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Trans women at law
As a legal researcher my job is to engage with how trans people and women intersect with British law. I am not a barrister or solicitor, rather, I am someone who has a deep understanding of how trans identities have been shaped under British law since the 1750s, meaning I am able to scope out the impact of issues such as the For Woman Scotland (FWS) ruling within its historic arc. As with all historiographic methods I am not impartial; indeed, to claim impartiality is a fools errand as there is no objectivity once human actions become involved. To claim that any law or judicial decision is objective misses the point: all human artifice is subjectively crafted based on human needs and desires. Law and legal processes are no different. The shaping of trans woman at law is subjective precisely because it is rooted in the needs and desires of the society that shaped that understanding. Thus, when dissecting and discussing the fallout from FWS it is essential that we recognise our positionality and do not attempt to impose objectivity onto it.
My scholarship is rooted in third wave intersectional feminism, and foremost I am a women’s rights scholar. I see trans rights as a subset of feminist women’s rights activism, not a separate cause, precisely because to reject trans personhood is to automatically tell all women that womanhood described and assigned at birth is a prison from which there is no escape and vice…
