It won’t be a surprise to anyone who’s trans living in the UK, but rampant transphobia and scare-mongering in the mainstream media and vocalised by high profile gender critical celebrities and politicians has fostered a hostile environment.
With the likes of the LGB Alliance and JK Rowling spewing nonsense and disinformation about trans women and trans kids, it’s language like ‘invading female only spaces’ that whip people into a frenzy, a fact that has not gone un-noticed by a recent report by the Council of Europe.
It describes an increase in anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes and hate speech, which the report says “deliberately mis-characterise the fight for the equality of LGBTI people as so-called ‘gender ideology’ and seek to stifle the identities and realities of all those who challenge the social constructs that perpetuate gender inequalities and gender-based violence in our societies. These attacks are harmful to women as well as LGBTI people.”
The report shockingly puts the UK on a par with Russia, Hungary and Poland with a sharp rise in anti-trans rhetoric on social media and in the press. Even some mainstream broadsheet newspapers seem to have an anti-trans agenda that is more obvious by the day.
The report gives a stark warning that “such rhetoric – which denies trans identities – is being used to roll back the rights of trans and non-binary people and is contributing to growing human rights problems.”
It goes on to say: “The ‘gender-critical’ movement, which wrongly portrays trans rights as posing a particular threat to cisgender women and girls, has played a significant role in this process.”
This, of course, is extremely discouraging and only goes to show that transphobia really is a growing problem in the UK and needs to be addressed as soon as possible.