Women have fought for their rights. Will they let trans activists reverse them? | thearticle

The rights of man have a long lineage; the rights of woman, however, have been asserted, resisted, argued over and enshrined in law for little more than two centuries. Since Mary

Wollstonecraft’s _A Vindication of the Rights of Woman _appeared in 1792, the movement that would ultimately become known as feminism has achieved a great deal in the West. Elsewhere the

record is patchy at best. For every step forward, there are also reverses.  Ask the women of Afghanistan, whose rights have just been erased at a stroke by the Taliban. Or the women of

Burma, whose elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been held incommunicado since last February’s military coup and is now standing trial on charges of sedition and corruption. The best

indication of the state of women’s rights around the world can be found in the Women Peace and Security Index compiled annually by Georgetown University. The top of the rankings are occupied

by wealthy Scandinavian countries; the UK comes a creditable 9th, with Germany 11th, France 15th and the US in 21st place. Russia comes 53rd, China 83rd. At the bottom, at 170, is

Afghanistan, with Pakistan in 167th and the Palestinian Territories, despite a much higher standard of living, in 160th place. Women have, of course, fought for their rights: sometimes

literally, such as the Kurdish women who helped to defeated Isis in northern Iraq, but more often by peaceful means. Where women have resorted to violence or coercion in their fight for

equality, it has usually proved counterproductive. In the campaign for votes for women during the years just before the First World War, the extremist Suffragettes in Britain resorted to

terrorist tactics: 32 churches were bombed, including Westminster Abbey, where a device filled with nuts and bolts exploded in June 1914, causing few injuries but damaging the Coronation

Chair and splitting the Stone of Scone in half. Such violence delayed the cause of emancipation; it was women’s contribution to the war effort that by 1918 had turned public opinion round.

The rise of modern British feminism in the 1960s took a different and more successful course, closely linked to the cause of gay and lesbian rights. The campaign against Section 28 of the

Local Government Act, 1988, which banned “the promotion of homosexuality in schools”, led to the creation of Stonewall. The repeal of Section 28 in 2003 was a triumph for lesbian women, soon

followed by the legalisation of civil partnerships and later same-sex marriage. In the past decade, not only women but lesbians too have achieved prominence in every conceivable field, from

politics to the police. Progress on such intractable issues as male violence against women has been slower, but Britain is gradually adapting to the social and legal implications of the

sexual equality that — with the exception of some ethnic or religious minorities — has largely ceased to be controversial. However, the rise of a new and militant cause, that of trans women,

has divided feminist opinion and even threatens to reverse some of this progress.  This shift is exemplified in the transformation of Stonewall, which adopted the “T” in LGBT only a few

years ago, from an advocacy group primarily for gay men and lesbian women into one that now sees its mission as enforcing trans rights across the board. This has brought it into conflict

with those women, including many lesbians, who object to the redefining of their sex but find themselves acccused of “transphobia” or labelled as “Terfs” (trans-exclusionary radical

feminists). Because Stonewall’s agenda is endorsed by a wide range of public bodies, such as the NHS, private corporations and academic institutions, this conflict has now become widespread,

acrimonious and even sinister.  A series of _causes célèbres _have highlighted the victimisation and demonisation of women, from Maya Forstatter to Julie Bindel and Kathleen Stock, who defy

what was until recently seen as an extreme demand of trans activists, that society should recognise any person who self-identifies as trans. This implies endowing them with all the legal

rights of women, including sports and access to women-only spaces. Stonewall has been in the vanguard of this campaign, the effects of which are now percolating down into the everyday lives

of countless women, particularly lesbians. An article by Caroline Lowbridge, headed “We’re being pressured into sex by some trans women” and published on the BBC website, has generated

controversy on social media. She asks the question: “Is a lesbian transphobic if she does not want to have sex with trans women?” The piece lets a number of lesbians tell their stories, some

of which recount being pressured or even forced into penetrative sex by trans women. Ms Lowbridge cites a small survey of 80 lesbians which found that 53 per cent reported being pressured

or coerced into accepting a trans woman as a sexual partner. She also has quotes suggesting that many trans women themselves are afraid to challenge the “toxic” notion that lesbian dating

preferences are transphobic, even though they disagree with the activists. The article touches on a sensitive issue for trans women: most are still attracted to women, but relatively few

lesbians (or indeed straight women) are attracted to them, especially if they still have male genitalia. Their predicament may be tragic, but it is nobody’s fault, least of all lesbians. Ms

Lowbridge’s article is carefully written and balanced, as it should be on the BBC site, but has nevertheless been sharply criticised by trans activists.  However, its most telling point

actually comes when she quotes the response of the chief executive of Stonewall. Nancy Kelly insists that while “nobody should ever be pressured into dating”, some preferences are more equal

than others: “But if you find that when dating, you are writing off entire groups of people, like people of colour, fat people, disabled people or trans people, then it’s worth considering

how societal prejudices may have shaped your attractions.” What Ms Kelly suggests here is that any lesbian who refuses to have sex with a person who has a penis may indeed be transphobic.

Coming from the person with perhaps more power and prestige than anyone else in the LGBT community, this statement is ominous. It implies that women may not only be redefined but have their

sexual orientation denied or undermined. Even in an advanced Western society, it seems, the rights of women can go into reverse. The irony of this development would not have been lost on the

man who made the first scientific studies of transsexuals and coined the term: Magnus Hirschfeld. This remarkable German-Jewish doctor, reformer and pioneer lived to see all his

achievements during the Weimar Republic reversed by the Nazis, who persecuted and ultimately tried to exterminate homosexuals along with all “deviants”, including transsexuals. Hirschfeld

himself was beaten up and forced into exile, while his Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (Institute for Sexual Research) was destroyed. Yet he would have been dismayed to learn that a century

later, lesbian women were being bullied and persecuted in the name of trans rights. The only word for this hideous wrong turning by the once proud feminist movement is “perverse”. A MESSAGE

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