The GRC is under at least some threat from the Conservative party, whose leader was quoted in The Times back on April 17 as saying, 'I think a review of the Equality Acts, and the Gender Recognition Act is a good idea. These laws were written 20 years ago plus when the world was different. A lot of people are trying to change what that law means. I think we need to update those laws to ensure that they are there to prevent discrimination, not for social engineering.'
The mention of 'social engineering' by the leader of the Conservatives should ring a few alarm bells. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the term as: 'The use of centralised planning in an attempt to manage social change and regulate the future development and behaviour of a society.' However, almost every other definition I can find foregrounds a manipulative element and deception as key elements of what social engineering means.
The GRA2004 might be creaky, but it creates a protected characteristic, recognised within the Equality Act 2010 (EA2010), which the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) must promote and enforce. Right now, the EHRC is neglecting its remit to protect that in favour of advancing another protected characteristic and so doing the reverse of what its directives say it should, which is to protect minorities who are discriminated from majorities which discriminate against them.
Although the EHRC has declared it will consider the protected rights some trans people have in terms of the EA2010, to say it isn't rushing to do so is an understatement. That's likely because reconciling what the EA2010 says with the recent Supreme Court judgment isn't going to be easy, but the members of the EHRC aren't providing their services for free and it's their job to deliver advice, not excuses.
Which is where our elected representatives aren't helping, because while the present Labour government is doing its best to look the other way, the Conservatives and Reform are testing the waters with what can only be described as carefully pitched dog whistles.
If the Conservative party believes the GRA2004 and the EA2010 are a focus for manipulation and deception then they should make it clear whom they believe is doing the manipulation and how they believe they are doing it.
In recent times there have been repeated accusations by conservatives that organisations with superhero like powers (including invisibility) are working to frustrate them, organisations which nobody seems able to identify. How convenient. This reluctance to name names is because these 'organisations' are bogeymen conjured up to justify the repellant actions of those who are trying to whip up discrimination against us and scoop up marginal votes in the wake of it.
Trans people make up such a tiny fraction of the population that should every single one of us march to Westminster at once, we'd barely get noticed. Does the GRA2004 deserve review? Yes, but not for the reason the Conservative Party suggests, but instead because it has served the few trans people in this country so badly. Out of a population of nearly 70 million souls, barely 10,000 Gender Recognition Certificates have been granted in 21 years.
What is it about us the Conservative Party and Reform find so indigestible, what is it they feel so loathe to protect, and how on earth are we supposed to be able to manipulate society as powerfully as they suggest from our position of such complete disadvantage?
The concentration of the right wing press on stories about trans sex offenders and on trans people using women's toilets has created a completely false impression of what we are like and even of how numerous we are. The former group are rare and a recent Parliamentary question revealed only 295 trans criminals of any type are jailed in the UK out of 97700 prisoners, yet despite being half as likely to commit a crime as cis folk, we're disproportionately likely to feature in front page stories.
Our numbers are so few and our ambition is not to be noticed, yet the array of forces aligned against us feel no embarrassment about using tactics for which they would be pilloried were they about sex, race, or religion. It is impossible not to conclude that as far as discrimination is concerned, gender is truly the last frontier.
