If Britain is now resetting the clock on trans rights, where will that leave us?
There is both joy and dismay after the supreme court judgment. Compassion and leadership are really needed now
So this is how a clock turns backwards. With the hands still spinning even now, it’s hard to know yet exactly how far back in time we will land. But Wednesday’s supreme court ruling that for the purposes of equality law, “woman” means “biological woman” – basically the chromosomes you were born with, regardless of what legal hoops you have since jumped through – is nonetheless a watershed moment.
We are going back to a time before “trans women are women”, full stop, no debate: and if it’s handled well, accepting that sometimes life genuinely is more complicated than that could ultimately be healthy. But if handled badly, we could be heading back to a far darker time, when trans existence was shrouded in fear and shame and bigots had carte blanche.
By stressing that their ruling did not remove trans people’s protection from discrimination, the five supreme court judges signalled clearly that they did not mean to go back that far. Instead, they seemingly want the time machine to stop in 2010, the year an incoming Tory-Lib Dem coalition pushed through an Equality Act drawn up by the outgoing Labour cabinet minister Harriet Harman, which their ruling sought to interpret. As Harman has said, that act reflected a hard-won, sensitively negotiated consensus between Stonewall and women’s rights groups that is frankly hard to imagine today.
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The deal done recognised that nobody should face prejudice or harassment for being trans, any more than for being black or gay, but that in practice some limited exceptions were needed (just as women’s rights under sex discrimination law have loopholes). It allowed for trans people to be excluded from women’s spaces where that was a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim – ensuring vulnerable women weren’t frightened off using a service like rape counselling, say, or protecting safety and dignity. That consensus eventually shattered after Stonewall proposed scrapping the exemptions, before thinking better of it, but in 2010 there was still a shared sense that having rights of your own does not magically exempt you from having to consider other people’s rights and feelings; that no person is an island, there is more than one way to be vulnerable, and compromise is required. When the judges warned against Wednesday’s ruling being considered a victory for either side, that spirit is surely the one they meant to invoke.
The UK supreme court judgment against Trans Rights is the inevitable sad conclusion to woke culture war dogma.
It shouldn’t have been this way.
Imagine if the Woke, BLM, Trans and MeToo movements had listened to the 1990s Rainbow Community on how to build solidarity instead of their own alienating intersectionist subjective rage?
Imagine if MeToo hadn’t mutated into a Salem witch trial where the new evidential threshold becomes ‘whatever a women says on Twitter’.
Imagine if BLM acknowledged that far more white people were shot by Police than black people and instead of rioting had progressed their argument with solidarity?
Imagine if the Trans community had not been so screamingly militant?
Imagine if the woke hadn’t started cancel culture deplatforming?
Imagine if the entire Identity Politics movement had sought to build class solidarity rather than alienating bullshit?
Since 2016s #MeToo moment, a coalition of 5th wave feminists, non gender binary activists, Critical Race Theorists and Critical Gender Theorists have manufactured a faith based woke dogma, the holy trinity of which is:
1 – All white people are irredeemable cross burning racists.
2 – All men are rapists.
3 – Everyone defending free speech is a uniform wearing Nazi who hates the Trans Community.
Woven into this woke Identity Politics Holy Trinity, is the ‘BELIEVE ALL WOMEN’ mantra, because intersectionism decrees all men are part of a power dynamic which means they can never be victims and because women are morally superior to toxic masculinity males, they would NEVER lie about that abuse.
When it comes to the whole Trans debate, I’m old fashioned. I think finding your true self and being comfortable in your own skin is one of the most important journeys of the human experience.
The idea thatthere are some men who believe they are women and some women who believe they are men and some people who believe they are both and some people who believethey are neither is as uncontroversial to me as the range of human skin,eye and hair colour.
Referring to someone by their preferredpronouns and identity is just basic good will courtesy offered to every fellow citizen.
If a trans person wishes to share a prison cell or locker room with me, I don’t care, but where Iget cancelled by the woke is when I also agree that biological women have a right to philosophically and intellectually challenge some of the identity politics dogma thatis being used here.
There is a legitimate debate between gender critical feminists and trans activists but what does it say about that debate when gender critical feminists have been pushed all the way over to the side of Nazis?
I have many self declaring feminist women who privately tell me they have real misgivings with some of the Trans woke dogma but are terrified of saying anything because the Fourth Wave Feminists, non-binary activists and trans ally vegan mommy bloggers rip them to pieces on social media. Part of the problem is that the Trans activists themselves have helped make this debate so radioactively toxic with their cancel culture dynamics.
Rachel Stewart was one of the most important climate changing voices for the Left in NZ before woke activists attempted her to be swatted by having cops turn up to her house and seize her weapons.
Jill Ovens was one of the most legendary left wing feminists NZ had but has been turned into the most angry TERFs we now have.
For me the true tragedy here for the Trans community and the rest of the Idenity Politics movement is how quickly their alienating and over the top attacks along with their fourth wave feminist allies have eroded and burnt so much of the good will the rainbow community had built in the 80s, 90s and 00s.
The rainbow community pre Trans activism had worked to make love and family inclusive, the new woke Trans activists built pure temple cliques that created diversity by cancelling everyone who didn’t agree with them.
This entire issue has caused immense damage on the Left and rather than debating the material well being of citizens, we are lost in middle class identity politics virtue signalling that censors rather than answers and in that cultural space, anger grifters like Posie Parker flourish.
I remember trying to tell the woke 5 years ago not to start a free speech culture war. ACT was on .7 until woke activists gave Seymour the free speech ammunition and he’s now 12%.
Please sweet Jesus, could the middle class woke stop fucking the Class Left before the next election?
Imagine if the Woke, BLM, Trans and MeToo movements had listened to the 1990s Rainbow Community on how to build solidarity instead of their own alienating intersectionist subjective rage?
Imagine if we had used the power in 2016 to actually force economic change rather than the low hanging fruit of outrage olympic identity grievance?
The true demarcation of power in a liberal progressive democratic capitalist state is the 1% richest plus their 9% enablers vs the 90% rest of us.
Identity Politics is an important personal journey to help you understand your individual relationship with power, but if all you have when you get to the table of change is a tribal allegiance to your skin colour, your genitalia or your orin station, then what use are you to the revolution comrade?
Meanwhile the planet is melting, we get it wokies, your self constructed identity is more important than the common ground of our shared humanity!
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