Trans rights

Earlier this week, GB News again found itself at odds with Ofcom. The channel had written to the broadcast regulator asking if, in light of the Supreme Court judgment affirming that the word ‘sex’ in the Equality Act means biological sex, it could now treat the dispute between trans-rights activists and gender-critical feminists as a ‘settled’ matter. ‘Broadly settled’ was the phrase Ofcom applied to the ‘theory of anthropogenic global warming’ in a guidance note issued in 2013 stating that broadcasters were no longer under an obligation to be impartial when discussing the issue. GB News wanted to know whether the regulator would extend the same latitude to debates about sex- and gender-based rights. Incredibly, Ofcom’s answer was ‘no’.

Indisputably a nutjob, Chase Strangio is the soul of nominative determinism. The lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union is a ‘trans man’ – meaning a woman, of course; one of the trans movement’s lesser impositions is forcing consumers of pliant media to keep translating wishful thinking into real life, much as the unhip once had to keep remembering that ‘super-bad’ means ‘super-good’. Strangio is a rare example of sexual disguise that is reasonably persuasive. The 42-year-old woman passes for a certain kind of man: weedy, slight and very short, with narrow shoulders, Marx Brothers eyebrows, just-credible facial hair, a tight fade over the ears bursting into a cocky skywards coiffure, and a chronically smarmy, self-satisfied expression.

The Texas Supreme Court just upheld a state law banning so-called gender-affirming care for minors, to explosive consternation from predictable quarters. Progressive commentators portray this and similar laws passed by more than a dozen Republican-controlled state legislatures as ‘anti-LGBTQIA+’. In truth, the laws are aimed not at that whole bramble of capital letters, but solely at the ‘T’.

August is traditionally the silly season in politics but we seem to be stuck in silly decade of policy, and not in a funny way. Even ten years ago, few might have imagined that the minister for equalities would have needed to open up a debate on toilets. Yesterday, Kemi Badenoch announced that the government is publishing draft guidance that will protect the dignity, privacy and safety of all. In particular, she insisted that so-called gender-neutral toilets are no longer an option. In this country, a woman would not be committing a criminal offence if she chose to use the cubicle in the men’s to avoid a long queue The problem is less about toilets than language and assumptions. As Badenoch pointed out, gender-neutral does not mean unisex.

SOCRATES: I was walking back from the gymnasium when I saw Keir Mather, the new MP for Selby, on his way there. I had been told he was young and good-looking and went to a world-famous Oxford College, so I have been very keen to meet to him. Hello, O Keir. MATHER: And you too, Socrates. But what, therefore? SOCRATES: Now that you are an MP, you must tell me what justice is. For that surely is a lawmaker’s main concern. MATHER: Enough verbal games. Justice is defined by the laws. My job is to solve problems in the real world. SOCRATES: Are Tory laws, then, just? MATHER: Of course they are not!

Is Britain a hostile environment for trans people? The United Nations’ independent expert on sexual orientation and gender identity has delivered his verdict – and it isn’t good. Victor Madrigal-Borloz, a lawyer from Costa Rica, said following a ten-day visit to the country: ‘I am deeply concerned about increased bias-motivated incidents of harassment, threats, and violence against LGBT people, including a rampant surge in hate crimes in the UK.’ But his statement was stronger on rhetoric than evidence. An unnamed ‘elected officer’ in Belfast told him that ‘I have never seen so much unadulterated hatred as currently directed toward the trans community’.

This is what it must have been like when women were marched to the stake. Yesterday in Auckland the British women’s rights campaigner Posie Parker found herself surrounded by a deranged, heaving mob. She had tomato soup and placards thrown in her face. She was doused with water. Huge men screamed insults and expletives in her face. The shoving of the crowd became so intense that Parker feared for her life. ‘I genuinely thought that if I fell to the floor I would never get up again’, she said. ‘My children would lose their mother and my husband would lose his wife.’ It was a truly chilling spectacle. The mobs’ faces were twisted into masks of feral hatred.

In 2016, the Obama-Biden administration concluded that “the quality and strength of evidence” for medicalized gender transition was “low” and insufficient “to determine whether gender reassignment surgery improves health outcomes for Medicare beneficiaries with gender dysphoria.” Six years on, such skepticism has evaporated. In June, the Biden-Harris administration issued an executive order directing the departments of health and education to “promote expanded access to gender-affirming care.” What changed? Not the evidence, only the politics. At a special Pride Month ceremony for LGBT activists at the White House, the president promised to use the “full force of the federal government” in implementing their policy agenda, from education to healthcare.

During Pride month this year a banner has been emblazoned across the BBC’s internal staff website used by every single employee. It features the following text: ‘BBC Pride 2022: Bringing together LGBTQ+ people of all genders, sexualities and identities at the BBC.’ Most people who work at the BBC aren’t concerned about this. But the slogan really should ring alarm bells, because behind its seemingly benign message of inclusivity is a latent political message about trans rights that is undermining the corporation’s impartiality. As a BBC employee I am proud and delighted that the corporation is striving to be a welcoming employer for people from all walks of life, whatever their colour, creed or whoever they choose to sleep with.

I am starting to wonder if the world of arts and culture is staffed, in large part if not exclusively, by massive whinging babies. What other plausible explanation is there for the frequency with which publishing houses, streaming services and theatres are going into open revolt because their employers have commissioned work by someone whose opinions they happen to find disagreeable? Terry Gilliam is the latest artist in the crosshairs. The Monty Python legend and director was due to co-direct a production of Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods at the Old Vic in London next year. Sondheim had expressed support for Gilliam’s vision for the show. But according to reports in the Stage, ‘staff unrest’ about his personal views has led to the show being cancelled.