Ok this is a risk.
It’s been a week.
This is a tough one to write and please believe – and even respect – I really mean it when I say: I don’t need, want or welcome advice, judgement or criticism. I really, really don’t. Been there done that rejected all of it. Not your business.
However I’m about to talk about my own experience.
So, it’s been a week since the guidance from the EHRC (not to be confused with the ECHR) on the implementation of how sex and gender should be treated by law. The Supreme Court no less was clear: within the law, when referring to sex and gender the law means biological sex.
This is, as it happens, like stating that gravity is real, that the Earth moves around the sun, that you can’t change the colour of your eyes. You can believe, assert, scream if you wish, that biological sex is irrelevant but your DNA doesn’t care. You are what your genes say you are.
The biggest self-harming over-reach of the trans movement was trying to make the rest of society accept that biological sex could be over-ridden by will and decision, and moreover should be accepted as law by the law.
So here’s my problem.
One of my children, and one of my extended family are trans. My child is biologically female and the other the opposite. It’s not a fad or a gimmick, it’s certainly not a problem, and as it happens you honestly really wouldn’t know if you met either.
Here’s why I don’t need your help – they are perfectly well adjusted, happy, normal adults (major transition was in adulthood where the decisions were theirs) You have a choice when this is part of your life experience. Do you fight it, and lose someone dear to you, or do you simply love your kid? I’m not an idiot; I chose the latter. I’m extremely proud of my child who is a wonderful person, and so much better for us accepting this is who they are.
Now I won’t pretend it’s easy for either of us because I support the Supreme Court decision, I think single sex spaces need to be protected, that women’s rights should not be blurred, that a man who decides they are a women should not compete in women’s sports or be jailed with them, or be in changing rooms or toilets with them.
That much seems entirely common sense and normal.
It is perhaps convenient that if either of the two people I know and love were in these circumstances (bar sport) you wouldn’t know, wouldn’t bat and eyelid, simply wouldn’t have a clue, and therefore, nobody has ever to my knowledge called them out, caused a problem or, even noticed.
My son, said to me, because he’s an advocate of trans rights, that my position is akin to “some of my best friends are black”. I take his point but disagree. We still get on fine, indeed more than fine, but I listen to his point of view. I just don’t sign up to all of it.
I don’t believe he does in fact have much in common with older men, who have not fully transitioned but demand because they say so the right to be in biological women’s spaces. But I get that there is a feeling amongst trans people that they are united by their experience and the one thing that they have in common. I don’t buy that, but I accept that they do.
Samantha Niblett, the MP who wants to bring sex toys into Westminster, earning herself the soubriquet “the MP for Dildoshire” in her pursuit of ‘life long sex education’ really, really annoyed me.
In bravura self-indulgent performance online, lying (in every sense of the word) down in a bikini on holiday she, not remotely seeing the ivory tower optics, explained ‘passionately’ why the EHRC guidance coming in – something that doesn’t change the law, merely offers advice as to how the law should be implemented – was “a shit day’ so much so she felt the need to repeat that line.
What we are supposed to make of that I don’t know? She isn’t trans but a big voice about the subject. She claimed that anyone ‘gender critical’ which in her estimation is anyone who welcomes the Supreme Court’s decision, ‘hates trans people’ and fears them.
Well Samantha I’m living, breathing, proof that that is utter bullshit. Sorry for the language but that’s how I feel.
I don’t remotely hate those members of my family who are trans, but the law is clear. Because biology is clear. Labour peer Professor Robert Winston risked ‘cancellation’ when some time ago he was clear on a Question Time appearance. Biological fact cannot be overridden.
I can quite comfortably support my son being who they are, not bat an eyelid about it, note that almost nobody notices, or assumes anything about them, and both agree the science doesn’t change.
As to toilets – and sadly it always comes down to this – let’s just say it hasn’t been an issue. If anything my son is an advocate for others rather than himself. With the other member of my family only a handful of people even know and wouldn’t were they to insist on an examination – something I would thoroughly disagree with for anybody.
The performative and, as it happens now, illegal statements from left wing bodies and institutions that they won’t implement the law or the guidance is another classic case of Labour and the left thinking they are “the good guys” and that there are rules for everyone, unless of course they don’t like them, and then it’s morally right to ignore or defy them.
I just wanted to be the voice momentarily, who says that you can comfortably believe that the law is right, the guidance there for a reason, and still love someone whom it effects. I have absolutely no desire whatever to try and ‘change’ my son’s mind or bother with an attempt. I like them as they are.
I also think the Supreme Court ruling did as Starmer infamously said, ‘give clarity’. Yes, it does, and now it’s clear, people should accept it, and get on with their lives. It’s entirely possible to do so, whoever you are.