I’m hugely honoured that my band’s song “mostly still” has been used in the trailer for Leeds Queer Film Festival this year!
Leeds Queer Film Festival is an amazing, affordable, non-profit community event, which every year shows feature-length films and shorts from around the world. I cannot recommend it enough!
This year’s event runs from 20-24 March, and you can find all the information you might need on their website.
This post is about the Department for Education’s December 2023 draft guidance on “Gender Questioning Children”. Advice on how you can take action can be found at the end. You can download a printable zine here.
The post was updated on 23 February 2024 to add information on the Further Education Residential Standards Consultation and the murder of trans student Nex Benedict in a school toilet.
Like many other young people, my first experience of sexual assault was in school.
I stood in the lunch queue at my school’s canteen, a boy my age behind me. Unexpectedly, he began to tenderly caress my back and my bum. Feeling extremely uncomfortable and vulnerable, I turned to confront him. He leered, laughed, then accusingly asked, “you gay?”
Like many queer students during the 1990s and 2000s, I was bullied viciously throughout my time in school. I was teased incessantly, beaten up, and on one occasion knocked unconscious in front of my entire year group. Later, since I started living as a girl, I’ve been groped by men many times in clubs and pubs. Yet that specific moment of abuse sticks with me especially.
So much can be said about it. I was a heavily closeted trans girl attending an all-boy’s comprehensive, and yet to admit I was also bisexual. I wonder of course about the sexuality of my harasser, who may have found bullying the only “safe” way to experiment with his own desires. But most important is the context of the wider school environment. Homophobia and ignorance about sexuality and gender was the norm; one that was not simply enacted between children, but also deeply rooted in policy and law.
Nothing was ever done about this sexual assault – in part because I didn’t for a moment consider telling anyone.
I attended school at the time of Section 28, a notorious anti-gay law enacted across Britain by Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government. Section 28 was named for a clause in the Local Government Act 1988, in which local authorities (responsible for the management of state schools) were prohibited from “promoting homosexuality by teaching or by publishing material”, or promoting the “acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship”. It was introduced following a major moral panic in the media over homosexuality in the wake of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, plus the publication of a handful of short books and leaflets with advice on teaching young people about the existence of gay and lesbian families or historical figures.
Section 28 would remain in force for over a decade. It was eventually repealed by the first Scottish Parliament in 2000, and in England and Wales by Tony Blair’s second Labour government in 2003, although its effects would linger for years to come. In addition to directly barring local authorities from introducing affirmative teaching material about lesbian, gay, and bi lives, Section 28 had the wider impact of stifling any real discussion around sexuality or gender difference. Teachers were afraid to talk about the issue, and books were banned from schools and libraries. Meanwhile, “gay” was the ultimate insult in the playground, a go-to word for any person, action, or object that was undesirable or bad.
Section 28 did not have anything specific to say about acknowledging that lesbian, gay, or bi people exist, or about homophobic bullying in school, let alone about trans or intersex matters. It didn’t need to. The vague prohibitions of the law, along with a more general culture of ignorance, silence, and fear promoted by politicians and journalists, meant that many people were uncertain where the boundaries of legality lay. Instead, there was a widespread feeling that you simply couldn’t talk about it.
The impact on entire generations of young lesbian, gay, bi, trans, intersex, and queer (LGBTIQ+) people was horrific. Many of my peers talk about the traumatic impact of growing up during this time, of struggling to come to terms with their desires and experiences, of failing to receive protection from adult authority figures or being abused directly by them. You can read more about this in accounts such as in Kestral Gaian’s book Twenty-Eight.
The worst thing for me about growing up under Section 28 was the utter lack of information. When it came to my sexuality and trans experience, I didn’t even know what I didn’t know. I had no easy way into understanding my own feelings and changing body, let alone the quiet but immense impact of a law I’d never heard of. I wrote a diary across several years chronicling my self-hatred and feelings of being ill, broken, wrong, a freak. I was extremely unusual in coming out as a girl during my teen years, in part because I had the luck to stumble across supportive US-based internet communities when I was 15, circa 2002. I wonder what information and support my harasser in the lunch queue ever had available to him.
The first adult I came out to outside of the internet was our Religious Education teacher, Mrs Richards. In retrospect, she was clearly a rebel, with a deep sense of Christian conviction about social justice which meant she was prepared to risk her job to do the right thing. At the time, I was vaguely aware she had been in trouble with the headteacher for telling a sex education class that, statistically speaking, at least some of us were gay and we needed to be okay with that. I told her that I wanted to be a girl, and asked where I could find help.
Mrs Richards did the best she could for me at the time – she sent me somewhere safer. She said she couldn’t speak with me, but recommended a free counselling service in town. This provided the first supportive, affirmative space in which I could explore my gender in person, laying the groundwork for my eventual transition. At the same time, I regret that even the most rebellious teacher in my school didn’t feel she could even safely listen to or reassure me in an extremely vulnerable moment.
After Section 28
Following the repeal of Section 28, many teachers remained unsure about what the law said and whether they were allowed to discuss LGBTIQ+ issues in the classroom. Nevertheless, there has been a gradual shift towards the explicit acknowledgement and inclusion of queer lives in curricula and pastoral support structures. In 2005, Schools Out launched the first LGBT History Month resources for schools. In my mid-20s, now a proudly out trans activist, I attended an event in Coventry about moving on from the legacy of Section 28. It was supported by the city council and attended by many teachers. A few years later, attempts to reintroduce Section 28-style policies at some academy schools were explicitly condemned by the Department for Education. The world was changing.
Meanwhile, LGBTIQ+ adults and young people were more visible in society than ever before. We were increasingly present on TV, in movies, and in the charts. The emergence of social media meant we began to find one another and create our own content on Myspace… then Facebook, Youtube Tumblr, Twitter, Twitch, and Tiktok. It became more normal to have an LGBTIQ+ friend, colleague, sibling, child, uncle, or parent. This created a virtuous cycle: the more we were out and visible in society, the easier it was to come out. There are now more openly lesbian, gay, bi, and trans young people in the UK than ever before. I hear about this a lot from friends who teach in secondary schools. Queer kids are increasingly just a normal part of school life. For those who need more support – often young trans people – there are often clubs or groups facilitated by teachers: something that would have been almost impossible under Section 28.
The new moral panic
Social progress is never linear nor guaranteed. We must therefore always be prepared to defend the gains we have made.
Since 2017, the UK has been gripped by a wide-ranging moral panic over trans people’s existence, as part of a wider backlash to social progress which has also affected groups including migrants, racalised minorities, and LGBTIQ+ people more widely. One element of this has specifically targeted educational, pastoral, and media support for young trans and gender non-conforming people. Prominent anti-trans campaigners have sought to raise fears over the growing number of out and proud young trans people, portraying trans experiences as a “social contagion” among children and adolescents, arguing that this should be addressed through the “elimination of transgenderism” or otherwise “reducing or keeping down the number of people who transition”.
The violence of this language is reflected in the violence that too many young trans people continue to face from other children and adolescents, as well as the adults who are supposed to help them. But anti-trans campaigners continue to position young trans people themselves as the problem. 2020, Liz Truss (then Women and Equalities Minister) stated that trans people aged under 18 should be “protected” from “decisions they could make“, raising fears of a new Section 28.
That new Section 28 is now here, in the form of draft non-statutory guidance on “Gender Questioning Children” for schools in England, produced by the Department for Education at the behest of the UK’s Conservative government. This document, which is currently under consultation, threatens to significantly undermine the ability of young people to safely be themselves. And just like Section 28, while the draft guidance specifically targets one group, it threatens to cause harm far more widely.
What does the Department of Education guidance say about “Gender Questioning Children”?
I will not be providing a detailed breakdown of everything the guidance states – for this, I recommend alternative analyses such as Robin Moira White’s excellent commentary for TransLucent. However, key elements include the following:
In short, the proposed guidance aims to position young trans, questioning, and otherwise gender non-conforming people as a problem. If implemented, it would make it extremely difficult – if not impossible – for young people to be themselves in school, to trust teachers, or to seek support if they are subject to transphobic bullying from peers. As Gendered Intelligence observe, “What strikes us most about this guidance is the tone of cruelty and contempt towards children and educators throughout.”
How dangerous is the Department for Education guidance?
In this post, I invoke the legacy of Section 28 very deliberately. The new proposed guidance on “Gender Questioning Children” is of course a very different document, produced in a different time, with a different response from civil society. However, I feel that understanding the guidance’s similarities to Section 28 is useful for analysing why it is so harmful, and understanding its differences can help us to map routes to resistance.
Like Section 28, the draft guidance is most dangerous in its vagueness. It does map out numerous ways to directly abuse young trans people, for example, through intentional misgendering and seeking to block social transition. However, it is the more general refusal to engage with the humanity and agency of young trans people – for example, through failing to even use the word “trans” once – which is most chilling.
While young trans people are of course the main target of the guidance on “gender questioning children”, the impact promises to be wider. As my own story shows, while Section 28 only explicitly targeted “homosexuality”, teachers or bullies didn’t tend to draw any distinction between gay, bi, queer, or trans experiences. Indeed, the atmosphere of ignorance and uncertainty made it difficult to event come to term with those differences. Many of us who went to school at that time struggled to come out because we had very little context for understanding ourselves. At my school, like many, boys were punished for painting their nails or growing hair past their neck. Similarly, the new guidance threatens to make life more difficult for any gender-nonconforming young person, regardless of whether they identify as trans. The point is to shore up and reinforce traditional understandings of sex and gender, in line with hardline conservative ideologies. Teachers, administrators, governors, and academy sponsors who actively wish to reinforce gender roles and make queer people’s lives more difficult will gain a powerful tool to legitimise sexist and homophobic policies, as well as transphobia.
However, homophobic bullying and ignorance also prospered under Section 28 because teachers were unsure about the limitations of the law and afraid to overstep. The new guidance’s insistence on entrenched biological essentialism could make even sympathetic teachers feel afraid to acknowledge queer and trans lives in their teaching, or otherwise put them under pressure from headteachers and governors. The whole point is to make LGBTIQ+ and especially trans students an impossibility: to enable incomprehension, to make them feel unwelcome, to “reduce” them in number, to make them disappear.
Where young queer and gender non-conforming people refuse to comply with this imperative to disappear – through coming out, through transition, through stubborn persistence – the guidance aims to make their lives immensely more difficult. They are to be outed to their peers, to their parents, to their peers’ parents. They are to be banned from wearing clothes associated with the “other sex”, barred from toilets and changing rooms, discouraged from using their own name and pronouns.
If enacted, this intentional targeting of trans and gender non-conforming lives and wellbeing will send an important message: it’s open season on the queers. As with Section 28, the guidance risks empowering bullies through fostering an atmosphere of institutionalised disrespect. The guidance states that “bullying of any child must not be tolerated”, but that statement feels pretty meaningless when the same document encourages schools to identify some children as different to their peers, and refuse their self-expression.
Normalising transphobia is extremely dangerous. We can see this, for example, in the murder of Brianna Ghey, a 16 year old trans girl who was stabbed to death in 2023 by two of her peers from school. Like many transphobic killings, her murder was extremely brutal. Prior to her death, the murderers shared numerous graphically violent messages about Brianna, using transmisogynist slurs and referring to her as “it”. This language and dehumanisation directly reflects discourses in society promoted online and in the press by gender-critical activists, journalists, and politicians from every major party. Brianna’s killers may have held the knife, but others with more power have repeatedly called for the “elimination of transgenderism”, and continue to do so.
Edit: 23/02/24 –
Two recent events have further highlighted just how dangerous the Department for Education “Guidance for Schools and Colleges: Gender Questioning Children” really is.
Firstly, the Department for Education has quietly introduced a second consultation. This consultation is on a proposed change to the actual law for Further Education colleges providing residential accommodation for students aged under 18. The law currently states that sleeping accommodation should “provide appropriate privacy for all students”. The Government is proposing to replace this with a clause requiring that “gender questioning students” either be segregated and made to sleep in a room on their own, or otherwise forced to share a space with students assigned the same sex at birth, as “different legal sexes should not be sharing sleeping accommodation”. This intervention shows how the main guidance is just one part of a wider attempt to undermine young trans people’s dignity and safety.
Secondly, just days ago Nex Benedict, a trans student in the US state of Oklahoma, was murdered by cis girls in the school toilets. Nex and another trans student were violently assaulted just months after their home state introduced a law requiring all students to only use toilets that match the sex listed on their birth certificate. This horrific killing reflects what researchers have been telling us for years: trans and gender non-conforming people of all genders are most at risk of violence in gendered spaces, and enforcing strict rules only exacerbates these risks.
The good news
It is difficult to feel positive in the current moment. After years of anti-trans campaigning and threats, the Conservative party is acting to intentionally make life harder for young trans people, in a move that has far wider implications for student safety as well as queer and feminist initiatives in schools. The Department for Education’s proposed school guidance is not simply being championed by the Conservative government – its publication has been “welcomed” by the Labour party, and supported by liberal media outlets such as the Observer as well as the Tory press.
However, the legacy of Section 28 is once again useful for understanding what is happening here. The Conservatives are once again showing us who they really are – this is not new. The Labour leadership were just as useless in responding to the original Section 28, and the UK Labour government was in power for six years (most of my time in secondary school!) before they bothered to repeal the law in England and Wales. The liberal media was somewhat more opposed to Section 28 in the 1980s than they appear to be now, but ultimately it was neither journalists or politicians who created the pressure for repeal. It was LGBTIQ+ campaigners and our allies: especially young people from groups such as Queer Youth Network who worked ceaselessly to change the conversation and create a better environment in schools and beyond.
Moreover, there are two major differences between 1988 and 2024 which are important to highlight.
Firstly, the legal situation is radically different. Section 28 was written into law, and applied across Britain. By contrast, the new guidance is “non-statutory”, and applies only to England. This means that schools are not legally obliged to follow it, especially in elsewhere in the UK. The government’s proposals can therefore be ignored. In fact, ignoring the guidance might even be the wisest option even for transphobes, given that the government’s own lawyers have warned that those who follow it risk breaking the law, as the recommendations appear to directly contradict both the Equality Act and elements of safeguarding legislation. Moreover, the guidance is yet to be published in its final form, as it is under consultation until 12th March – meaning that you can tell the government exactly what you think about it. Edit: 23/02/24 – however, since this post was written the government is now also seeking to change the law through the FE Residential Standards Consultation.
Secondly, there appears to be way more support for trans and gender nonconforming young people now than there was for young gay people in the 1980s, perhaps especially among teachers. The world has changed. For example, I learned about the government lawyers’ warnings from Schools Week. The very day the draft guidance was published, their main headline was Trans guidance: DfE lawyers said schools face ‘high risk’ of being sued. Individual teachers are speaking out across social media to voice their disgust and opposition to the proposals, and teaching unions have also expressed their concerns. Furthermore, headteachers such as Kevin Sexton from Chesterfield High School in Liverpool are going public with their opposition, noting that inclusive policies that centre actual safeguarding for young trans people have been working perfectly well for years. The school has no intention of scrapping its gender-neutral uniforms, mixed-gender sports, or all-gender toilets it provides to young people who need them.
As such, we are in a strong position to fight back against the new Section 28.
How you can take action
The original Section 28 was defeated because countless ordinary people took action. That can be the case again. Of course, some people are better placed than others to fight this particular threat to young people (for example, if you work in education in England). However, there will be things you can do regardless of who you are, how old you are, and where you live.
If possible, act with others, rather than alone. We are always more powerful together.
IDEA 1: Resist the new Section 28 in schools
If you are currently a student, a teacher, a parent or carer, a school administrator, a governor, or even working for an educational company or charity (e.g. in teacher recruitment) you are particularly well-placed to fight back against the new Section 28.
We can see inspiring examples of this in current protests by students and teachers in the US state of Florida, where the government has introduced a slew of anti-LGBTIQ+ laws, including a trans sports ban and a Section-28 style “don’t say gay” law. Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya wrote in Autostraddle about the power of student-staff solidarity in one Florida school:
I know a high school walk out sounds like a small thing, but this is huge. It shows a two-fold approach to resistance happening in the state: First, the administrators and staff members who flouted the ban in the first place showed it’s totally an option to just…not enforce transphobic regulations. If more Florida school staff were willing to do this, it would make the ban difficult and maybe even impossible to reinforce. Second, the students showed their solidarity and support not just for this one trans athlete but all trans athletes, holding signs and chanting affirmations of support for trans lives everywhere and questioning the ban. It’s further evidence that the Florida legislation does not adequately represent the Florida people.
Here are some ideas for English and Welsh schools:
Actions include:
IDEA 2: Pile on the political pressure
You don’t need to work or study in a school to make a difference. Countless other organisations are in a position to make a difference, and you can put pressure on them to do so. People living throughout the UK are potentially in a good position to do this.
Actions include:
IDEA 3: Take part in the consultation
I am less certain about this proposal than the others, but it is an obvious one to include. The UK government is holding a formal consultation on their proposed guidance for “Gender Questioning Children” in schools. Anyone can participate, and tell them what you think.
You can take part in the consultation here.
The upside of this is that it is an opportunity for us to speak back directly to the UK government and Department of Education. The downside is that there is a good chance we will be ignored. The past decade has seen more consultations on trans civil rights and healthcare than ever before – and overall, things have got a lot, lot worse. For example, a majority of respondents to the consultation on the Gender Recognition Act from both the UK and Scottish government supported reforms; those reforms are now thoroughly dead, at least for the time being. Trans communities have poured an enormous amount of time and energy into responding to malicious consultations when we could have been doing far more constructive things with our time.
However, in her post for TransLucent, Robin Moira White makes an important point. With the consultation closing on 12th March, the civil service may have little time to assess responses before a new general election is held. She therefore proposes that respondents request that the existing draft be “torn up and thrown away”, and new draft guidance be introduced, based on the Scottish and Brighton examples. If enough people and organisations argue for this, then it might put sufficient pressure on a new Labour government to do a better job.
A related approach was proposed by Edinburgh Action for Trans Health in response to an NHS consultation in 2017. They recommended “hostile participation in the form of direct submissions of demands that don’t react to the questions posed or restrict themselves to the scope imposed by the government”.
Actions therefore include:
I won’t be producing any advice myself this time – instead, I hope this post will help people in thinking about wider routes to resistance. Edit 23/02/24 – However, the following guides have been produced by various organisations:
If you’re responding to consultations, don’t forget to also respond to the Department for Education’s deeply transphobic proposals regarding Further Education Residential Standards. This consultation closes 5 April 2024 so you have longer to respond.
IDEA 4: Support trans youth groups
Regardless of how things play out with the proposed guidance, young trans people are still having a hard time in schools.
There are a small handful of national bodies which support young trans people through advocacy and peer support: e.g. Gendered Intelligence, Colours Youth Network, and Mermaids operate across England. Perhaps more importantly, a lot of small, local youth groups exist specifically for queer and/or trans young people across the country. This was an unthinkable possibility when Mrs Richardson referred me to a local counselling service, so we really need to value and uplift these groups.
Actions include:
IDEA 5: Plan a creative protest
Back in 1988, after the Conservative party introduced Section 28 and most Labour politicians refused oppose it, it would have been easy to despair. Instead, some extremely audacious actions took place in opposition to the law. Just after the House of Lords voted for the new law, members of the Lesbian Avengers abseiled into the debating chamber to protest it.
A few months later, another group of lesbian activists invaded a BBC studio during the Six O’Clock News, shouting “stop Section 28!”
While neither of these protests succeeded in blocking Section 28, they highlighted queer opposition to the new law, and inspired entire generations of new activists to fight back.
Actions include:
There are no doubt a whole host of actions and interventions I haven’t thought of. We are never powerless, even in the face of entrenched fear and hatred.
—
So now it’s your turn: how will you resolve to smash the new Section 28?
Wednesday 28 February
7pm – 9pm
Birmingham LGBT Centre
Free entry and food provided.
Bread and Roses for All, and Hormones Too!
A panel discussion with Aquila Edwards and Luke Dukinfield, facilitated by Robin Lynch and hosted by Birmingham Women’s Strike Assembly.
I will be giving a short talk about intersections between trans health and women’s health, focusing on how our bodies have historically been pathologised and disciplined in medical settings.
There will then be a facilitated discussion. I’m honoured to be sharing the panel with some fantastic speakers so it’s sure to be a really interesting event.
Speaks for itself, really!
…although, having said that, there is a powerful accompanying piece about bullying and suicidal feelings available on CN’s blog.
An article posted yesterday on The Intersex Network highlights intersex erasure* at a recent House of Lords event.
Activist Anis Akhtar explains how this “LGBTI” event focused almost exclusively upon the “LGBT”, with LGBT groups speaking and topics of discussion including LGBT History Month, homophobic and transphobic hate crime in the EU, the forced sterilisation of trans people in countries such as Sweden and the complex intersection of LGBTI experiences and religion/faith.
Akhtar concludes:
“I was not surprised that the focus was LGBT but glad that a few people did say LGBTI on the day. What is paramount is that intersex people in the UK now have a voice – the use of the acronym “LGBT+” by the Liberal Democrats may be a good start.
It is extremely important to spread the word of what intersex is and what we experience due to society’s ignorance, negligence and outright discrimination towards any person who supposedly differs from the “norm.”
Intersex people stand up for LGBT and it is time that LGBTs include us as LGBTI, or intersex people stand alone and continue to fight for our own equality globally.”
Akhtar’s experience reminds me of a “trans youth” (25 and under) consultation at the Government Equalities Office during the autumn of last year; part of the process that eventually led to the creation of the trans action plan. A few of us asked why intersex issues were not also on the agenda. We were told that intersex people are “not on the [current government’s] agenda” and the Government Equalities Office did not intend to tackle intersex issues until (at least) 2015.
This is quite frankly unacceptable. Intersex people aren’t about to magically disappear, and people aren’t about to start magically respecting intersex rights.
So how can those of us who aren’t intersex provide solidarity? There’s a long history of the people within the trans rights movement co-opting intersex issues for their own ends or erasing intersex experience by claiming that trans and intersex issues are “basically the same”. This is totally unacceptable and has to stop.
What we can do is be there for intersex activists when they ask for help, just as trans people would like cis allies to stand by us without telling us how we identify or how to run our campaigns.
When UK LGBT organisations attended the House of Lords LGBTI event, why did they not join intersex activists in asking the Government Equalities Office to get its act together? When a conference that promoted infant genital mutilation was held in London during September, where were the trans people, the queers, the feminists who should have been standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the intersex activists who called a demonstration?
We need to get our act together and support others as we’d like to be supported ourselves.
*Edit 16/2/12: I today recieved the below message from a correspondent who prefers to remain anonymous, and have appended it to this post for the sake of balance. I should also clarify that whilst Anis Akhtar’s blog was not my sole source, I was not present at the event myself.
Having read your blog about the UNA House of Lords event, I must point out that intersex identities were not erased, far from it. Intersex was included in the event rationale/publicity, intersex activists were suggested and considered as potential speakers, Oii was included in the mailing list, Anis was in email correspondence with the UNA Chair (David Wardrop) and the speakers before the event, Anis spoke at the event after the Q&A and got a very appreciative thanks from the Chair and a big clap from the audience, and two of the three international speakers explicitly mentioned intersex issues in their addresses. Do you really think that amounts to erasure? I see how you might reach that conclusion if Anis’s report was the only source, so I understand why you might say that, but to be fair I do not think ‘intersex erasure at the House of Lords’ is accurate or helpful. Erasure implies an absence or at least an attempt to censor, which is the opposite of what really happened. It’s a pity you were not there to see for yourself.
I have discussed this with the UNA Vice Chair who assures me that he will support my suggestion of a follow up event where intersex issues are discussed more fully and we get an intersex activist to be a main speaker.In the meantime, I wonder if you would be so kind as to insert a correction into your blog or remove the ‘intersex erasure’ claim? Anis’s speech was brave and important because of what it took personally for him to get there and speak despite social phobia and visual impairment, and it deserves attention on it’s own terms, not because of some spurious claim that Anis stood up to people who wanted to erase the existence of intersex people. They didn’t – Anis was welcomed and applauded wholeheartedly.
The quite fantastic LGBT Asylum News blog has recently posted to ask for a little financial support from its readers. This blog is an incredible resource, with well-written, well-researched daily news stories from all over the world dealing with a wealth of issues that might otherwise receive very little attention in the UK. Its writers are also wholeheartedly dedicated to a genuine “LGBT” approach: one that incorporates a wealth of perspectives and experiences relating to multiple sexualities and gender identities.
You can read more about why LGBT Aylum News is wonderful and why it deserves your support here.
My talk at the Trans* Education and Determination teach-in.
Part 1:
– Introduction to the teach-in
– My decision to undertake social research
– A brief history of trans academia
– Gender pluralism
Part 2:
– Introduction to my research on experiences of primary health
– Existing research on trans health in the UK
– The role of the internet in trans community
– Methodology and research ethics
Transcription available below.
Stonewall and its representatives have been taking increasingly bizarre decisions in recent months. I recently wrote about the furore caused by Stonewall chief executive Ben Summerskill’s surprising comments at the Liberal Democrat party conference, where he argued against campaigning for equal marriage. Since then, a number of heated exchanges have taken place between the organisation and its critics: a good summary of some of these can be found in the Why the silence Stonewall? blog. Meanwhile, the charity’s attitude towards trans issues has been questioned once again after the organisation nominated a transphobic journalist for its Journalist of the Year award (hmmm, this sounds familiar), whilst at the Labour Party conference Summerskill claimed that Stonewall has been in talks with ministers and officials about potential amendments to the Gender Recognition Act in relation to civil partnership.
This last point is particularly strange. Why are Stonewall – an organisation who are so very keen to exclude trans people and remain LGb only – involved in trans lobbying? Don’t get me wrong, I’m in favour of any move towards Stonewall becoming an LGBT organisation at the very least (more on that later), but surely if they’re engaging in this kind of deeply important, high-profile lobbying on our behalf then they should damn well let us be a part of their organisation and officially campaign on our behalf. Otherwise, who knows what the heck they’re saying? For that matter, what right do they have to speak for us? Shouldn’t we be able to speak for ourselves?
It may well be the case that the “large” trans organisations (which, in the broad scheme of the third sector, really are very small) don’t have the power to push a trans-positive agenda on the scale they’d like to and have somehow managed to rope Stonewall into helping us out. For me, this is a perfect argument in favour of a united LGBT alliance, rather than separate groups where the LGb inevitably gets the power and the T ends up left out in the cold, despite our ultimately similar interests.
This brings me nicely onto the main subject of this blog: another instance of Stonewall deciding that they’re going to speak out about trans issues. On this occasion, they demonstrate how attempting to speak for someone else can backfire magnificently.
Earlier this year, Stonewall sent out a copy of “Fit” to every school in Britain as part of a wider campaign to tackle homophobic bullying in schools. On the whole, the DVD – like the rest of the campaign – is admirable in its aims, scope, and general thoughtfulness. This is something which they’ve (almost!) done really well. However, for some incomprehensible reason the people who put together the DVD decided that it would be appropriate to include a brief discussion of trans issues.
The main content of the DVD consists of a story about sexuality, identity and bullying, involving a fairly large cast of teenagers who attend a 6th form college. This central narrative is split into a number of smaller stories, each focusing based around a particular character; the brief discussion of trans issues takes part within one such story. In this scene, Lee – a tomboy who has previously discovered that her best friend is gay after following her – attends a gay youth group for the first time. Whilst she is there, the following discussion takes place:
Male 1 [is talking about his mother]: “She keeps saying: ‘but you don’t look gay’. I think that she wishes I was a tranny, so then we could be girlfriends.”
[group laughs]
Lee: “What’s a tranny?”
Female 1: “It’s short for transgender.”
Female 2: “I know this one! Transsexuals are people who want a sex change, tranvestites are people who dress up as the opposite sex. Drag kings and queens – well they dress up for a living!”
[group applauds]
Lee: [looks confused] “I need to take some notes, has anyone got a pen like?”
[Lee is given a pen]
Lee: “So what’s a transsexual?”
Female 3: “Boys who feel more like girls and girls who feel more like boys.”
Lee: “Transvestite?”
Female 3: “Well, they feel content with their born gender, but prefer to wear the clothes of the opposite sex.”
Lee: “So am I a transvestite?”
Female 2: “No. Lots of girls are tomboys when they’re young, then they grow out of it.”
Female 4: “I didn’t! I’m a total boy and I love it!”
Female 2: “…and I’m not a boy, I like being a girl.”
Female 4: “…and that’s fine too! Look, there’s as many way to be a girl as there are girls.”
[The conversation then turns to the issue of gay marriage. The group seems to be broadly in favour, and they think civil partnerships are an unfair compromise.]
[Edit: the inappropriate scene can now be seen here on Youtube]
In a different context – let’s say a random TV drama – this scene would make me cringe a bit but I wouldn’t think much more of it. After all, general cluelessness about trans stuff is pretty much par for course, and in the broad scheme of things this particular instance isn’t so bad. Within the context of a DVD that seeks to tackle homophobic bullying, however, this is completely out of order.
“Fit” handles homophobic insults and the common negative use of words such as “gay” in a pretty nuanced manner, putting all kinds of nasty language into its characters’ mouths and then carefully demonstrating how this impacts the beliefs and actions of others. At the same time, you learn how gay teenagers might think and feel through empathasising with gay characters.
By contrast, the tokenistic discussion of trans issues takes place in a setting where there are apparently no trans characters (Lee remains a tomboy of sorts throughout the narrative and her sexuality is somewhat ambiguous, but at no point is it seriously implied that she identifies as trans in any way because of this). We are portrayed as an alien “Other”, a topic of discussion which cis characters claim they know all about even though they get it wrong. And no-one addresses these mistakes at any point.
To the trans reader, said mistakes may be pretty obvious, but this might not necessarily be the case for cis readers. As such, here’s a brief low-down of some of the issues:
1) “Tranny” is very much a contested word. It’s commonly used as an insult by tabloid newspapers, idiotic bloggers and random arseholes on the street: as such it has a similar sting to words such as “faggot”. It’s a word with a lot of power to cause pain: something that simply isn’t acknowledged when a character in “Fit” blithely asserts that it’s “short for transgender”. Which it isn’t, anyway…it can be levelled at pretty much any given trans (or trans-looking) target, although transfeminine individuals tend to suffer from this most commonly. There are trans people who reclaim “tranny” as a positive identity. I personally support this, although I wouldn’t do so myself. However, I think it’s always important to be very aware of context when such words are used. Putting them randomly in the mouths of cis characters in this way is pretty damn inappropriate.
2) “Fit” demonstrates the complexity of sexual identity, showing how gay (and straight!) people all look different, act differently and have different interests. It even acknowledges (a little) that bisexuality exists, which has to be some kind of achievement for Stonewall. However, the brief descriptions of trans identities are incomplete, insufficient and somewhat inaccurate (try telling a trans guy that he’s a girl who feels like a boy and he’ll probably tell you to where to go). Moreover, these descriptions are binary-centric and fail to account for the further complexity of transness.
3) Where are the trans characters? As previously explained, this discussion pretty much consists of cis people talking about trans people…in complete contrast to the rest of the DVD, which is all about allowing the voices of gay people to be heard and their experiences to be seen.
I’m very much in favour of Stonewall becoming an LGBT organisation. LGBT people have many differences (and that doesn’t just refer to trans people being different to everyone else: gay men and gay women have some different issues, bi people have different issues again…) but there is a lot that brings us together. We have a shared history, and broadly shared experiences of discrimination and “coming out”. Looking at some of the other materials from Stonewall’s anti-bullying kit, I saw how easy it would have been to build in trans issues. Like gay children, trans children in schools are often bullied for appearing to subvert gender norms, are likely to feel isolated and alone and have difficulty explaining their identity to others when seeking help. Gay, bisexual and trans issues in school really are often quite similar, and we’d surely be better off pooling our knowledge and expertise to work on resources such as that produced by Stonewall rather than having separate LGB and T packs (on those very rare occasions where a trans organisation can afford to produce such a pack, that is).
What I’m certainly not in favour of is the kind of nonsense found in “Fit”. What gives Stonewall the right to exclude trans people from their organisation and then turn around and decide that they’re going to campaign ineffectively and inappropriate on our behalf, without our input?
As such, I’ll be demonstrating against Stonewall duplicity in London on 4th November. If you’re free and can make it to the protest, I hope you might be able to do so too.
(demo link for those who don’t use Facebook)
Ben Summerskill: Stonewall not fighting for gay marriage because ‘it could cost £5 billion’
This one leaves me utterly flabberghasted, even in spite of Stonewall’s long history of questionable positions and decisions.
The organisation has done some really good work in terms of raising awareness; opposing homophobia in schools, in the media, and in sport; and lobbying politicians. However, they also have a nasty habit of gobbling up a vast proportion of the funding available to LGBT organisations, pushing aside or ignoring local groups who are already working on particular issues, and toadying up to government representatives and corporate interests.
This is the organisation that charges a huge amount of money for inclusion in their ‘Diversity Champions‘ programme for employers (which can’t do many small businesses and public sector bodies any favours), ignores input from those effected by many of their schemes (e.g. LGBT student societies were entirely sidelined in a recent guide to gay-friendly universities), and insists that it’s still entirely appropriate to campaign as an ‘LGB’ organisation (despite the fact that most of the issues they campaign upon impact trans people, and they’re getting all that ‘LGBT’ funding!)
The organisation’s name couldn’t be any less appropriate. Stonewall was a riot in which some of the most marginalised gay, lesbian, bi and trans people (e.g. drag queens, butches, prostitutes and homeless street kids) took a stand against institutional bigotry and discrimination. To name an assimilationist, corporatist, trans-exclusive organisation after this event seems like some kind of sick joke.
Ben Summerskill – the current Chief Executive of Stonewall – seems to embody everything that is bad about the organisation. I was able to attend a Parliamentary Committee briefing last year where representatives of LGB, trans and feminist organisations gave evidence in relation to the Equality Bill, and was deeply shocked to hear some of Summerskill’s arguments:
Lynne Featherstone (Hornsey and Wood Green) (LD): This is really to Stonewall. I wondered what concerns Stonewall might have, if any, about the new disparities that will be created by the Bill—for example, in terms of harassment, the exclusion of sexual orientation. I would like your views on that.
Ben Summerskill: I can certainly say on the issue of harassment we are not convinced that there is a need for protection in this area. Members of the Committee who have dealt with Stonewall in the past will know that we tend only to ask for things where we can provide hard evidence of need, and we tend then only to ask for prescriptions that might put things right.
Lynne Featherstone’s face was a picture; I think she hardly expected a representative of Stonewall to claim that that there was no need for protection against harassment on the grounds of sexual orientation when the proposed Bill saw fit to (rightly) include such protections on the grounds of other ‘diversity strands’, such as race.
Summerskill was also quick to defend Stonewall’s decision to nominate Julie Bindel for their ‘Journalist of the Year’ award. He ultimately admitted on a number of occasions that this nomination was pretty disrespectful towards trans people (others who have issues with Bindel, such as many intersex individuals and sex workers, didn’t get a look-in) but claimed that un-nominating her would ultimately be far too dramariffic. Yeah, right.
Given this noble history, I wasn’t too surprised to hear that Summerskill doesn’t believe in fighting for marriage equality. After all, Stonewall were quite content to compromise on civil partnerships; they didn’t seem to think there was a chance of achieving full marriage equality…and so didn’t bother fighting for it. It was, however, the sheer audacity of Summerskill’s arguments that shocked me.
I understand those who believe that marriage is an oppressive, patriarchal institution (an example of this position can be found here). Moreover, the experiences of the LGBT lobby in the USA demonstrate that equal marriage campaigns can be a massive drain on resources that keep activists from addressing more urgent issues, such as everyday violence on the streets, queer poverty or homelessness. Summerskill apparently drew upon both of these arguments, but in a somewhat confused and contradictory manner. If Stonewall believes that marriage equality campaigns are a drain upon resources, why did they bother campaigning for civil partnerships? Moreover, since when did Stonewall take a radical feminist or queer stance on anything?
I personally believe that the oppressive nature of marriage is a contingent and historical situation rather than a necessary one: it’s possible for there to be a tradition which celebrates a relationship in an open, non-prescriptive fashion. Moreover, if married individuals are to be afforded certain benefits or privileges by the state, it’s important that all relationships are afforded equal recognition as long as this questionable system of privileging remains. The current system in the UK, whereby separate institutions of marriage and civil partnership exist for ‘gay’ and ‘straight’ couples, merely enforces the idea that ‘gay relationships’ are that much different to ‘straight’ ones. And that’s before we get on to the massive complexities caused by the Gender Recognition Act, which forces trans people to divorce or annul their partnership should they want to acquire a Gender Recognition Certificate (lest we end up with a gay marriage or a straight civil partnership!) Marriage equality will mean that trans people can just get married without having to worry about their own legal gender status and how it relates to the legal gender of their partner.
The really impressive bit, though, is where Summerskill argues that marriage equality will be ‘too expensive’. Since when did equality come with a price tag? Since when was it acceptable for a civil rights organisation to throw up its hands and say “sorry guys, we’re in recession right now, we’ll just have to wait until the economic climate is more appropriate for our liberation”?
I’ve heard a whole load of people argue that Stonewall does not represent them, particularly in recent months days hours. I’d like the join them. As a trans person, Stonewall officially doesn’t give a damn about representing me…however, as a bisexual individual, they’re meant to be acting in my interests. I don’t see that happening any time soon, and therefore would like them to stop pretending that they’re campaigning for my rights when they seem so keen to do the exact opposite.
I finished reading The Well of Loneliness last night.
As a novel it’s not fantastic. The plot plods along in a relatively predictable fashion, following Stephen – the protagonist – as they grow up, get a job, and meet people. The writing is mediocre and occasionally quite dull.
As a giant “fuck you” to the world, it’s very powerful and still disturbingly relevant. The story follows Stephen, a female-assigned “invert”. Invert is a late nineteenth century/early twentieth century term that’s often said to refer to homosexuality, but there’s a whole body of literature out there discussing whether or not it’s more to do with gender identity than sexuality. It’s now considered somewhat backward to associate lesbianism with necessary masculinity, which has led to a great deal of criticism by latter-day activists. However, if Stephen – and other female-assigned inverts such as Jamie – are seen as trans men, everything begins to make a whole lot more sense Certainly Stephen’s story often reads more like that of a trans man than a lesbian.
I’ve come across several pieces that describe The Well of Loneliness as a plea for tolerance. It strikes me more as a demand for tolerance, and one that’s still disturbingly relevant. . The condemnation of those “good people” who oppress others for differing from society’s norms still holds true. The demand to accept the very existence of those who transcend sexual and gender stereotypes still holds true.
I got pretty depressed earlier today reading the mindblowingly ignorant comments following a Guardian article about trans rights. It made me think about how there’s still a lot of people out there who happily move through their “normal” lives whilst handing out casual bigotry whenever it suits them. We’ve come so far, yet we still have so far to go.
On a brighter note, a guy I know from Queer Youth Network was in a positive documentary on Channel 4 last night, which you can still watch on 4od. The fact that we’ve got to the point where we can tell a positive story like this on national television shows that progress.
Dr Ruth Pearce 