After the Supreme Court: the end of trans ideology?
In April this year, the Supreme Court ruled that, in relation to references in equalities law, ‘women’ are biological females – putting an end to the claims that ‘trans women are women’. Or has it? Despite this significant legal victory for campaign group For Women Scotland and many others arguing for women’s rights, claims that the sex and gender wars are over might be premature.
On the one hand, much of the dominance of trans activism in the public realm seems to have been challenged. The Tavistock Clinic has been closed due to concerns about the number of children being referred for gender-reassignment treatment. Institutions like the BBC and the NHS dropped their Stonewall affiliation. Many politicians, who previously choked when asked what a woman is, now happily defer to the Supreme Court ruling and agree that women’s spaces should be for women only.
On the other hand, the ruling has not convinced everyone. Ofcom made the headlines in June, telling GB News that it still had to provide ‘balance’ by airing the view that trans women are women when discussing sex and gender. Petitions and boycotts have circulated to call for the government to row back on its support for the Supreme Court ruling. The trans poet Kate Tempest told a crowd at Glastonbury ‘they can shake their heads in despair but we’ve been here from the start, we ain’t going nowhere’. For many trans activists, the Supreme Court ruling was not a clarification of fact, but a declaration of war on their sense of identity.
The view that ‘trans women are women’ might be the view of a minority – one with shrinking policy and political support thanks to the Court ruling. But does that mean that the gender wars are over? Many argue that views on trans and women’s rights often take a generational split. How can we talk to young people about sex and gender when so often a pro-trans view is seen as the ‘right thing to do’? And where are the new battlegrounds in this war? Should we really believe that a cultural elite, who seemed so enthralled to trans ideology, is going to give way so easily?
