This is a piece I wrote for Pink News, but I’m also publishing it here:<\/p>\n
The relationship between Stonewall and the trans community has never been straightforward, to say the least.<\/p>\n
Stonewall in England is, and has been, ostensibly an LGB group, campaigning for those involved in same sex relationships, and has taken the position that they are allied with trans campaign groups, but do not involve themselves in trans issues directly.<\/p>\n
On paper you can draw nice neat lines separating \u201cgender identity stuff\u201d and \u201csexuality stuff\u201d, and have everything work out. Sadly, reality is messier and doesn\u2019t much care for attempts to confine things to neat boxes.<\/p>\n
Perhaps this was most obviously seen in 2008, when what was reckoned at the time to be the UK\u2019s largest public protest by transgender people and our allies took place; outside the swanky Stonewall Awards ceremony in London. Trans people were hurt and outraged that journalist Julie Bindel, who many trans people saw as openly transphobic, was nominated as a champion of diversity. I was there, waving a banner and shouting, and the crowd was angry over what it saw as Stonewall promoting its own interests by hurting our vulnerable community.<\/p>\n
A similar problem arose more recently, over the same sex marriage bill. It\u2019s fair to say Stonewall were caught napping a bit when, in autumn 2010, the Liberal Democrats announced our commitment to delivering marriage equality. As momentum built, Stonewall joined enthusiastically and published a draft \u201csame sex marriage bill\u201d. It was, as I recall, less than two pages long and didn\u2019t mention trans people once.<\/p>\n
Trans people were treated terribly unjustly by marriage law for a long time, and if ever there was an opportunity to right wrongs, it was with this bill. Since the 70s, our marriages were in legal limbo until 2004, when the then government, finally forced to act by the European Court of Human Rights, grudgingly agreed to recognise our true genders (and thus allow us to be protected at work from sex discrimination and a whole host of other stuff), but at a cost; the government wanted to take our existing marriages away, to erase them from history.<\/p>\n
When the actual act came forth, not only did the government not want to right historical wrongs; they also wanted to make a new one, the Spousal Veto. If you wanted your employment non-discrimination rights, and other stuff that came with recognition, you (literally) need a letter from your husband, wife or civil partner saying they consent. If they don\u2019t (and it doesn\u2019t matter if they\u2019re estranged and hate you, or in a coma after an accident and unable to consent), the only way you can end your legal non-personhood is to divorce them.<\/p>\n
About a dozen-or-so trans lobbyists, of which I was one, met with civil servants, lobbied parliamentarians, and offered amendments and compromises to try and get our confiscated marriages back, to remove or at least time-limit the veto. Despite parliamentarians like Julian Huppert and Liz Barker passionately taking up our cause in the Commons and Lords respectively, the civil service and government didn\u2019t budge.<\/p>\n
The Marriage (same sex couples) Act passed into law with a spousal veto, and with no restitution of the marriages confiscated.<\/p>\n
Things could have been so different if our little group of people who didn\u2019t really know what we were doing had a big organisation like Stonewall behind us. In Scotland, after work by the excellent Scottish Transgender Alliance and the Equality Network, and where Stonewall does<\/b> support trans people, the Scottish Parliament voted unanimously to remove the spousal veto. In England and Wales, we\u2019re stuck with it. At a time when trans people really, really needed the help of a professional LGBT lobbying organisation, Stonewall decided it was nothing to do with them and looked away.<\/p>\n
Every time I talked to formed CEO Ben Summerskill about this, he said it went back to the 2004 Gender Recognition Act, when trans groups wanted to do things by ourselves. I can\u2019t help wounding if there were personality politics involved at the time, if bridges were burned. Perhaps that\u2019s why we\u2019re left in the cold. Times change, a new generation of trans activists is around today and we feel like we\u2019re being constrained by deals, and perhaps arguments, that happened behind closed doors ten years ago by people who haven\u2019t been able to move on.<\/p>\n
My plea to Stonewall, and to interim CEO Ruth Hunt, is to use this opportunity to sweep away old understandings and misunderstandings, and to see if we can\u2019t build something more inclusive, where trans people can turn to the largest LGBT rights organisation in the country (because that\u2019s what everybody else sees them as, regardless of whether they see themselves that way), ask for help, and get it.<\/p>\n
We don\u2019t promise to be uncritical, and not say anything when you get it wrong, but wouldn\u2019t it be great if Stonewall at least tried to be on the same side as trans people, rather than leaving us to fight the same battles, against the same people who hate us for the same reasons, alone?<\/p>\n
Editor’s note:<\/b> This piece originally created the impression that Stonewall Scotland was responsible for the removal of the spousal veto and discounted the hard work of the Equality Network and the Scottish Transgender Alliance. This was a drafting mistake on my part, and I offer my unreserved apologies to both.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This is a piece I wrote for Pink News, but I’m also publishing it here: The relationship between Stonewall and the trans community has never been straightforward, to say the least. Stonewall in England is, and has been, ostensibly an … Continue reading