As Trans+ History Week is marked this week following the UK’s Supreme Court ruling on the legal definition of “sex”, there has been a rallying cry from activists and allies: transgender people have always been here and always will be.
To coincide with Trans+ History Day, on Tuesday (6 May), the organisers of Trans+ History Week held its second annual in-person community event at London’s Canary Wharf. The event featured a live podcast recording between Sex Education star Anthony Lexa and YouTuber Abigail Thorn, followed by a panel discussion featuring trans and non-binary journalists.
The event comes just weeks after the UK Supreme Court issued its ruling that the protected characteristic of “sex” under the terms of the 2010 Equality Act excluded trans women and referred only to “biological women”.
The judgement, which sparked protests across the country, is expected to have wide-ranging implications for the day-to-day lives of trans people, with the Equality and Human Rights Commission already issuing interim guidance that trans women should be barred from using female toilets.
Speaking to PinkNews at the event, Jo Maugham, the founder and executive director of Good Law Project, said: “It is incredibly important that everybody be reminded that trans people have always been with us and always will be with us, and the only real thing that’s up for debate is whether we treat trans people with respect or we don’t.”
Asexual activist and model Yasmin Benoit pointed out that many people do not realise they have been sharing space with trans people all their lives. “We’re in a time where a lot of places, especially corporations [and] media outlets [are] going quiet,” she said.
“They don’t want to seem too fixated or too obsessed with ‘woke’ things. At the same time, you’ve got the right-wing press which are being incredibly loud and won’t stop talking about [trans lives]. The message is skewing in a really negative direction.
“If you are an ally [of] the community right now, you need to make it incredibly obvious and be making a tangible difference and working with that community to make change, instead of just thinking [about] it.”
Lexa, who portrayed Abbi Montgomery in the hit Netflix series, told PinkNews that in difficult moments, when there was “so much fear-mongering around our identities”, it was important to “feel a little bit of hope”.
She went on to say: “There’s still so much community and hope and joy and spirit and strength in this beautiful network of people. Fear is the thing that’s getting us down and our lives aren’t necessarily changed yet. It’s just a fear of what’s to come, but what’s to come hasn’t happened yet.”
Trans activist and author Charlie Craggs said the crux of the issue was that transgender men and women were seen as a new demographic which was “all of a sudden a threat to women”, but added: “We are a historical thing and [have] never posed a threat to women.
“The fact that we’ve always been here and we’ve never been a problem, debunks [the] whole argument.”
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