With the general election nearly upon us in the UK, many are ruminating about this government’s track record, whilst also anticipating what might come next. The Prime Minister’s closing speech at the Conservative Party conference on 4th October last year provided him with the perfect opportunity to offer analysis and reflection on the government’s achievements against its own pledges, and to celebrate all that has been done. But instead we heard that Sunak wants to distance himself from the recent past, including his own predecessors. He says he wants to move away from rhetorical ambition and short term headlines.
I’ve selected just sixty-four words from this speech, to compare what Sunak says with the evidence available, and also to reflect on how they align with what his own government pledged when it launched the ambitious and evidence-based "LGBT Action Plan 2018: Improving the lives of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender people". The plan was informed by LGBT+ experts, research evidence and importantly, the largest ever survey of LGBT people, commissioned by the Conservative government itself. Over 108,000 people aged 16 and over took part, and the results were published in 2017.
These are the words that Sunak said:
It also shouldn’t be controversial for parents to know what their children are being taught in school about relationships. Patients should know when hospitals are talking about men or women. And we shouldn’t get bullied into believing that people can be any sex they want to be. They can’t. A man is a man, and a woman is a woman, that’s just common sense.
There's a lot to take in here, but lets just look at this remarkable set of words in some detail, as they shine a light on just how much the government has shifted in recent years.
Sunak begins by asking us to believe that an issue exists. Schools are apparently teaching inappropriate content to children about gender identity, and parents are not being told if a child discloses something about their identity or sexuality at school. The accuracy of these claims has been widely disputed, and no concrete evidence has been provided to substantiate them. Is there even an issue? We all have a gender identity. People whose identity aligns with their sex are cisgender, cis. That’s a majority, but it’s not everyone. If young people are old enough to learn about sex and sexuality, then surely they are old enough to learn about identity, and there should be nothing controversial about that. Learning about how some people are does not rub off – you can’t catch being non-binary or trans and more than you can catch being gay or lesbian. Learning promotes understanding, and that’s good for everyone.
Furthermore, young people who don’t feel comfortable disclosing feelings about gender and sexuality to their parents need someone to turn to. If they can’t talk in confidence to anyone in school, who can they talk to? There’s a real risk that they will just stop talking. That may be very detrimental to them, and the government knows full well that it may be detrimental to them, because they collected the evidence in 2017. In the 2018 Action Plan, the government pledged to act so that every child and young person would feel safe in education and achieve their potential, and they pledged to ensure that Relationships and Sex Education would support pupils, whatever their developing sexual orientation or gender identity. They know that teaching young people about equality and difference works, but they have now chosen to ignore the evidence.
Sunak then says that patients should know if hospitals are talking about men or women. He implies that cis women should know if there is a trans woman among them. A number of cis women, including some very high profile figures, have been getting very upset about the idea of trans women in women’s spaces over the last few years, and the term TERF has emerged to describe the most vociferous of these women – Trans Exclusive Radical Feminists. But, where do you draw the line here? If patients should know whether there is a trans woman among them, should they also know other personal details? What if there is a cis woman who has been convicted of drug offences, violence, emotional abuse or theft? Someone’s identity is theirs, not anyone else’s, and yet Sunak is saying that personal details about one patient should be revealed to others. Everyone deserves to be treated fairly and that includes trans women. Sunak is feeding in to the rhetoric that trans women are a threat to cis women, when the evidence is clear that they are not. He, like TERFS, seem to feel that it's ok for trans women to feel uncomfortable, but not cis women. And anyway, the law ( 2010 Equality Act) already allows for trans people to be excluded in certain circumstances where the reasons are clear and justified.
He goes on to say that “we” shouldn’t be bullied into believing that people can be any sex they want because they can’t. He’s using divisive ‘us and them’ terminology, but doesn’t say who is doing the bullying. A logistical problem here for Sunak is that, for now at least, he literally runs a country where there are laws in place making it possible for people to legally change sex. A trans person can not only socially and medically transition, but they can also legally transition. Looking again at the LGBT Action Plan, the government pledged to ensure transgender people are treated with dignity and respect, and said that they would consult on reforming the Gender Recognition Act 2004 and consider how to improve the gender recognition process. They also pledged to bring forward proposals to end the harmful practice of conversion therapy in the UK.
And so to the climax and the crowd-pleaser, where raucous cheers and applause are guaranteed: Sunak states that it is common sense that a man is a man, and a woman is a woman. He, the man in charge of the country, implores us to understand that all you need to do is believe this, and it becomes true. The difficulty here is that it goes against what scientists who study these matters for a living are discovering, namely that the true nature of sex and gender is staggeringly complex, and goes far beyond the socially conditioned view of the binary, whether Sunak likes it or not. Studies on intersex people are still in their infancy and there is conflicting and sparce evidence, but researchers who include hormone differences in the definition of intersex estimate that the incidence in its many forms is around 1.7%. Whatever the incidence, the physical existence of intersex people indicates the binary argument is not entirely accurate. In 2017, Amanda Montanez attempted to explain the known science about sex and gender as a visual graphic called Beyond XX and XY, which explains that there are a host of complex factors determining whether someone is female, male or somewhere in-between, including not only anatomy but also an array of genetic and chemical factors. Another problem with this proclamation that gender is binary is that it does not reflect the very real lived experience of many. Gender identity is not an ideology or a belief system. It is the way people are. As I said before, we all have a gender identity, and we always have done. Gender fluidity was evident in many ancient cultures before the big three monotheistic religions waded in. People worshipped and dressed like their gender fluid gods, and trans and non-binary people as well as LGB people had specific places in society. They still do, such as the fa’afafine people in Samoa and the Hijra people in Hindu culture.
Where does this leave us now? Sunak’s speech and various subsequent actions by him and others in his government including our so-called common sense Czar, leave us in no doubt that the Conservatives have done a complete U-turn in terms of their own policy and position on LGBT+ people, in particular, trans and non-binary people, and especially young people. But Sunak doesn’t care. He makes a point of distancing himself from recent Conservative leaders such as Teresa May, under whose leadership the LGBT Action Plan was delivered. In the last few months, a startling number of new guidelines and policies have been launched, whilst other pledges have been dropped in a last ditch attempt before the election to win the populist vote by whatever cynical means, employing exactly the tactics Sunak claims to avoid – rhetorical ambition and short term headlines. He talks about the things that are dearest to us in our lives - our kids, schools, education, hospitals and healthcare, our beliefs and what is right. It sounds so great on the surface, but in fact it is cynical and divisive when it claims to be the opposite. It's playing with people, singling out a minority and using them as political pawns in a last ditch attempt to gain popularity. Recently it was people in boats. Now it's trans and non-binary people.
These new measures and dropped promises include the closing of gender-affirming services for young people, the dropping of the conversion therapy ban, new guidelines for schools, the Cass Review, restricting the use of hormone blockers for trans young people, and the banning of rainbow lanyards in civil service offices. Under the schools guidelines, for example, pupils old enough to drive and have sex would not be entitled to have their chosen pronoun used, to talk in confidence to school staff, or to learn about people like themselves, which is a form of conversion therapy in itself. To add insult to injury, the LGBT Action Plan is still live on the government website, as a reminder of just how far away from it the Tories have shifted.
Sunak is aligning himself with Thatcher and Section 28, which banned the teaching of homosexuality in schools and for which David Cameron eventually had to apologise. I am old enough to remember Section 28 and the damage it did. Experts agree that this cynical and divisive approach is potentially harmful to a group of people who are already at greater risk of mental health issues and suicide. And the government knows this, they have the evidence from their own research and from history. Starmer unfortunately has backtracked too, and issued similar rhetoric in recent months. Trans and non-binary people are a minority, but people who believe in equality must now surely stand with them to prevent history from repeating itself. Attempts to erase them from society, to deny them services, and to use them as political pawns should be of concern to anyone who believes in equality and human rights.
it's Pride Month. It's a time to celebrate the LGBT+ community but also a time to stand up for what is right. I hope that your life this month and every month, is full of love and positivity, full of people who accept you for who you are and support you if you are in any way struggling.
Always an ally x
MJ Buckman June 2024 (cis, woke)
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