The fight for trans rights is very much alive
Over the last week there have been a series of articles in the UK press seemingly affirming that gender and sex-based rights will be restricted for trans folk. From sports to single sex spaces trans people are facing increasing restrictions, with the centrist Labour party giving way on the issue to the right-wing demands. Trans women especially are facing heavy restrictions on their ability to enter needed services such as women’s refuges, and while the ability to take part in competitive sport is of a minority interest to most trans women, by framing trans women as other it makes it easier to restrict their rights across a range of other services and spaces. The Atlantic posted an article on 8th August 2023 stating that the issue has now been resolved in favour of women’s rights, yet in actuality the issues have only just become more complex and heated.
It is worth repeating that what comes trans women’s way will invariably blow back onto cis women. There is no such thing as the average woman, every single woman has her own body shape, gender expression, and idea of what it is to be a woman in society, and if that does not match up to other people’s perceived ideas of normative behaviour they will be targeted. We are already seeing this with toilets, with tone policing, and with women being called out for being trans when they are clearly not. The fight for trans rights, especially the rights of trans women to exist in society on an equitable footing, is the fight to be a woman in your own image.
The argument that trans women are taking resources from cis women is a complete non-starter. If there are limited resources it is not trans women who are the issue but the government who is restricting funding for those resources. From women’s refuges to public healthcare on the NHS to sanitary products to childcare, trans women are demonised simply for asking for help in the face of 13 years of austerity and cuts. Trans rights are everyone’s rights because equity is not based on simple slices of the cake, it is about make the cake bigger and better for all.
Exclusionary feminists make the mistake of wanting to parcel out the small cake in such a way that it excludes trans women. They state that trans women can never know what it is like to be a woman because those trans women were never habituated to womanhood in their youth. This is to claim that all women experience womanhood in the same fashion, that the patriarchal culture that excludes women somehow does not also exclude trans women in the same fashion. Equity in sports is not possible, yet you do not hear exclusionary feminists seeking to ban the top tier female athletes due to their bodies — oh, but that’s not true; sub-Saharan African women have been targeted due to their natural biochemistry, with global sports organisations insisting they change their bio-chemistry to suit a European normative standard.
I am conflating numerous issues here; the right to basic human dignity, healthcare, and escape from traumatic domestic life makes access to sports seem a distant second, but they all flow from the same attempt at policing what is woman and what is not. Regardless of what politicians may claim and what the press may state, trans rights are not “done”, they are not decided, and they certainly are not settled in the favour of exclusionary feminism. This fight is alive, necessary, and going to continue as long as trans folk are stigmatised and demeaned by society at large and the law in general.
