Trans Rights Isn’t A Curiosity to Pontificate over — It’s Peoples Lives.
Content warning: discussing transphobia.
Trans Rights Isn’t A Curiosity to Pontificate over — It’s Peoples Lives.
Content warning: discussing transphobia.
The year 2020, among other horrible things, was a particularly gruesome year for trans rights. In July, the Conservative Government dropped plans to make it easier for trans people to legally affirm their gender.
A three-year public consultation, which began under Theresa May’s government, found that the trans community was overwhelmingly in favour of dropping current requirements of spousal consent, proof of having lived with ones current identity for a number of years, and medical reports, amongst a myriad of other bureaucratic requirements that prevent trans and gender non-conforming individuals from receiving the legal and medical assistance they may need. Instead, Equalities Minister Liz Truss has opted to put the bureaucracy online and make access to it cheaper.
This decision sparked protests throughout the country — thousands gathered in and around Parliament Square, and across the nation, others stood in solidarity.
Just as December began, a High Court ruling found the administration of puberty blockers to people aged under 16 to be unlawful, with the rationale that “the vast majority of patients taking puberty-blocking drugs proceed to take cross-sex hormones and are, therefore, on a pathway to much greater medical interventions”. This is an argument that rings familiar to any advocates of legalising marijuana — that something such as puberty blockers, which has “improved psychological well-being and no clinical signs of adverse effects on the brain” as found by researchers at the University of Rome — isn’t the subject of critique itself, but is caught in the blast radius of a strawman argument about something more severe.
Despite the science not backing these harmful and discriminatory ideas, the Guardian, Telegraph, Daily Mail, and the BBC all ran headlines which portrayed blockers and the medical professionals that prescribe them as evil, and some echoed concerns about how the trans community welcomes young people questioning their identity online. What most don’t tell you, however, is that Keira Bell began taking testosterone at 20, not as a teenager, and this is where she actually begins having regrets — through decisions she made as an adult. Oddly, that tends to get left out, or buried near the bottom of the article in the BBCs case.
And the BBC has been no ally. From featuring anti-trans group LGB Alliance in to ‘balance the debate’ around trans rights, to even passionately displaying their complete disregard for trans people on the diversity page of their website, to banning their staff from attending trans rights parades in the name of impartiality, the BBC has proven themselves not to be all that impartial. (You can read more on the BBCs partiality here). Rather, the BBC and the outlets after their throne have unified in disdain for trans rights and the pursuit of happiness in the lives of trans and gender non-conforming individuals, and they should be ashamed.
