PFC Briefing paper
May 1998
Press for Change is a political lobbying and educational organisation, which campaigns to achieve equal civil rights and liberties for all transgendered people in the U.K. through legislation and social change.
A transsexual is a person having the physical characteristics of one sex and the psychological characteristics of the other. [New Oxford Dictionary 1992]
1.00 Extract from Press for Change Statement of Aims and Objectives:
4.00 The Press for Change campaign will work towards achieving…
4.01 The right (of trans people) to live in their proper gender role without harassment, ridicule or discrimination.
2.00 Why do some owners of women-only space seek to exclude trans women?
Prejudice against transsexual people is usually founded on ignorance and/or fear of a perceived threat.
2.01 It is understandable that many people remain ignorant of transsexualism. People get mixed up between sex and gender, and think people are "changing" sex out of some kind of lifestyle choice or other superficial reason, or that trans people are "sick" or "perverted".
Obviously this level of prejudice is easily dealt with by providing proper information and above all by just meeting or knowing someone who is “out” as a transsexual person. This usually dispels any fears.
2.02 A more difficult issue to confront is prejudice which is based on the understanding that if transsexual people are what we say we are — that is, if trans women are really women and trans men really men — we represent a threat to many of the deep-rooted assumptions on which our culture is constructed, for example that there two sexes and everyone must belong to one or the other, that sex and gender roles are purely cultural and boys and girls are different only because socialised differently and that equal opportunities will necessarily lead to equal representation.
Trans people themselves differ on the "nature v nurture" argument, but we do know very well that sex, sexuality and gender are not necessarily congruent, and we illustrate the mutability of all these "grey scales". We also illustrate that the gender identity for any individual is innate and if strongly felt, unchangeable, not acquired.
Therefore transsexual people have been viciously attacked by some so-called feminist theorists (Janice Raymond being the most famous): transsexual women are told that they are men who are parodying a stereotype of a woman; transsexual men are told that they are betraying their lesbian sisters by not being masculine women. These arguments would be laughable were it not that they can lead — and have led — to extreme prejudice and to acts of violence, never mind exclusion from community resources to which the rest of society has access.
3.00 Exclusion is unrealistic
It is not possible to tell who is or is not a trans woman. Many trans women look like born women, many born women present an ambivalent or masculine appearance. Unless the individual chooses to reveal her status, no group can be sure it does not include trans women.
It is difficult to construct a "test" by which an individual qualifies as a "woman". Some women with female on their birth certificates have XY chromosomes (owing to Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome or another intersex condition), many women are unable to conceive, and a few women have "male" on their birth certificates owing to having been reassigned during childhood. Common sense says the only workable definition of a woman is a person who so defines herself.
4.00 Exclusion may be illegal
4.01 The legal position following the case of "P v S and Cornwall County Council" has yet to be resolved in a formal court judgement, but the indications so far are that such a judgement would be likely to go in favour of the trans person.
4.02 P was a transsexual woman who was offered promotion as a male, but was dismissed when she told her employers of her intention to undergo gender reassignment. Her case was brought to the European Court of Justice after an Industrial Tribunal found it could not deal with the case under British law. The case was supported by the Equal Opportunities Commission. On 30th April 1996 the Court of Justice found in favour of the plaintiff.
The Court found that there was a breach of the 1976 European Union Directive on equal treatment, which guarantees men and women the same rights. The Court heard that Article 5 precludes the dismissal of a transsexual person for reasons related to gender reassignment and that the principle of equal treatment for men and women means that there should be no discrimination whatsoever on the grounds of sex. The judgement declares it illegal to discriminate in employment against a person on the grounds of their wishing to undergo or having undergone gender reassignment.
4.03 Whilst the judgement refers to employment, transsexual people have been seeking to extend its implications. In one case, a trans woman who was working as a voluntary prison visitor was granted £60,000 compensation when the agency with which she worked tried to stop using her owing to her transsexualism. In another, a trans woman was refused access to a women-only college course, but the college backed down when threatened with a legal challenge.
4.03 Given that owners of single sex space are generally obliged to admit one sex or the other, a women-only space which excluded trans women would be logically obliged to admit trans men!
5.00 Exclusion is unfair
5.01 Whilst the life experience of trans women may in general differ in some respects from that of born women, there is such a range of experience amongst all women that in any group of women brought together for social, leisure, educational, work or other reasons, there will be some experiences common to all and others unique to each member.
5.02 Trans women, whatever their history, live as women, and therefore face the same discrimination, problems and issues as other women. They may have had a particularly rough time and need the support of other women — some extreme examples being womens’ refuges and rape crisis centres. They may be particularly in need of the "safe space" provided by women-only facilities, being generally perhaps more vulnerable to harassment and intimidation from men.
6.00 Challenging Exclusion
6.01 A challenge is more likely to be successful and to enable everyone to feel comfortable long term if it is based on building bridges, rather than confrontation. On a preliminary level, it is important to educate the excluding group or individual, and to put some of the arguments outlined above.
6.02With feminist or lesbian groups, an additional appeal can simply be: how can you who believe in your own right to self-definition presume to tell me who I am?
6.03 When all this falls on deaf ears, majority views can win the day: recently at a Torquay swimming pool, where the manager tried to make a transsexual woman change in a separate room, all the other women using the centre went and changed in the room with her!
6.04 Finally, there are the courts, and the ground has been laid for a legal challenge.