Letter to Guardian - 16 Oct 2018

Over the last few days you have published an open letter from a group claiming that women are being shut out of the debate over reforms to the Gender Recognition Act, an opinion column supporting that view and now a letter claiming academics are harassed over their research. It is true that "It is not transphobic to investigate this area from a range of critical perspectives” however many of the signatories to that letter have through social media and elsewhere shown transphobia attitudes using language which ridicules and demonises.

There is a failure to acknowledge what the GRA is and what it does. The debates around women’s spaces is a debate around the Equality Act 2010 and the provisions in that act are broadly supported by charities and organisations including Woman’s Aid UK, Liberty, Amnesty, the NSPCC and Action for Children. The changes to the GRA will not affect the Equalities Act which already allows, regardless of if someone holds a GRC or not, single sex spaces to exclude trans women / trans men if it is "a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim".

Women are not being silenced - women have been invited to parliament, participated in television and radio interviews and have adverts the media and the street, in addition to many newspaper features which have been supportive of their position. Many women and women’s groups were also involved with, or gave written evidence to, the original Woman and Equalities Committee inquiry.

Transgender people reserve our rights to demonstrate peacefully against those who seek to misrepresent who we are. Debate is welcome on how to keep all women safe, however demonising trans women in that debate is transphobic.

Trans women are women. Trans men are men. These statements are recognised in law.  Those with non-binary identities are valid and deserve recognition.

None of this impinges on cis women’s rights.