The Transgender Issue: An Argument for Justice

by Shon Faye

Since the Sunday People outed the trans model April Ashley back in 1961 with the headline ‘“Her” Secret is Out’ – thereby instantly ending her modelling career – the media have tended to be less interested in informing the public about trans people and more interested in creating profitable cycles of mockery and suspicion.

Media coverage of the trans community rarely seems to be driven by a desire to inform and educate the public about the actual issues and challenges facing a group who – as all evidence indicates – are likely to experience severe discrimination throughout their lives. Today, the typical news item on trans people features a debate between a trans advocate on one side and a person with ‘concerns’ on the other – as if both parties were equally affected by the discussion. As trans people face a broken healthcare system – which in turn leaves them with a desperate lack of support both with their gender and the mental health impacts of the all-too-commonly associated problems of family rejection, bullying, homelessness and unemployment – trans people with any kind of platform or access have tried to focus media reporting on these issues, to no avail.

Trans people have been dehumanized, reduced to a talking point or conceptual problem: an ‘issue’ to be discussed and debated endlessly. It turns out that when the media want to talk about trans issues, it means they want to talk about their issues with us, not the challenges facing us.

Seventy-seven per cent of LGBTQ+ pupils say they have never received any school-based education about gender identity and what being ‘trans’ means; 33 per cent of trans pupils are not able to be known by their preferred name at school; 58 per cent are not allowed to use the toilets in which they feel comfortable.15 This environment, created by the failings of adults, only increases hostility and bullying among pupils. Horrifyingly, almost one in ten trans young people have received a death threat while at school. Rather than being indulged or given special treatment, the stark truth is that many trans children are receiving little institutional support and, in some cases, are explicitly discouraged from being fully themselves at school.

In any minority group, those who have the time, resources and political access to lead the charge for recognition and better treatment tend to be the middle-class members, who don’t appreciate the urgent issues of poverty and homelessness that for many can impede participation in activist movements. This representational imbalance leads to ‘single issue’ priorities, which emphasize the personal freedoms of the individual over the economic liberation of the entire minority group.

This manufactured controversy over trans inclusion is a deliberate distraction: the bitter debate over trans women makes political solidarity and organizing among LGBTQ+ people and cisgender straight women more difficult.

The medical establishment in Britain is systemically and institutionally discriminatory towards trans people.

many trans people feel compelled to change either their appearance or their negotiation of public space because of the threat of violence.