The ‘laughably titled’ Minister for Women and Equalities, Kemi Badenoch (Picture: Carl Court/Getty Images)
I feel sorry for the Conservative Party. Not the increasing mad bunch in charge at Conservative Central HQ but the honest, decent members up and down the country.
And I feel for all LGBT Conservatives I know, who are welcomed and respected in their local parties, who have today had to watch the laughably titled Minister for Equality, Kemi Badenoch, proposing to strip trans people of the rights and freedoms we have enjoyed to live decently in society for a quarter of a century now.
I confess that I broke with the Conservatives during the madness and downright dishonesty of King Boris, and the national embarrassment of Brexit, but I’m an old-fashioned liberal Tory at heart and I feel sorry because the leadership have run out of ideas, competence and time.
Under the guise of protecting women and girls, Ms Badenoch is proposing to change (not ‘clarify’) the definition of ‘sex’ in the Equality Act to mean ‘original birth certificate’ sex. This would exclude those who have been through the tough process to live in their affirmed gender and have that recognised by the state.
It will simplify things, she suggests. When was simple ever the solution in politics? Even General Elections are a convoluted process.
Badenoch’s proposal is a solution in search of a problem. Trans organisation Translucent made Freedom of Information requests about complaints in NHS Trusts and in a 12-month period where the amount of complaints numbered over 200,000, there was one – just one – complaint about the presence of a trans woman in hospital.
The electorate, surveys consistently show, have the cost of living or the general state of the NHS at the top of their list of electoral concerns, with gender issues almost invisible at the bottom of the list.
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So why is this non-issue being given the prominence that it is? What is the unhealthy obsession with other peoples’ genitalia? Given that the Tories have had a thumping parliamentary majority, why has this change not been pushed through before?
I identify a number of factors which lead to the answer. Firstly, the Conservatives have no answer on the economy, the cost of living, tax or the NHS, so a distraction must be found.
It is wearing to be a transgender citizen in the UK in 2024 (Picture: Robin White)
Secondly, a small, not very well understood minority is ripe to be demonised. And perhaps it can now be proposed consequence-free, given that the Conservatives have marginally more chance of being elected than I do of passing through the eye of a needle. So in reality, this is an attempt to goad Labour into saying something unfortunate.
Imagine for a moment, in Kemi cloud-cuckoo land, that the Conservatives are returned to office and the measure passed. Would the proposed change be effective or good law?
I’ve heard anecdotally that after ‘bathroom bills’ were enacted in some US states under the previous Trump presidency, many of the tiny number of trans people passed by unnoticed. It was more likely that gender non-conforming lesbians (of which there are many, many more of than trans people) were the ones who suffered intrusive questioning and harassment.
Legal exceptions already exist allowing (if justified) the exclusion of trans people from spaces, services or sports. What more is needed?
The proposed change certainly offends the European Convention on Human Rights, transposed into UK law by the Human Rights Act. It is a cornerstone protection of individual rights and is ‘baked into’ a number of trade treaties and other international agreements. Do we really want to alienate ourselves from these values and become a pariah state?
Folk who know a trans person often have a very much more positive view on trans people (Picture: Robin White)
Undoubtedly, protections for women and girls should be enhanced. Too many of those who expose women and girls to violence go uncaught and unpunished. They should believe that they will be found and properly sanctioned. Much more can be done to support women to succeed. Stamping on trans people will not achieve one jot of that.
Will Kemi’s strategy be effective electorally? No. It runs the very real risk of confirming the Conservatives as the ‘nasty party’. And the polls trend ever downward for the Conservatives.
I know that Kemi’s rhetoric is going nowhere but it is wearing to be a transgender citizen in the UK in 2024.
Opinion surveys show that folk who know a trans person often have a very much more positive view on trans people than when we can be portrayed as a threatening, badly understood bogeyman or woman.
My heart goes out to young trans people particularly, feeling their way forward in life, exploring who they are with sources of help being removed and being used as a convenient political football.
It is not right, not humane and ultimately, not Conservative.
Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing jess.austin@metro.co.uk.
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