“Labour is avoiding the transgender debate: the Right now covers it uncontested”
Mila Edensor analyses contemporary rhetoric surrounding transness, arguing the necessity for left wing voices as the debate spirals into dangerous territory.
Image via Wikimedia Commons
During the latter half of the 20th century, homosexuality was demonised for political purposes. It was associated with disease, contagion, corruption and pedophilia within the rhetoric spouted by mainstream politicians. As politicians, their status legitimised such perspectives, both contributing towards and capitalising from the public’s prejudice. Such prejudice, backed up by power, eventually became a concrete response: policy. The court of public opinion was entered into the courts, and queer people paid the price.
In our current era, the same ideas remain; the baton has simply been passed on. Transgender people are now the focus of the vitriol and moral panic. Further, within the UK discussion, there is a dearth of prominent transgender voices and public figures; the ‘trans debate’ that defines today’s politics occurs with little input and reference to transgender individuals. All that remains is empty rhetoric that surrounds the trans community, meaning that policy is discussed in reference to an imagined and conceptual transgender individual.
“the institutional British Left, spearheaded by the Labour party, has been unable to articulate committed support towards the trans community.”
Within this discussion, the institutional British Left, spearheaded by the Labour party, has been unable to articulate committed support towards the trans community. Instead, they have allowed the Conservatives to choose the terms of the debate and turn up the dial to whatever sense of urgency best suits their political goals. As a result of Labour’s complacency, of their inability to articulate a coherent perspective, they have handed over to the Tories authorship regarding the public perception of transgender people at large, and therefore further control over the priorities that shape policy discussions.
One of the most popular associations made within right wing rhetoric is that of the youth’s corruption. Minister for Women and Equalities Kemi Badenock claimed that gender affirming care for children was a ‘form of conversion therapy’. Language has power, and the language used here is especially important, given that the Tories are currently under pressure to ban conversion therapy, which is typically understood as a method of changing a person's sexuality or other queer attributes to fit within cisgender and heterosexual norms. Within the warped association of transness and corruption lies the potential for a ‘moral’ argument to ban access to gender affirming care. Furthermore, this idea of conversion implies that children are being misguided, manipulated and pushed into making choices that harm them, irrespective of the fact that research shows that 98% of adolescents who take hormonal gender affirming care continue taking it into adulthood.
This narrative is mirrored in the USA, where the governor of Florida, Rob DeSantis, signed into the law the prohibition of gender affirming care for transgender children. Also included in this law is the power for a court to temporarily remove a child from their home, should they be found to be taking such treatment, ultimately grouping the provision of care under other acts of child abuse.
This political project has been very successful across the USA. Right wing politicians have been able to mobilise a political base using this issue, and have subsequently delivering on this fabricated anger within policy; 35.1% of transgender youth have now live in states that have passed bans on trans affirming care. So when we see our own politicians using the same narratives, also mirroring this within policy, such as Sunak’s government’s decision to block Holyrood’s bill regarding Self ID, this substantiates grounds for caution, and further substantiates the need for a Left capable of articulating a response.
Both these instances across the Atlantic make use of notions of corruption to justify further political actions. They create an ideological framework within which discriminatory policies can be seemingly justified on the basis of child safety, making them more acceptable in the eyes of the public . The USA is further along in regard to the implementation of policy correspondent with this rhetoric. The UK currently sits on a knife’s edge, where the tide could turn in either direction. Labour’s stance of strategic ambiguity in this context, so as not to alienate voters, leaves the public without a legitimised alternative perspective. There is no effort being made to unpick transphobic ideology, and evidence from the USA demonstrates the ease with which oppressive rhetoric is turned into oppressive policy. As it stands, the Right is being left to dominate the conversation.
“The UK currently sits on a knife’s edge, where the tide could turn in either direction.”
The Right uses this narrative control for political means. With the power to dictate the direction of conversation, one such area they have moved public debate towards is sports. This is a logical choice, with their interests considered, as the question regarding transgender bodies within a system of strict gender segregation is obviously difficult to answer. But they do not seek a respectful discussion. After all, there is far more long-term gain to be had in capitalising off of contention. Every governing and political body can be burned through as near endless political capital and bans are passed at multiple stratas. Bans have even been implemented at county level. Regardless of one’s stance on the issue, it is undeniable that the rhetoric surrounding it exaggerates the scale of the situation and is being used as an allegory to present trans women as invaders. Sure, of course this issue is important for sporting bodies, but why must it be so prominent within public debate? The Mail Online headline ‘High school basketball game is abandoned after trans player 'injures three female opponents' with shocking video showing the biological male hurling an athlete to the floor’ creates the image of an enraged and beastly man pretending to be a woman in order to inflict violence. This is not a genuine discussion regarding how society should deal with biological advantages - this is demonisation of a minority group with the goal of inspiring public hatred.
Perversely, those who engage in this political rhetoric market their actions as if they are being done with the goal of protecting women’s rights. Nowhere else is this more clear than in West Virginia, where the House recently passed a Bill explicitly titled the ‘Women’s Bill of Rights’, despite the fact the bill does not expand women’s rights in the slightest. For example, when one lawmaker tried to include an equal pay clause, their proposal was rejected on the grounds that it was not fitting to the nature of the Bill. All the Bill really achieves is defining that ‘there are only two sexes, and every individual is either male or female’, using this definition to bar trans people from using the spaces that match their gender, and writing intersex people out of existence. The Bill plays off the idea that trans women are actually predatory men who pretend to be women in order to gain access to womens spaces, irrespective of the fact that predatory men do not feel the need to transition to assault women. If there is genuine concern regarding comfort and the prevention of sexual assault in such spaces, how is forcing transgender women with female secondary sex characteristics into male changing rooms logically coherent with this goal?
Single sex spaces are a difficult discussion to be had, but we are certainly not treating them with the respect and humanity they deserve. Does a body’s incompatibility within a strict sex binary justify the characterisation of transgender people as invaders by their very nature? Or is this more accurately characterised as a dramatised and heightened assessment of the situation? Should a person’s respect and humanity be brought into question just because their body does not fit the specifications of a sporting institution?
“We have no legitimised positive frame of reference for the trans community - this exists only within marginal and fringe spaces. When given the power to influence society, avoidance is complicity, apathy is acceptance and Labour’s silence is deafening.”
Across the anglophone world, hateful articulations of these issues are being given prominence. And still, we are yet to see a mainstream left wing assessment of how the conversation has been manipulated. Discussions on transgender people have been moved to topics where there is room for right wing narratives to be considered by design. Discussion of the historical and cross-cultural existence of trans people are seldom mentioned. Instead, these specific topics are promoted and blown up as if allegories that tell us something fundamental about trans people as a whole. These issues have been focussed on because the Right is able to capitalise off their difficulty, not because the right genuinely cares about women’s rights. And in the face of this rhetoric, the Left remains silent, evasive and incompetent.
We need only look to the past to see the consequences of such transphobic discourse. The Weimar republic recognised the rights of trans people to a limited degree. They were given police permits called ‘transvestite certificates’ that allowed people an exemption regarding anti cross dressing laws. Furthermore, trans people were able to receive care at the Institute for Sexual research in Berlin. When the Nazis seized power, the research held in the institute was destroyed during the book burnings. The police rescinded recognition of the ‘transvestite certificates’; transgender people were either sent to concentration camps or subjected to forced castration. And now in the modern day, Floridian lawmakers have banned multiple books containing LGBTQ+ or transgender themes from schools. They have banned trans people from changing their gender markers on driving licences. Of course, this is not a direct comparison - but can perhaps act as a warning, foreshadowing what may come if transphobic rhetoric continues to go unchallenged. The act of censoring, prohibiting and destroying knowledge of a demonised community looks strikingly similar no matter the century.
Looking to the future, to the spectre of a potential Trump administration - given the fact that as of the 21st of February he is polling 45% to Biden’s 42% - there is reason to believe this rhetoric is going to intensify. And the intensification of rhetoric signals intensification of policy. On the 31st of January 2023, Trump tweeted a ‘Plan to Protect Children from Left-Wing Gender Insanity’. This plan presents transgender people as the ultimate enemy. Firstly, his desire to ‘pass a law prohibiting child sexual mutilation’ plays into a narrative of corruption and implies that trans people are tricked and simultaneously trick others into such procedures. And after fabricating a dilemma, he proposes a solution:
permanently ceasing federal funding towards gender affirming care and barring any hospital or healthcare provider from medicaid and medicare should they provide it.
instructing every federal agency to ‘cease all programs that promote the concept of gender transition at any age.
Creating a private right of action for ‘victims’ to sue doctors who have ‘unforgivably performed these procedures on minor children’
passing a bill stating that the ‘only gender recognised by the US are male and female - and that they are assigned at birth’.
gender and sex must be seen as the same and the state should ‘promote positive education about the nuclear family’ and ‘the roles of mothers and fathers’.
These are paraphrased examples, but the divisive language has been kept. It goes without saying that this is not an accurate portrayal of gender affirming care. The danger lies in his position as a presidential candidate, as it legitimises the view that doctors are mutilating their ‘victims’, mutilating children en masse across the nation, and that transgender people are a scourge that threaten the nation’s youth.
In the instance that Trump takes power at the next election, when his discourse reaches our island, how will the UK public react? To what direction have we been primed to respond? We have no legitimised positive frame of reference for the trans community - this exists only within marginal and fringe spaces. When given the power to influence society, avoidance is complicity, apathy is acceptance and Labour’s silence is deafening. We have a history that demonstrates our society’s capacity for the oppression of queer people in both rhetoric and policy. Ours is a nation capable of passing legislation such as Section 28, that posited homosexuality as a dangerous and corruptive phenomenon that had to be banned from schools in both books and mention. The longer the floor is left open to conservative rhetoric, the more difficult it will become to articulate a respectful and conciliatory message regarding transgender people within society. The terms of debate will solidify. Transgender death and pain will be pushed to the discursive margins, and we will be left discussing levels of threat, invasive extent and corruptive capacity, in place of questioning these hateful notions and presumptions in the first place. The Right has the groundwork and the tools for politically effective messaging. It is time for the Left to start talking.