Despite places like Twitter making you feel like there’s a TERF on every corner, a new report has proven the opposite in the UK.
Britain has had a pretty terrible track record recently when it comes to LGBTQ+ matters. Whether the UK has slipped down the ratings for queer rights, failed to impose an all encompassing ban on conversion therapy or even dished out grants or charitable statuses to poisonous groups like the LGB Alliance. It ain’t a pretty picture.
All is not lost however and a huge new report by More in Common (an international research organisation who quizzed more that 5000 people) has shown that British people are not as polarised on trans matters as certain social media or even main stream media outlets would have you believe.
The report reads: “Many of our findings are reassuring. The public do not approach the issue of gender identity through a hyper-political lens. Instead, their common starting point is one of compassion, they understand that for many trans people life can be difficult and most think as a society we have a responsibility to make it less so. None of the people we spoke to, from across the ideological spectrum, saw the debate in terms of a battle over the definition of womanhood, or thought that trans people were a threat. Instead, they saw very practical issues needing practical solutions.”
The report is being touted as the most in-depth look into how Brits feel about trans rights with most saying that these topics should be discussed in schools. If you watch the news, you can’t move for politicians being asked leading questions by journalists with the main question seemingly to be a derivative of the age-old question “is a trans man a man and a trans woman a woman?”
In response, the report said that most participants in the survey agreed this was the case or said they just didn’t know with only 32% saying they actively disagreed. As has been reported countless times, most recently in a Stonewall survey, Gen Z and Millennials were more likely to agree that TWAW and TMAM when compared older generations.
The report continued: “The danger is that unless healthier and better debate can be created, the all-or-nothing approaches of highly engaged activists could bleed into the public consciousness and lead to wider polarisation that serves no one (or their cause) well.”
It was quite succinct when talking about perceived opinions as opposed to real ones, saying: “The notion that Britons fail to grasp the complexity of this issue is at best ignorant and, at worst, actively patronising. Britons are aware of the issues and want sensible, sound and tailored solutions to problems which are not abstract debates, but instead real issues that affect their friends, families and colleagues. The British public is not well served by noisy debates, inflammatory tweets or reductive questions.”
It just goes to show that just because you get into an argument with someone on Twitter and then feel like you’re getting piled on top of, it is not representative of the population at large which, for the most part, have a lot more common sense.