A rant, essentially, on the control of trans women.

These past couple of weeks have seen a tipping point of several years of rising gender debates. The crux of these arguments is to define gender into distinct boxes, whether that be biological sex or how buff you are. Gender, which is very much a performance, an act, must be exhausting to keep up to the level that these people do, in which you are trying to control others.

There are, honestly, hundreds of points to unpick throughout these debates but there are a few things I feel the need to express and that may help others not necessarily from learning but also from solidarity, grief and motivation. Should they want to hear it.

First is the ruling that Trans women will no longer be included in the Equality Act 2010, which protects people based on their sex. (They are still protected under the act because of the gender reassignment section.) This ruling harms trans women, particularly, but also trans people as a whole in a few ways. One, that the media and headlines around the ruling will be or indeed have been, ' trans women not women, says supreme court'. The details will not prevail in the mind of the public, but that statement will. Social interactions and truly any unregulated context (of which there are many) will be impacted by these headlines. Even some regulated too which I will go into.

Secondly, this is just one ruling that has been allowed to pass without ANY input from Trans organisations, though plenty submitted to speak on it. There have been others (such as no new buildings can have gender neutral toilets in the UK) and there will be more. Whether covered extensively by news or social media, or not. These decisions will continue to be made based on money, political influence and the word of a powerful minority. The few people filmed outside, popping champagne and celebrating oppression, are just that, a minority. The overwhelming support for trans people (protests, donations, follower counts, etc) following this decision says something to that. What I think has failed to occur to these celebrating women, is that should they one day, or even currently present as slightly more masculine, through choice or not (for example many women who suffer from PCOS grow hair in places that are considered masculine such as their backs and faces, not to mention many women of colour grow darker hair on their bodies and faces than their white counterparts). Should they in any way not adhere to white, straight, capitalist feminine ideals, they will be targeted by their own. One example of this is that Daniel Radcliffe's wife is taller than him, there's literally nothing she can do to change this (nor should she), and many people accused ('accused' because they see it as an affront) her of being trans because of this. So what happens when you cut your short as many women do, what happens when you have a double mastectomy because of breast cancer (1 in 8 women get breast cancer in their lifetime) and are perceived by someone else as trans. What then?

If they are going to be passing bills that state a trans woman is not considered a woman under the Equality Act, despite many trans women experiencing sexism in the workplace, healthcare inequalities, and domestic violence (all the same issues that cis women do), then by necessity, we need to define womanhood. Is it that women have vaginas? Is it that they are assigned female at birth? Is it that they are desired by men? Trans women can have vaginas, trans women can have many of the same sex charactersitics of cis women without surgery, many trans and cis women do not care about men desiring them. So what is it? Because if you are going to define it by gentilia, that feels an enormous step back for cis women as well as trans women, are you going to ask cis and trans women alike to pull down their underwear? In public spaces? During a police search? does that truly seem safer than letting trans women be seen as women?

Lastly, suppose trans women are not going to be included under the 'discrimination based on sex' section of the Equality Act. In that case, that means should something happen in the work place such as pay discrimination where a man has more pay than his trans women counterpart, she may then first not be eligible to argue that under the basis of 'discrimation based on sex' due to the gender pay gap because she is viewed as a 'trans' woman BUT her pay is not based on her transness but rather her woman-ness. Secondly, she then has to reveal her transness to her workplace to potentially gain any grounds of discrimination, which could open a world of difficulties for her in other ways. It should be up to her, especially in her workplace, to decide to disclose her identity, just as someone should not be forced to disclose sexuality, pregnancy status, race, etc in order not to face discrimination.

Transness is actually a wonderful expansion and opening of rigid rules that we have set for ourselves through colonial and patriarchal histories. I invite you to consider the transness of nature, the transness of your own life, the transness of life. We are all transitioning in our own ways. Gender has become a sticking point as sexuality once did, because it threatens to upend so much of what keeps the powerful, powerful.

I could go on forever, but for now, hopefully, the European Court shuts this down. Trans people are being used as scapegoats continuously and all we can do is fight where possible, continue to support trans youth and spread information. A Kimmerer quote to finish because I love her.

“The trees act not as individuals, but somehow as a collective. Exactly how they do this, we don’t yet know. But what we see is the power of unity. What happens to one happens to us all. We can starve together or feast together.”

― Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass