Transphobia

The question was direct and to the point, ‘Are you one of them blokes?’ With those six short words, I was the victim of blatant transphobia. We have been advised to report such attacks. ‘We need the stats,’ explained one transgender campaigner in 2018. That was in response to ‘hateful’ stickers which read ‘Female is a biological reality’ appearing in Edinburgh. This attack was personal and in my face. But if this was transphobia, I was in no danger. The woman who asked the question was in her 60s, laden down with groceries and she would have needed to stand on a box for it to be truly in my face. I towered over her. I decided that the situation called for a straight answer, ‘Why yes, so I am!

The trans debate can be a nasty one. And when women (and it usually is women) have the courage to speak out, they face being shamed and silenced. Their crime apparently is 'transphobia'. But all too often, this word no longer means the hatred or fear of trans people like me. Instead, it refers to the simple act of disagreeing with an ideology that insists men and women are defined, not by their biology, but by feelings. Dame Jenni Murray, Professor Kathleen Stock, Joanna Cherry MP, Julie Bindel, and many other women have been hauled before a kangaroo court and been found guilty. But behind these high-profile cases, ordinary women face the same treatment. An army of (often anonymous) accounts police social media for wrong think.

I’m done with being white. It’s boring. From now on I choose to identify as black and I insist that you all refer to me as a black man. Please do not mis-race me. Of course I am not going to do this because it would be mad and also a tad racist. Clearly I am not black. And I expect that calling myself black would be an affront to actual black people, who would rightfully point out that I am as white as the driven snow. ‘You can’t just put on the black identity like a piece of clothing’, they’d say, and rational people everywhere would agree. So why, then, is it okay for Eddie Izzard to announce to the world that he is switching to ‘girl mode’?

Who runs a newspaper – and especially a great liberal newspaper – in a digital age when liberalism often seems to be in retreat, menaced by its enemies internal and external? In the not-too-recent past, the question would be easily answered: the editor, supported by his (for in the past it was usually ‘his’) senior journalists ran the paper. Things are more complicated now. At least they appear more complicated at the Guardian and at the New York Times. At both papers, each the proud inheritors of certain liberal traditions, one may no longer say with confidence that editorial control of the paper resides with the editorial staff. This evening, the columnist Suzanne Moore announced she is leaving the Guardian.