I guess we'll find out
Last week the government laid out the EHRC statutory guidance to Parliament.
The guidance is a stark reflection of where the UK is at with regards to trans rights. I have been out for 15 years. 15 years ago I could not have imagined the place we have now reached. I am heartbroken.
The guidance states clearly that trans folk are to be excluded from gendered spaces almost entirely. Trans women are to be excluded from women's toilets, communities, sports, changing rooms, wards. The same for trans guys, who are to be excluded from men's spaces because they aren't considered men (ugh) and excluded from womens’ because - get this - they look like men.
I want to put this into perspective. A couple of weeks ago I went to a disabled adventure day and met some wonderful disabled women there who, like me, were using wheelchairs. A group of them were wheelchair rugby players and they were trying to encourage me into the sport, to join the team. Of course my gender history didn't come up in conversation. I'm pretty open professionally but I don't go around telling people I'm trans in my personal life, it just isn't usually all that relevant. I was hesitant in response to their invitation, and they knew it, but couldn't understand why. Did I just not like them that much? Maybe I just didn't like team sports? And I couldn't tell them that shortly it was going to be unlawful for me to join.
I have been a girl in this world my whole life. I knew, growing up, I didn’t look like it. When I was in primary school I remember praying to some unnamed deity that I would wake up with a different body. And one day I did, it just took 20 years and the help of a specialist medical team. I have been visibly a woman for 15 years now. I’ve had estrogen flowing through my veins in place of testosterone that whole time. I’ve worked in schools as a psychologist, spoken at countless events including at Google’s HQ, I’ve published 20 scientific articles all as the fully realised Cora. Even my birth certificate says ‘female’, changed when the government admitted they got my original assignment wrong.
And yet I can't join the team.
And now I am to be excluded from all of these spaces. If I get sick I'll be placed on a men's ward or segregated to a room alone. If I shower at the gym or the pool I'll have to shower in the men's, even the accessible showers at my gym are inside the gendered showers. Every time I go anywhere and ask where the toilet is and someone points me toward the ladies’, do I now need to ask if they have a gender neutral option, instantly outing me to all in earshot? What if I'm in a dangerous place, where remaining secret is how I stay safe, do I head to the accessible toilet hoping that no one watching is too curious?
I use the accessible toilet a fair amount generally, I periodically use a wheelchair, but with gender diverse folks all now forced to use the one accessible cubicle available, I’ll need to queue more often. The last time I got caught in an accessible toilet queue it was during the intermission of a play, and I could either sit in the queue and miss the start of the second half or stumble into the ladies loo. Now, my neurogenic bladder isn't known for its patience. So when things are urgent and the one accessible cubicle is in use or out of order I will have to break the rules to use the women's, risking challenge, or use the men's, risking harassment.
And I have to now make the impossible choice if a service provider, a hospital, or even my employer, ask me to stay out of the toilets, groups, and spaces I have been using without issue for well over a decade. Do I conform and betray myself? Or do I thwart the rules and risk persecution?