Not All Have Our Backs.

There has always been a faction that did not think that the “T” belonged with the LGB and politicians are exploiting that gap.

Attacking Stonewall for defending trans rights is a slippery slope
The gender wars are being fuelled by a Tory government – don’t let infighting destroy the LGBTQ+ community’s greatest champion
The Guardian
By Finn Mackay
December 20, 2021


The UK’s national LGBTQ+ charity, Stonewall, has recently been accused of advocating for trans rights. Six years ago, there was another “Stonewall question”, but the issue wasn’t whether the organisation should be advocating for trans rights, but instead why it wasn’t.

For those of us who remember these fights, it’s discombobulating to witness a reframing of Stonewall as a sinister organisation that sneaked trans rights on to its agenda when nobody was looking. The very opposite was the case: it was hard won. Many petitions were circulated, letters written and debates had. The inclusion of trans men, trans women and all transgender people eventually followed in 2015.

Stonewall public campaigns, training, policy, work with employers and sports organisations, for example, included trans and transgender people. They could seek advice if they faced discrimination at work, in housing or health provision. For many people, this was an obvious broadening out of the title, to reflect the solidarity and diversity that already had long existed in LGBTQ+ communities, clubs, organisations and social groups.

There has always been TERFs (Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist) and transphobic gays who didn’t want to be associated with us but now they are receiving political backing and they reinforced the conservatives in their attacks on us.

Then in 2018 the government announced its LGBT equality action plan and began a public consultation on reforming the Gender Recognition Act. Around this consultation, and the similar one launched by the Scottish government, many groups mobilised in favour, and just as many mobilised against. Opponents, such as the LGB Alliance, called this a “green light” for “predators” and some people felt it would mean that men intent on abuse could change all their sex markers on their official identification online one evening, access spaces for girls or vulnerable women the next day, then just change back again online. This was never what was suggested or offered in the consultation document though.

They are pushing the conservative lies and fear. They are fighting diversity training that includes us, they want to roll back the clock and force us back in to the closet.

The current gender wars are not a fight against the binary roles that constrict our society, instead this particular manifestation of the culture wars is a battle against trans women in particular. Most of the debate concerns what services trans women should or should not be allowed to access, from public toilets to public services.

They are using us just like the Republicans are using their hate against us as a wedge issue…

It seems as if the Conservative government has purposely fuelled and exacerbated the gender wars in order to consolidate its base. We’ve seen Liz Truss bleating about centralised control of public toilets to keep out trans women, and the government has ditched most changes to the Gender Recognition Act, despite the majority of more than 100,000 respondents to the consultation supporting modernising reforms. At the same time, the government has stalled on its promise to end conversion practices. For Truss, free speech must be protected, and this means an assumed right for those who are LGBTQ+ to consent to anti-LGBTQ+ conversion practices.

Sound familiar?

It is the same tactic that is being used by conservatives around the world, because most people do not understand much about trans people the conservatives exploit that ignorance to generate hate and fear against us. The conservatives dream of a fascist state with them in control, to do that they need a boogeyman and we are “it.”