Protest and the right to pee

Trans Rights Protest, Parliament Square London, July 4th 2020. 

I often find protesting a melancholy experience. How many have I been on since 2016 now? Several to fight Brexit; at one of them over a million turned up. Two to express my anger at our government's pandering to Donald Trump. A Women's March. I was there as a woman with my sisters. I even stood in a damp Trafalgar Square along with a couple of hundred EU citizens to show my solidarity with them.

Each protest had a personal purpose, often to show my support for others. The cataclysm of Brexit still awaits, and though it will hurt me and take money out of my pocket, I am lucky to be able to hope that the effect will not be too great - economically at least - on me. It, of course, depends on how bad it gets. I went on the anti-Brexit marches thinking of the millions it will crucify (all the more so now). The anti-Trump marches felt like solidarity with Americans reeling under the boot of a proto-fascist, the Women's March felt like trying to send strength to women there too. The EU citizens demonstration was definitely a case of lining up with some innocent people being kicked to pieces by nationalist politicians.

In each case, I have been left feeling that its one thing to put a few hundred thousand people on the streets but unless you know why you are doing it, you have a plan and an infrastructure and a way of making something come of it all, it's just whistling in the dark. There's plenty of evidence in the academic literature about this sort of stuff too - the big crowds of themselves may make little difference. It's the focus and the cultural leverage created by all that feeling and belief that matters - and that usually needs structure and leadership and a plan.

Bindel in The Observer, 2004

I am hoping that yesterday's protest in Central London against the planned rollback of trans people's human rights by the British government wasn't just whistling in the dark. The organisers managed to get over a thousand people there. Not exactly on a scale of the anti-Brexit epics, but pretty good considering they had no money, no experience of this, and were ignored completely by the media. I recall being at the first trans demo of modern times (possibly, any times, excepting the sterling work of Press for Change a decade or so earlier) when about a hundred of us stood outside the V&A Museum in 2008 to protest about Stonewall nominating Julie Bindel for an award. She had written the article (right) a few years before - one of the first major, insult-laden attacks on trans people of its era. I remember reading it in my kitchen, pre-transition, trying to navigate my way through an increasingly broken and toxic marriage. I practically hyperventilated. It was so gratuitous, so hurtful. It treated me and others like me as abstractions (as we are treated still). It made me feel very frightened for my future, my whole life - the poisonous cartoon bringing all the hate awaiting me into focus.

Standing outside that museum that night, making ourselves heard, felt like a critical moment. Something of a Lesser Free Trade Hall moment* perhaps. Ok, well maybe that's a stretch...but no-one went home from that night thinking that the job was anything like done. We still knew we were a small and misunderstood group. But we had taken a step within a bigger process and that night marked a beginning of sorts. Years later, Julie Bindel doesn't seem to have changed in the slightest, but the self-awareness of the trans community and its belief in itself has changed beyond recognition.

So much for the history. Back to the idea and the feeling of protesting. Standing in a square and shouting slogans against a notional or unspecified threat, be it the danger of Brexit or the ghastly intentions of Trump, is one thing. Doing so knowing that you are about to be picked out because of who you are by the government and quite deliberately targetted to be the victim of an unfair law justified by baseless fears, is another. The personal, as they say, is definitely the political, if you are trans in 2020 Britain.

I'm going to rewind a bit. Apologies if you know this stuff. I remain convinced that millions simply don't.

Two years ago, the then government of Theresa May launched a consultation into the reform of the 2004 Gender Recognition Act. This piece of legislation, progressive for its time, has widely been seen to fall behind best practice in helping trans people gain the official papers we need to live in the gender to which we know we belong. The current process is long, involves a great deal of getting 'approval', from doctors, psychiatrists and finally an anonymous panel, and is costly. It involves having to live 'in role' for two years (at a time when getting medical support to get the hormones that help many to even start to be accepted publicly, or at work, is increasingly impossible). Then there's the issue of not being able to even apply for a Gender Recognition Certificate (the thing they give you at the end of all this with which you can apply to get a new Birth Certificate) if you are married, without the permission of your partner. The alternative is to get a divorce. If you are concerned about the effect on your children of a divorce, or for religious reasons you feel you cannot, then your partner essentially controls your gender, not you.

It's all a bit of a nightmare.

To tackle this problem, the government committed to looking at a system of 'Self-ID'. This is a process that is in place in a number of other countries, like Ireland, Norway, Portugal and Belgium, without any problem - they all have slightly different versions of it. These countries allow people to make a legally binding declaration of their gender and then be granted it. In Ireland, it involves making a 'Statutory Declaration' and then a Gender Recognition Certificate can be issued. There, as here, to lie in a Statutory Declaration can put you in jail (for two years in this country). Interestingly, despite the 'easing' of the process there, the number of people who have applied for a Gender Recognition Certificate since this law was passed has been pretty modest. Turns out that Irish society is not full of men who "wake up one day and decide that they want to be a woman" on a whim (as one of the fear-mongering Usual Suspects put it on BBC Radio 4 the other day). And while we're on the subject, the penalty in jail in Ireland for lying on a Statutory Declaration is only three months. Even so, there's been no tsunami of men pretending to be women invading single-sex spaces there. More of such nonsense in a moment.

The government consultation took place in the UK, and of the 100,000 submissions it received, around 70% were in support of a process of Self ID. End of, you'd think.

But that's where it all started to go wrong. First, a new Brexit-driven government took office in the UK, desperate to banish the woke and the progressive from its ranks. Second, all hell broke loose (in fact it already had) about the possible arrival of predatory men in women's single-sex spaces, without any checks or restrictions. Yes, that's right - in spite of the fact that wherever Self-ID systems had already been introduced, it wasn't actually happening.

Any argument that it's not really down to governments to gatekeep what gender you know you are was suddenly consigned to the dustbin. Hysteria exploded, orchestrated by a small but influential group of radical feminist voices, many of whom were influenced by the class-based doctrines of Marxism, joined by others from a deeply socially conservative or religious position. These individuals, most of whom deny that trans people have any right to be understood as the gender they claim to be ramped up a campaign to stop Self ID. The British press, vulpine and bigoted as ever, rushed to give these people and the fear stoking narratives they were promoting huge coverage. Notably The Times and The Sunday Times.

And the new government started to listen. Last month it placed a story in The Sunday Times suggesting that it was not only going to abandon Self ID but was looking at rolling back the rights of trans people - trans women in particular - to enter single-sex women's spaces. Like changing rooms or toilets. The 'concern' implied that these trans women might still have 'male' genitalia, so could conceivably display it, or worse, use it to rape someone. I'm going to address this nasty little soundbite later.

For good measure, the government also gifted the haters the news that they were looking to make it much harder for trans kids to get medical help of any kind under the age of 18. I should add that it's almost impossible for trans kids to get help even now as it is tightly rationed, and delays are colossal.

All of which took me to Parliament Square yesterday. Fighting not even for self ID anymore, but to hold on to the rights we already have. Not because of any evidence that trans women have been charging into women's spaces en masse and sexually assaulting them, but because of fear.

I'm going to break this down a bit further. Stay with me, it needs saying over and over.

The government is talking about not simply not reforming the GRA, but changing The Equality Act to allow, possibly even require, discrimination towards trans people - trans women in particular. Not because of the individual risk any person might represent (because of how they're acting, what they are doing, say they will do, or what they have done) but because they are a member of a group. No further qualification is required. I can be an exemplary member of society. It doesn't matter. My rights may be removed simply because of my trans background.

This is one of the purest definitions of prejudice that you'll find.

I have never raped anyone. I will never rape anyone. I have not the slightest interest in raping anyone. Why am I even having to write this?

If I did rape someone it would not be because I was a woman with a trans background, it would be because I was a rapist. And I am not.

Nevertheless, I may be no longer allowed to use a women's toilet. Perhaps I will be challenged to 'prove' that I am not trans before I enter? That's one of the more ludicrous endpoints of all this. Will I - or any other woman, trans or cisgender - be required to lift their skirt or drop their jeans to allow an inspection of our genitals? I am not going to tell you what they would find there, because  - do forgive me here - that's absolutely my business.

Maybe I will be allowed in if I do have a Gender Recognition Certificate? How will anyone know? Perhaps trans women will have to carry their papers to gain admittance to changing rooms? And what if you don't have a GRC, because you couldn't get the help you need to get one, or you couldn't afford it, or frankly you thought the whole damn thing was so humiliating and demeaning? Maybe you are doing your two years 'Real Life Test' (as it used to be called) - which you actually have to do before you can even try and get surgery and/or a GRC. You'd be denied the use of women's facilities and thus actually fail to pass that test (which if it even sniffs a hint that you are not living 100% 'in role' will reject you).

Ever read Catch 22? Actually, to hell with it, why not simply have us all sew a star on our coats?

Let's go further into this rabbit hole of fear. There's a view that Self ID could allow men access to women's spaces. A man, say some, could simply burst in, lying that he is 'now a woman'. But in fact, Self-ID legally makes not the slightest difference to the likelihood of this happening. A man 'could' in fact do it right now, claiming falsely that he was transitioning. It's illegal to claim such a thing if it's not true now and it will stay illegal. And it isn't happening. Why would it? Such a man, with malevolent intent, is hardly going to need to come up with such a ridiculously implausible and demonstrably false claim.

Equally, given that many single-sex spaces require permission to access them, The Equality Act already gives owners of such spaces entitlement to bar individuals on a case by case basis, if there are reasonable grounds to do so. The GRA - founded on Self-ID or not - has nothing to do with this provision. Any individual can be kept out on defensible grounds. These grounds are based on their judgement of what risk that individual, in that moment, is causing or could represent.

The owners of single-sex spaces need this power and there isn't any possibility that it's going to be removed. Imagine a loud and vocally racist elderly white woman turning up at a refuge for example and demanding shelter.  Those running the shelter might take the view that they should not admit her because she poses a clear threat to a vulnerable Bengali woman for whom they are caring. Or, of course, they might decide to take that risk. They'd decide on the basis of the specific case in front of them. But if they said no, they wouldn't seek, don't need and haven't asked for a blanket ban on all elderly white women (to use this example) because as a whole group they might be racist. 

Going further, let's say that a trans woman did actually commit an offence in such a space. First, she wouldn't be the first person ever to commit an offence in such a space - and I can't recall previous calls in Britain for whole categories of human beings to be made answerable and banned en masse simply because one offending individual was within that group. Second, she would have done so because she, as an individual did so, and she, as an individual should be held responsible. Collective punishment of a whole group, pre-emptive in this case, is grotesque...and another form of prejudice, well known in some pretty dark periods of history and underpinning both apartheid and Jim Crow America.

This is of course amongst the most naked rhetorics of prejudice. Those who claim that a whole group must be excluded because one member of that group did, or even could, perpetrate an act are inevitably claiming that the act is inherent, characteristic of and essential to that group. You have no doubt heard that 'All men are rapists'. It's the same logic and it comes from the fact that some men have raped women. In this logic, they did so not because they were evil, violent, damaged or mentally ill individuals, but because they were men. The same approach infuses racist claims that 'all Muslims are terrorists'. Here is the same poison in action. All trans women are, in this bent and bitter world, rapists, predators, groomers or whatever.

Of course, if there's not an actual example of a trans woman committing the act in question, stories can be manipulated, 'facts' changed as required to produce the required narrative. Or perhaps that's not even necessary - just say it, feed on the lack of familiarity with trans people, the innate fear of the unknown. Trans women are men, after all, they say. And all men are rapists.

I need hardly add that men need no excuse to hurt women. Most women who are raped are raped by someone they know. In addition, the notion that a whole wave of men are awaiting the arrival of new ways of declaring themselves female just so that they can gain access to women's toilets with impunity is absurd. Even if it wasn't they'd get a shock to find that the legal situation is exactly as it was, GRA reform or not. And for those types of men who don't care what the law says one way or the other (let's say 'actual rapists' for example), I'll add that I have a friend who was raped in the cubicle of a woman's toilet by a man who simply walked in after her. A truly horrific story. I don't think he stopped by at a solicitor's office to complete the paperwork for a GRC on his way in either.

I have been using women's toilets and women's changing rooms without the slightest incident for almost 15 years now. I did it before I started the convoluted process of getting 'permission' from the state to be seen as a woman, I did it whilst I was qualifying for that permission, and I have done it since. Thousands of times. I may, or may not, have had surgery at any point in the last 15 years. That is, and will stay, my business. 

For the avoidance of any doubt, when I use a women's toilet I tend to go into the cubical, close and lock the door, do what I need to do, come out, wash my hands, dry them and then leave. When I use a changing room in a shop, I go into the cubical, draw the curtain, try the clothes on, put my own back on and then leave. If I am at a swimming pool changing room, I go in, take my clothes off, put them in a locker, curse not having brought a £1 coin for the key before eventually finding one, put on my costume and then go swimming. When I am done swimming I come back, go into the shower, where I take my costume off, wash myself and my hair, then wrap myself in a towel, dry myself and my hair, put my clothes on and sometimes my make up, then leave, feeling virtuous.

No-one has ever been injured at any stage.

It seems strange indeed that I had to travel to London yesterday and stand in a square to ask that I should be allowed to carry on doing these things. A melancholy feeling indeed - and a very frightening, enraging, baffling one too.

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* The Sex Pistols burst onto the music scene with a gig at Manchester's Lesser Free Trade Hall in 1976. It's been said that "there was hardly anyone there but everyone who was went on to form a band".