This was sent by email to Uma Kumaran MP in light of the recent Supreme Court decision and the appallingly bad-faith readings of it both by senior politicians in the current Government and the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

Dear Uma,

I am writing to ask you to stand up for trans rights in the wake of the recent Supreme Court judgment, on the Equality Act 2010. This judgment was response to a case brought by a hate group funded by a small number of extremely rich benefactors. Throughout the case, evidence was not heard from a single transgender person.

I am deeply concerned to see our Supreme Court repeating far-right talking points in its judgment. Moreover, I am very disturbed to see that our Health Secretary, Minister for Women and Equalities, and our Prime Minister are taking it even further, with Sir Keir now claiming trans women are men. A short while ago, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (which was gutted and stuffed with far-right ideologues under the previous Governments, to the extent where staff and senior officials have resigned en masse) rushed out guidance at 10pm on a Friday claiming that the judgment means service providers will no longer be able to provide trans-inclusive services. (This is not true.)

Not only does this expect trans people to humiliate themselves and out themselves as trans by using facilities that do not match their gender, and heinously seek to exclude trans women from accessing rape crisis centres, it also invites vigilantism—effectively offering carte blanche to those who would bully people out of toilets because they don’t look “woman enough” or “man enough”. This is effectively carte blanche to eliminate transgender people from public life. No woman I have spoken to feels safer as a result of this recent assault on trans rights—instead they worry that they might be targeted next because they have short hair, or have a flat chest, or don’t look ‘woman’ enough. (As I am sure you know, women of colour, and particularly Black women, are more likely to be targeted for not conforming to traditional Western ideas of femininity.) And no gay or lesbian person I know feels safer either—instead, many of us are worried that we will be targeted next, as we know that the deeply conservative and fundamentalist voices that have amplified transphobia in the name of “women’s rights” will also target other minorities.

There is not a shred of evidence that trans people are a threat to (cisgender) women or to so-called “same-sex attracted” people. Sexual predators and creeps do not need to pretend to be trans in order to assault or abuse people. All the government’s trajectory does is to effectively seek to eliminate trans people from public life, or to make them de-transition, to live their life presenting (unhappily) as their assigned gender at birth.

The Government has the option to fix this gap in the Equality Act by introducing primary legislation, to amend the Equality Act to say that trans people should be treated as their “acquired” (lived) gender for its purposes.

Instead, as I outlined above, we are seeing an appalling backsliding from our Minister for Women and Equalities, our Health Secretary, and our Prime Minister. Far from being the principled government I had hoped for, the Prime Minister and Health Secretary give the impression of being weathervanes-in-chief, kowtowing to a moral panic whipped up by a small group of newspaper columnists and opinion editors who have found publishing naked transphobia to be an effective way of farming engagement. Instead of evidence-based policy, the Government seems to be forming echo-chamber policy, fuelled by disinformation on social media and recycled far-right talking points. That is appalling in itself, but especially flabbergasting and disgusting to see this coming from a Labour government.

I know that you care about the impact of transphobia and hate crime on young people, and was pleased to read in Hansard your question on 14th November on this topic. But now is the time to take a stand. I urge you to pull every lever you have within Parliament and within your party to help reverse your party’s, your government’s, and our country's disastrous backslide on trans rights—before it is too late.

(Signed)