The lessons of the trans debate

The World Athletics Council has taken the decisive step of announcing that transgender women who underwent male puberty before their transition will henceforth be excluded from female events. The decision has been made, according to the council, to ‘protect the future of the female category’. World rugby has already made a similar ruling and other sports are expected to follow suit. It has been a long and heated debate, but a consensus is emerging on the side of common sense.

Those who overreached on this issue are counting the cost. Nicola Sturgeon’s bizarre gender self-ID law that would have granted women’s rights to anyone who wanted to claim them went on to sink her premiership. She said that opponents of her plans included homophobes and bigots – but they also included about two-thirds of the Scottish public. When a convicted rapist was sent to a women’s prison, Sturgeon was unable to say why his request to be seen as a woman should be granted. She badly misjudged the mood of her country and suffered the consequences.

Gender dysphoria affects a small number of people who deserve to be treated with compassion and respect. This is no longer a controversial assertion. Legally changing gender is a well-established procedure, requiring a medical diagnosis and that the applicant live as their preferred gender for a certain period. There were few objections when that treatment was provided on the NHS.

But this commonsense position was stretched and abused by a minority of campaigners who thought that, after racism and sexism, transphobia was the next evil to be slain. In her first year as prime minister, Theresa May suddenly announced that she wanted to update the law to allow people to change gender by self-identification without a medical diagnosis – an issue the Conservative party had hardly discussed before.