https://archive.ph/yw2s0
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/25413097.equality-chief-i-not-fight-trans-rights-hurt-women/
'Kennedy sees the battle over trans rights as an “imported culture war”, which came along with “a rise in right-wing rhetoric, the rise of fascist tendencies, and a return to patriarchy. It manufactured fear and anxiety and made marginalised people scapegoats for the ills of the world”.
What’s happened in Britain and America isn’t happening in Europe, Kennedy says. “They’re looking at us in horror. The things that are going on around trans people’s human rights is unfathomable. We’re referred to as ‘Terf Island’ for a good reason.” Terf means “trans exclusionary radical feminist”.'
“It’s awful for LGBTI people, and specifically trans people, and more specifically trans women, right now. It’s terrifying. They’re demonised by the press, by their politicians, demonised on <a class="break-all" href="https://archive.ph/o/yw2s0/www.heraldscotland.com/topics/television/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">TV, questioned within institutions and their workplace, and they’re maybe not even able to use the toilet when they go outside.
“All the while this is happening, other people who are hateful are lauded and lifted up as heroes – and worse than that, painted as heroes for feminism. It’s just abhorrent.
“To be a trans women right now is so hard. Their strength is unparalleled. I cannot imagine being able to just hold my head high and live my life regardless of how – and I’m going to swear now – f***g awful it is. The admiration I have for trans women is huge. I couldn’t do it.”
“It’s dangerous for any woman who falls outside the supposed standard of what women should look like. I cannot believe that we’re returning to a world where if you don’t look like a feminine woman then you’re looked at with suspicion. I’ve heard more about cis women being pulled up and questioned in toilets – often cis lesbian women v than I have about trans women. I mean, what are we doing? We’ve gone so down the rabbit hole that people are being encouraged to take pictures of women in bathrooms. It’s not just trans women who bear the brunt of that, it’s all women who don’t conform to whatever it is we’re meant to conform to.”
She described the proposed system around bathrooms as “a mess with no clarity. It’s unreal. Trans men are to use women’s toilets, and trans women are to use men’s toilets. But anybody that’s non-binary, or looks ‘too transitioned’, is to use gender-neutral toilets, if there are any”.
“What that likely meant in practice was that, for example, bearded masculine trans men would be told they should use women’s toilets – unless that caused upset or fear – then they didn’t have a toilet to use at all, unless there was a gender-neutral one. It’s utterly ludicrous, appalling actually.”
Kennedy believes that women opposing trans rights are damaging feminism. “I’d give them grace and say they don’t realise how these things entwine. Partly this might be because before 2018 they weren’t involved in the equalities movement, or human rights or the feminist movement. So they don’t see there’s an intertwining of shared struggles.
“We all have human rights. If some of us don’t have them, then none of us do. As soon as you start that divisive pulling apart you weaken the armour and the tools that we have for moving forward. I believe in intersectional feminism where everyone who’s marginalised needs to work together. If we don’t work together, we won’t achieve anything.
“Many women [opposed to trans rights] are in quite privileged positions and have – or believe they have – what they need. Some people believe everything is fine because they’re fine, and they don’t look any deeper.”