The Conservative Party’s low-level attacks on trans people are part of a desperate attempt to distract from trans issues and must be resisted, argues Lucy Nicholls
While Rishi Sunak made headlines this week for his brutal tirade in parliament at the expense of trans people, the mother of murdered trans teenager Briana Gee also appeared in the public viewing gallery. I was there.
Last week, the killers of Brianna Gee, both 16 years old, were sentenced to 20 years in prison and 22 years in prison.
Brianna’s mother, Esther Gee, recently campaigned on social media for restrictions on children under 16, and appeared in Congress as part of this campaign.
Mr Sunak was told he was sitting in the reading room of the Commons when Mr Gay carried out the inquiry, and criticized Labor for failing to “define women”. He has since refused to apologize for his insensitive comments and has been criticized by Keir Starmer, other Labor MPs and Brianna’s father Peter Spooner.
anti-trans agenda
Mr Sunak’s comments are an example of the party’s growing hostility towards transgender and LGBTQ people more broadly. At the last Conservative party conference in October 2023, Mr Sunak claimed that Britons were being “bullied” into believing that people “can be whatever gender they want”, adding that parents are being forced to believe that they can be whatever gender they want to be. They argued that children should be able to decide what gender they would be. He learns about gay relationships at school.
In April, the government changed guidelines on how schools should treat transgender and gay children, including encouraging schools to encourage parents to remove LGBTQ children.
Despite government threats, a recent Stonewall report found that the majority of British people do not think transgender people should be a matter of national concern.
In other words, the general public doesn’t care about transgender issues as much as the government would have us believe. As Stonewall said in 2022: “The British public doesn’t think trans people are a problem, but we also need to make it clear that they don’t think trans people are a problem either. be”.
Furthermore, the majority of the British public agrees that transgender people face discrimination, and there is no denying that.
In the survey, 41% of transgender people said they had been the victim of a hate crime in the past 12 months. When asked if they have ever avoided opening up about their identity for fear of negative reactions from others, 67% of transgender people said so. Shortly after Mr Sunak delivered a derisive conference speech attacking trans rights, the Guardian newspaper reported that anti-trans hate crimes had reached an all-time high.
Your culture war is not working, Rishi.
Rishi Sunak and the Conservative Party’s continued attempts to add fuel to the fire on the transgender issue are another example of the cynical use of culture wars to divide the nation.
It was during his keynote speech at the 2023 conference that Mr Sunak chose to ban trans women from female wards. This is a contentious issue that Mr Sunak is exploiting, given that many women want to have their own private sex spaces and should be able to access those spaces as a right under the Equality Act. .
Similar arguments exist for some questions about trans women in women’s shelters, bathrooms, and prisons, such as those from Muslim women who wear hijabs and victims of abuse. We need solutions that preserve the rights of women while also protecting the rights of transgender people. These issues can be addressed by creating more spaces for everyone to feel safe, along with serious discussion of the issues, and should not mean excluding trans women from necessary services. yeah.
This is something the Conservative Party has never thought about. They hope to use these issues to not only target LGBTQ people, but to fuel their “culture war” agenda. They want to distract from the core problems facing working class people. As such, they ignore the fact that there are very few trans women in the UK. They make up just 0.1% of the population and are trying to prioritize the issue of trans people in hospitals above all other concerns about the NHS.
These are very serious. The NHS is facing a series of crises related to funding, staffing and privatization. These are easy to ignore when your focus is elsewhere. The interviewer asked the impressive young doctor on air about not why there aren’t enough hospital beds to go around in the country, but about the very difficult debate of where to give hospital beds to trans patients. I can. first place.
Transgender people are not the only targets of the Conservative Party’s ongoing culture wars. One of the Conservative Party’s “top priorities” this year is to “stop the boats”. That means stopping boats from crossing the Channel to reach Britain, where people desperate to escape the conflict Britain caused in the first place.
Of course, very few people come to Britain in rubber boats, which has been a point of contention on the right even before Brexit. In 2023, less than 30,000 people arrived by boat, which was also less than 0.1% of the total population.
The Tories will have us believe that dangerous criminals and smugglers are sneaking into Britain to rape, pillage and increase NHS waiting times. They spew all kinds of racism to justify the Rwanda project and the Bibby Stockholm monstrosity off the south coast.
Another target is the Palestinian movement, where the government so cynically uses anti-Semitism to attack anyone who opposes Israeli apartheid, including Jews.
what to do?
Transgender people are oppressed in the UK. Just like women, black people, Jews, Muslims, and homosexuals are oppressed. All socialists should oppose transphobia as well as all kinds of discrimination against minorities.
There is clearly a lot of discussion on the left when it comes to trans issues. These should be openly discussed. For example, there are discussions about women’s demands for space to be respected and issues such as women’s sports. These should be treated as serious discussions in the context of supporting transgender and women’s rights, and not used as the Conservative Party is doing to exacerbate transphobia.
But we should ultimately accept that our common enemy is the ruling class. The government has not attacked transgender rights because it is particularly concerned about the welfare of women in hospital wards, public toilets, and prisons.
The government’s overall record on women’s rights is very poor. Women workers continue to face challenges around wages, job security, and access to childcare. The government has rejected a range of legislation proposed to improve women’s rights more generally, for example by blocking the classification of menopause as a protected subject or including misogyny as a hate crime. . There are still very high levels of violence against women in the UK, not to mention rampant sexism within the police force.
When governments attack migrants who use public health services, it is not out of great concern to save the NHS. The same can be said of the government, which claims it wants to eradicate anti-Semitism through attacks on Palestinian protesters.
Dividing the working class on the basis of race, religion, and creed is a favorite tactic of the ruling class.
So when Rishi Sunak makes digs at the expense of trans women when there is a mother of a murdered trans teenager, we need to condemn this. Socialists should stand in solidarity with trans people who face all kinds of discrimination far worse than the Prime Minister’s cheap jokes.
We must continue to oppose the Tory culture war and advocate for working class unity. This is particularly important for two important reasons. First, the biggest problems, such as austerity, war, and racism, affect the entire working class.
Second, the next government is likely to be led by Labor, which seems unlikely to reverse the Conservative cuts or end the culture war. A strong and united left will be needed to fight for the interests of the entire class.