‘Supreme Court Gender Decision Achieved Nothing and Was a Waste Of Money’

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We typed ‘woman’ into Google News this morning: it gave us one woman beaten, another poisoned by an unlicensed botox clinic, several women pictured for an objectifying Daily Mail article about ‘sex faces’… and an op-ed in the Spectator titled: ‘Ofcom still isn’t sure what a woman is’.

The latter involves some bloke called Toby complaining about how ‘woman’ isn’t being used properly as a term, as he peddles his own agendas of transphobia and climate-scepticism (his view is that the press should sooner be questioning the climate crisis than the ‘clear, scientific, biological definition of a woman’). Looking through this morning’s headlines, poor lexicology is the least of women’s problems. So fight your fights, Toby, but not in our name.

Eleven weeks on, it seems the Supreme Court ruling described by the British press as “historic” and a “vindication” for “feminism” has achieved quite a lot of nothing. We were told it would bring “clarity” to equality law and reduce male violence in single-sex spaces. In reality, the confusion wrought has seen a new misogyny law thrown out and the Labour women’s conference postponed.

Toby says the definition of woman is now a “settled matter”. Keir Starmer said “a woman is an adult female, and the court has made that absolutely clear”. And so our first exercise on this week’s Media Storm was trying to define an “adult female”. But we couldn’t pin down a biological criteria that comprehensively captures all cis women. Chromosomes, gonads, genitals, hormone levels, facial hair – someone always falls through the cracks.

The Independent’s solution has been to equate “biologically-female” with “assigned-female-at-birth”, but that doesn’t hold up because transitioning people’s biology changes, and so people born male may become biologically female.

Meanwhile, some cis women are born without ovaries, or with a rogue Y chromosome. Imane Khalif was born a woman, given a female birth certificate, and then deemed to have failed one of these modern “biology” readings. Does she now lose protection under UK equality law? If so, do not tell us that was done in our name.

For our part, it seems counterintuitive to put the definition of womanhood to paper – we never felt the need to contemplate it before the media decided to lynch any MP who didn’t have a “simple answer”. Prescriptive definitions of what a ‘woman’ should be have never worked in women’s interests. Indeed, the entire point of feminism has been challenging restrictive characteristics.

So, clarity? No. We have not been given that. “The implication that trans people are coming along and saying ‘science is wrong’ is a piece of propaganda,” said our guest, LGBTQ+ activist, YouTuber metalhead and insect-enthusiast, Katy Montgomerie.

How about the second point, that this ruling addresses male violence in single-sex spaces? Despite a lack of evidence of attacks by trans people in public toilets (we set our intern the task of finding them and she identified only one case involving a trans teenager from six years ago), rapes and sexual assaults are happening there. FOI requests on the topic have been almost flatly denied by police, but we managed to locate one dataset.

Gwent Police covers 600 square miles of rural Wales, and counted 134 recorded incidents of rape and assault in public toilets over five years. Women are being violated in toilets, but not by trans women. Are we seriously supposed to feel pacified by this bullshit Supreme Court ruling?! This is crass transphobia, being peddled in our name.

The media coverage of ‘what a woman is’ does not accurately represent cis women. A majority of cis women supported trans women’s right to self-identify, yet cis allies have been as poorly represented in the media as trans women were in the Supreme Court hearing.

Some thousand cis women joined the April 19 protest against the ruling, yet The Guardian wrote: “Trans activists rally in London against gender ruling… thousands of trans and non-binary people thronged Parliament square.”

Meanwhile, the ‘cis female voice’ is given by the group that brought the case (with the help of a £70,000 donation from J K Rowling), and which calls itself For Women Scotland. How dare they take this name when the only advocacy they have ever pursued is excluding transgender women from women’s spaces.

A retaliatory campaign by cis women in support of the trans+ community has gathered over 37,000 signatures. They have called themselves ‘Not In Our Name’.

Let’s make one thing clear. When we are in bathrooms, or changing rooms, or any rooms with trans women, we do not experience their presence in any remarkable way. We experience it as we experience each other’s – as women. This is not some social justice argument. It is just how we feel. We do not feel fear. We do not feel difference. To be honest we do not feel a fucking thing, we are simply taking a piss.

The mainstream media is not interested in platforming this view because it does not fit into their attention-grabbing, debate-style reportage. Instead, they exclusively pit “gender-critical cis women” against “trans activists”, which makes it almost impossible for trans people to self-advocate, Katy told us.

“When you’re first offered the chance to go on the BBC, and they say ‘we want you to come on and talk about trans rights’, you think I’d love to do that! But then they say, ‘The question is going to be, Are Trans Women A Danger To Society? And we will also be interviewing Dr IHateTransPeople. And we’re not going to fact-check any of it. You’ll be given equal time and the other person is going to constantly imply that you are a degenerate paedophile, and you have to keep completely cool, calm, and collected. Those are the only opportunities we’re ever given.”

“What you’re signing up to,” Katy explained, “does more damage than you could ever achieve. Because the takeaway will be ‘trans women versus cis women’. But it’s not trans people versus women. The media have created this narrative.”

The effect of this dichotomy is to divide and distract us from our shared struggle against male violence. This is a struggle faced not just by gender minorities, but also cis men. If we are to address it, Katie concluded, “the first thing the government should be doing is ending this pointless culture war against trans people”.

“Look how much money was just spent on this Supreme Court case and how much money is going to be spent in the fallout of it with follow-up court cases. All of that money could have been spent on the government funding women’s services better, which the government is cutting back on doing.”

Media Storm’s latest episode ‘What is a woman? Common sense vs culture war’ is out now.