Trans Awareness Week: “In the Endless Debate, What Gets Lost Is People”

By Phil Clements, Document Control & Archiving Manager, Co-Chair of OMG UK LGBTQ+ Advisory Committee at Omnicom Media Group

In the endless debate, what gets lost is people.

Of course, trans people have the right to exist. They always have, and they always will. This is irrefutable. So why should trans people have to defend themselves? Cis people don’t.

As allies, we should not allow those who attack trans lives to trap us in justifications. Sure, we’ve done our homework, and we know the facts. We feel we’re in a good position to challenge the anti-trans panic that’s out there. We can look at history, sociology and science and explain why all those pernicious transphobic claims and lazy assumptions are wrong.

Image source: Canva

But we also have to be aware that justifications presuppose an otherness about the nature of trans being. It positions trans existence as something that requires qualifying. It suggests that a minority ought to explain itself – and thereby, it affords the majority a false sense of superiority.

Majorities very rarely have to explain themselves. By definition, they outnumber, and so they have a tendency to view themselves as normal, rather than simply more common.

Notions of ‘normal’ beget notions of ‘abnormal’, of something that’s a problem needing to be fixed.  Something to be altered and assimilated. Something to be feared.

This was also true of the ‘straight’ majority in the 20th century. Initially, there were voices within the straight community that resisted being described in terms such as ‘heterosexual’. While they were certainly happy for minorities to be analysed, picked apart and classified like exhibits in a museum of oddities, heaven forbid the microscope should focus upon them. They felt very strongly that there ought not to be a word to describe their state of being. They were above categorisation. You see, they felt they were normal.

Fast forward several decades, and we have, among the cis community, those who reject the term ‘cis’. They’ve even gone as far as trying to pretend it’s a slur.

Just a little bit of history repeating.

One must then ask where exactly these blueprints are from which LGBTQ+ people have supposedly deviated. Not so long ago, homophobic and biphobic people pretended they could speak on God’s behalf. In a more secular society, many transphobes have simply replaced the G-word with ‘Nature’ – as if nature is conscious and communicative and sits planning existence at their breakfast table every morning.

Keeping the ‘debate’ at such a basic level distracts us, as allies, from talking about the issues that genuinely impact trans people’s lives.

Healthcare, the cost of transitioning, the waiting times relating to transitioning, employment issues, domestic violence and the rise in anti-trans violence that has followed a huge increase in the amount of trans-focused articles in mainstream media – these issues are all very real.

Image source: Canva

A Pink News piece from September 9th, recorded that coverage of trans people by the British press had risen dramatically, with an average of 154 articles about the trans community having been published every single month since 2015. “That’s over 13,000 articles focused on less than one per cent of Britain’s population,” Ell Folan pointed out. “This might be a welcome change if the coverage was positive and inclusive – however, analysis of the actual articles shows that it is not.”

As allies, we’re unlikely to find answers in mainstream media, so we need to dig a bit deeper.

For example, Stonewall’s LGBT in Britain – Trans Report (2018) revealed that one in seven trans university students (14%) had considered dropping out or had dropped out of a higher education course due to experiencing harassment or discrimination from students and staff in the past year.

"We live in a system that fails trans people on almost every level."

The LGBT Foundation’s Hidden Figures report (2020) showed that despite 35% of trans people holding a university level degree compared to 27% of the general population, only 63% of trans people had had a paid job at any point in the previous 12 months.

36% of trans people said they had left a job because the environment was unwelcoming.

According to Stonewall’s LGBT in Britain – Trans Report (2018), one in eight trans employees (12%) had been physically attacked by colleagues or customers in the past year.

The same Stonewall report showed that three in ten trans people (29%) who accessed social services in the past year had experienced discrimination.

More than a quarter of trans people (28%) in a relationship in the past year had faced domestic abuse from a partner.

One in four trans people (25%) said they were discriminated against when looking for a house or flat to rent or buy.

One in four trans people who had undergone or were undergoing medical intervention were unsatisfied with the support they had received from their GP (24%).

The report also found that hate crime against trans people was significantly underreported; most trans people - four in five (79%) - hadn’t reported it to the police. Some trans people who had reported a hate crime didn’t feel supported by the police or experienced further discrimination.

According to research by the Human Rights Campaign foundation, 49% of trans adults and 55% of trans adults of colour said they had been unable to vote in at least one election in their life because of fear of or experiencing discrimination at the polls.

And according to the National Centre for Transgender Equality: “Transgender older adults face profound challenges and experience striking disparities in areas such as quality of health and access to health care services, mental health care, employment, housing and other areas of livelihood. Research reveals that many transgender elders routinely encounter both a health care system and a national aging network that are ill-prepared to provide culturally competent care and services and create residential environments that affirm the gender identities and expressions of transgender older people.”

We live in a system that fails trans people on almost every level. So let’s try not to get distracted by the politicians, the hate preachers and even the journalists who, for personal gain, choose to drag all conversations about trans lives through the mire. There is, of course, always a time to be outspoken. But better to talk to a room of people who want to be educated than some random people online who wish to stay oblivious and will only double down on their entrenched, misguided beliefs.

Allies should try to help fix the real problems, not the made-up ones.

You can connect with Phil Clements here.