Just seen a couple of sad/angry posts on my Facebook news feed.
One was by a gay guy expressing solidarity for his trans friends and saying, "Injustice makes the rules, courage breaks them."
Yeah, OK Henry. Using single sex spaces and services and competing in sporting categories for the opposite sex with zero regard for the impact that your actions have on the opposite sex is certainly breaking the rules. I don't see where the injustice is though. The rules in question were made by two Labour governments, both of which you voted for, and until this morning your lot swore blind that those rules said what you wanted them to say and not what they actually say. If the judgment had gone the other way then you'd be praising those same rules. And today's judgment took years of determination and expensive and exhausting legal action from a group of ordinary women who most certainly had no part in making the rules. I'm pretty sure you wouldn't allow a trans man into your bed so tell me why we should allow trans women into our communal showers?
The other was by a woman whose partner is trans, simply sharing a post by a Church of England group expressing shock and sadness about the judgment.
I really struggle with the fact that these people, who I know to be kind and sensitive and empathetic, can be so myopic about this issue. Why is it apparently not possible to support trans people without believing that the rights, safety and dignity of all women constitute acceptable collateral damage? Or even acknowledge that women's rights, safety and dignity are genuinely at stake here, and that the female rape survivor and the woman in prison for stealing money to buy drugs are not just evil and bigoted? I really don't get it.