\n<\/p>\n
T<\/span>ransgender people fear social acceptance is going into reverse and some are retreating from public spaces, according to the first major analysis since last year\u2019s supreme court ruling in the UK on the definition of a woman.<\/p>\n The Stonewall survey finds that while almost half of British LGBTQ+ people feel more accepted by society than a decade ago, 58% of trans+ people \u2013 and 75% of trans women \u2013 feel less so. <\/strong>Almost half of trans+ people now avoid certain bars and restaurants where they do not feel safe, 37% avoid single-sex spaces such as toilets and changing rooms, and 29% avoid exercise classes or sports teams. A <\/strong>striking 80% are pessimistic about the future of equality, in stark contrast to the net hope expressed when the same question was asked in 2017.<\/p>\n Last year\u2019s ruling that sex in law means biological sex was a landmark moment for gender-critical campaigners, who had argued that trans access to single-sex spaces from changing rooms to prisons was endangering women, and who saw the verdict as a relief and vindication. But it has had significant consequences for trans lives, said Stonewall\u2019s chief executive, Simon Blake, citing warnings that trans people may avoid going to hospital under new NHS guidance that they should use wards matching their birth sex.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you feel as though there\u2019s guidance which is impacting on your ability to participate in public life, to get treatment when you\u2019re unwell, to be able to use the toilets which you have been using successfully for 10 years at work, when it feels as though your rights are secondary rather than equal \u2013 that\u2019s going to make you feel incredibly pessimistic,\u201d Blake told the Guardian.<\/p>\n Recently, he said, he had been out with friends for a drink. \u201cThey were frightened about going to the toilet \u2013 each time that someone went to the toilet, it was a question mark. That\u2019s not the way anybody should be expected to live.\u201d He is calling on government to monitor the ruling\u2019s impact and act on any harms revealed.<\/p>\n The survey, to be published on Monday, also found 22% of LGB and 32% of trans respondents reported having attempted suicide at some point in their lives.<\/p>\n <\/span>To rebuild public trust, Blake sought inspiration from Stonewall\u2019s less combative early years, getting veterans such as the actor Ian McKellen to talk to staff about winning hearts and minds in a hostile era. <\/span> Photograph: Lia Toby\/Getty Images for BFI<\/p>\n \u201cWhat so often people who have often experienced suicidal ideation say is \u2018I don\u2019t want to be dead, I just don\u2019t want this any longer,\u2019\u201d said Blake. \u201cI had three people over the weekend say we are very, very close to leaving this country \u2013 friends, colleagues (feeling) that this is a hostile country to be in.\u201d<\/p>\n Gender-critical campaigners, however, consider the ruling not as a rollback but as a clarification of what the Equality Act always meant. They argue it has restored women\u2019s ability to have single-sex toilets, changing rooms, wards and sports without having to justify each exclusion case by case, and that uncertainty for trans people about their current position partly reflects organisations, including Stonewall, having previously claimed the law said something it did not.<\/p>\n Stonewall was not, Blake stressed, aiming to overturn the supreme court ruling. <\/strong>\u201cWe understand that this is the law. But we also want to ensure that trans people are protected and, along with other organisations, we are looking at what that would look like.\u201d<\/p>\n Discriminating against trans people on the grounds of gender reassignment remains illegal, he noted, and the supreme court judges argued their ruling should not be seen as one side in a bitter culture war triumphing over the other. \u201cIt\u2019s on government and our watchdogs and everybody with responsibility to understand the impact, and where there is a negative impact to take action.\u201d<\/p>\n If this approach seems unduly meek to some, Blake has reason to tread carefully. A former Stonewall trustee who cut his teeth on successful campaigns for equal marriage and the age of consent, he returned in 2024 to an organisation in crisis. Institutions from Whitehall departments to the BBC had quit its workplace diversity scheme \u2013 a key source of income \u2013 amid controversy over Stonewall\u2019s tactics and the quality of its legal advice.<\/p>\n To rebuild public trust, Blake sought inspiration from Stonewall\u2019s less combative early years, getting veterans such as the actor Ian McKellen \u2013 who co-founded Stonewall in 1989 \u2013 to talk to staff about winning hearts and minds in a hostile era. \u201cProgress takes time. You\u2019ve got to coalesce, to convene, sometimes you\u2019ve got to be pragmatic,\u201d he said of the new strategy.<\/p>\n \u201c<\/strong>Our first value was about having the courage to do what we think is in the best interest of the LGBTQ+ community and sometimes that will mean absolutely pushing really, really quickly, and sometimes it might be understanding that there is a first step.\u201d If the goal is now to air genuine disagreements without vitriol and agree on a way forward, that\u2019s exactly what Stonewall managed to do in the past: \u201cWe were having the same conversations around equal marriage, the age of consent.\u201d<\/p>\n For 52-year-old Blake, growing up gay in the 1990s was a \u201cterrifying\u201d experience. \u201cWhen I came out to my parents their first thought was <\/strong>\u2018Christ he won\u2019t be alive for very much longer\u2019, because of HIV.\u201d<\/p>\n That was arguably the easy part. \u201cIn your formative years, when you\u2019re learning to love yourself, every single day somebody or something is telling you either through explicit words or through silence that you\u2019re not good enough; that you\u2019re a danger to children; that you shouldn\u2019t be allowed to teach \u2026 it\u2019s just confusing. The (feeling of), \u2018I\u2019m a nice person, I don\u2019t understand why you\u2019d want to be frightened of me, what am I missing?\u2019 \u2013 that sadly, despite the progress, is still happening.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>The Stonewall Inn in New York, whose name became synonymous with the fight for LGBTQ+ rights.<\/span> Photograph: Tracey Whitefoot\/Alamy<\/p>\n That the ban on conversion practices currently under parliamentary scrutiny is trans-inclusive matters to him personally because \u201cit\u2019s saying you don\u2019t need to be changed, you\u2019re good enough\u201d, something he needed to hear as a teenager.<\/p>\n Blake credits Stonewall with transforming his life as a gay man. So why does he think its trans advocacy ended in so many feeling worse off?<\/p>\n \u201cPeople knew less around trans issues and non-binary issues a decade ago, and it wasn\u2019t part of a culture war which had been played out for a long period of time, people\u2019s lives being talked about as if they\u2019re abstract rather than they are lived,\u201d Blake said, arguing that made trans people feel dehumanised.<\/p>\n Was the defensive \u201cno debate\u201d position some activists then took, refusing even to acknowledge any conflict between trans rights and women\u2019s rights, counter-productive? \u201cWhat I recall that period to be was saying that there is a reality which is that trans people exist and that actually trans people should be around the table having the conversation, and that when trans people went around the table in some of those conversations it felt really difficult and therefore (they) didn\u2019t feel able to participate \u2026 everybody needs to be able to have questions, we need to be able to have discussion, but we do have to find ways to do that without heat.\u201d<\/p>\n If that seems a forlorn hope in a climate where Reform-led councils are taking down rainbow flags and scrapping diversity training,<\/strong> Blake chooses to focus on the trade unions who rode to the financial rescue after Durham county council defunded their local Pride event.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat you keep on seeing is most people <\/strong>\u2013 what I like to call the moral majority \u2013 saying \u2018we just want to get on, we just want to live our lives, and for other people to be able to do so\u2019.\u201d But it\u2019s precisely that ability to live ordinary lives that, according to his research, some trans people feel is slipping away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Transgender people fear social acceptance is going into reverse and some are retreating from public spaces, according to the first major analysis since last year\u2019s supreme court ruling in the UK on the definition of a woman. The Stonewall survey finds that while almost half of British LGBTQ+ people feel more accepted by society than<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":52548,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[3277,638,104,7470,25410,1167,286,2481,570,291],"class_list":{"0":"post-52547","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-crime-justice","8":"tag-ceo","9":"tag-debate","10":"tag-heat","11":"tag-progress","12":"tag-stonewall","13":"tag-takes","14":"tag-time","15":"tag-trans","16":"tag-transgender","17":"tag-turning"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=52547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52547\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/52548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=52547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=52547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=52547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}