It's never been harder to be a woman... and today, my thoughts are with our trans sisters. For while it is difficult (impossible, at times) to go through life as a cis woman – when our reproductive rights are being eroded in 'modern-day' America and our bodily autonomy taken away; when "Your body, my choice" is echoed in the mouths of misogynistic men on the streets and on social media; when women in Afghanistan are banned from showing their faces or hearing each other's voices – now, a startling Supreme Court ruling has effectively outlawed and excluded trans women from all public spaces.
That this can happen in Britain, under a Labour government – that it can stand on the shoulders of our deep-rooted values of diversity, inclusion and tolerance – is unthinkable, bordering on perverse. It was with a deep sense of shame and solidarity that I spoke to the journalist Diana Thomas, who writes for us on Voices, this week – about how this ruling will directly impact her life and the lives of other trans women (and your lives, too).
She told me she was barely able to watch the ruling come in, because she was so terrified about its impact. "Our lives are at stake," she said. "It's devastating. I will now be excluded from all women's spaces." Diana made an important point that is all too often missing (or misunderstood): that this ruling affects only trans women, not trans men – that of the infinitesimally small percentage of trans people within our community (0.055%), this impacts approximately half of those.
And so, this tiny number of vulnerable trans women (let's not forget that the trans community is the most targeted group within the LGBT+ community as a whole) now have nowhere to go; are effectively being told they don't – can't – belong to British society... because of what? Lack of proof about the impact of trans women on cis women, and a movement funded by the far right in America.
As my colleague Kat Brown pointed out, this ruling also means that any woman who doesn’t resemble some mythical feminine ideal also risks being challenged in loos and changing rooms – and indeed, this has already happened to Kat (she stands at a statuesque 6'1").
First, they came for trans women. The question we now need to ask is: who’s next?
Victoria Richards
Voices editor
What a load of melodramatic tosh!