“I've moved a long way in my conceptualisation of what privilege really means, and quite how extraordinarily stupid and thoughtless and arrogant my tribe can be,” he says over a Zoom call. “[They] always think they know better and never fucking listen.”
Maugham is referring to the prevalence of transphobia amongst an affluent and loud minority of middle class women and men, something the High Court’s ruling effectively institutionalised in England and Wales.
Maugham says the ruling is having an immediate impact on the lives of young trans people. “The data is unequivocal,” he says. “There is a very strong correlation between affirming the gender of trans young adults and reducing their risk of attempting or committing suicide, and the consequence of that data is that there will be children who kill themselves in consequence of this judgment.”
Young trans people have said it feels like, “a deep discomfort and almost a repulsion in your own body.” Not that the judges who made the decision would have fully understood that – one of the key issues Maugham noticed was that the High Court refused to take input from charities like Stonewall and Mermaids, and no trans children were spoken to throughout the ruling, something campaigners criticised at the time.
“The read across from that judgment to a child's right to consent to an abortion is obvious, right?,” Maugham asks.
“I think that the generation of feminists in the UK, that finds amongst it a lot of transphobes, has forgotten its privilege,” Maugham says, delicately. “It's forgotten its relative privilege compared to the trans community general”