Transgender issues in the law, politics, sport, and the impact on children
While Westminster understandably has its mind on other things, the transgender debate – which you might have expected to calm down after last year’s consultation on the Gender Recognition Act (GRA) – rumbles on with its trademark ferocity. And as two stories have this week have shown, its proponents continue to take no prisoners.
Three years after her parliamentary committee reported on transgender rights, Maria Miller this week accused her own government of mishandling trans issues.
When the Tory chair of the House of Commons women and equalities committee announces publicly that her own government’s priorities are wrong, we must surely be in the last days of this shambolic administration.
As professionals, academics, teachers and parents, we are anxious about the 25-fold increase in referrals of children to the NHS gender identity development service since 2009.
On Wednesday night [21 November 2018], Channel 4 broadcast a much-debated documentary examining the staggering rise in children being referred for consultation on gender re-assignment. In the last nine years, referrals for children to the NHS’s Gender Identity Development Service have risen some 2500 per cent.
[Transcript of the Speech I gave at A Woman’s Place is a Safe Port, a meeting organised by Woman’s Place UK in Liverpool on 25th September 2018 to coincide with the Labour Party Conference]
I am a transwoman but I am also a science teacher, and I do understand the reality of biological sex. It is the basis of the procreation of our species. There are seven and a half billion people on this planet and each has two biological parents – one female and one male – that’s real.
When equalities minister Penny Mordaunt launched the consultation on reforming the Gender Recognition Act she declared that “trans women are women”. Whether anyone really believes this remains to be seen. Yet our political leaders are willing to endorse this Orwellian thinking, and when it comes to the transgender debate, objective truth plays second fiddle to political expediency.
As the Government Consultation on reforms to The Gender Recognition Act 2004 comes to a close, we should reflect on what is at stake. As a transsexual person I have a particular interest. While I understand the superficial attraction of self-declaration, a procedure based purely on an assertion of our own feelings, any process lacking objective evidence is vulnerable to abuse.
Sir,
The compilers of the Book of Proverbs probably had more pressing concerns than gender identity when they characterised the wicked, the foolish and the wise, but the transgender debate today (letters, Oct 3 & 4) involves the same three kinds of people.
As ministers consult the public over plans to simplify the legal process for changing gender, it’s important to recognise the valid concerns that many women have about their safety. Removing medical and legal barriers to people who want to identify their own gender is welcome, but it involves a lot more than wearing new clothes and changing names.
Debbie Hayton