The Transgender Issue: Trans Justice Is Justice for All

by Shon Faye

In the early 1970s, Sweden became the first country in the world to allow trans people to change their legal sex. However, it simultaneously enforced a strict policy of compulsory sterilization, on the grounds that such people were mentally ill and unfit to care for children: eugenics, pure and simple. The Swedish courts finally overturned this foul policy in 2012 – but, in the intervening forty years, the practice had spread to many other European countries, including France, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Finland, Greece, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia.

The United Nations has recognized the mandatory sterilization requirement to be a form of torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, and the Council of Europe has, in the past decade, finally established that member states must abolish this requirement: in 2017, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that coerced sterilization violates trans people’s right to privacy and family life.39 Yet sterilization of trans people is still demanded in many countries around the world, including Japan.

Cisgender women, disabled people, fat people, black people, HIV-positive people and trans people are all groups that experience high degrees of medical discrimination and abuse, historically and currently. Our struggle is, then, a shared one – and it should not be left to us alone.

This implication – that trans people can be dismissed as wealthy children of privilege – rides roughshod over the evidence, which clearly shows that trans people are in fact more likely than the general population to live in poverty.

Transphobes on right and left alike rely on rhetorically separating trans people from the broader working class, their efforts bolstered by a sustained critique of millennial ‘identity politics’.

From the hostile feminism of Burchill and Moore in Britain to the jibes of male comedians in the US, the instinct to separate trans people from any meaningful economic and political struggle is a refusal of solidarity. Paradoxically, it also harms the very causes these liberal commentators support, by providing ammunition to the political right.

On the right, trans people are simultaneously – and, again, paradoxically – framed as a powerful and dogmatic cultural elite and as infantile, pathetic ‘snowflakes’ who revel in their fragility and sensitivity.

A 2017 Stonewall report found that two in five British trans people adjust the way they dress because they fear discrimination or harassment; the same number avoid certain streets in their local area for the same reason.

Gendered appearance is not only indivisible from social class and economic means; it’s also racialized. A working-class black trans woman’s ability to meet society’s requirements of acceptable femininity and avoid violence involves negotiating with female beauty industries that are often as racist as they are financially exclusive.

This creates a double bind for many trans people: they can struggle to access transition-related treatment without functioning as a worker – but they are also likely to be discriminated against and struggle as a worker because of their lack of transition-related treatment. This catch-22 historically led to the common experience of seeing visibly trans people volunteering in charity shops to satisfy these onerous conditions.

Cisgender people, media bosses conclude, do not want to watch a news item about a trans call-centre worker talking about his poor pay and how his shift patterns make medical appointments difficult – because it is depressing and, arguably, familiar to many low-paid non-trans people with medical conditions of their own. People do, however (or so the reasoning goes), want to watch a late-night Channel 4 documentary in which a trans woman gets large breast implants or has her browbone shaved down.

Trans bodies when objectified are entertainment; trans bodies when at work in the service of profit are not.

This must be said: corporate diversity schemes can never guarantee the safety, dignity and prosperity of the transgender worker – or, indeed, any worker – in the way that a strong and robust trade union movement and a properly funded welfare state can.

While this sort of liberal agenda is presented as emancipatory, it creates boundaries of acceptability: trans people and their political demands are acceptable only insofar as accepting them allows better participation in the capitalist system.

Ray Filar says, divides liberation movements: ‘The suit wearers come in, then they take over. It happened to women’s liberation, to the gay liberation front, to the anti-AIDS movement, to black power.’ Filar suggests that this development leads to more ‘palatable’ trans people pulling the ladder up behind them and leaving their less acceptable comrades behind. Movements are taken out of the hands of the radical, angry, non-respectable, non-conforming people who did the years of unrewarded hard graft to make it all happen, then gradually they are overrun by small-[/blockquote] minded career activists out to make a name for themselves.24

In a society that is both patriarchal and capitalist, men’s misogyny towards women sits comfortably alongside their desire to extract women’s sexual labour. This does not change because the woman is trans. In fact, given the political invisibility of most trans women, it may be intensified. To put it plainly, many of the men who purchase the services of trans sex workers will be the same men who argue for the oppression of all trans people and all sex workers. They will be the same men who preach hate and incite violence against them and the same men who, in some cases, personally use physical violence against them.

Yet the converse argument – for pro-sex-worker trans politics – isn’t intended as a moral absolution of the client or unethical industry practices; it isn’t concerned with morality at all. Rather, it recognizes that trans sex workers exist in a society in which money is necessary for survival, and that sex work is one of a limited number of options available to the marginalized in this society – and so, regardless of any condemnation or criminalization of clients, trans sex workers will still need to sell sex. Accepting this reality turns the focus from ‘ending demand’ for sexual services, to harm-reduction for the worker.

Its malevolence aside, Hungary’s Article 33 spoke volumes for the government’s political priorities: why on earth would any government faced with coordinating its medical and economic response to a major pandemic concern itself with curtailing the civil liberties of trans people?

Their rejection of dominant, ancient and deep-seated ideas about the connection between biological characteristics and identity causes a dilemma for the nation state: whether to acknowledge and give credence to the individual’s assertion of their own identity in law and in culture; or to mandate that it, the state, is the final authority on identity, and to assert its power over the individual – by force if necessary.

In other words, integration of the ‘right kind’ of LGBTQ+ citizen (white, documented, non-criminal, sexually respectable) has become a way for imperialist Western powers to maintain their dominance and confirm their credentials as the ultimate arbiters on human rights and justice for the rest of the world – which explains why both gay and trans soldiers are such popular mascots for mainstream LGBTQ+ campaigns and equality awards.

The ban heralded a paradigm shift away from this socially liberal approach of Western governments. In stating that trans healthcare is uniquely unworthy of state support and ought to be regarded as distinct from all other types of healthcare, it harnessed the symbolic power of the military to signal that trans people are considered a burden to the state and a liability to the nation.

To what extent must trans people bend themselves to fit the way our society is ordered at present? To what extent do the challenges trans people present to lawmakers expose fundamental flaws in the entire system?

This new way of controlling the unruly urban population’s behaviour included policing masculinity itself, and led to arrests of men in ‘female attire’. There are accounts of women dressed in men’s clothing, too; though, as Jacques argues, this was generally dismissed as a deception in order to obtain work normally restricted to men, a purely economic choice. Male transvestitism, however, was presumed to be motivated by sex and deviance.

Their lawyers successfully argued that their cross-dressing and female personas in public were simply an extension of their stage characters. The judge begrudgingly agreed and freed them: in his summing up, he lamented the fact that there existed no laws criminalizing Boulton and Park’s gender abnormality (though he did condemn the unwarranted rectal examination the pair had endured).

She had been arrested when she tried to hang herself in hospital after the mental health team refused to admit her. Police charged her with criminal damage and took her into custody in an extremely vulnerable state, then attacked her. After her bra and trousers were forcibly removed, she was pepper-sprayed in the eyes; officers also reportedly asked the woman if she was a ‘Mr or Mrs today’ and repeatedly referred to her as ‘he’, despite her identity documents clearly stating she was female. CCTV footage corroborated the woman’s account and the police subsequently admitted to assault and discrimination. Examples like this make many trans people extremely suspicious of police forces’ attempts to position themselves as allies and friends to the trans community.

Nevertheless, the use of excessive force against peaceful protesters at Pride, which originated as a queer protest against oppressive policing, seemed to underscore many radical and left-wing suspicions about the price trans communities pay for giving police forces such a central position in their politics.

Such episodes serve as a reminder that, ultimately, the new-found relationship between the police and trans people in the twenty-first century is based on supplication, not solidarity.

While I have some sympathy for the pragmatic defence of cooperating with police where no alternative is possible, this is a rather different issue from uniformed police marching at Pride, winning ‘LGBT diversity awards’ or being praised merely for acting in a slightly less oppressive manner towards the ‘right kinds’ of trans people.

Yet the entire story was false. Two years later, at Huntley’s request, the Daily Star eventually published a small correction, stating that Huntley ‘does not own a wig, has never asked to be addressed by any name other than his own and that there has never been a plan for him to change his gender identity’.

When the story of White’s conviction broke, I was phoned by a reporter at a British newspaper asking if I would provide a comment for her story on White. Her rationale for contacting me was that I was trans – no more, no less. I was incensed. That I should be called for comment on a case that at the time I knew little about, simply because White and I were both trans, seemed to imply that, in advocating for less medical gatekeeping in the gender recognition process, I was personally enabling a violent serial rapist.

we cannot have a society in which a general principle of respect for trans people’s autonomy to determine their own gender socially, legally and medically is only given in return for good behaviour.

This is why there is huge political will from Conservative governments to continue expanding what the academic and activist Angela Davis calls the prison industrial complex : a nefarious alliance between government, business and media to continue to feed a system of surveillance, detention and imprisonment that suppresses or masks deeper wounds in society like poverty or mental health problems – and generates capital.

One crucial reason why LGBT people have cause to organize together politically is that, even though we see ourselves as distinct tribes, the rest of society has tended to conflate us. Or as one trans person succinctly put it: we are all beaten up by the same people.7 This shared oppression, both historic and current, drives – indeed, necessitates – solidarity between lesbians, gay men, bi people and trans people.

When you feel your culture and identity endangered and ephemeral, the anchor of history and the celebration of antecedents can be empowering, and worth fighting fiercely for.

The picture is also complicated by the fact that, in the early days of the modern LGBT rights movement, the word ‘gay’ was used to describe everyone – including trans people.

They soon published their own political manifesto, Declare Your Sex, which clearly identified trans liberation as a part of wider gay liberation: Many gay people are confused by the separation between ‘gay transvestites’ and ‘straight transvestites’. But this is an artificial split, imposed on us by those people who seek to isolate us and deny our identities. A transsexual or transvestite is gay because she or he is transsexual or transvestite. Some of us are into men and some of us are into women. Some of us are homosexual, some of us are heterosexual, some of us are lesbians. But we are all transsexual or transvestites and it’s these identities that must be recognized and encouraged. To be gay means to break the rules of your official sex, to cross over the guidelines set up by the family, the schools, and the church. Some of us cross over by sleeping with the wrong person. Some of us dress the wrong way. Some of us do both. We are all gay.20

In cases like these, a trans man or a non-binary person may first try to embrace a butch female identity as part of a negotiation with their own fears of rejection, before ultimately realizing that they cannot co-exist with their unresolved dysphoria. But while there may exist a small number of women who experience deep confusion about their gender and are unsure for years about where they sit on the gender spectrum, there is no credible evidence that significant numbers of people initially identifying as lesbians are consciously abandoning a female identity to transition en masse, let alone that they are being pressured to do so.

I have no doubt that many cisgender lesbians would not feel sexual desire for a trans woman, especially one with a penis, or that a lesbian may express interest in a woman until learning that the woman is trans and changing her mind. Ultimately everyone has a right to set sexual boundaries for any reason and to not feel pressured sexually on an individual basis. Yet, as with the trans man thrown out of a gay sauna, there is a crucial distinction to be made between this scenario and the mere presence of trans women on, for example, lesbian dating sites or in lesbian bars and their being cast as predatory by definition.

Back in 1991 The Times published a column about gay rights by Janet Daly. Headlined ‘The Sad Fraud of Gay Equality’, it used precisely the same analogy with cults that Turner reheated in 2019. ‘Now gay life has become an aggressive freemasonry, for which recruits are required to stand up and be counted,’ Daly wittered; ‘the price [homosexuality] exacts in the form of childlessness, instability and now mortal danger from Aids is not something that most sixteen-year-olds have the capacity to evaluate.’26

The problem group may be small now, but they will grow. They will grow by encouraging confused young people to join. For sexual minorities, this narrative of recruitment lends itself to the language of seduction and abuse, which helps direct the moral disgust society feels at paedophilia on to an innocent group. It is a shameful but highly effective propaganda tool.

‘For all of its recent success, the LGBT alliance is actually fragile, and the trans activists need the gay rights movement to help legitimize them,’ said Meg Kilgannon, a parent and director of the campaign group Concerned Parents and Educators of Fairfax County. ‘Trans and gender identity are a tough sell, so focus on gender identity to divide and conquer,’ she stated, adding that, ‘if you separate the T from the alphabet soup, we’ll have more success.’28

Having been rejected by her local LGBT community for bigotry, Ben-Shalom found a new home in the anti-abortion and anti-gay lobby, which accepted her with open arms.

Other similar groups include WoLF (The Women’s Liberation Front), an anti-trans radical feminist group that has partnered with several anti-LGBTQ+ organizations on legal cases opposing trans rights in the US. In the fiscal year 2017 – the most recent year for which the feminist group’s financial records are available – WoLF applied for and accepted a $15,000 grant from the ultra-conservative Alliance Defending Freedom.31

it only takes a handful of committed LGB people wilfully perpetuating these negative narratives for them to become normalized. Such narratives are then taken up by political conservatives and far-right voices, whose ultimate goal is the dismantling of all LGBTQ+ rights because of their profound disgust for us all.

Misogyny, homophobia and transphobia share much of the same DNA. To the patriarchy, we all do gender wrong.

Notwithstanding the support from women at the festival, its organizers and many feminists from around the world who had contacted me with messages of support, insisting that I was welcome as a feminist voice and sister, it was driven home to me as never before that, for some cisgender women (and men), feminism was a justification for smears, abuse and cruelty, purely because I had been born with XY chromosomes.

‘TERF’ no longer solely denotes women with left-wing radical feminist politics (including the revolutionary political lesbians who left their male children behind to live in all-female separatist communes). Now, it is applied to any transphobic troll or bigot of almost any political persuasion who justifies their concerns about accepting trans women as women as being grounded in ‘protecting [real] women’. In my view, its indiscriminate application doesn’t make TERF a hugely useful term. Its use – or protests against its use – often denotes a tribal identity that is more about signalling which ‘side’ you’re on in a Twitter war than about coherent feminist politics.

As the Canadian feminist writer Nicole Cliffe joked on Twitter in 2017: NORMAL-SEEMING UK PUBLIC FEMINIST: The pay gap! ME: Right on! NORMAL-SEEMING UK PUBLIC FEMINIST: Roving gangs of trans people are forcing lesbian children to date men! ME: What just happened?!

Ditum wrote, was obvious because of how Cox looked: ‘a tight-tight dress, with breasts thrust forward and shoulders pulled back, facing down the camera but pouting seductively’. The problem seemed to lie in Cox’s feminine presentation, which for Ditum was apparently regressive and inherently anti-feminist. Yet this willingness to judge trans politics as a whole by directly critiquing one television actress’s body, posture, outfit and hair is exactly the kind of inference that would be plainly misogynist if made about a cis woman.

Anti-trans feminists’ repeated claims that they were being silenced were in fact highly effective in getting their viewpoints aired on television, radio and in the press. As the (cisgender) feminist Sara Ahmed puts it: Whenever people keep being given a platform to say they have no platform, or whenever people speak endlessly about being silenced, you not only have a performative contradiction; you are witnessing a mechanism of power.