The Equality and Human Rights Commission’s (EHRC) transphobic code of practice — which recommends organisations that offer ‘single-sex’ spaces and services should exclude trans people — takes effect today.
The Canary has already highlighted the problems with the code at length. It’s utterly opaque, non-functional, and a blank cheque to harass trans, intersex and gender non-conforming individuals.
This article isn’t about the contents of the code. It’s not even about how this sorry shithole of a queer-bashing country got to this point.
Rather, this article expresses a heartfelt wish: that this code haunts its architects within Labour and outside of, in just the same way that Section 28 haunts the Tories to this day.
EHRC code: ‘Why are the government pushing ahead with this?’
MP Nadia Whittome’s early day motion calling on Parliament to disapprove the code received a record 167 signatures. Labour, Lib Dem, SNP, Green, Plaid Cymru, SDLP, Your Party and independent MPs lent their support. Nevertheless, it has now passed its 40 days of ‘scrutiny’ without so much as a vote.
The new code erases the vast majority of steps forward in trans inclusion since the Gender Recognition Act. The government originally passed the 2004 legislation after the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the UK had failed in its human rights obligations by failing to recognise trans people’s genders.
Apparently, the UK is now ignoring that fact.
For that matter, the Gender Recognition Act itself states:
Where a full gender recognition certificate is issued to a person, the person’s gender becomes for all purposes the acquired gender.
That law hasn’t gone anywhere. However, it suddenly grants a “certified sex” rather than a “biological sex”, giving question to what “all purposes” was worth in the first place.
During a June parliamentary debate on the EHRC’s code, Whittome asked and pointed out:
Why are the government pushing ahead with this? Why not instead withdraw the guidance, and legislate to clarify that the Equality Act 2010 was always intended to be trans inclusive? For goodness’ sake, it was passed after the last Labour government passed the Gender Recognition Act in 2004.
‘A legitimate aim’, the EHRC says
The government knows perfectly well its intention to be trans inclusive at the time the Equality Act was written. In fact, it included specific exceptions detailing when (and only when) trans people could be excluded. That is, the exclusion has to be a “proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim”.
However, limiting or modifying access to, or excluding a trans person from, the separate or single-sex service of the gender in which they present will be unlawful if you cannot show such action is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim. This applies whether or not the person has a Gender Recognition Certificate.
That explanation was from the EHRC’s own website. The same wording remains in the Equality Act. However, the government is now treating the exclusion of trans people as a legitimate aim in and of itself.
If our public institutions hadn’t been captured by transphobic voices, that “legitimate aim” would be decried as the rank discrimination it is. Our left-wing politicians recognised that once, even if their memories have now become conveniently short.
Snivelling cowards
Just four years ago, when he was leader of the opposition in 2022, ex-prime minister Keir Starmer told the Times:
…a woman is a female adult, and in addition to that transwomen are women, and that is not just my view – that is actually the law.
After the Supreme Court ruled the Equality Act didn’t recognise trans people as their lived genders, Starmer then had a lackey state the opposite on his behalf. Asked if the then-PM agreed that trans women were women, they said:
No, the Supreme Court judgment has made clear that when looking at the Equality Act, a woman is a biological woman.
The job of overseeing the EHRC’s code as it comes into force now falls on Andy Burnham. Like his predecessor, he once ridiculed ‘single-sex’ restrictions on bathrooms. Then, when he wanted to grub for Reform-leaning votes in Makerfield, he suddenly became a supporter of the transphobic code.
Likewise, Women and Equalities Minister Bridget Phillipson once supported trans inclusive spaces. Now, she’s presiding over the wholesale destruction of those spaces. She’s one of the few cabinet members whom Burnham retained in her old role whilst also promoting her to Labour Party chair.
May it f*cking haunt you
This sudden and complete reversal in a nominally left-wing party’s attitude to any minorities rights — this naked political opportunism — should scare anyone. The fact that laws can suddenly be reinterpreted to justify the blanket removal of a minority’s rights is not a sign of a functioning legal system.
Rather, these are signs that none of us are safe, and none of us can trust our society. Trans people once had guarantees that this exact situation could not happen. The Gender Recognition Act and the Equality Act safeguarded them. However, the government has demonstrated that it’s happy to ignore those guarantees.
This is a demonstration of what they’ll do to any minority group, if they can get away with it; if they think it will win them a few dirty votes.
If, by some remote miracle, British society ever becomes trans inclusive again, I hope that the stain of this code never leaves Starmer, Burnham, Phillipson, and all the other ‘left-wing’ MPs who rushed headlong to strip a small, queer minority group of their rights in pursuit of a clap of the back from the transphobic media.
I hope this is what they’re remembered for. This bonfire of trans rights — alongside asylum seekers’ and migrants’ rights, protest rights and others — should obscure any good they may ever think they did. May their names be a byword for hatred, bigotry and spineless cowardice.
In a just world, this would be their legacy. May it f*cking haunt them.
And I’m still going to piss wherever I damn well like.
Featured image via Chantelle Whitehead/ Pexels
By Grace
