Transgender issues in the law, politics, sport, and the impact on children
Last week* the BBC announced that the 2024 Children in Need appeal had raised more than £39 million for charity. With such large sums of money, comes great responsibility – which charities are worthy of funding, and which ones should be kept at the end of the proverbial bargepole?
Keir Starmer’s new Office for Equality and Opportunity – launched earlier this month* – purports to ensure that ‘equality is at the heart of every mission’. The terrifying reality might be something rather different. One key immediate priority is a ‘full, trans-inclusive ban on conversion practices’. The government has said, ‘Conversion practices are abuse. They have no place in society and must be stopped.’
Kemi Badenoch has suggested that JK Rowling deserves a seat in the House of Lords. The Tory leadership contender said in an interview with Talk TV: ‘I don’t know whether she would take it but I certainly would give her a peerage’.
Seven hundred and twenty-six plaster face casts of transsexual, non-binary or gender non-conforming people were unveiled yesterday* in London’s Trafalgar Square. Mil Veces un Instante (A thousand times an Instant) by Mexican artist, Teresa Margolles, sits proudly upon the Fourth Plinth around Nelson’s Column. The casts are arranged in the form of a Tzompantli, or a ‘skull rack’, that exhibited the remains of war captives or sacrifice victims, and the art is intended to draw attention to the rights of trans people worldwide. But is it really necessary? As another Transgender Day of Remembrance approaches on 20 November with its pseudo-religious trappings, this imagery is not what London needs.
The number of people applying for a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) has reached a new record. Government figures revealed that there were 1,397 applications in 2023-24 and, of those, 1,088 were granted. Labour has vowed to simplify the process of changing gender, meaning that the numbers could rise further.
Let’s give Rowling a break. For four years, she has spoken up consistently and courageously in defence of women’s rights – in sport and elsewhere – when politicians and officials were unable to even to define the word ‘woman’.
Hilary Cass’s review of gender identity services for children and young people put a stop to doctors playing fast and loose with the development of youngsters in Great Britain. Her report was welcomed on both sides of the Commons, and it was reassuring to hear Wes Streeting confirm that he intends to uphold the ban on puberty blockers to under-18s.
The Tavistock’s notorious Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) clinic in London – which prescribed puberty blockers to children – closed in March. Two replacement clinics have already opened in London and Liverpool. NHS England has now confirmed they will be joined by six more, starting with Bristol this coming autumn and a centre for the East of England by March 2025. The NHS is under immense pressure; should it really be spending money on these clinics?
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) needs to find some far better answers to the transgender question if it is to restore its credibility in eyes of those who care about women’s sport. We might not have the spectacle of Laurel Hubbard – the transgender weightlifter who displaced a woman from the last games in Tokyo – but the debate is far from settled.
Debbie Hayton