Before offering your opinion on the latest bit of culture-war scaremongering from the Tories on trans people, consider this.
How would you feel if a woman you know, perhaps vulnerable, was forced into being treated in an all-male ward at a hospital. How would that woman feel?
Terrified, most likely. And that is exactly how I would feel in the same situation. My instincts are the same as most women – I just happen to be trans.
But these are the realities facing me as a trans woman, after Kemi Badenoch announced, in a series of combative media interviews this morning, that the Conservatives would seek to ‘clarify’ the legal definitions of sex and gender, potentially denying trans women from accessing women-only spaces.
Even if they have a full female anatomy, exist on a day to day basis among other women and are fully recognised by the British state as women through a gender recognition certificate.
There’s a very large ‘F’ on my passport, meaning my sex is registered as female so why on earth would I be placed in male facilities in places like hospitals.
It’s abhorrent, cruel and feels like a clear breach of my human rights.
But it seems the Tories are just fanning the flames of the same culture war issues as always in a desperate bid to win the election.
Let me be clear. I would never, ever go on an all-male hospital ward. I’d rather die at the scene of my injury or illness than be placed on one.
Badenoch’s series of interviews, in which she struggled to articulate her position and ended up snapping at the presenters, just show how little thought has gone into these proposals and that the Conservatives simply want to try and scapegoat the trans community, using us as a political football.
That was also shown by the party’s official account on X posting ‘We know what a woman is – Keir Starmer doesn’t.’
Well I know what a woman is, and I know I am one.
And what’s most galling is that Labour are waiting on the sidelines ready to put the boot in too, and haven’t been strong enough in responding, calling the policy only a ‘distraction’ without explaining why it’s so offensive.
Badenoch’s ‘review’ comes hot-on-the-heels of a government proposal to ban trans people specifically from single sex hospital wards.
Sadly, both parties seem content to justify this repeated humiliation of trans people by saying they respect biology and want to protect women.
But the stats suggest it isn’t a problem.
Earlier this year, trans charity Translucent polled 180 acute and mental health trusts in England, asking how many complaints they had received in the 12 months to September 2023 regarding trans women on women’s wards.
After almost 90% responded, the devastating figure was announced – one. Just a single complaint.
I’m going to say that again so it sinks in – one.
I transitioned on the NHS with the help of amazing doctors and specialists.
But now, as long as these changes come into place, I will never go to a UK hospital again.
They are no longer safe spaces.
I’ve spent my whole life fighting to be who I am, a woman, and no-one is taking that away from me – not a hospital administrator, a doctor, or anyone.
Certainly not Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer. Or Kemi Badenoch.
There’s also another big fly in the Conservative ointment of ‘protecting biological sex’ and ‘preserving dignity.’
A fly called trans men.
Badenoch said part of the issue she wants to tackle are people ‘visibly of a different sex’ from the one they claim accessing single-sex services.
Well the trans men I know are almost always indistinguishable from their cis counterparts.
Many have beards, bald heads and muscles. They read car magazines and smell of leather and aftershave, because they are indeed men.
Which means that, if some people get their way, your mum, wife, daughter or grandma might find herself in a single sex space with some very manly-looking people, all because ‘biology’ trumps all.
If we’re engaging with the transphobic argument, I’m not sure how you square their presence with the stated goals of ‘dignity’ and ‘protection’.
It seems that those great defenders of women haven’t given a second thought to them.
I don’t believe for one millisecond that most of the people who work in spaces like hospitals want trans people humiliated in this way.
But it does seem that the NHS is coming under serious pressure to rowback LGBTQ+ policies.
Only this year, the Rainbow Badge scheme, which supported LGBTQ+ staff in a number of ways, including by giving them Pride pin badges to wear, was shut down.
Rainbows are a sight only offensive to homophobes and transphobes – but for me it’s a sign that the NHS is becoming less and less safe for trans people.
That was further backed up when, in the wake of the controversial Cass Review, the Royal College of GPs said the majority of them should not provide a number of basic elements of trans healthcare, including prescribing certain drugs, or even carrying out blood tests to inform decisions on hormone doses.
With this latest attempt to leverage a culture war for votes, it’s hard for people like me not to conclude we are being targeted, scapegoated, and becoming easy election punch bags.
That’s a body blow, made worse by the cowardice also evident in the Labour Party, who I implore not to let this happen.
But as Kemi Badenoch embarasses herself trying to defend an unworkable policy that targets people like me simply for existing, I remind her that I am, no matter what she says, a woman.
And unlike her, after July I’ll still be a woman with a job.
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