Campaigners condemn discussion of trans issues in UK election | General Election 2024

For the transgender and nonbinary youth Oscar Hoyle works with, politics is inevitable, he says. Many of them will vote for the first time on Thursday. They are forced to participate at a young age because of fears about the future.

Hoyle runs Blossom, a national support service for Generation Z, the LGBTQ+ generation, in the run-up to the UK general election, and the challenges they face are being portrayed as a political conundrum.

This is the first or second election and everyone feels completely hopeless about the two major parties. [the Conservatives and Labour]Hoyle says: The young people I meet are considering voting for the Liberal Democrats for the first time because they support them as openly as the Greens. But I also know that many are planning to ruin their ballots.

Oscar protesting for trans rights and trans protection in London Photo: @oscarthoyle

Questions about trans-related issues have been raised during the six-week campaign, and party leaders have been repeatedly asked to define what it means to be a woman and to state their position on women-only spaces in recent days, with the focus on this topic growing ever stronger.

On Friday, two activists climbed up to NHS England's headquarters in London and unfurled two banners, one reading “Trans children deserve better” and the other “We are not victims of your politics.”

The protest, which grew to seven by Monday, followed the government's move to ban puberty suppressants, a move backed by Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting.

Labour’s plans have been particularly criticised after Harry Potter author JK Rowling got involved. Rowling wrote in The Times that she would struggle to support Labour and accused Keir Starmer of abandoning women over concerns about the impact of transgender rights reforms.

Hoyle says much of this is reflected or distorted through mainstream media and social media reports, and that these young voters are highly media literate.

But it doesn’t make it any easier. Last week, I saw young people crying on social media because they saw the horrific transphobia. And there’s definitely been an increase in people coming to our meetings because people need a place to escape.

But you can't put all the blame on the media, because they have to talk about it first to get it reported. A lot of this is because politicians are really irresponsible in the way they talk about trans life.

Protest at NHS Englands headquarters. Photo: Trans Kids Deserve Better

The over-focus on trans issues by politicians and the media in this election is a concern raised repeatedly by activists, advocacy groups and individuals.

“I’ve never heard of a gender debate on my doorstep,” said Steph Richards, who runs advocacy group TransLucent and is a Labour member campaigning for the party in Portsmouth. The issues the public wants to talk about are the state of the NHS, sewage and immigration. There’s a lot more racism than transphobia.

Richard points to a poll conducted by More in Common last week that found the trans debate was low on the list of topics that would most influence voting intentions, but high on the list of topics the public felt politicians talked about too much.

Nevertheless, Richard describes her personal experience with the campaign as bloody and horrifying. I knew this was Tory's strategy. Lee Anderson [former deputy chair of the Conservatives who defected to Reform in March] I followed it, but it was horrible to see my existence continually being undermined, and it always raised the same question: What is a woman?

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Steph Richards says gender debate didn't come up much during the campaign. Photo: @PompeySteph

Richard is optimistic about Starmer’s defence of the Equality Act. While I agree that single-sex spaces are needed, the law is perfectly effective as it is and the party has pledged to introduce a trans-inclusive ban on transition practices.

But she fears the proposed gender recognition changes will replace one bad system with another. Labour’s plan would retain the requirement for a medical diagnosis, which many find intrusive.

Liz Ridgeway, a personal trainer who underwent a two-year process to become certified as a gender recognition professional, hopes the next government will step in and find out what our needs are.

Gender recognition is a good thing, but it’s not a priority for many transgender people. The most important thing for me is that the waiting lists for medical care are incredibly long.

Ridgeway also mentioned that the Labour Party had invited Rowling to meet with them to discuss her concerns. When I heard that JK Rowling was talking to Labour, I thought, why don’t they talk to transgender people?

Writer and activist Jane Fay said: “I have a lot of reservations about the Labour Party. Street welcomed the government’s decision to ban puberty suppressants for under-18s and pointed to the fact that trans women are being treated in separate wards in hospitals.”

Labour, in an effort to keep up with the Conservatives, sat in the gallery and made policy without a single transgender person, Pay said.

Fox Fisher, writer, filmmaker and co-founder of Trans Pride Brighton, echoed this frustration, saying: Trans people are being used as a political football once again and Labour is being dragged into this pointless culture war over trans rights. The way we discuss trans rights is completely mis-framed and focused on non-trans people and people who discuss trans rights with non-trans people.

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