Extract:
The feminists challenging trans orthodoxy
This year, the UK government proposed changes to the Gender Recognition Act (GRA) to allow trans people legally to change their gender without medical consultation. So-called self-identification has the support of the political class, the corporate world and even the established church. This has enormous implications for women’s rights and women’s spaces and so a number of feminists started pushing back. They also raised important questions about the rising number of children who are transitioning.
But it wasn’t easy. Anyone who says that trans rights and women’s rights had the potential to clash is now labelled a bigot. Some feminists organised meetings on the GRA this year but trans activists prevented them from going ahead. Some trans activists physically blocked them, others made bomb threats to venues to get the meetings cancelled. Many trans-critical feminists face violence, death threats and censorship.
The statement ‘women don’t have penises’ may sound like an incontrovertible, scientific fact. But in Britain in 2018, saying this is tantamount to a speechcrime. When a group of radical feminists distributed stickers with the offending phrase around Liverpool, Merseyside Police took the extraordinary step of investigating them.
At the beginning of 2018, anyone who raised critical questions on trans issues would be dismissed as a bigot and duly ignored or hounded from public life. But it is largely thanks to the feminist pushback that something resembling a debate has emerged. It is still a fractious debate, which often sheds more heat than light. Nevertheless, thanks to the brave pushback, we stand a much better chance in 2019 of reaching a consensus that can better accommodate the rights and freedoms of both women and trans women.
