In the way they talk about Brianna, the entire Ghey family has shown us an idea of trans people that isn’t often conveyed in public: not ostracised, but surrounded by people who loved her. Not freakish or somehow shameful, but recognisable in her vulnerability to any parent of teenagers trying to find their way. Much as the family of the MP Jo Cox did after her murder, by meeting hate with love, the Gheys have ensured their daughter is not merely remembered for the awful way she died, but for the values by which her family clearly live. That is an extraordinary achievement in the midst of grief, and it offers the kind of rare, galvanising moment in public life to which all political parties could have responded in kind, by quietly undertaking not to exploit an obviously sensitive issue for electoral gain.
That doesn’t mean leaders can’t talk about trans rights, given it’s an issue of legitimate public interest, or be asked searching questions about policy – including how Starmer got from his 2021 view (supportive of self-identification for trans people, and insistent that it’s “not right” to say only women can have a cervix), to his 2023 position, that self-ID isn’t happening and a woman is an adult human female. Voters deserve clarity on something with serious implications not just for trans people, but all those anxious about women’s legal rights to single-sex spaces, say, or fairness in sport. But it’s precisely because these are serious questions that they deserve to be handled responsibly.
That means not making transness the punchline of a bad joke, any more than you would race or gender. It means no gratuitous sideswipes or spuriously dragging it into every unrelated political attack, and generally not inflicting unnecessary drive-by pain on people who are non-combatants in this election. Wasn’t Sunak’s whole point supposed to be that there’s an embarrassment of broken Labour pledges to choose from? So choose some. Just don’t break something more precious in the process.
The above is pretty much how I feel about this whole shameful episode.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/feb/08/brianna-ghey-parents-love-rishi-sunak-cheap-laughs-election