I’ve tried to stay out of the trans-rights conversation, honestly I have. There are a number of reasons for this, and not all of them are laziness and cowardice. The main thing is that – though it bears on some important points of principle – it directly affects a relatively tiny proportion of the population and it already gets more coverage than almost any other issue up to and including a major European war.
Gee whiz, holding that centrist line gets harder
And for most of the people who get involved in this conversation as journalists, commentators and activists, it rapidly becomes a full-time job. There are a lot of people more willing, and better qualified, to do that job. And the conversation is so bitterly polarised that once you’re in the saddle it’s hard to climb down and say that, actually, there may be other things worth talking about.
But, here goes. I try to start from the position that this is a conversation about competing rights and courtesies that presents real difficulties that can’t be hand waved (or shouted) away. It seems to me very obvious that housing male-bodied sex offenders in the female prison estate might be a problem, and that enthusiastic ideologues promoting irreversible surgery or hormone treatments on pre-pubescent children might, also, bear looking at to say the least. Like most people, I think biological sex is a real thing, and male violence is a real thing.
I also think that those who for any number of a variety of reasons feel they can’t live in their original sex deserve to be accommodated as far as is possible within the constraints available to reality. I think that it’s needlessly cruel and provocative to systematically ‘deadname’ trans activists; that it gets us nowhere to smear by association as perverts, ‘groomers’ and autogynephiles the many trans people who are keen to get on with their lives with as much dignity as possible. These are real people, with real feelings about how they wish to live in the world. They’re not going through all that stuff on a whim.
Holding the mild, handwringing, centrist line may be hard – as the loudest voices insist on ever more ludicrous and uncompromising claims about the nature of reality – but it seems to me worth doing. I try to keep my eyes on those trans people (such as our own Debbie Hayton, or Buck Angel) who patiently show that there’s a spectrum of opinion even within the trans community. I try to see past the viciousness of the discourse to keep the underlying arguments on their merits. And I keep in mind, too, the trans child of a friend of mine – and the encouragement I find in observing that a class of ten-year-olds accepted her clothes, hair and pronouns without a problem. Having spent my childhood in school playgrounds where ‘gay’ was a go-to insult and trans identification unimaginable, that seems to me progress of an entirely welcome sort.
But gee whiz, holding that centrist line gets harder. At this weekend’s London Trans Pride, a male-born, trans-identified activist called Sarah Jane Baker made a speech from the stage through a bullhorn whose climactic line was: ‘If you see a terf, punch them in the fucking face.’ The organisers of trans protests can no more be condemned for ‘kill terfs’ signs in the crowd than the gender-critical speaker Kellie-Jay Keen can be called a Nazi because a cohort of white supremacists joins the crowd for one of her events. But this wasn’t some isolated lunatic in the crowd. This was a speech from a public stage, seemingly endorsed by the organisers of the event: the video of this incitement to violence appears to have been hoisted on Transpride London’s Instagram feed.
Can we say it was just a rhetorical flourish? I don’t think so. Sarah Jane Baker spent three decades in prison for a series of violent crimes including kidnapping and attempted murder. And here ‘she’ is, openly advocating violence and being cheered to the echo doing so. So speaking on behalf of the milquetoast, benefit-of-the-doubt, centre-ground-seeking constituency whom the advocates of self-ID, if they are to make any progress in the court of public opinion, will need to win over: what in the name of God are you clowns playing at?
In the last few months I’ve seen the idea of being ‘peaked’ enter the discourse: someone who might regard themselves as an ally, or undecided, or confused about these issues, someone keen to #bekind, digesting some piece of news and coming to the conclusion that the trans rights movement is now being spearheaded by vicious, entitled misogynists. I’m afraid that seeing Baker thundering that threat of violence from the stage and being cheered and celebrated for it has ‘peaked’ me. I daresay it will have peaked many others like me. If the purpose of trans pride is to celebrate diversity of identity and speak up for human rights, if the purpose of trans-inclusionary activism is to persuade rather than to intimidate, this seems to me a massive own goal. If you’re worried your opponents will ‘weaponise’ outrage at Baker to discredit your cause, how hard is it to make sure that there’s nothing to weaponise? There’s no excuse whatever for platforming a violent criminal offering to punch women ‘in the fucking face’, and even less excuse for celebrating it afterwards.
Before the event London’s mayor Sadiq Khan tweeted: ‘I want to wish everyone at London Trans Pride today a joyful, safe and empowering day. It’s never been more important to support trans people, who are being stigmatised and placed at the heart of a toxic culture war. As your Mayor, I will always be on your side.’ One way of stopping the ‘toxic culture war’, it seems to me, would be not to offer violence from the stage at a rally. And one way of supporting trans people would be to make sure they have better allies, and better advocates, than thugs like Sarah Jane Baker. Sadiq Khan should say so.
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