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Original podcast recording here.
“One of the foundational aspects of the relationship between trans
organisations and women's organisations over the years was a core ethos of
trying to make spaces safer for all of the people involved, for all women
including trans women”
(voice of Becky Kaufman)
Participants:
Emma Ritch, Engender (ER)
Alys Mumford, Engender (AM)
Becky Kaufman, Scottish Trans Alliance (BK)
Mridul Wadhwa, Rape Crisis Scotland (MW)
Marsha Scott, Scottish Women’s Aid (MS)
MUSIC
AM:
Hello I'm Alys Mumford and you're listening to On The Engender,
Scotland's feminist policy podcast. This episode is going to be looking at the
Gender Recognition Act and what any proposed changes to that might mean for
women's equality. The Gender Recognition Act is the law that governs how trans
people can get their gender identity legally recognised and in November 2017
the Scottish Government launched a review of the Gender Recognition Act. The UK
Government is also conducting a review but through a separate process. We will
be going into the details of this much more throughout the podcast
I'll be joined today by Engender’s executive director Emma Ritch,
Marsha Scott from Scottish Women's Aid, Mridul Wadhwa from Rape Crisis Scotland
and Becky Kaufman from Scottish Trans Alliance. As well as these wonderful
women, eagle eared listeners may at certain points hear paper shuffling as we
as we try hard as we can to cram as much policy as we can into this episode.
Let us know what you think by using the hashtag On The Engender. We hope you
enjoy the show
MUSIC
AM:
Hello and welcome to On The Engender, Scotland’s feminist policy
podcast. I'm Alys Mumford and I'm here as always with a fantastic panel of
women. We have Emma Ritch, the executive director of Engender (“hello”), we
have Marsha Scott the CEO of Scottish Women's Aid (“hello”), Mridul Wadhwa, the
training and volunteer coordinator for Rape Crisis Scotland (“hello”) and Becky
Kaufman, the justice policy officer at Scottish Trans Alliance (“hello”).
Thanks all for joining us today. We're going to be talking about the Gender
Recognition Act and we’re going to kick off with Becky who is going to give us
a quick rundown of just what the Gender Recognition Act or GRA as we’ll
probably be calling it actually is.
BK:
The current Gender Recognition Act is a piece of legislation in
the UK which was passed in 2004 in response to a series of human rights
decisions that ruled that is it was a violation of a trans person’s Article 8
right to privacy and Article 12 right to marry in their gender identity and in
2002 the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the UK had to create a legal
process by which trans people could change the gender on their birth
certificates and have their gender recognised. When that law was passed it
created a rather complicated process by which that took place and as time has
gone by and understandings of trans people and how they live and how they
navigate the world have evolved that the process of the Act have become rather
outdated and so the Scottish trans Alliance beginning in 2014 began to campaign
for three significant reforms to the Gender Recognition Act. The first one is
to remove the requirement for the psychiatric report and replace it with birth
certificate being broad in line with the process for changing other ID such as
passports, driving licences and bank records in the UK which essentially
involved a proposal involves a trans person signing a legal statutory
declaration that they are living permanently in their gender identity and
intend to continue to do so for the rest of their life. It's important to
remember that this would make it a criminal offence for somebody to make a
false declaration. The second call is consistent with a broader range of
understanding in Scotland especially the 16 and 17-year-old should also have
access to legal processes. It's quite problematic for 16 and 17 year olds who
are entering their first jobs or going off to college or university to not be
able to have their birth certificate match all the rest of their identity
documents so we're campaigning to have access to gender recognition lowered to
the age of 16 and people who are under 16 currently can have school records and
passports changed with parental consent and we are proposing that the process
for birth certificates be brought in line with other legal documents. And then
finally we’re campaigning for a legal space for non-binary people. It's long
been understood that more than just men and women exist in the world but
non-binary people forever have been forced to choose a space that doesn't fit
them and we're asking that the law make a space for them for those people. So
that is what we’re campaigning to change. Now this is devolved legislation here
in Scotland so we’re campaigning specifically for these reforms to take place
under Scottish law. There is an overlap between these things between the Scottish
and UK government but ultimately it is devolved and it’s ultimately a piece of
Scottish legislation. However because we live in a time when social media and
the media knows no borders, conversations throughout the UK are also entering
into the conversation up here in Scotland and it’s very important that we make
the point that we up here in Scotland through a long partnership, Scottish
Trans Alliance has been working in partnership with women's organisations in
Scotland over a wide variety of issues discussing where trans people do fit
into broader women's issues and how we can support each other's work for well
over a decade and we've developed a very strong positive dialogue in this area
and I think it's important that we share our ability to have these
conversations
AM:
Absolutely so I’m going to...and that’s led us beautifully onto
talking a little bit more about the role of women's organisations in this and
when the Scottish Government consultation that Becky mentioned was launched
national women's equality organisations of which we have some represented
around the table worked, together to welcome this discussion to produce a
series of answers to some frequently asked questions around the General
Recognition Act and then submit a joint consultation response. Emma, Mridul and
Marsha as representatives of three of the national women's equality
organisations who were involved: can you just talk us through how that
happened, how did women's organisations come to the position they did?
ER:
So I guess from Engender’s perspective we see a very under
resourced women sector in terms of our ability to engage with national policy.
Engender is Scotland’s feminist and policy advocacy organisation working kind
of generally if I could put it like that as opposed to the violence against
women's organisations that we've got round the table and also the organisations
working on employment and labour market issues like Close The Gap and Equate
Scotland. So there's not a lot of capacity and because there's not a lot of capacity
relative to the task of gendering all of the policy in Scotland, we try and
divide things up a bit between us and we wanted to engage I think from a gender
perspective on the GRA consultation because of what Becky described as the
bleed across from the discussion happening south of the border to discussion
happening up here and to make I think clear some areas of misinformation that
had emerged and because we divide up lead responsibility for policy based on
their areas of expertise Engender often takes the lead on stuff to do with
equality law and policy and so it was in this particular instance. So for us it
felt really important to challenge the misunderstanding, the misinformation
that was out there and to enable sister organisations to take part in as ready
a way as they could given their own capacity with this discussion.
MS:
And we are immensely grateful that Engender was willing to do that
for all the reasons one can imagine I think. You know, not just capacity issues
but also obviously Engender’s fabulous expertise about equalities law which I
would love to pretend I can replicate but can't. But also I think Scotland has
got a very hard foot for sort of collaborative approach amongst our women's
organisations and that is never more important than when we’re responding to a
policy issue like this where the discourse is often difficult...sometimes feels
very risky to put your organisational head above the parapet and also because
the work that we do so often lines up with our being called man haters or you
know folks who are betraying the sisterhood in somewhere another. It is really
really helpful to have Engender pull us together and in such a sort of
evidence-based robust way that allowed us to have internal conversations that
we possibly at least speaking for SWA weren't aware we need to have.
MW:
Hmm, I mean I think you know Engender and SWA have already stated
how the sort of the response came about. I suppose I'd like to speak more to
how the front line within the organisation at Rape Crisis Scotland was also
involved in sharing their thoughts and even gaining an understanding of what
the GRA proposes and I feel that Rape Crisis Scotland already had a policy of
self-declaration. Their trans inclusion policy is based on self-declaration so it
seemed like a natural fit to support the GRA and that was demonstrated across
our volunteers and helpline and other staff because I think part of the
discourse that we've seen around the GRA particularly in the context of
violence against women services is that maybe the frontline doesn't necessarily
agree with that you know let's say the policy of the organisation which is
completely untrue. From at least Rape Crisis Scotland’s perspective some of us
also spent some time engaging with rape crisis centres who chose to submit
their own responses so for example I went down to one of our centres and spoke
at their AGM about what this means and what it might look like in practice to
their board and members as well as their staff and volunteers and I think there
is a general consensus certainly within the rape crisis movement and our
frontline workers that they support in principle what the GRA proposes.
ER:
Mmm, I think it's very much with the grain of how women's
organisations have been working or trying to work for a good near decade now.
And certainly in Engender’s case we changed our constitution a number of years
ago to ensure that any women can join our organisation who identifies as a
woman and I think that the GRA proposals that have come forward from the
Scottish Government are actually really kind of behind where we all are
actually rather than in front of us. So it just seemed almost like a
no-brainer.
MS:
I think we need to give the Scottish equality unit some credit at
least from the violence against women's organisations perspective because it
was they who took the lead quite a number of years ago in requiring that any of
us who got funded did trans inclusion work and that is one of the explanations
for why we could have a much more civilised discourse about this issue in
Scotland because we've all been doing the work not under a really bright light
of policy you know debate.
BK:
I think to build on a point that Emma just made there though is as
far as I agree that the attitude has always been very progressive and very
leading but I think that one of the big misconceptions that has been thrown out
about GRA reform is that somehow or another this is some attempt to massively
change the landscape. And ultimately between the Equality Act between just
policies and procedures with passports and driving licences and really just
across all sectors this is just bringing birth certificates in line with what's
been happening on the ground for the better part of a decade. I mean even
within the justice sector where I work the Scottish Prison Service introduced a
policy based on self-declaration all the way back in 2014.
ER:
Yeah, I think that's a really good point and I very much
appreciate that for some people they are only just learning about the GRA
because of the consultation because it’s been in the news. But the reason
Scottish women's equality organisations are talking about trans rights is not
because of the GRA consultation, it's because we support trans rights and as
you say have done and there’s this whole legacy of sisterhood and solidarity
and working together between the sector so it gives us the opportunity to talk
about it but it's not the reason for the work.
??
Absolutely yeah.
ER:
It’s very interesting that it has seen this huge spike in people
talking about it when actually it's a fairly boring piece of you know very
significant for people but you know...
MW:
I mean I feel like this legislation is really just going to impact
individuals who need to use it. It has had I suppose for those who are
not usually interested in trans issues to engage with it and that's really
quite an opportunity. I feel like wherever people are at in their understanding
this has provided us with an opportunity to talk about what we've already done and
what we might need to do more but in the end the legislation is just going to
impact trans individuals who need to use it to make life easier for themselves.
ER:
One thing we do hear when there is some misinformation or concerns
that people have is around the idea of women only spaces and those frontline
services you talked about and an apparent gulf which hopefully we’ve reassured
people there isn’t between frontline services and policy creation. So we’ve
already said that Scottish women's services are already trans inclusive as
Marsha mentioned so it's a conversation that's already been happening. Can you
just say a little bit about women only spaces and what if any changes the GRA
reforms might have on those services?
MS:
I think from our prospective very little change and that just
reflects you know what we've been saying before is a that it's not changing the
world as we know it. But also because these are things that have been embedded
in a lot of our practices for a long time. I think from Scottish Women’s Aid’s
perspective it was a real opportunity to sort of gather evidence about what has
been happening over the last years and what do we know about you know any
problems that have arisen, what have we learnt from implementation of new kinds
of practice and you know the evidence was so reassuring that in fact our
services you know so what we did to gather evidence was we surveyed all of our
services. So we have 36 across Scotland. We did a forum, a face-to-face forum
with folks and we did you know a lot of conversations sort of reaching out to
individual services. And the findings of all that were really reassuring.
People...there was absolutely no evidence that there had been a problem with
trans inclusion in any of our services and actually what floated to the surface
was two things that I think are notable. One is that there is a real I think
parallel a sense of parallel injustices on the part of women who experience
domestic abuse. You know we've been hearing for a million years it feels
like that you know that women have to prove that they are victims of domestic
abuse so show me your black eye, you know there needs to be a visit to the
A&E for this to go to the level of serious injury etc etc etc. And I think
that really echoes some of the issues that are raised in the self-certification
discussion. So I think the first impulse of many of our services was this is an
injustice that we can relate to and you know we can respond to by making sure
our services are tailored appropriately. The second thing is that our services,
the one thing that our services came back to when we did the survey was: we're
not sure we're doing as good a job at this is we would like to be and we want
some more training so we did with STA last week or the week before or sometime
very recently brought together a bunch of our services to help support them to
improve their practice around trans inclusion. So it's really been I think a
really positive experience for the organisation. Lots of internal discussions
obviously and we also bring in the baggage of being treated quite poorly in the
courts both as organisations and as individuals so you know watching with a
watching brief I suppose about what will happen around jurisprudence as we go
forward but in general you know the evidence is unmistakable that this has not
been a problem.
MW:
I'll speak to what we’ve done, what we do on our helpline where I
work on the national helpline. So we've had LGBT and trans inclusion
particularly training for all our volunteers and all our staff for many many
years. The STA have always come in every year to speak to our volunteers about
what you know the intersection of sexual violence and transphobia and so in
2015 we launched a badged service on our helpline which is advertised as LGBTI inclusive
or specifically for LGBTI people. That doesn't mean that they can't call any
other time but what we realised through a process of engagement with the trans
and other the lesbian, gay and bisexual community was that they’re more likely
to use our service if they know that we are inclusive. So what we've done and
what we advocated was that rape crisis centres to do was to become more
explicit about their inclusion. And I feel that that's certainly an ongoing
conversation within rape crisis centres and I’ve been part of some of that
discourse with some of them but certainly on our helpline we do quite a lot to
make it very explicit that we are an inclusive space for everyone not just for
those who want to use our service but also in terms of volunteer recruitment
we're quite clear when we advertise for volunteers that we invite those who are
underrepresented in our diverse group of volunteers to apply. So there are many
things that we are doing but at the same time making quite clear that this is a
woman only space and that we're working within that context and I feel as a
volunteer recruiter you know we have enough checks and balances to see if
anyone who applies to be a volunteer is ready, able and has the values to work
with us effectively and part of that value assessment is to look at their
attitudes around diversity and equality that goes beyond just you know like
racial equality but I think all strands of equality so you know that's how
we’ve progressed on our inclusion work while maintaining the ethos of a
women-only space.
ER:
I mean that is really wonderful to hear I think to hear that
actually the result of all these conversations is striving to do better for all
women is hopefully for all of our listeners a huge sisterhood boost. It feels very
nice listen to. It certainly does here
MS:
Can I just have a wee rant here about the implication that the
reason that women's organisations were coming together to support the GRA was
because we got money from the government, I'm sorry but what so that's a
problem when we’re doing something you don’t agree with but it’s not a problem
when we’re doing something you do agree with. So our support for the domestic
abuse act is a problem because we get money from the government?
ER:
I think also that if the government gives us money expecting us to
fall in line with everything they propose then they're not getting a very good
deal for their buck.
LAUGHTER
MS:
There's a lot of people behind closed doors obviously sorely
disappointed in their investment.
AM:
Maybe they should try giving us more money.
LAUGHTER
MS:
I'm willing to gather empirical data.
BK:
There's another thing too that kind of ties into that as a person
who works very close in the justice sector and sees first-hand on a daily basis
the different checks and balances that are put in place for risk around people
is that the people who are opposed to this seem to be presenting this idea that
organisations that have been in existence for decades whose fundamental ethos
is about protecting vulnerable people from dangerous people are suddenly when
presented with a trans person going to forget how to do that and whether that’s
women’s centres or whether that's within the justice system it's like wait a
minute the structures have been in place to protect people for a long time and
we care and as organisations we all care and all work very hard to protect
people. There's no amount of money from the government, there's no matter
pressure from anybody would make a suddenly chuck all of our beliefs out the
window and start over.
MUSIC
AM:
Hi there. I'm just interrupting our policy chat for a moment to
let you know that excitingly it's a year since we launched On The Engender. We
want to thank you so much for joining us as we’ve explored topics including
women in politics, the criminal justice system and social security. If you're
not already subscribed to On The Engender, make sure you sign up so you don't
miss out on our upcoming episodes including looking at women in the media,
public transport and how we can gender our internet. We’d love it if you could
leave us a review on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. It helps other
people to find the podcast and become certified feminist policy geeks. We’re
also really excited that in the coming months for going to be launching a
couple of podcast mini-series, one looking at the history of the women's
movement in Scotland to celebrate our 25th anniversary and one where we'll be
looking at the Representation of the People Act which gave some women the vote
100 years ago and talking about the barriers which still exist to women's
political participation today. Be sure to keep an eye out for more information
on these soon. Back to the show.
Emma, we know you love to talk On The Engender about the importance
of data. And Becky this is something Scottish Trans Alliance have also
spoken about. Can you talk a little bit about what if anything these changes
mean for data collection and why we love data so much.
LAUGHTER
ER:
We do love data. Data’s very important so in most of the policy
issues that we engage with we're trying to make the case to Scottish Government
and other policymakers that it's important that they think about gender and you
need gender disaggregated data to make the case and so we’re always pushing for
more organisations to gather more data about women's and men's and non-binary
people's different experiences of the world. What we have noticed way before
actually the launch of the GRA consultation was this misapprehension that seemed
to be emerging from public services who were kind of saying well non-binary
people exist so it's now offensive to ask people if they're a man or a woman or
even mention gender or sex because that might give rise to lots of confusion
and so one of our slight concerns in all of this which is not a product of the
consultation of the GRA changes which we welcome but the kind of broader
discourse around it is that we are asking Scottish Government to do its bit
really, to communicate clearly with public bodies that they have the same
obligations that they've always had to gather data under the public sector
equality duty and we share common cause I think with Scottish Trans Alliance
that we want good quality data gathered in almost every situation that is live
to these issues but not completely obscured by them.
BK:
See I think it's interesting how this conversation has evolved
around data because there's never been a moment that Scottish Trans Alliance
has campaigned for stopping collecting gender disaggregated data. What we're
looking at with the introduction of non-binary categories is correctly
categorising the tiny tiny fraction of the population that has been forced
historically to put themselves into one or another box that they don't fit in.
But it's really important that at no point in our campaigning and certainly not
with anything that we believe in is that we want to stop saying man or woman.
What we want to do is in a specific policy context and since this is a
policy podcast we can get really geeky about this the thing is as we know about
policy is if you have policy and it only says women have access to pregnancy
services and there is a person who is legally a man who needs pregnancy
services they are now excluded in the law. Now we're not saying never say women
again, what we are saying is women and other people who may need these
services. And other people who need these services doesn't erase the women, it
creates a space for the other people who may need the services.
ER:
Yeah I mean I think in Engender’s experience engaging in with the
public sector equality duty and with the question of data gathering and
analysis more broadly I think it's almost impossible to overstate how possible
it is for public bodies to get confused about what it is they're doing
(LAUGHTER) and part of that is a product of you know no one's really
responsible for it, they don't prioritise building gender competence which is
something we push for all the time in mention quite a lot on this podcast. So
it's not I think a confusion among trans advocates, it's not a confusion among
gender equality advocates, it's another confusion and so I think just around
all of this discussion we need to be quite live to that. Something which has
come up from some groups of feminists who are slightly concerned about
labelling and identities and the use of data is this kind of question of will
trans people confuse data on things like the gender pay gap or things like
crime and justice figures and the short answer to that is no. There is no way
given this proportion of the population that trans people are that even if what
we don't know happens which is that if you start life assigned male at birth
working a job, transition late in life your pay will be utterly unaffected I
suspect that's not at all true.
LAUGHTER
ER:
Let's argue that it is true for just a second. Even if that were
true trans people would not confound the data on the gender pay gap because of
the large surveys you have to do to generate that, they will not confound the
census - that's just completely unrealistic. I think there is a tiny kernel of
a concern that I have about what men's rights activists will do with some tiny
tiny tiny datasets about offending and I think that the answer to that is to
make sure that our feminist analysis of men's violence against women is firing
on all cylinders because we will be able to map on that gender analysis of
violence against women onto very small groups of perpetrators who may seem to
be quote unquote changing gender.
BK:
Interesting facts that go along with that is as far as the
statistics about violence against women or perpetrators particularly
the...under the current legislation and no part of this is currently being
proposed to be changed and we are certainly don't want to change is
justice agencies do have the right to see a person's gender history and to
include that and that's not going away. So that somebody who is assigned male
at birth committed a violent act and then transitioned would still show up in
the statistics as a male perpetrator of violence and can be seen as that and
the Gender Recognition Act, the GRA reforms are not taking away the justice
sector’s ability to look at a person's gender history.
ER:
Interesting. I mean I think that there's so many different ways
that data is gathered within the justice system. I think there are some
datasets where maybe that isn't the case but I think our analysis can
supplement for any kind of areas of slight confusion with really small numbers
of perpetrators.
BK:
I totally agree with that and I think ultimately diligence on our
part as we were doing our research it's important and the data will be
available and it's not being hidden by the reforms.
??
For sure, for sure.
MS:
I don't know if this is terribly relevant to everybody else but
certainly from our perspective and it is about analysis of understanding
gendered approaches to violence against women and girls is that the ‘what about
the men’ question is a mantra in our lives and it's not you know it’s way
bigger than the small issues relatively speaking numerically that are going to
be raised by the Gender Recognition Act amendments and absolutely these are the
things that we need to grapple with about understanding about women and men's
experiences and how they differ and the impact of violence on them and if we
could get that across the rest of it would be a piece of cake.
??
Absolutely absolutely.
BK:
And just touching one last thing while we’re doing data because
data’s fun. I like numbers.
??
So fun.
But people are worried about somehow or another self-declaration
skewing census numbers. You know for the last few censuses the guidance has
told people to check the sex box based on their self-identified gender so we've
been already collecting self-declaration based data for going on 30 years.
??
And has the world ended, Becky?
BK:
It was really nice when I came in.
LAUGHTER
AM:
So as Becky mentioned we are indeed a feminist policy podcast so
we’re going to out take a deep dive into techy policy world and we've had a
question from a listener to On The Engender about how if at all the GRA reforms
will interplay with the Equality Act 2010. This is again something that's come
up quite often in online discourse. So the Equality Act 2010 legally protects
people from discrimination in the workplace and in wider society. Who can talk
to me about how these things interplay?
ER:
I mean it's quite actually a short answer to this question which
is a relief possibly to some podcast listeners in that there's not going to be
any difference at all because you don't need a gender recognition certificate
to be protected by the Equality Act on the grounds of gender reassignment so no
change at all. I suppose what I would say in terms of our consultation response
is a slight concern in that Scottish Government identified in their 200 page
consultation response that they would be recommending some changes to the
Equality Act and they can't make changes to the Equality Act themselves, it’s
reserved to Westminster reserved to UK Government and our only concern is that
we're not really sure what it is they want to change. Because it didn't
describe that in the consultation document. What we have heard on the grapevine
is that UK Government isn't minded to make any changes but it would obviously
just be useful and prudent and right for the women's sector to be looped in on
discussions that Scottish Government’s having with the UK Government about all
of that because that’s obviously protections that women depend on in all areas
of discrimination including trans women so we’re kind of keen to know what
they're saying.
AM:
There’s nodding. Anyone else want to add anything on the Equality
Act?
MW:
I mean I think this question just provides an opportunity for
people to learn a little bit more about the Equality Act and how it should be
implemented when it is, where it isn't. And it just suggests that maybe
there isn't enough clarity on how that act works really and maybe this is that
opportunity for people to learn more about it and how trans people are
protected under the Equality Act.
MS:
Just maybe a slightly facetious observation that the first place
they could start would be perhaps with some CPD with their own officials
around...
AM:
Sorry Marsha, what is CPD?
MS:
Continuous Professional Development
AM:
Thank you.
MS:
With their officials ‘cause I managed to refrain from chiming in
Emma when you were talking about the issue about ‘oh now we're not allowed to
say women are men’ with the story but now that you've opened the door for me
again I am going to. So I just came from a meeting of UK organisations and I
had a sister organisation talk about an official who last week said in a
meeting from another government not ours I will happily say that when this
organisation started talking about women's services they said ‘oh no you're not
allowed to say women anymore’. So absolutely got a problem around understanding
some of the Equality Act.
AM:
And I think that's very interesting and goes back to what has
come up in most of the these conversations we've had today around this being an
opportunity to understand more about how people don't understand the point of
data collection, that people don't really understand what happens in frontline
violence against women services and have a very different idea to what it might
look like than it actually does and the purposes of women only spaces, why we
do these things, why they exist. I mean, we've certainly had some events
advertised as women only spaces that people have felt ‘well, what about men’
(“Always the question”) but there is this fundamental lack of you know gendered
analysis of all these things and this has highlighted some very small aspects
of them but maybe optimistically but it is that opportunity to really get to
grips with some of these things.
MS:
Just a wee plug. Scottish is doing a seminar called ‘what about
the men’ which will will look at gender and violence in the fall so we’ll let
you all know about that.
AM:
Sounds great, excellent.
BK:
Looking forward to it.
AM:
So to bring us to a close, again that might also be optimistic.
We've talked sort of around the subject of the discourse around the Gender
Recognition Act which certainly down south has been quite hostile on certain
forums. This is a process which is going to be going through the Scottish
Parliament for the next couple of years. We’ve only just had the consultation
response close. This is not an issue that people are going to stop talking
about anytime soon. So we said right at the start this is a conversation we
want to be having. It highlights ,things it creates opportunities for
conversations that we should have been having already. It helps us strive to do
better for all women in Scotland. What advice, how can you offer, how can we
have those conversations is in a way which doesn't lead to people feeling hurt,
attacked, unsafe, dismissed. Any thoughts?
MS:
If we could sort of all swear not to be binary in our discussions
so this isn't ‘I'm a good sister because I believe this or I’m a bad sister
because I believe that’. This is in fact it comes back Becky to what you
were saying which you know is almost all of the actors and I have to say
there’s a few folks on social media that I would not put in this box but you
know come from a place of relentlessly trying to address injustice and to
reduce women's inequality in my world. And some of the critics have come from
absolutely those areas and if we could all move away from pro you know anti
kinds of stances and just talk about issues and evidence and data then
that lowers the heat on the conversation I think but it also honours the
intentions of most people which is something we’re not really good at always.
But I also think it might be worth a discussion about whose interests are
served by our having a discourse that’s so dangerous that a lot of people are
not willing to engage in it. Certainly not women's organisations you know
certainly not trans organisations you know so I think maybe a little more
discussion about you know who benefits when we all fight would be worthwhile.
BK:
Funny, the words ‘play nice’ keep popping into my head. You know
it's I think it's really important that people understand that it's not a valid
argument to tell somebody that you're taking away my freedom of speech because
I don't want to listen to something I disagree to for the 300th time. It's very
important that we understand that civil discourse is not the same as subjecting
yourself to in-your-face abuse and that choosing not to be in an abusive
situation is not the same as silencing an argument. An argument happens when
people on both sides of the table choose to intelligently present points,
discuss points, respect where the other person is coming from and then go away
and make draw their conclusions. And we from Scottish Trans we have never
entered into a conversation without that being our core ethos. That's how we
want to talk to people. Now it's unfortunate that some people find themselves
at a certain place in an argument where they feel that nobody wants to listen
to what they have to say anymore but that's not because they're being silenced,
it's because some of the things are trying to say I've been settled already and
it's time to talk about the issues that are actually on the table.
ER:
Yeah I do think that the the Gender Recognition Act and the
consultation are serving as a bit of a proxy for a wider discussion, some of
which does seem to have been settled and it seems sometimes people are almost
litigating arguments against the Equality Act 2010 which is 8 years old. But I
also think they’re serving as a bit of a proxy for a long-running conversation
within feminist and queer spaces about gender identity and how queer theory and
feminist analyses of gender as an oppressive socially constructed hierarchy
interact with each other. And I think I have a couple of thoughts on how we
might navigate some of those choppy waters because I do think that feminist and
queer theorists and activists can create a coherent theory of gender but I
don't think we've quite got there yet. And I think to succeed at that task
which is difficult obviously or we’d have done it already, we’ll need to act
with radical kindness I think and some integrity and learn how to creatively
resolve some tensions which do exist in the theory in a way that honours
people's lives and realities and justice.
AM:
Em, could you talk just a little a bit more about that concept of
radical kindness which we do hear talked about a lot and maybe not seen that
much so...
ER:
Sure. Yeah. I suppose first of all I'm not advocating ignoring
injustice or letting bad behaviour go unchallenged. What I suppose I'm
suggesting is that we find a way of relating to each other with the
understanding that women's lives under patriarchy are difficult, that this work
is difficult and that if we encourage each other with kindness then surprising
things are very likely to happen in our working relationships and in our
coalitions. And I think that is the history of the engagement of women's organisations
with Scottish Trans Alliance and I would say Scottish Trans Alliance’s
organisational identity to me is fundamentally one of kindness and generosity
and the work they have done with our sector I think is why we find each other
round the table together and not shouting at each other. Probably we would not
be shouting at each other but I think they have enabled a discourse and enabled
reflection and self-reflection in a way that's been really helpful. So I
suppose do we assume the worst of our sisters or do we assume the best of our
sisters. Are we giving each other the space we need to grow? Are we jealously
scoring points off each other as often seems to be the way the discourse
unfolds on Twitter? Or are we prioritising the building of relationships and
encouraging each other? And are we sharing information and knowledge or are we
acting like we’ve always had it? And if people don't have it then they can't
take part in the conversation. And I think above all if we allow issues to
become polarized as Marsha was describing in terms of another kind of hot topic
for feminism then we lose the capacity for a nuance completely and I think that
is especially likely when we think we’re the smart ones and they’re the dumb
ones. We’re the ones with the worthwhile analysis and they've got nothing at
all to say to us. And I’ve really valued trying to think about some of these
things for myself the writings of C N Lester and Julia Serrano a non-binary
person and trans women who write a lot about trans rights and queer theory. But
I've also found some value in writers who I generally disagree with but find
points of agreement with, women who might describe themselves as gender
critical or maybe even stronger language like Claire Heuchan who writes as
Sister Outsider, Victoria Smith who writes as glosswitch. Because their fierce
commitment is to thinking about gender as a hierarchy and so there are grains
in what they say that I think are valuable for our discussion and I think above
all we need to create some space for deep and rich conversation.
MS:
One of my constant irritations I think in media land generally is
that whenever there is a women's issue quote unquote comes up somehow women are
supposed to be above arguing about it. Do you know what I mean? So things like
quotas for instance so you know ‘well, a woman says quotas are fair’. Oh my god
that ends the discussion then as if women don't have a right to have you know
diverse opinions about all of this stuff but also as if women didn't grow up in
sexist communities and families and schools and and carry the same baggage as
everybody else and have a right to have a safe space in which to work through
those opinions. So it's quite a pedestrian observation I think but it just
drives me crazy all the time when people say ‘oh well a woman said this’. Well
you know what women are allowed to disagree, women are allowed to have wrong
opinions in my view because that's you know where we all started, let's face
it.
MW:
I suppose you know everyone’s said everything I probably would
have said but I found myself in a room not too long ago where I was speaking at
an event and then there was after I finished speaking about violence and no
recourse to public funds somebody stood up and went on this whole anti-trans,
trans women are not women rant. But for me it was it was it was useful that she
spoke in the way that she did because it allowed first of all for her to
express whatever was going on for her and it was this whole sense of injustice
and we were all I felt like we were all united in that even as a trans woman I
could see where she felt her injustice but I felt like she was misguided in her
analysis mostly by her experience of patriarchy which we are all united in. But
it was the response of the majority in the room who clearly were not agreeing
with her that brought out this whole binary notion and that shut it down
whereas I felt when I you know let's talk about this, let's explore what this
means and I feel like the only way that we can reach a resolution at some stage
where we can reach a common ground where we really see our injustices as they
are and where the injustice comes from and what we really need to tackle that
is the patriarchy is if we recognise that we are on a journey. That if you
start as though you reach the destination we’re not going to be able to resolve
that and it does require a lot of kindness and it does require a lot of
patience but also it means a space where you can go and rant.
LAUGHTER
MS:
Is that not where we are now?
BK:
I'd like to build a little bit on what Mridul and Marsha just
said. I’ve spent the vast majority of my life working in roles where very
fraught, very high tension, high stress things and where arguments could really
blow out. I worked in maximum security prisons in the US for 20 years and I
think that you learn when you're in high-stress environments like that
regardless that actually at the end of the day the only way to get a peaceful
resolution whatever you're doing is you have to meet the other person somewhere.
You know having things blow up, having things go out of control, being violent,
being angry whatever is not the solution to problems to problems. And what Emma
was saying about radical kindness is a very very valid point is that you need
ultimately you are never going to meet the middle ground unless you look at the
person across the table from you and figure out where they are and where
they're coming from and even if where they are or where they are coming from is
nowhere, is not a place that you would ever go or you’ve ever been
understanding at least trying to understand in making that effort to understand
them builds bridges. And ultimately things get done when you build bridges, not
when you burn them. And this binary identity of the good people and the bad
people we need to chuck that out really badly. This idea you know nobody's all
good and nobody's all bad and we need to find that space where we meet.
MS:
I don't think we’ve finished gathering the empirical data about
whether some people might be all bad. Just saying.
LAUGHTER
BK:
Okay. I do have a few people for that list. It’s a short list
though.
AM:
But of people that care about women's rights.
Let's try and stay together. So we talked there about radical
kindness, about seeing the person on the other side of the comment, the table,
the room, the microphone and I think there's something there about remembering
why the Gender Recognition Act came about, why the reforms are proposed going
right back to what Becky said about at the start that this is about making
trans people's lives better, improving their safety, improving their wellbeing
and their ease of participating in all areas of life. I don't know if anyone's
wants to come in on that?
MW:
I suppose you know just reflecting on some thoughts that
I’ve had through this GRA and what I felt was missing in the discourse that
maybe might help those who oppose or are concerned about what the GRA might do
for women only spaces and so on is I think we need to really have a deeper
understanding of how unsafe trans people's lives are and you know the journey
to self-declaration in itself requires jumping through a lot of hoops
personally, emotionally. If someone who is trans chooses or needs to transition
because I certainly needed to transition to survive you know so there that was
no ongoing violence that I could have been exposed to as a trans person who
hadn't transitioned. And I imagine that that is true for most trans people that
I know I have come across is that the more you are able to access the resources
that you need, the earlier that you can either you know like as early as
possible in childhood so that the violence that comes with being trans and I
think that is a given. I can't imagine a trans person who hasn't experienced
violence for being trans whether that's emotional, physical or whatever sexual
violence as well. So I think there needs to be an understanding and why self-
declaration is so important to allow people to find or to be able to live their
lives in a way that the risk of violence is reduced because then they are able
to be part of a group without question whether it's a woman's refuge where I
used to work before so that they can access those spaces and people are not
asking questions about their intentions but actually understanding their risk.
I think we need to really understand that when it comes to why the GRA is so
important and how there is so much synergy in what those who have concerns
about what it might do to women only spaces as well you know I think if we
begin to understand that more we might be able to agree a lot more.
AM:
Absolutely.
MS:
That's really true. I would just also add a geeky observation is
that for the feminists in the conversation who are struggling with with trans
inclusion it might well be a good thing to do to track back the links between
patriarchy in all of our lives and in all of our feminisms and it seems perhaps
for some of the folks around this table an exercise that's been done over and
over but I suspect it hasn't been done enough for some of the of the sisters in
the debate.
BK:
I think it’s reasonable for the people in this conversation when
they're presented with arguments that say scary things are going to happen, to
step back and go what are these dangers actually out there but I think Mridul
makes a really valid point and that's probably one of the foundational aspects
of the relationship between trans organisations and women's organisations over
the years was a core ethos of trying to make spaces safer for all of the people
involved, for all women including trans women and understanding that in this
conversation there has been drawn the spectre of the scary predator who is
going to use this as a weapon and this idea that you mean violence against
women isn't already relatively easy that the scariest spectre has to use this?
And it's understandable there’s fear in this but I think as we have
conversations like this and as we recognise that in the broader conversation
creating safe spaces for all women, looking out for women’s safety, advancing
the rights of trans people and everybody else in the world and trying to find a
space where the historical scars of patriarchy are finally ground down because
they’re real, they live. But I think it's important that we know that everybody
involved in this conversation ultimately we’re driven by wanting to make safe
positive spaces for people and we’re all fighting for that and we’re clever
enough that we're not looking to hurt people along the way.
AM:
Absolutely. I'm going to close up this episode of On The Engender
as all episodes should end on a hearty smash the patriarchy. Thanks very much.
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