The recent trans, toilet ruling, has it helped?
Not really. If anything, it’s made the debate pretty toxic, and intentionally or not, it’s thrown trans people under a bus.
Basically, if you were born with a nunu, you can call yourself a woman, and the law will see you as a woman. If you’re born with a willy, you’re a man. And that’s it, black and white.
Okay, that’s pretty clear and unequivocal.
However, for the best guess absolutely maximum 262,000 trans people in the UK, half of one per cent of the population, that’s a bit of a problem.
Let’s just repeat that, an absolute maximum of half of one per cent of the UK population.
It’s worth saying that even the Office of National Statistics thinks that might be an over estimate.
Talk about using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.
Because as clear as it may be for the vast majority of people, for the trans community, it just isn’t that clear. Imagine being born male or female and simply not identifying with that gender. For trans people, that is their life, and it is very real.
Anyway, zooming back to the questions and public toilets, if someone has had their john thomas removed by surgery and to all intents and purposes looks like, acts like, and navigates the world as a woman, according to this recent legal judgement, they’re not legally a woman and would have to go to the gents if they were caught short in public.
This is Paris Lees, born male, so legally a male, but would you really know it unless I just said it? According to the law, she’d have to use the gents. How comfortable do you think that would make anyone feel?
This is Buck Angel, born female, so if he ever visited the UK, he’d be legally a female, so legally, he’d have to use the ladies if he got caught short in public.
And to be honest, who on earth would really know if a trans was a trans or a cis? Are they going to have staff asking people to prove their trans/cis status before entering a toilet?
As you can imagine, trying to police this particular ruling can get pretty complicated pretty quickly.
Now, I’m not sure, but I really don’t think the people who brought this case to the UK courts had this in mind. Unfortunately though, that’s what we’ve got.
But then again, Britain really is the personification of ‘be careful what you wish for.’ Br*x*t spring to mind?
So how is this going to get resolved? Well it’s no use asking the activists who brought the case to court, they’re just happy as larry that they’re women, and no one can take their status/definition away from them, not that anyone was ever going to.
However, trans people are still people, and just as entitled to respect, protection under law, and the absolute legal right to be free from discrimination, which, I might add, also includes hate crime, which, as the name kind of gives away, is a crime.
Some people think that trans people are ‘just’ a minority, or simply don’t understand them, or are scared of them, or think they are an easy target for ridicule.
They are people, just like you and I are people, and maybe a bit more engagement than right now might need to be going on.
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