Trans World Is A Man's World
A thoughtful piece on the sex vs gender debate by Fiona Rintoul in The Times.
"It's interesting, isn’t it, that the toxic scrapping in the trans debate is all centred on womanhood. Trans men exist, but manhood is not a disputed territory. It is women who must open their sanctuaries and hard-won sporting sinecures to people who are biologically male.
"It is women who must not be so transphobic as to request a woman doctor — as in one who is biologically female — even if they have just been raped by a man."
Only women are asked to put trans rights first in Scotland’s gender reform
By Fiona Rintoul - The Times
How do you feel about the Gender Recognition Reform Bill, which has just passed through the Scottish parliament? The bill, which makes it easier for transgender people to obtain a gender recognition certificate (GRC) and removes the need for a medical diagnosis, has elicited both noisy support and trenchant opposition.
A GRC legally recognises that a person’s gender is not the gender that they were — to use parlance that would have mystified most of us a decade ago — assigned at birth. Supporters of the Scottish government’s reforms believe existing procedures are too cumbersome and intrusive. Opponents worry that simplified procedures open the door to predatory men, who might consider living as a woman for three months to be a small price to pay for unfettered access to women-only spaces.
I feel kind of “meh” about the bill. I understand the concerns of women’s rights campaigners, because there are no lengths to which some men will not go to pester, harass and incommode women. And let’s not kid ourselves; there are plenty such men. I’m surprised when people are shocked by the high percentages of women who report having experienced sexual harassment. Personally, I would expect the figure to hover around 100 per cent. It’s a mean old world out there when you’re a gal — especially a young one.
But if something is permitted in law, there is perhaps no reason to make it difficult. Opposition to the abortion pill on the basis that it made it too easy for women to get an abortion always struck me as absurd. Why should it be hard? What are we saying? You can have an abortion, but we’re going to make you suffer, because basically we hate you. If there is a legal process by which people can change their gender, it is legitimate to ask why it should be onerous.
Some worry about young people rushing into changing their gender without proper consideration. I worry about that too. But similar legislation to the new bill has been introduced in Ireland and other countries, and society has not collapsed. Also, allowing young people to change their gender easily without taking steps to alter their sexual characteristics might help prevent irreversible surgical and hormonal interventions. Limiting medicalisation is surely a good thing. Stage-two amendments to the legislation tried to address common concerns it has provoked. Those under 18 must live in their acquired gender for six rather than three months and must take advice from an adult before they can obtain a GRC. Registered sex offenders must notify the police if they apply for a GRC, though it is not clear how this will be monitored.
Maybe the new legislation will make trans people’s lives easier without impinging on women’s rights. Maybe it will jeopardise women’s safety, and we will have to rethink. Time will tell. Tuesday’s narrow defeat of the rape survivor Michelle Thomson’s amendment to prevent men charged with sexual offences from obtaining a GRC is worrying. It exposes a wilful naivety about women’s lives.
The real problem here is not the speed at which people may change their legally recognised gender or whether they require a medical diagnosis to do so. It is the interface between gender and sex. When asked whether the new bill means a GRC changes a person’s sex in relation to the protections in the Equality Act 2010, potentially affecting access to single-sex services and spaces and women’s sports, Shona Robison, the cabinet secretary, maintained that it did not. “Single-sex exemptions under the Equality Act 2010 will remain, regardless of this bill,” she said.
However, the Court of Session’s ruling last week that a trans woman with a GRC counts as a woman for gender quotas on public boards gives the lie to this assertion. A colonisation of womanhood is under way. The means are not contained in the Gender Recognition Reform Bill, which is about processes rather than definitions, but the self-ID ushered in by the bill underscores the need to distinguish between sex and gender.
It’s interesting, isn’t it, that the toxic scrapping in the trans debate is all centred on womanhood. Trans men exist, but manhood is not a disputed territory. It is women who must open their sanctuaries and hard-won sporting sinecures to people who are biologically male. It is women who must not be so transphobic as to request a woman doctor — as in one who is biologically female — even if they have just been raped by a man.
Many people do not even want us to discuss these matters. Last week a screening of the film Adult Human Female at Edinburgh University was blocked by protesters in a chilling trampling of freedom of speech. “You don’t get to spread hatred and expect to be unchallenged,” wrote one campaigner in a hysterical intervention that encapsulates everything that is wrong with contemporary discourse.
To disagree on a point of biology is to spread hatred. This kind of overblown rhetoric is sadly typical. As the writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie observed after her recent Reith lecture on freedom of speech, too often today we choose the most extreme understanding of someone’s position — which can also be the most inaccurate.
With the Gender Recognition Reform Bill passing into law, it is time to get real. I hope the bill succeeds in making trans people’s lives better. But I also hope that we can acknowledge the limits of a piece of paper. “I’m a woman who doesn’t have a uterus,” the Tampax-trawling trans woman Dylan Mulvaney declared in a recent video explaining that she carried tampons in case another woman needed one. No. Some women are born without a uterus, which may be a tragedy for them. Mulvaney has, in her own words, “a bulge”. There is a difference, and if you can’t see it, you ain’t no sister.
