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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
Who counts as a woman? This question lies at the heart of many public debates about sex and gender today. While we increasingly recognise the desire of some to eliminate the sex binary in law, a particular boiling point emerges through conflicting demands over women’s spaces. Which should govern access to these – sex or gender identity?
Karen Ingala Smith, a veteran campaigner for women’s and girls’ rights, opts for the former. In this trenchant critique of inclusivity politics, she argues that we cannot ignore the wealth of evidence which shows that people of the female sex have a unique set of needs which are often not met by mixed-sex spaces. Drawing on her 30 years of experience in researching and recording men’s violence against women and girls, she outlines how certain spaces, including refuges, benefit from remaining single sex – and what they stand to lose. Written with sensitivity and respect for all concerned, this book nevertheless dismantles the idea that we have reached a post-sex utopia.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
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CONTENTS
Cover
Praise for Defending Women’s Spaces
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgements
1. What’s the Problem?
Notes
2. Sex Inequality
Notes
3. Standing on the Shoulders of Giants
Notes
4. What Difference Does it Make?
Risk assessment – women’s refuges
Risk assessments – community-based services
Trauma – and trauma-informed environments
Gaslighting – re-learning to trust our own judgement
Why is this important when we’re talking about women’s refuges?
Asking women what they want
Sarah’s story
Notes
5. Looking Beyond
Prisons
Women’s safe accommodation
Toilets
Hospital wards and healthcare
Women’s bodies – only women bleed
Feminist conferences and meetings
Women’s prizes
Women’s sports
Girl Guides
Sexual objectification and the performance of femininity
Lesbians and same-sex attraction
What about the men?
Notes
6. Sisters are Doing it for Themselves
The Fawcett Society
Edinburgh Rape Crisis
nia – standing alone and standing up for women
Grassroots support
Women speaking out for women
Notes
7. ‘Trans Rights Are Human Rights’
The Gender Recognition Act and reform
Transgender lobby groups and the single-sex exceptions
Influencing government: through the backdoor silently
Research
Suicide research
Homicide statistics
Crime data
Notes
8. Despatches from ‘Terf Island’
Notes
About nia
End User License Agreement
Guide
Cover
Contents
Praise for Defending Women’s Spaces
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Begin Reading
About nia
End User License Agreement
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Praise for Defending Women’s Spaces
‘It says something about the alarming political times in which we live that a book like this has to be written. Who would have thought that, 40 years after the start of second-wave feminism, we would have to go back to first principles by defending all over again the women-only spaces that were created as a prerequisite to achieving women’s autonomy, equality and freedom – a struggle that remains not only unfinished business but is now under huge multi-directional threat? Karen Ingala Smith makes a clear and powerful case for the right of women to have a room of our own, not as part of some crude competition for the status of ultimate victimhood or to prioritise the human rights of women over others, but as a key site of feminist resistance against patriarchal violence and sex-based oppression. Let’s read, discuss and even agree to disagree, but let’s do it with honesty, decency and compassion, and without descending into the blind alley of regressive identity politics.’
Pragna Patel, founder and ex-director of Southall Black Sisters
‘A lucid and insightful defence of women’s sex-based rights and the need for single-sex services for women who have been subjected to male violence and abuse written by someone who has worked in the sector for three decades.’
Joanna Cherry KC MP
‘Karen Ingala Smith is a giant in women’s safety: few have done more to fight for women’s lives and voices to count. She is unapologetically women-focused.’
Jess Phillips MP
‘Karen is a true feminist, gutsy and determined and forcing us to confront the terrible extent of violence against women and girls carried out every single day in the UK. Her book is accessible, sometimes brutal, but delivered in her own style as a very funny and incredibly likeable woman. Direct, punchy and readable, this book presents things all women should know.’
Rosie Duffield MP
‘This authoritative book marshals all the evidence for providing single-sex spaces for women traumatised by male violence – and for excluding transwomen, that is males who identify as women, from such spaces. Ingala Smith is one of Britain’s foremost campaigners against male violence, and as chief executive of one of the few organisations supporting women victims of men’s violence to stand up publicly for female-only spaces, she has played a key role in the recent resurgence of feminist activism in opposition to trans ideology. Her deep knowledge and crisp, clean prose make this both an essential and enjoyable read.’
Helen Joyce, author of Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality
‘Defending Women’s Spaces is an important, factual, and therefore appropriately chilling account of how gender identity politics has destroyed women’s safe spaces and challenged our feminist understanding of women’s sex-based rights. Essential reading.’
Phyllis Chesler, author of Women and Madness and A Politically Incorrect Feminist
‘Karen Ingala Smith makes a compelling argument in favour of female-only spaces and services. Her practical insights, derived from three decades of experience working for women, provide an important and welcome intervention into the academic debates around gender. This book will also force policy-makers to recognize how sex matters.’
Michael Biggs, Associate Professor of Sociology and Fellow of St Cross College, University of Oxford
Defending Women’s Spaces
KAREN INGALA SMITH
polity
Copyright © Karen Ingala Smith, 2023The Author asserts her moral right to be identified as author of this work
First published in 2023 by Polity Press
Polity Press65 Bridge StreetCambridge CB2 1UR, UK
Polity Press111 River StreetHoboken, NJ 07030, USA
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-5445-4
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2022940799
The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.
Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.
For further information on Polity, visit our website:politybooks.com
Dedication
For any woman who is a victim/survivor of men’s violence and who has ever wanted a space away from men
For any woman who has said no to men in her space or space for her sisters
For any woman who has been told that in wanting to be in a space without men, she is the one with the problem
Acknowledgements
I’d like to sincerely thank the following women for sharing their thoughts and stories, and using their expertise to help me bridge some of the gaps in my knowledge or access their transcripts (any remaining errors are mine, however): Keira Bell, Nicola Benge, Leonora Christina, Edith Eligator, For Women Scotland, Cátia Freitas, Dawn Fyfe, Judith Green, Scarlet Harris, Jean Hatchet, Rachel Hewitt, Emma Hilton, Onjali Raúf, Hannana Siddiqui, Sarah Summers, Still Tish, Kruti Walsh, Verdi Wilson, Bec Wonders; also to the women I spoke with who asked to maintain anonymity: I want to thank you all for your insight, contributions and support, and acknowledge its worth; nia’s senior management team and trustees: Sophia Antoniazzi, Dana Baldwin, Marcia Buxton, Louise Campbell, Nadine Evans, Rachel Evans, Heather Harvey, Caroline Murphy, Felicity Slater, Amy Terry, Ruth Tweedale and Jodie Woodward for committing to prioritising women and taking on whatever came our way and for supporting me in the writing of this book; for holding the line for so long: Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter; for sisterhood, support, solidarity and all you do for women: WPUK and the women who have spoken for and supported us, Lisa-Marie Taylor, Julie Bindel; for approaching me about the possibility of writing this book and for your skilful editing which hugely improved my initial manuscript, Elise Heslinga; for encouraging me to agree to write this book when the timing was dreadful: Clarrie O’Callaghan and Ruth Tweedale (I’ve cursed you both a few times); for representing and supporting me, Caroline Hardman; for commenting on early drafts and helping me improve the manuscript (and the rest): Shonagh Dillon, Jayne Egerton, Samm Goodall (and the last two for being my adopted Amiga Sisters); for four decades of friendship and all that’s come with it: Kirsten Durrans; for everything they’ve done to make me who I am, my parents Susan French and Bruno Ingala. And last, but definitely not least, for being the reason that I feel happy whenever I put my key in the front door or hear his: André Smith.
1What is the Problem?
In January 2016, the UK government’s Women and Equalities Committee (WESC) published the Transgender Equality Report. The report claimed that each of us is assigned sex at birth and quotes a newspaper article which claims that it is a ‘sobering and distressing fact that in UK surveys of trans people about half of young people and a third of adults report that they have attempted suicide’. Speaking of the single-sex exceptions permitted in the Equality Act 2010, the report states that the Act permits service providers not to allow a trans person to access separate-sex or single-sex services – on a case-by-case basis. Quotes in this section included comments from an anonymous individual who likened the permitted exclusion of transgender people to apartheid, from the Scottish Transgender Alliance recommending the removal of the single-sex exceptions from domestic violence and abuse refuges and rape crisis services, and from Galop, an LGBT anti-abuse charity, which claimed that transgender people are currently at serious risk of harm by being excluded from such services. One respondent, Mridul Wadhwa, had written with regard to employment in ‘the gender-based violence sector’, ‘I am disappointed to think that someone has the right to refuse work to me and others like me in my sector just because they think that I might not be a woman.’1 This book makes the case for why I disagree and is a defence of women-only spaces.
I will begin by asserting that human beings are not assigned a sex at birth, but that our biological sex is observed and recorded. Our biological sex is in reality determined by our chromosomes at fertilisation, and sex differentiation in an embryo begins after 6–7 weeks of gestation.2 In chapter 7, I will take a closer look at the statistics on suicide and transgender youth and show that the claim above has no place being reported as fact in a report from a government inquiry. Throughout the book I will aim to explain why allowing biological males with transgender identities to access women’s spaces poses a serious potential risk to women’s safety, well-being and recovery.
Seventy-four per cent of all victims of recorded domestic abuse-related offences against adults aged between 16 and 74 years in England and Wales were female.3 Ninety-two per cent of defendants in domestic abuse-related prosecutions in England and Wales were males.4 Ninety-eight per cent of perpetrators of rapes and assaults by penetration in England and Wales were male.5 Ninety-five per cent of those exploited in prostitution are female.6 Girls are at least three times more likely than boys to report experiences of child sexual abuse.7
Globally, 27 per cent (more than a quarter) of women aged under fifty are estimated to have been subjected to physical or sexual, or both, intimate partner violence in their lifetime, 13 per cent in the year prior to being surveyed. Twenty-four per cent of girls and young women aged 15–19 years old and 26 per cent of women aged 19–24 had experienced this violence and abuse at least once by the time they were 15 years old.8
Men’s violence against women and girls is both a manifestation of sex inequality and a way in which sex inequality is maintained. Men’s violence against women is more than a number of individual acts perpetrated by individual men, though of course every man should be held to account for what he does. It is a social and political issue and it is for this reason that we need to address the circumstances that are conducive to it.9 Whether or not individual men pose harm, it benefits women if all males are excluded from some spaces. Equally when we think about men who are abusive in relationships, we shouldn’t characterise their behaviour as a series of isolated incidents. Domestic abuse is a way that women are diminished and controlled; violence can be part of that control. Perpetrators routinely fail to recognise this. If they admit to violence, they are more likely to excuse it as an out-of-character outburst, something that is rare, rather than something that fits within the pattern of how they operate in a relationship, and something that reflects broader patterns of men’s violence against women. Power and control are the endgames. Sociologist Sylvia Walby talked about private and public patriarchy: private patriarchy being what happens in many heterosexual homes, public patriarchy being what happens in the world outside.10 The personal is political. Women learn how to modify their behaviour, how to avoid upsetting their partner, and to put his needs first. Outside the home, women make innumerable small or large modifications to what we do to try to keep ourselves safe. All men benefit from the sex inequality maintained by men’s violence against women and girls.
Feminism is not a monolith. There is no prescribed set of rules and no single way of doing feminism. However, this book reflects the ways I’ve come to approach feminism. Debate exists within feminism about whether we should be revolutionaries or reformists. Revolutionaries recognise that patriarchal society is the core or root of the problem and that equality in this society is an impossible dream. A reformist position would be to chip away at what is wrong with our society, try to squeeze a few women (usually those privileged in some way) into roles usually occupied by men and gradually create one that is not so hostile to women. In reality, most feminists are a combination of both and most radical feminists also recognise the value of reform. The feminists who created refuges11 and rape support services recognised this. Specialist services for women who had been subjected to men’s violence were needed – and are still needed – because of what men do to women, girls and children. It never meant that they accepted that men’s violence against women and girls was inevitable and could not be ended.
It is incorrect to claim that there is no clash between a feminism which targets sex-based oppression and gender identity ideology,12 or that there is no clash between women’s sex-based rights and protections and some of the prospective extensions of trans rights. This book is primarily about why we need women-only, that is single-sex, spaces, particularly specialist services led by women, which are delivered by women, to women who are victim-survivors of men’s violence. I look at how they were developed through an incredible wave of feminist activism and how the state then assumed ownership of what women created. I will look at the threat posed to single-sex services by transgender rights activism and ask what has happened to the feminist spirit in the movement responding to men’s violence against women? How has this movement reached the point where many refuse – whether through capitulation or conviction – to say that women are adult human females? That women’s oppression is based on our sex and that some of the needs of women are best met in single-sex services.
The importance of women-only space goes beyond the needs of women who have been subjected to men’s violence. Conflicts about males who self-identify as women mainly fall into two categories: practical considerations about mixed sex spaces and more abstract concerns over social justice and fairness. However, this book deals mainly with the first. Physical spaces and services include hospital wards, prisons, support or counselling groups, changing rooms, toilets, women-only leisure services such as gym classes or swimming pools, conferences and meetings, schools and training; or the provision of personal or medical care, sports categories, prizes, shortlists or awards for women; or particular jobs. In the UK, some of these are covered by the Equality Act 2010, and the single-sex exceptions justify excluding males if doing so is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim and if at least one of six qualifying criteria are met:
only people of that sex require it;
there is joint provision for both sexes but that is not sufficient on its own;
if the service were provided for men and women jointly, it would not be as effective and it is not reasonably practicable to provide separate services for each sex;
they are provided in a hospital or other place where users need special attention;
they may be used by more than one person and a woman might object to the presence of a man (or vice versa); or
they may involve physical contact between a user and someone else and that other person may reasonably object if the user is of the opposite sex.
The explanatory notes13 go on to give examples where this is lawful, such as in cervical cancer screening services, domestic violence support service, hospital wards, changing rooms in department stores. These are examples, rather than being a list of the only possible exceptions. The single-sex exceptions mean that the prohibition of gender reassignment discrimination does not apply in these circumstances; instead, sex is given precedence over gender reassignment. In 2022, the UK’s Equality and Human Rights Commission issued new guidance on interpretation of the Equality Act and the single-sex exceptions. The guidance made more explicit the legitimacy of women-only space in qualifying circumstances.14
However, using the Act still isn’t mandatory, so there are cases where the single-sex exceptions could be applied and haven’t been. Some organisations or individuals have decided to include males with transgender identities in their women-only spaces or categories on the understanding that ‘transwomen are women’, even where the Act would permit their exclusion and where some women would prefer the space to be for females only. Though I focus on the needs of women who have been subjected to sexual and domestic violence and abuse, I will address some of these other areas too.
This book prioritises women, and in so doing is not ‘anti-trans’. Certain aspects of what I term ‘transgender ideology’ or ‘transgender identity ideology’, however, create an environment that is arguably hostile to specialist single-sex services for women who have been subjected to men’s violence and one in which women cannot set our own boundaries – and this is what I object to. Equally, to dismiss the perspective of female victim-survivors as underpinned by ‘misandry’ or irrational fear is to deny their clarity of vision which has come from hard-won insight, while to class the legitimate protections they ask for as transphobic oppression misrepresents reality.
Part of the problem is that some people use the terms ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ as if they were the same. They are not. ‘Gender’ slipped into usage in some circumstances to avoid saying or writing the word ‘sex’, and it’s just a few steps from this until the word woman becomes a social rather than a biological category. The Gender Recognition Act (GRA) further complicates things because it permits those who obtain a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) to change their sex as recorded on official documents such as birth certificates, passports and driving licences. When I talk about women-only spaces, I mean single-sex spaces. From my perspective, a space which includes biological males who identify as women should be recognised as a mixed-sex space. When I say transgender male, I mean someone who is biologically male rather than someone who identifies as male. I don’t use terms like ‘cis’, ‘cisgender’ and ‘cis woman’, since, in my view, this prefix suggests that adult human females – in my view, women – are a sub-section of their own category. I will not uphold this perspective, nor use such terms. If we accept the concept of cis women, we’re accepting that the class of ‘woman’ can be mixed-sex.
I choose to talk about ‘men’s violence’ rather than ‘male violence’, because I do not accept that the biology of males determines their propensity to be violent to women. Maleness is a biological characteristic; manliness, or masculinity, is something else. However, being male in combination with the effects of socialisation – the process in which a male infant becomes an adult man – means that biology does play a significant and undeniable role in the nature of that violence. Another undeniable fact is that males who transition share the biology of those who do not, and it is impossible to meaningfully alter the consequences of that biology.15
When I talk about women who have been subjected to men’s violence, I use the word ‘subjected’ deliberately to convey that the violence was done to them by someone. If we say women who have experienced violence, we linguistically make invisible the fact that someone was responsible. But it didn’t just happen out of nowhere. I talk about women victim-survivors, as some women see themselves as one or the other, or sometimes as moving from victim to survivor. Some women reject being seen as a victim, while others believe that the word victim should be destigmatised, and that discomfort around identifying someone as a victim is itself a form of judgement. And of course, some women do not survive.
Throughout this book, I am almost always talking about males who believe or say they believe they have transitioned to being a woman, or transwomen. I focus on this group because it is almost always males who are seeking to breach boundaries set up to protect women, so females who transition are not a meaningful object of focus in this context. From my perspective, ‘transmen’ remain female. I would not seek to exclude them from women-only spaces and recognise that they are harmed by gendered stereotypes, as are all women. Arguments that their presence may be triggering to women, for example because they may have an altered and masculine appearance, can in some cases, be approached in the same way as we would to similar arguments about other women who chose not to adopt stereotypically female traits. However, we must also recognise that some females have altered their appearance to the extent that their appearance to other women is as if they were male. Here, some compromise has to be made and, unfortunately, someone’s needs must be prioritised.
The British Triathlon Federation, the national governing body for Triathlon, Aquathlon and Duathlon in Great Britain released a statement in July 2022, saying that they had reviewed their Transgender Policy and would, from 2023, be introducing two categories of competitors: females and ‘an Open Category (for all individuals including male, transgender and those non-binary who were male sex at birth)’. They reaffirmed their commitment to sports for all and that transphobic behaviour, harassment, bullying or hate speech would not be tolerated.16 To me, extending this approach, encouraging males to accept other (males) who do not conform to the stereotypes associated with their sex, is a welcome way forward: recognising the rights of all whilst not denying the realities of biological sex. In some circumstances, particularly those where safety is a concern, another option might be to look at so-called ‘third spaces’. For example, Fionne Orlander and Miranda Yardley, both transwomen, say
In recognition that women should have access to single sex spaces, and in recognition of our own concern and fear of using single sex spaces designated for males, we call on all political parties to recognise the need for the provision of publicly funded third spaces for transgender individuals of either sex, to allow us to participate fully in public life without imposing ourselves on those single sex places presently enjoyed by women.17
I would take this a step further: if we need third spaces for people with transgender identities, this should not mean that females who have undergone gender reassignment forego their right to single-sex spaces, particularly if they come to regret the steps they have taken. Perhaps, therefore, sometimes, we need third and fourth spaces.
The advantages of third (or fourth) spaces would be that all are kept safe. It would not matter whether the transgender identity was a result of dysphoria or ill-intent. The potential risks to women that have been increased by permitting males with transgender identities into public spaces such as toilets, would be removed, if, of course, the third space was used in line with the intended purpose. There may be resistance from some trans rights activists as the space would not function to affirm or validate desires. Third/fourth spaces should not prevent us from addressing other needs that have been ignored because of sex-role stereotyping, such as the assumption that males would not have child-care responsibilities, and third spaces would also address inconveniences associated with that. There may also be resistance from those who would see this as reinforcing the legitimacy of gender identity. And, of course there would be a cost, but that should not be used as a reason to fail to protect people’s dignity and safety. We are accustomed to building hygiene facilities into public spaces and for the requirements of those spaces to change over time, and the vast resources of activist lobby groups could be effectively mobilised towards this end.
It is argued that the words ‘women’ and ‘man’ are defined socially. The GRA makes provision for some people to be defined socially and legally as that which they are not biologically, but most people relate this social category to the biological equivalents: female and male. My take on Simone de Beauvoir’s famous proclamation that ‘One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman’ is not that we should be tempted to divorce womanhood from biology but to draw attention to the multitude of ways in which our physical, female bodies take on meaning as they move through the social world. Or, as Germaine Greer said, ‘Just because you lop off your dick and then wear a dress doesn’t make you a fucking woman. I’ve asked my doctor to give me long ears and liver spots and I’m going to wear a brown coat but that won’t turn me into a fucking cocker spaniel.’18
The idea of a female brain has been used to justify sexism and misogyny for centuries. In 1912, Lord Curzon, former MP for the Conservative Party, who opposed women’s right to vote said, ‘Women have not, as a sex or a class, the calmness of temperament or the balance of mind required to make political judgements.’19 Despite feminists’ efforts towards making this line of argument obsolete, some trans rights activists continue to push the idea that some essence of gender is innate.
A claim made by some trans rights activists is that some people are born into the wrong body,20 though this appears to be asserted less frequently than it was in the past; others that the concept of binary sex is a tool of white colonialist supremacy,21 or that the category of woman is not fixed and should be ‘expanded to include (those) new possibilities’.22 All of this has been used as reasons for arguing that ‘transwomen are women’ and therefore should, ‘as women’, be included in women-only spaces. Kathleen Stock’s Material Girls persuasively counters Judith Butler’s assertion that males should be included in the category of woman.23 Meanwhile, Gina Rippon24 and Cordelia Fine25 convincingly debunk the notion of the gendered brain, and illustrate that it is cultural beliefs about sex – in other words, gender – that are socially constructed, rather than sex itself. Other research has shown that when children are introduced to fictional characters who challenge stereotypes, their own endorsement of them declines.26
Rippon describes the brain as a rule scavenger which picks up its rules from the outside world. The rules will change how the brain works and how someone behaves. The upshot of gendered rules? ‘The “gender gap” becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.’ She said,
We need to persistently challenge gender stereotypes. We can see how they are shaping the lives of young children, how they are serving as gatekeepers to the higher echelons of power, politics, business, science as well as possibly contributing to mental health conditions such as depression or eating disorders.27
For Cordelia Fine,
The circuits of the brain are quite literally a product of your physical, social, and cultural environment, as well as your behaviour and your thoughts … Neuroscience is used by some in a way that it has often been used in the past: to reinforce, with all the authority of science, old fashioned stereotypes and roles … The gender equality you see is in your mind. So are the cultural beliefs about gender that are so familiar to us all.28
Of course, most of us, as younger and older adults have opportunities to challenge and unlearn the stereotypes that we learned as children, perhaps in a more conscious way than in early childhood when lessons are unconsciously absorbed. But ‘appropriate’ (that is, stereotypical) behaviours are learned early and they are learned deeply. By the time we are teenagers or adults, let alone 40-year-old males, most of us have absorbed the gendered behaviour stereotypes associated with either sex, but, crucially, usually see these as our innate personality characteristics. This is not a claim that what we think of as personality draws only on gender stereotypes, nor that children or indeed adults gravitate only towards characteristics socially coded as corresponding with their sex. The problem arises that if we train children to think in terms of stereotypes, non-conformity may be interpreted as evidence of incongruence with their sex category, leading to children being encouraged to think of themselves as actually being a girl or a boy depending on that characteristic or stereotype, rather than their body. Nevertheless, it is important to remember that we don’t know the role that self-image plays in the absorbing of stereotypes – that is to say, we don’t know to what extent transitioning as a young person affects the gender messaging they receive. It could be, and has been, argued that the younger a person socially transitions, the less of their life they spend exposed to the sex-role stereotypes projected upon them by others who do not know their sex and therefore absorbing the lessons of their prescribed gender. It is also argued that the earlier they transition medically (particularly hormonally), the less their bodies develop physically along the paths dictated by their biology. It could be that this group of people are more likely to ‘pass’ than others. It is also true that some people develop naturally (I’m not talking about genitals but in terms of height, shoulder size/shape, body shape, foot and hand size, facial characteristics) with physical characteristics more similar to those associated with the opposite sex. These people may also pass most of the time. Nevertheless, post-puberty transition arguably does greatly limit someone’s chance of passing, and extensive surgery and treatment is prohibitively expensive for many, while socially constructed and learned gendered behaviours also play a role in determining whether someone is publicly accepted as passing: women are, famously, conditioned to be kind at the cost of honesty, comfort or even their own safety.
It is perhaps more useful to use the term ‘gender affirmation surgery’ than ‘sex change’ and frame our understanding as such; however, this understanding of the value of gender affirmation surgery to some who undergo it cannot come at the cost of replacing sex with gender identity as a primary way to categorise people.29 Neither should the benign sounding ‘gender affirmation’ be allowed to disguise the brutal and painful reality of penectomy and orchidectomy (removal of penis and scrotum), oophorectomy and hysterectomy (removal of ovaries and uterus), phalloplasty and scrotoplasty (construction of a phallus and scrotum using skin usually taken from the arm), metoidioplasty (creation of a phallus from a hormonally enlarged clitoris) and mastectomy (removal of the breasts) or the irreversible nature of some hormone treatments.30,31 The ‘treatments’ undertaken vary significantly and include surgery, hormones and voice and behaviour modification. Most males who say they have transitioned still have a penis, regardless of whether or not they have obtained a Gender Recognition Certificate. Research estimates prevalence rates of genital surgery in males with transgender identities as being 5–10 per cent; in other words, 90–95 per cent still have a penis.32,33,34 Youth, poverty and belonging to a minoritised racial group are negative correlates; in other words, transitioning older white males with higher incomes are more likely to have genital surgery.35
Some make a point of retaining characteristics associated with their sex whilst claiming to belong to the opposite category, including Alex Drummond, who has had no surgery and retains a full beard. Drummond claimed, ‘I identify as lesbian as I’m female’ and ‘I’m widening the bandwidth of how to be a woman’.36 Remaining visible as transgender can be a political choice – a refusal to conform – with those who attempt to pass labelled ‘assimilationist.37 For others, the idea of passing is important to their belief in being able to live authentically or safely.38 However, ‘the choice to “pass” is a privilege that is only available to trans people who are able to “pass”’39 and using a transgender person’s visibility as an excuse for violence or abuse is unacceptable. Speaking out against the pressure to pass or judging those who do not, transgender activist Eva Echo said, ‘We shouldn’t be moulding ourselves to fit society. Society needs to make room for us – accepting us as we are.’40 I agree with Eva Echo’s words but not the sentiment. Transgender people should be accepted as they are, but not as the sex that they are not.
One often hears the accusation ‘you’re denying my existence’ from trans rights activists. Disagreeing with the beliefs of someone is not the same as saying that they don’t exist. Many people use social descriptors in our ideas about who we are; we’re talking about someone’s internal idea of themselves, such as feminist, vegan or sky diver. These are things we do, or believe about ourselves. It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. Nevertheless, I believe sex influences a person’s experience of the world in numerous important ways and I don’t believe that people can change sex. Some people, however, believe that they can, and legally, birth certificates and other documents can be changed as if this were true. Others confuse or conflate sex and gender, and believe or say that they believe that people can change from one category to another. We’re all still female or male, regardless of the choices that we make and ways we live our lives. Does this mean that transition cannot be meaningful? Not necessarily, but I would prefer that there was more interest in changing society by dismantling the system of gender, rather than changing bodies. For some, however, it appears that transition can be meaningful for the person concerned and those they are connected to, in both positive and negative ways.41 But problems arise when the consequences of that transition are imposed on other people.
The true trans fallacy, like the true Scotsman fallacy, is used when people attempt to defend a claim by excluding any examples that do not fit the picture that they are trying to create. So, males with transgender identities who exist at the extreme end of the scale of exploitative, abusive or violent males, are written off by trans rights activists as ‘not really trans’, despite the broad definition of trans suggested by the charity which describes itself as standing ‘for lesbian, gay, bi, trans, queer, questioning and ace (LGBTQ+) people everywhere’ – Stonewall – in their list of LGBTQ+ terms into which they almost all clearly fit.42 This fallacy is a linguistic tool that functions to maintain boundaries and construct unchallengeable arguments.
The existence of intersex people (now increasingly and more accurately termed ‘people with differences in sex development’, or DSDs) has been used by some to try to make the claim that it is wrong to say that there are two sexes: female and male; or as a kind of ‘gotcha’ to catch out those who advocate for single-sex spaces. Briefly, people with DSDs have been born with some medical conditions which affect reproductive functioning. This doesn’t mean that they’re on some mid-point between the sexes. People with DSDs are still either female or male. They are not ‘proof that sex is a spectrum’.43,44
And non-binary? Non-binary people prefer not to be thought of as belonging to either category of ‘woman’ or ‘man’, but as with all humans, in reality, they are still one or the other sex, and are affected by this like everyone else. At best, non-binary identity is just a different way of saying that they don’t wish to conform to the stereotypes associated with their sex. At worst, it’s an indirect way of saying that they, unlike most other people, have managed to transcend that which most of us fail to do, and consigns all those not designated non-binary to the land of sex-role stereotypes.
I recognise that people who identify as transgender can face transphobia: discrimination, violence and abuse.45 Of course, I do not think that is acceptable. However, it is not transphobic, in my opinion, to believe that people cannot change sex, that women’s oppression is based on our sex, and that gender is a hierarchy. Sex is the axis of sex-based oppression and gender is the biggest tool in the box. Feminism is ultimately optimistic and offers the hope of change and a better world. This book does not argue that all biological males, whether or not they have transgender identities, are predators and abusers.
I have spent more than three decades working with and for women who have been subjected to men’s violence, in London and West Yorkshire. I did this first as a support worker in a hostel for homeless women and then in a women’s refuge. After about five years, I got my first job as a manager, but for most of the next decade I worked for small charities, still based inside the refuge or women’s hostel. In my working life I have focused on supporting women, but I have always understood that work to be political.
