Reply sent today:
Dear Kerry
Thank you very much for your reply to my email concerning potential reform to the Gender Identity Act.
I’m incredibly disappointed with your response, not so much due to your stance in supporting self ID, but in that I wrote to you with my concerns regarding the impact of GRA reform on women’s rights and received a reply that was completely focussed on trans rights. It neglected to mention women almost entirely, apart from where you assert that they their voices should be heard but only where they do not offend the trans community.
The part of your letter that caused me not just disappointment but deep concern was:
‘I think there are many means for abusive men to access vulnerable women and children, and I don’t think that trans people should be denied rights because a minority of people will seek to exploit a new process.’
- Can I ask what, in your view, puts the needs of the trans community above the safety of children? I thought our society accepted the safety of children as paramount and beyond the needs of adults from any demographic. This part really reads like you view potential attacks on women and children as necessary collateral damage to ensure natal males feel affirmed and validated. What number of attacks would be ‘acceptable’?
- Does your view that rights should not be lost due to abuse of the process by a few extend to other safeguarding practices? For example, do you think we should permit people to board commercial flights without security searches, which are not only inconvenient but seen as an invasion of privacy and degrading by some? After all, only a very tiny minority of people will seek to exploit this. By extension of your logic, we should abandon all safeguarding practices.
Another part which I found concerning was:
‘We do of course need to listen to people’s genuine concerns about safe spaces… these concerns can, and should, be addressed in a sensitive way without discriminating against trans people.’
- Firstly, I hope the wording did not imply that you do not consider all concerns to be ‘genuine concerns’? I really hope this does not mean you see concerns raised by women as transphobic straw men, designed to pursue exclusionary feminism based on unfounded beliefs that transwomen are inherently predatory. This is how women’s concerns are portrayed in the media as we know very well from recent examples.
- Once again, it very much reads that women are entitled to their concerns but only where these concerns are not objected to by trans people. I must ask again why the feelings of natal males are more inherently valuable than, for example, those of a woman who has been sexually assaulted and is uncomfortable with sharing a hospital ward with any male? Would you expect victims of Karen White to share a rape crisis centre with transwomen without complaint?
Your letter seems to hinge on transwomen being in such danger in UK society that it is worth eroding the rights of women and children in order to ensure their safety. Which, if true, I would be able to understand, if not accept. However this is simply not supported by any reliable facts; trans people are statistically less likely to be murdered than ‘cis’ men or ‘cis’ women according to a Transrespect study which collated data from 2017-2018. In this time, 1 trans person was sadly murdered in the UK. By comparison, 149 women were murdered. Adjusting for the fact trans people make up a tiny proportion of the population compared to women, ‘cis’ women are still twice as likely to be murdered.
For other violent crime, it is simply impossible to make any kind of fair comparison as misogyny is not treated as a hate crime like transphobia is. I assume this is in part because of the sheer volume of incidences that would be treated as misogyny. Again, it seems that the safety and rights of women are dismissed because they are too difficult to enforce.
Just to make it clear, I am not suggesting self ID will lead to any significant increase in the number of women attacked directly due to transwomen accessing womens’ spaces. However, self ID cannot be implemented in a way which distinguishes between genuine trans people and people that may be claiming to be trans for nefarious reasons. It would be a gateway for any male to enter female changing rooms, toilets and hospital wards. Even if there are very very few incidences, women still deserve comfort, dignity and peace of mind that protected spaces afford them; the bar of feminism is very low if it is reduced to, ‘You very probably will not be assaulted.’ There is also the possibility of voyeurism alongside direct physical or sexual crime; how can this be monitored if the presence of a natal male in a changing room causes no suspicion?
Finally, there are the social implications of making transwomen synonymous with women in law and in society. The beliefs of the majority of the trans community are no longer that a person should simply be free to present how they wish; but that upon doing so, you BECOME your acquired sex. And not only this; others should be COMPELLED to say you are. Women have been investigated by the police for ‘misgendering’ people; despite no resulting convictions, this is frankly Orwellian. No modern society should compel a person to state an untruth in order to preserve the feelings of others if that truth is anchored in scientific fact.
By making transwomen synonymous with women, and the inference that women have a unique biology ‘transphobic’, and allowing them to access women’s hard-won rights, we are denying those rights were needed due to our biological vulnerability. We are denying misogynism takes place due to our female anatomy, and instead replacing it with a vague notion of women are discriminated against based on our ‘identity’, which is clearly untrue as oppressed women across the world are unable to ‘identify’ out of their situation. It reduces being a woman to just an idea in somebody’s head. By allowing transwomen to appropriate all-female positions within your party,you are dismissing why they were needed in the first place to affirm natal males.This is not to say trans people should not benefit from affirmative action in the way women do to ensure they are proportionately represented; but letting transwomen apply for women-only positions does not actually achieve this. All it does is degrade the reasons why these positions were needed in the first place.
In summary I simply do not agree with your letter that the needs of trans people come before the safety and protection of women and children. I do agree every single person should be free to live as they wish, dress as they like, and be free from oppression or violence. However this can be achieved for trans people without compromising the rights of others, or compelling women to acknowledge natal males as women. It is not always the case that the smallest group is the most vulnerable one, although I accept generally that has been the picture throughout history. In this instance we are applying this mindset where it is simply not applicable.
I would suggest that facilities (such as rape crisis centres and certain hospital wards) are created specifically for trans people. Not only would this be better for the comfort and dignity of all concerned, but it would be advantageous to the trans community; the staff training would be geared towards the physical and mental health of trans people, and they would not receive substandard care which is a patchwork of men and women’s health.
Please remember sex is real, it exists, it matters, it has consequences. The vast majority of transwomen (80%) have not had any ‘transition’ bottom surgery and do not intend to – this reinforces the ridiculous idea that a ‘woman’ is now considered anybody that dresses in a stereotypically female way and says they are one. To draw a comparison, would you approve of a white person appropriating the highly racist ‘blackface’ and using it to apply for BAME positions within the Labour party? Even if they said they ‘felt’ BAME and wanted to be seen as such? The outrage would be entirely accepted by society, yet in this case women’s outrage is seen as bigoted. Please ask yourself what the difference is between these two scenarios. There really isn’t one.
I really didn’t expect I would have to be writing to my MP in 2020 in order to petition for natal males not to take priority in women’s rights, but I guess it has been a very strange year.