Many [press reports say “thousands” of] cisgender women have signed an open letter to women and equalities minister Liz Truss expressing their concern at her apparent plans for the gender recognition act.

Trans equality was not widely seen as an issue until the Transgender Equality Inquiry of 2015 triggered a concerted campaign in the media to depict trans rights as a new threat to cisgender women like ourselves.

We reject this assessment. As cisgender women, we are angry that these groups claim to speak for us, and try to justify their bigotry against a vulnerable minority in our name. It is disturbing to hear an equalities minister repeat their talking points almost word for word while outlining plans to reform trans rights.

The fact that you chose to make this a priority during the biggest crisis the world has faced in decades is even more disturbing.

I don’t know how effective such letters are; we’ve seen the current government press on with all kinds of terrible measures in the face of facts, best practice and common sense. But it can’t do any harm.

It’s 32 years since the Conservatives introduced Section 28. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before:

Children who need to be taught to respect traditional moral values are being taught that they have an inalienable right to be gay. All of those children are being cheated of a sound start in life. Yes, cheated.

That was Margaret Thatcher in 1987.

The newspapers were full of stories of a sinister “gay agenda” pushed by an equally sinister “homosexual lobby” determined to turn all your children gay. Politicians said they weren’t concerned with “responsible homosexuals”; they were concerned about the “sick” ones who had “an urge to persuade other people that their way of life was a good one.”

This video, shared by Ben McGowan, makes me wonder how much has really changed.

This week will mark 32 years since Thatcher’s introduction of the vicious Section 28 which caused unforgivable pain to the LGBT+ community.

Here is its history and legacy from Thatcher to McVey: pic.twitter.com/trXawzAx5y

— Ben McGowan (@BenMcGowan_) May 18, 2020

The video includes quotes from politicians, including one who decried “Labour’s appalling agenda encouraging the teaching of homosexuality in schools” in a piece in the Spectator in 2000, compared equal marriage to bestiality and wrote about “tank-topped bum-boys” in a column about the politician Peter Mandelson.

He’s the Prime Minister now.

Pinknews:

The ‘gender critical’ feminist movement is a cult that grooms, controls and abuses, according to a lesbian who managed to escape.

…“They really don’t even care about gay people, which is the bottom line [for me],” she says. “They’re going for gay rights too, including marriages, the rainbow, LGBT+ clubs in schools.”

Liberty:

Liberty joins other UK human rights organisations to say: trans rights are human rights.

In a joint statement with Amnesty International UK and Human Rights Watch it says:

“Human rights are universal and belong to everyone. Yet too often in the UK trans people are spoken about and treated as though their rights don’t matter.

The toxic media coverage about trans people has recently spiked. At times of crisis and political change, marginalised groups are often singled out for abuse and hate. History has shown us time and time again the dangers of setting the rights of one marginalised group up for debate. But we know that our rights and freedoms are bound together.

What’s more, this isn’t an equal conversation or level playing field. Key voices are missing – trans and non-binary people, and in particular young trans people. They are so often spoken about, not listened to. As a society, we need to make space so they can be finally heard without having to defend who they are.

We need to do this because denying rights leads to dehumanisation.

This is already happening in Hungary, Russia and the US, where trans people are facing serious human rights abuses, and new and vicious attacks on their fundamental rights.

We cannot allow this to happen here. Today, as we mark the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia (IDAHOBIT), our collective of UK human rights organisations wants to remind people that trans rights are an indivisible part of human rights.”

Benjamin Ward, UK Director of Human Rights Watch said: “For too long now, trans people in the UK have been dehumanised and their voices silenced.” said Benjamin Ward, UK Director at Human Rights Watch. “It’s time for people in the UK to stand together with trans people and for the human rights and humanity we all share.”

Kate Allen, Director of Amnesty International UK, said: “Trans people often face extreme discrimination, and right now we’re seeing growing threats to their human rights in the UK and abroad. But the biggest human rights organisations are united by their side – we won’t rest until trans people can live freely as themselves, without inequality or abuse.”

Martha Spurrier, Director of Liberty, said: “We must, as a human rights movement, demonstrate that we will forever stand by the side of trans people and I’m proud to join others to spread this message on International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia.”

I mentioned that today is the international day against homophobia, biphobia and transphobia but I don’t think I’ve ever explained what transphobia actually is. The Trans Actual website has put together a comprehensive explanation.

Transphobia, like homophobia and biphobia, is an umbrella term to describe various negative attitudes towards people based on a single characteristic: who they love, or who they are.

You can be perfectly pleasant to trans, gay or bi people and still be transphobic, homophobic or biphobic; you can vote for equal marriage but feel uncomfortable around gay people, use trans people’s pronouns but think they’re mentally ill, accept that bisexual people exist but believe that bisexuality means promiscuity or sexual greed. And while that’s not ideal, you’re not directly hurting anybody. But unfortunately some people with transphobic, homophobic or biphobic beliefs do hurt people – not necessarily physically, although god knows there’s plenty of that, but also by discriminating against them or making their lives more difficult or dangerous.

And just as people who are racists don’t like being called racist, people who are transphobic (or homophobic, or biphobic) get very upset when people point it out. Some of the most transphobic people around are adamant that they don’t have a bigoted bone in their body.

Like many of their strategies, that one has been nicked wholesale from the religious right and the far right: racists aren’t racists, they’re race realists who just want to protect white people’s civil rights; religious conservatives don’t hate LGBT+ people, they just believe in family values. The transphobes’ equivalent is to claim to be protecting “sex-based rights” or battling “gender ideology”, terms that come from right-wing religious fundamentalism. The term “gender ideology” was barely used before 2016.

Most people who say they aren’t -phobic truly believe it: in the movie of their life, they’re certain that they are Luke Skywalker, not Darth Vader. Few of us want to believe we’re the baddies. So to protect that, they attempt to define what homophobia, transphobia or biphobia is or isn’t. That definition always, always, finds in their favour. They are the judge and the jury of their own prejudice, and they always find the defendant not guilty.

The thinking goes like this. Transphobia, homophobia and biphobia are traits that bad people have. I am not a bad person, therefore what I do cannot be transphobic, homophobic or biphobic.

Racists do this too. My favourite (and I say that with bleak humour) example is the Ku Klux Klan, some of whose chapters recently claimed that because they no longer go around wearing pointy hoods and burning crosses on people’s lawns, they can’t possibly be racist. But of course, they are.

Transphobia, like racism, doesn’t just mean acts of violence. It can be pushing a narrative that human rights for trans people are in conflict with human rights for others. It can be trying to limit trans people’s access to healthcare, or demanding that charities do not help trans people. It can be misrepresenting the actions of a few as representative of the many, or misrepresenting science and medical opinion to cast doubt on trans people’s very legitimacy. It can be choosing not to hire trans people, or to give them a platform you offer to others. And most dangerously, it can be about stochastic terrorism: demonising a particular group of people in the knowledge that such demonisation may lead others to commit violence against them while your own hands remain clean.

Today, like every day, LGBT+ people are on the receiving end of all of those things. It’s terrible everywhere, but in some parts of the world it is also exceptionally dangerous.

Graeme Reid in Advocate.com:

The annual celebration  is an opportune moment to reflect on the advances made in LGBTQ+ rights, and the challenges that remain.

…At a time when access to health care is a global concern, LGBT people remain vulnerable to discrimination, driven by health workers’ personal prejudice or government policy.

…Access to appropriate health care is a struggle for transgender people in many parts of the world. Coercive medical requirements can foster abuse.

…LGBTQ+ people are often cast as a threat to traditional notions of the family, society and the nation. Stigma and hate speech are even more threatening in a pandemic, when vulnerable groups are blamed and targeted.

…As IDAHOBIT is celebrated throughout the world, as an aspect of  “breaking the silence,” challenges to  equal access to healthcare, education, protection from discrimination and violence, and rights to association, expression and privacy remain pressing in many parts of the world. Even in a crisis of staggering proportions, the advances that have been made in human rights, including for LGBTQ+ people, need to be protected.