by Amber Roberts
Gender Critics believe that Trans Women aren’t Women as strongly as we believe that Trans Women Are Women, no matter what anyone tells them to the contrary. On both sides of this we have people making threats, shouting abuse and being hateful in general. This behaviour needs to stop on both sides, it’s not helpful to anyone and just encourages more hate.
We hear a lot from JK Rowling and there are many people who share her views, including Joanna Cherry (MP Edinburgh South West), Helen Joyce (Author of Trans: When Ideology meets Reality) and Allison Bailey (Co-Founder LGB Alliance)
In my personal opinion, someone needs to have a sit down, face to face, calm chat with her, and actually show them show how their own actions have turned this situation nasty. Next, we need to tell them, calmly and politely our side of things. We need to listen to their concerns and on each of those concerns show the facts around those concerns such as The Gender Recognition Reform Bill (Scotland) which only changes the process in which a Trans Person can gain a Gender Recognition Certificate and a GRC enables Trans People to change their birth certificates to reflect who they are now that. It is not, as some have claimed, a free pass into bathrooms, changing rooms or Sports. In regard to bathrooms and changing rooms, access to them is already given to Trans in the Equality Act 2010.
Trans Women are often labelled as predators. It is true that some Trans Women are predators, just like it’s true that some Men and some Women are predators. But this isn’t true for all, and it is not fair on anyone if we label entire groups of people based on what a few have done. Predators will carry out their disgusting acts regardless of what laws are put before them and whilst every effort is made to make it more difficult for predators, we cannot do this at the expense of the rights of others.
The hard cold truth of things is that what they are doing to Trans People, is exactly the same as what society did to People of Colour, what Men have done (and still do in places) to Women, what Hitler did to the Jews, what society did to Gay people and the many other cases of Oppression that’s in human history, albeit for different reasons. We need to show gender critical people that they are continuing a vicious circle and it needs to stop. To coin a phrase, we need to Break the Wheel, stop oppression (unless of course it’s those committing acts against human rights, such as murder, rape, torture and those who are breaking laws such as theft, arson, assault etc) we need to stop blaming entire groups of people for the crimes of the few and instead go after the wrong doers and make it clear that we are all equal. We live in a society where it’s a case of innocent until proven guilty, yet many trans people are facing a situation of guilty until proven innocent and others face being judged as guilty regardless.
Some gender critical people say that Trans Women are not Women, that they are Men no matter which way you spin it and they use biology as proof of this, saying that Human’s cannot change their sex. First, let’s look at the definition of sex.
The Oxford Dictionary defines sex as “The state of being Male or Female.” And “either of the two groups that people, animals, and plants are divided into according to their function of producing young.”
However, it’s not that simple with today’s scientific and medical practises. There are plenty of Male and Females who have had their reproductive systems completely removed and these processes are called an Emasculation for Males and a Hysterectomy for Females. It doesn’t make a person any less of a man or woman if they don’t have their reproductive systems.
We get these reproductive systems depending on our chromosomes but again it’s not always that simple. Some are born with both reproductive systems and others are born without and whilst these are rare, the fact remains that it still happens. So how do we categorise them? And this question brings us Gender and Gender Identity and in turn we are brought back to “the state of being male or female” definition in the dictionary.
Gender Identity does not always match with what we are assigned with at birth and it’s for an individual to determine their own identity in life and this includes gender. It’s for this reason that we have the Transition process, with laws and regulations in place.
We cannot become a society where people are forced into a certain identity. To do so would be to become a Dictatorial society and we know from our history that this simply doesn’t work. Our society is ever changing and if we are to prevail as a society, we need to treat each other equally, something that has been taught to us throughout childhood with the phrase “Treat others the way you wish to be treated”.
I have long thought the amorphism of “treat others the way *you* wish to be treated” may be better crystallised as some form of “treat others the way *they* wish to be treated”. The former favours acting on assumption, the latter prioritises communication and transparency around actual needs.