Exclusive inclusiveness

Which is better: to be ignored because of inertia or deliberately excluded? This is what most transgendered people in the UK face

Exclusive inclusiveness


Labour has a good record of passing laws supporting minority and disadvantaged groups. These include legislation prohibiting discrimination against people on the grounds of age, race and sexual orientation. So it comes as a surprise to find a Labour government deliberately intending to exclude one specific minority group from the provisions of the Single Equality Bill. That group is transgendered people who are not transsexual, ie the vast majority of transgendered people.

What is the difference between transsexuals and other transgendered people? Transsexuals are women who want to become men or men who want to become women permanently, usually through surgery. They feel that they are, quite literally men trapped in women's bodies or vice-versa.

The rest of the transgendered community is made up of a variety of people who, sometimes occasionally, sometimes permanently, adopt the appearance or other preferences associated with the opposite sex, or indeed who appear androgynous. These people can consider themselves to be sometimes male, sometimes female, both or neither. In the end there is nothing genetic which predisposes men to wear trousers and women to wear skirts. An estimated 1% of the population are transgendered in some way and that at least 90% of them are not transsexual and are therefore excluded from the Bill's scope.

Unlike transsexuals, other transgendered people do not need medical treatment. Being transgendered is not a medical condition. The only "cure" is to cure society of its lack of understanding and tolerance; this is why inclusion in the Single Equality Bill is so important.

Transgendered people need legal protection for a number of reasons. Some have been sacked on a Monday morning for what they were wearing on a Saturday, night even though it had nothing to do with work. We can legally be refused goods and services in shops, pubs, restaurants and by taxi drivers. Despite being quite presentable and respectably dressed, I have been refused service in two well-known high street footwear chains. I have been threatened and abused by people in the street and on public transport.

Transgendered people who have been assaulted have found themselves arrested and prosecuted and no action taken against their attackers. Transgendered people have been driven from their homes because of hate-crime by their neighbours and many transgendered children leave school at the earliest opportunity because of bullying and a failure to cater for their needs; indeed some transphobic bullying has even been reported from school staff.

A transgendered friend of mine was recently subjected to degrading and humiliating treatment by pub staff; she was not allowed to use the ladies' toilet and forced to ask for the key to the disabled toilet and then be accompanied to the gents to wash her hands. Indeed public toilets are a major issue for us; we risk assault in the gents and are sometimes banned from the ladies.

So why is the government proposing deliberately to exclude us from the Single Equality Bill? The consultation paper for it, entitled Framework for Fairness, describes being transgendered but not transsexual as a "lifestyle choice" and thus somehow less worthy.

This gratuitously offensive term reveals a basic misunderstanding of transgenderism. "Choice" makes it sound like we can turn it on and off at will, like a fair-weather supporter of a football team. "Lifestyle" appears deliberately to belittle us, with all the overtones of shallow consumerism, and ephemeral faddishness it implies.

Transgendered people are born transgendered - it is not a choice. Even if we are not in our alternative persona 24/7 (which some are), we are still transgendered 24/7 in the same way that gay men are still gay all the time and heterosexuals are still heterosexual even when they are not sleeping with a member of the opposite sex. Being transgendered is not my "lifestyle", it is my life.

Quite why the government is deliberately trying to exclude us is hard to figure out. If they are worried that society will descend into chaos and anarchy they only have to look, for example, at the 14 US states which legally protect transgendered people, including Minnesota which has had this provision since 1993 (the city of Minneapolis since 1975). I don't see civil order breaking down and riots on the streets there.

Societies in places like Samoa, Polynesia and Siberia all recognise more than two genders. We currently have a transgendered mayor in Cambridge and Italy even has a transgendered MP, as did New Zealand until a year ago. More information about this issue can be found on my website.

Martin Luther King once said that we should all be judged, not by appearances but by the content of our character. This is all transgendered people are asking for. The proposed Single Equality Bill, supposedly promoting inclusiveness, actually excludes us.

Not only that, but if it becomes law, the position of transgendered people will have suffered a reversal. To date we have simply been omitted by inertia, now we are to be deliberately excluded.