ukpol, transphobia
UK looks like it move towards banning trans people from all single-sex spaces https://archive.ph/taXyE
But wait there's more... trans women will definitely be banned from women's restrooms under this, but what about trans men and women's bathrooms?
The proposed law says that they might also be banned from women's restrooms, or maybe men's, it depends on whether they make people uncomfortable or something completely unclear
What the fuck is this nonsense
ukpol, transphobia, genocide CW: heavy language on these topics
@cwebber@social.coop
You've probably heard of the engineering principle of "unintended consequences".
This, on the other hand, is what we call "an intended consequence", or, the machine working successfully as designed.
The intent was laid out 46 years ago, in 1979, when Janice Raymond wrote The Transsexual Empire. In that vile book, she called for genocide of trans people.
She said you can't use death camps, that's messy and public opinion will turn against you. In 1979, this made sense. We all knew family who'd been affected by the war. Now, we're learning that the US isn't as exceptional as it thought.
Instead, she said, you have to legislate them out of existence. Make life as a trans person so difficult that they simply cease to exist. If that happens by self-harm, fine. If it leads to desperate crime which has us locked up forever? Fine. If it leads to total poverty? No problem. If it's deep-seated addiction, tearing the body apart until it can't hold anymore? Excellent.
Someone in Project 2025 has clearly read it. It's exactly what we're seeing. Systemic pressure from the top down to repress transness in any and every way imaginable. Make health care unavailable. Make being in public difficult and unpleasant, by restricting bathroom use. Don't allow ID changes, and charge people who use altered gender markers as fraud perpetrators. Lock 'em up. Deny their existence. Scrub anything about them from every public source of information. Make acknowledging their existence cost you everything, even if you're not trans yourself. Ban the words from use. Fire anyone who's revealed to be trans, and do so for publicly-applauded bigotry.
It's from the textbook of repression. Every authoritarian state needs an internal enemy. Someone to blame it all on.
This time it's us. Again.
They did the same move in 1930s Germany. Berlin had been the queerest city in the world before that.
They died.
Let's not.
re: ukpol, transphobia
@cwebber@social.coop That sounds like gender-neutral toilets are going to be required, since gender reassignment is still a protected characteristic and the European Convention on Human Rights still applies.
(Also, could you please post the original unarchived link? I'm getting blocked by cloudflare so I can't actually read that article.)
ukpol, transphobia
@cwebber@social.coop This is hardly the most fucked up thing about this but… birth certificates?? Sure, everyone goes around with theirs at all times, right 🙄
Or maybe it’s another way to nudge people toward a National ID Card (“think how much easier than a birth certificate that would be!”)?
re: ukpol, transphobia
@noisytoot@berkeley.edu.pl @cwebber@social.coop “since gender reassignment is still a protected characteristic” The Supreme Court judgement addressed this. They claim that if everybody is treated as their legal birth sex, that’s not discrimination. I wonder if the ECtHR will agree.
re: ukpol, transphobia
@mallory@hachyderm.io @cwebber@social.coop The Supreme Court judgement changed the definition of the protected characteristic of sex, but didn't modify the protected characteristic of gender reassignment, which still exists. It means that if you ban trans people from single-sex spaces, you still have to provide a space for them otherwise you'll be discriminating against people with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment, which effectively means that gender neutral toilets are required.
ukpol, transphobia
@crowbriarhexe@tech.lgbt @cwebber@social.coop trans men will be banned from all single sex spaces, whereas trans women might be banned from all single sex spaces or forced to use male spaces.
This really is about as safe as walking into a flaming furnace naked, and clear as mud.
re: ukpol, transphobia
@noisytoot@berkeley.edu.pl Ah. That one is addressed by the article: “It will say that in the case of areas that are necessary for everyone, such as lavatories, it would not be proportionate to leave a trans person with no facilities.” So I’d assume only buildings with a non-gendered toilet would be banning trans people entirely from the gendered toilets. At least officially. In practice, many bigots will not know or care about the law and just yell at trans people in every bathroom.
re: ukpol, transphobia
@mallory@hachyderm.io Is it up to the owners of buildings or would it be legally required to ban trans people from single-sex spaces? If the latter (which I think it is), then it seems that buildings without gender-neutral toilets would be required to install them.
Christine Lemmer-Webber
