04 October 2023 , 18:56
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The worst thing about being a trans journalist is having to read the newspapers every morning. One truism I've heard is that if you miss three days of the news cycle, you may as well have slept for a year – but if there's one thing that can be relied on, it's that trans people like me will be thrown under the bus.
Rather predictably, Rishi Sunak today took to the podium at the Conservative party conference to remind us that "a man is a man and a woman is a woman". His statement would be entirely innocent, to which I would only add "and a non-binary person is a non-binary person", were it not the pretext for yet another attack on trans rights.
Case and point: Health Secretary Steve Barclay announced plans yesterday to ban trans women from women's hospital wards. His government may have no clue – or political will – when it comes to saving a National Health Service crippled by decades of Tory cuts, but it does, he assures us, "know what a woman is".
Rishi Sunak addresses delegates at the annual Conservative Party Conference (AFP via Getty Images)Now, I don't claim to know what a woman is, or to have much interest when called upon to engage in abstract debates about the meaning of gender. I do know, however, that there is absolutely no evidence of complaints from cisgender women who've shared hospital wards with trans women. It is a complete red herring to portray trans women are creepy interlopers in such spaces – as so many women can testify, men have never needed to pretend to be women in order to harm them.
And as someone who is nearly a year on testosterone and recently had top surgery, Barclay's insistence that we need to return to "sex-specific" language when it comes to cervical cancer and the menopause strikes me as a clear betrayal of patient care. I need to be called for the relevant tests when the time comes, but in order to feel comfortable going, I also need to know that any doctor whose care I'm under won't necessarily expect a woman to walk through the door.
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The irony is that when politicians cite "common sense", be it in the context of trans rights, immigration, or net zero, they're usually appealing to the exact opposite.