The Joy Tuck Club

The Bonfire of the Tranities

• Rachel Fishwick, Phoebe du Maurier • Season 1 • Episode 6

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The unprecedented rise of transphobia, which is shaking the very core of our societies, is the burning topic of our discussion today. This unnerving wave of discrimination has prompted the UK government to redefine the concepts of 'man' and 'woman' to 'biological sex', paving the way for a potential withdrawal from the UN's European Convention on Human Rights. 

As we navigate this thorny issue, we delve into the disturbing impact of Christian right-wing think tanks and the surge in negative media coverage, which have contributed to the dehumanisation of minorities. We confront the alarming reality of the Conservative government utilising the trans community as a political diversion. The repercussions of this are far-reaching and deeply troubling, particularly for those who don't fit the heteronormative mold.

In the midst of these challenges, we strive to illuminate the resilience and courage exhibited by the trans community during these testing times. We journey through the unsettling narrative of UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, whose speech has sparked a wave of anti-trans sentiment, to the proposed blanket bans on trans healthcare in the US. Yet, hope resides in resilience. We draw attention to the signs of resistance from the trans community and their allies in the face of adversity, emphasising the urgent need for empathy and understanding. Join us as we dissect these pressing issues with a compassionate lens, advocating for a future free from hate.

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Visit The Joy Tuck Club online at redandfreckles.com for transcripts, commentary, community, news, and much, much more.

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The Joy Tuck Club is written, produced, and edited by red+freckles, of Two Damp Trans Ltd, UK.

Rachel:

You know the funniest thing about this? Yeah, what? Rishi Sunak's trying to cancel trans people. Yes. He's the one that's been self-idying is the prime minister. Nobody voted for him. He's self-idying as the prime minister, so why can't we self-id as trans?

Phoebe:

That's a really good point. Let's start this show. Such a dick Trigger warning. Please be advised that this episode contains reports of hateful conduct that may be triggering for some listeners. The world can be an awful place, but know that you make it better.

Rachel:

You're listening to a special edition of the Joy Tuck Club with Rachel and Phoebe. We don't normally comment on all the hateful news towards trans people unless it's so utterly ridiculous it verges on the funny. But this isn't that. The news is becoming so dire recently that we felt need to do a special episode addressing the rising Transphobia that's been making the headlines this week, not just in the UK, but almost everywhere, it seems yeah, well, everywhere except New Zealand, australia, malta, portugal.

Rachel:

But large swathes of the US have been sinking into the transphobia swamp. Sections of Canada are becoming more restless and best to avoid much of South America, eastern Europe and Turkey.

Phoebe:

Yeah except for BA's Turkey breasts. Yes, yeah, yeah. What we wanted to do in this episode, though, is to reassure the trans community that it will be okay, and Try to find a silver lining in the gathering storm clouds. But first let's set the scene some more. Imagine, if you will, a hall filled with people Gleefully cheering on the planned legislative demise of a minority. They've done this before their ancestors have as colonizers, but this is now in their own country. Let's roll the audio.

Phoebe:

And we shouldn't get bullied into believing that people can be any sex they want to be. They can't. A man is a man and a woman is a woman. That's just common sense.

Rachel:

That was the sound of the bridge prime minister Rishi Sunak telling the attendees at the conservative conference in Manchester last week. That is common sense, that trans people should no longer exist. And despite the backlash that he's received, he continued the next day in Granada saying, incorrectly, that it's just a fact of biology.

Phoebe:

Hmm, I don't think Rishi's a biologist. I'm not even sure if he's a PM really, but there is a concerted push currently within the UK government to have its equality and human rights commission redefine the terms man and woman as, quote biological sex and if that's prevented by international obligations, then Scrap the obligations.

Rachel:

The UK will pull out of the UN's European Convention on Human Rights, which is an international treaty the UK helped draft if it does so, the UK would join the likes of Russia and Belarus, and this would give free rein to the government to pursue its agenda of eradication of the separation of transfer from human rights, and it would also imperil a web of trade agreements and treaties, including the Good Friday agreement with Northern Ireland. In other words, it's not so easy.

Phoebe:

Right, it's, it's rhetoric designed to rouse the mob, though.

Rachel:

Yeah, I think Rishi Sunak's speech was just actually the third instance at the Tory party conference where trans people were used as a Potential vote, when I don't even know why they're going down this road because people don't care about trans rights Really, like you average Joe or Jane on the street, they've got bigger fish to fry, more things to worry about. So why are they, why are they even Pursuing this right? Because they it's almost like they've got nothing else, that's true. So how did this start? Where was what was the first instance at the conference?

Phoebe:

Well, what set the tone of this conference goes all the way back to May, with Suella brave man attending a conference in Europe alongside Some of the most notorious far-right and anti LGBTQ plus politicians, and there was an uproar about that, but Sunak defended that. So she came back and called on the PM to tackle trans ideology. She got quite stirred up there, but it's spreading across.

Rachel:

Conservative deputy chairman Lee Anderson, who was promoted by Rishi Sunak, said the Tories would likely put a mix of culture, wars and trans debates at the heart of its general election offer. And this was back in February. Really, they say out their store back in February, but don't take my word for it. Let's hear it from the horses now.

Lee Anderson:

The big thing in 2019, there's three things that won the election. It was nothing to do with me, it was Brexit, it was Boris, it was Corbyn and it was as simple as that. Those three things together was a great campaign, great ingredients at the next election when we got those three things.

Annelise Dodds:

So we're going to have to think of something else.

Lee Anderson:

It'll probably be a mixture of culture, wars and trans debate.

Phoebe:

Well, that's what they've been doing ever since, isn't it? Do you understand why such a transparently transphobic attitude exists? It helps to understand that the government in the UK are Tories or traditionalist conservatives. God, king and country, you know staunch monarchists and all that. Many made their way even to America back in the day, where they fought in the War of Independence Lost and were aligned with the southern states in the Civil War Lost again. They are the closest in kind to Republicans in the US today, so it should come as no surprise that the American equivalents have been behaving in much the same way as the Republican presidential election debates just two weeks ago. This is Mike Pence, who was Vice President under Trump, and is chatteling some of his energy.

Rachel:

And we're going to pass a federal ban on transgender chemical or surgical surgery anywhere in the country.

Phoebe:

So we have just about all the presidential candidates now pushing some kind of anti-trans agenda in the US and in the UK. It's kind of getting worse. It's getting ahead of itself. The 23 US states have now banned gender affirming care for minors 23 now. 23 now.

Rachel:

And rising.

Phoebe:

And rising. Yeah, a lot of cases are still working their way through courts where you know there were temporary restrictions on the ban, preventing it from taking effect, and then they're getting overturned. This all goes back, though, to 2015, when the US Supreme Court, in an extraordinarily good decision, struck down all state bans on same sex marriage, so they took it up to a federal level, essentially, and so this is the law of the land.

Phoebe:

You're allowed to marry the person you love. So it was legalized in all 50 states and it required states to honor out of state same sex marriages as well. So the Christian right very, very well funded. Who are all for abortion bans? All for well. They don't like anything LGBTQ. Obviously, they don't believe in bodily autonomy for women and they went wow, okay, the Supreme Court's now said we can't focus on this issue gay marriage anymore. What are we going to do next?

Rachel:

We need a new target, yep. And what was that target?

Phoebe:

That target was trans people, and so it began yeah, it began with them ceding the right wing media, right Barton, so on. They gave talking points to politicians and this anti-trans push started to take hold.

Rachel:

Yeah.

Phoebe:

It's where you then saw people like Trump, who initially said that trans people are equal in every way to everyone else, Changes mind now saying uh-uh, we're going to nationally ban all gender affirming care. That's. One of the reasons that these speeches are so bad at these conferences is because they're already talking to the converted. And what they're yeah.

Phoebe:

And all they're doing is seeking to gain pre-selection to become the leading candidate to run for prime minister or president. Yeah, and so they go as far as they can and it sounds absolutely horrific and it flies against what most of the people believe, but that doesn't matter, because they're talking to a conference. Unfortunately, that then gets broadcast nationally and becomes a type of hate speech, and what we know from the past is that this is how atrocities start to happen, and they're using that same language against every minority, which curiously, then means what we want. You know the make America great again, which means take America back to the fifties. There's versions of that here as well. What's the bridge slogan for the conservative party now? Oh, God.

Rachel:

Long term decisions for a brighter future.

Phoebe:

Really.

Rachel:

That's the new slogan, yeah.

Phoebe:

Yeah.

Rachel:

Yeah.

Phoebe:

We're not going to be the first to say this, of course, but in the fifties, sex-based rights were rampant, in the sense that females did not have the same rights as males, you know, didn't have a right to a credit card, didn't have the right to play for a loan, couldn't own certain types of property, and so forth. That's what they're calling for, that's what they want when they talk about family values.

Rachel:

They want that yeah, they want the nuclear family, the. Ant-man and the woman, 2.4 children and the dog.

Phoebe:

Yeah, and what color is that nuclear family? Oh, I think they're shockingly white. Blanched yeah.

Rachel:

Yeah, yeah.

Phoebe:

And everyone else must be lesser, because that's the way it works.

Rachel:

I mean we'll get into it later, but this is one of their tactics is dehumanizing the minorities.

Phoebe:

Yeah.

Rachel:

You know so people disassociate them as humans, and then, once they've got the majority of people doing that, it's so much easier to pick on us, right? Because people don't care, right? Yeah?

Phoebe:

And so trans rights became the wedge issue. Yay for us. I'm so glad I came out directly into this environment timing Perfect.

Rachel:

Like I said, we're right where we need to be at this time, in this moment in time.

Phoebe:

Well, exactly, call to activism. I mean, I'd be happy to be labeled an activist because we need it. So that's what was happening in the US and the Christian right wing groups think tanks in Washington, incredibly well funded with money coming in From places like South Africa and Central Europe, russia.

Rachel:

Yeah.

Phoebe:

That were then funding political donations, because the Supreme Court ruled that that doesn't need to be tracked anymore.

Rachel:

Right.

Phoebe:

Money can come from anywhere and go to anyone politically, and so they float into campaigns, which then caused massive change of tactics at the state level as well.

Rachel:

You know there definitely seems to have been a ramping up in the media. We had the figures somewhere about how many more transgender negative stories there are in the media now compared to years ago.

Phoebe:

There are an average of 154 articles about the trans community. This is pink news published every month since 2015. That's shocking, yeah, but it's also been doubling year over year.

Rachel:

But the majority of them are negative articles.

Phoebe:

They are.

Rachel:

Yeah, they're not all fluff pieces you get the old one. The other ones that we tend to try and sift through and hoover up and put out to you guys. But you know, 154 a month, how many is that a day?

Phoebe:

Yeah, but that was averaged all the way back to 2015. In the first month of 2016, the Telegraph published just 10 articles related to trans people and six of them 60% of them were positive, but by January they'd completely shifted. They ran 75 articles about trans people in January this year and 73 of those 99% 98 points something. This is the Telegraph. We're negative, yeah just the Telegraph.

Rachel:

Wow, they've published even more height than the male. That, wow.

Phoebe:

I thought the male were the number one hater.

Rachel:

So that was a 650% increase in coverage and none of it positive, yeah, but of course the media and politicians they go hand in hand right, they do yeah.

Phoebe:

They use the same sorts of rabble rousing terminology as well, calling it an ideology, which means a belief system. Being trans, they claim, is a belief system. Women are being erased, which is well? The population is not a pie, we don't exist, and then snuff out women Like the great phrase it's not a pie, it's only so much to go around. Yeah.

Rachel:

We're not taking anything away from anyone else by existing.

Phoebe:

No.

Rachel:

We're actually adding yeah, you know, yeah, right, I feel like this has become a thing in the UK, because the Tories have done such a shit job over the last what they've been in power now 13 years They've got nothing left, so this this is it they do.

Phoebe:

They do have something left they have in their accomplishments.

Rachel:

I'll go and I want to hear this.

Phoebe:

The lowest standard of living ever in the UK in recent times they have achieved the highest energy prices. Yeah, they've destroyed the economy. Absolutely.

Rachel:

Utterly destroyed the highest levels of inflation.

Phoebe:

Yeah, yeah yeah. Highest levels of homelessness. They've done a stellar job.

Rachel:

But none of those things are going to win the election right.

Phoebe:

No. So let's wave a big, let's find the biggest red herring we can.

Rachel:

Yeah, you know. So all the way back in February they were already planning on doing what was doing, and then you fast forward to now and true to their word, yeah. That's exactly what they're doing. Yeah, they're blowing trans people up as a massive distraction and a massive thing that everybody should be worried about and using that. So let's take a look at the stuff that they said at their conference. I think it all started with Braverman, who wasn't specifically targeting trans people, but she punched down on the whole LGBTQ community, right.

Phoebe:

Yes, she did so. 2% of asylum seekers are seeking asylum because of persecution due to their sexual orientation. Yeah, this isn't difficult to determine, because asylum seekers come from specific countries and specific countries are known to have the most horrific human rights abuses with regards to the gay population. Yeah, and Sir Brother Braverman has said that's no longer an option.

Rachel:

So she thinks that people might be using that and faking their queerness to get asylum in the UK.

Phoebe:

Right, except it's only 2% of all asylum seekers, which I think about 10% of the population is gay, something like that.

Rachel:

It's about 10%, yeah, In 2021, a total of 43.4 million people that's 89.4% of the population aged 16 or over identified as straight or heterosexual. So that leaves 10%.

Phoebe:

10% of the population is LGBTQ. Only 2% of asylum seekers are yeah, and yet they're abusing the system.

Rachel:

It sounds like the tour is just punching down on a minority. Again, again.

Phoebe:

Yeah Well, it's become a bit of a theme here, hasn't it?

Rachel:

It's a bit of long-warned people that we're just the start. If they get away with this persecution of trans people, they won't end there. They will go after anyone that doesn't conform to their heteronormative society. Yes, that's what's going to happen.

Phoebe:

Yes, there's some sort of giant clawback of equal rights happening. Yeah.

Rachel:

We were making progress. It wasn't that long ago that the UK was one of the leading countries in LGBTQ plus rights, and now we've dropped from the top of the list down to about 30, I think, below Russia. That tells you how shit things are here.

Phoebe:

So you said that the UK, not so long ago, was leading Europe.

Rachel:

Yes, so this year we've dropped 14th to 17th, but we used to be. In 2015, we topped the European rainbow map. We were 86% accepting of LGBTQ rights.

Phoebe:

Wow. And now the UK is 53%, the tiny island of Malta is 89%. It's the highest, russia 8%, turkey 4% and Azerbaijan 2% as the lowest.

Rachel:

So the anti-trans rhetoric pushed out by the media and the government is clearly having an effect on people.

Phoebe:

Right, because now the response to surveys has shifted remarkably.

Rachel:

This does segue nicely into the Home Office report about the rise in hate crimes. It does. Transgender people got up by 11%.

Phoebe:

This shows the propaganda works and this is exactly what was planned from the beginning in those think tanks in the US was here's a bunch of talking points that will demonise trans people.

Phoebe:

We're going to start with children, protecting the children, the children who are trans and misguided and therefore and they're mentally ill. That's an easy target, but then we will gradually raise the age because no one's going to accept it saying right away that trans adults have been out there, trans with their HRT for decades are actually a problem when there's no statistic to show that they are. So we'll start with protecting the children and once that's accepted, we'll start to expand out. And they have states like Florida making it very, very difficult now for adults to have gender-affirming care, to take HRT. They have to show up daily and get their pills or patches, whatever they need, from an actual doctor, not just a nurse practitioner, which has meant incredible needless pressure on what's actually a really thin resource qualified GPs and they took that over here as we discussed. It's become propaganda and it's working because what are you saying? The statistics?

Rachel:

Yeah, it's definitely working because the home office the home office has done a report on the level of hate crimes and, for the first time, homophobic hate crime has dropped by 6%. Yeah, but you know what hasn't? Yeah, I can guess Trans hate crime is the highest it's ever been. It's risen by 11%. 11%. In the year ending March 2023, 4,732 hate crimes against transgender people were recorded. That's a rise of 11% on the previous year. And do you know what the home office says might have contributed to this?

Phoebe:

I can't. Imagine.

Rachel:

What did they say? Said it may be due to comments in the media and by politicians.

Phoebe:

Like they told the truth.

Rachel:

Yeah. But then they sort of backed out and say, well, maybe it also is because we're just recording the numbers better.

Phoebe:

Oh.

Rachel:

Yeah, even though they've kind of admitted that they may be at fault. Yeah, maybe they're not planning on doing anything about it.

Phoebe:

Well, you know, there's one place that we see this in real time, and that's social media. Right, I remember when I joined trans Twitter.

Rachel:

Oh, it was such a lovely place back then.

Phoebe:

Well, you've been there longer than I have, yeah.

Rachel:

It was just, it was so welcoming and a real nice sense of community.

Phoebe:

Yeah.

Rachel:

And everyone was just, you know, talking about their journey and helping, offering up help. People were going. You could go on there for advice. Hmm.

Phoebe:

You didn't have GCs and turfs tromping all over people's threads Not overly.

Rachel:

They know that they would pop up every now and then, but yeah there were a few and far between, and that changed, but mainly changed once the muskrat took over. Ah, yes, and he, of course you know things started getting bad. But then he, he removed transgender protections, basically, and then he declared open day on trans people. He did he's been fueling it. And now, oh my God, I think you've had a bit of experience of this recently, haven't you, Phoebes?

Phoebe:

Yeah, well, I normally avoid getting involved with anything turfy.

Rachel:

Well, because you can't argue with a turf right. They're so stupid.

Phoebe:

Well, yes, they like to say it's basic science, or it's simple biology, or whatever.

Annelise Dodds:

Ideology. It is very simple, yeah.

Phoebe:

So I used to think of Twitter as this, as my section trans Twitter as a nice warm bath, kind of a pool you could just Well. It's where we met. It is where we met.

Rachel:

Slip into the water together.

Phoebe:

Yeah, but it seems that it's now filled with sharks. Yes, and you have to be careful where you go, and so there are these little currents that we can still be fairly safe in, you know, communications between in the trans community. But if someone raises their head too high, their profile, then their timeline forever more, it seems, is going to be filled with GCs and turfs making terrible condoms. Misgendering Piling on Misgendering used to be something that you could complain about, lodge complain on Twitter, and that was removed as well.

Rachel:

He removed misgendering and order protections for trans people, but then said that he would declare the word cis a slur. That's right, you weren't allowed to use the word cis.

Phoebe:

Yes, my God, he has incredibly thin skin.

Rachel:

Yes, yeah, but of course we all know that he's his hatred for trans.

Phoebe:

Yeah.

Rachel:

But when general comes from his own trans daughter yeah who's turned her back on him.

Phoebe:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, she's seen the light. She changed her name completely. What nothing to do with you. Yeah, I can't blame her. No, so I got involved in a little.

Phoebe:

I can't really say it's a debate, but it was a thread that was originally posted by a GC and I took to just posting definitions of things like lesbian and woman that go beyond their idea, which is that you take the first thing that pops up and then say nothing else applies. So woman, adult, human, female yeah, that's just one definition of woman. Words are nuanced, words often have more than one related meaning, and yet they choose the one that fits and say nothing else applies. But of course, woman is a very gendered term. It specifically means the gendered role in society, and the other one is lesbian, which they say is same sex attracted only, but it's also gender attracted, yes, and so the simple way to really stir a turf or a GC is to post these definitions and that's all one has to do, and from that I've been called a degenerate pervert. I'm not going to say some of the things because they were really, really horrible, homophobic, bigot.

Rachel:

Oh homophobic. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Bigot yeah.

Phoebe:

I can't say that I agree. No well, give them a go. Very gay, yes. And it just went on and on. But what surprised me is that I have done this now and then. In the past I wasn't as bad. It was like getting stung by bees. Well, it didn't. It doesn't hurt, right, because it's nonsense? Yeah. And eventually I did it for a couple of hours and then just stopped.

Rachel:

But they have all arguments that you can't win because they're so committed to their thought pattern and the way that, whatever they thought, that you know they're obsessed and you can't change their mind, even with cold, hard facts. Yeah, they just won't listen. There's, there's is the only way the audience people talk about the trans debate. They don't want to have a debate, but clearly we don't want to have a debate. My existence isn't up for debate.

Phoebe:

Yeah.

Rachel:

You know, and that there's the impasse.

Phoebe:

Yeah, there was a hobbyist chicken farmer, a what I know, who was insisting that sex is, of course, binary, which would make it the only binary thing in nature and for a hundred years now, ignoring even intersex people. For a hundred years now, biologists have known that sex is much, much more complicated. That's the cascade of things that occur To him. I posted an article because he was really quite proud of his chickens that showed that chickens undergo sex reversal. I mean, I was just stirring, but what surprised me, as I said before, was how you only had to scratch the surface a tiny bit, and so I've retreated back into the safe currents.

Rachel:

Yeah, I've just just done a quick. I remember this triggered something in my head. A recent study showed that same sex attraction is far from limited to humans. Lots like up to 80 percent in some cases of animals are sexually fluid. Yeah, the project examined all the existing research on same sex activity among animals. That's what they found.

Phoebe:

Right. I remember chatting with a cousin of mine who'd spent a lot of time working cattle farms and the like, saying how she often saw changes in. They say gender roles only occur in humans, but that's not true. Bulls act in a particular way, cows act a different way, generally speaking, and she said she would see cases of different animals on the farm swapping roles. So a cow would start to act like a bull, with its aggression and so forth, and likewise a bull could act just like a cow. And this isn't uncommon, no, but, as Sunak reminds us all, it's common sense, common sense, common sense, yeah.

Rachel:

So, speaking getting back on to Rishi, should we dive into what was actually said at the conference?

Phoebe:

Yeah, let's do that yeah.

Rachel:

Talking about illegal immigration, cruella Braverman said our country has become enmeshed in a dense net of international rules that were designed for another era, and it is labor that turbocharged their impact by passing the misnamed Human Rights Act. She said I'm surprised they didn't call it the Criminal Rights Act.

Phoebe:

Wow.

Rachel:

And later on in her speech, she returned to the theme of human rights, warning about how, under labor, britain would go properly woke. Things are bad enough already. We see it in parts of Whitehall and museums and galleries, in the police and even in leading companies in the city. Under the banner of diversity, equality and inclusion, official policies have been embedded that distort the whole purpose of these institutions, and this, this is the worst bit.

Phoebe:

Yeah.

Rachel:

Highly controversial ideas are presented to the workforce and to the public as if their motherhood and apple pie Gender ideologies. That word again White privilege, anti-british history. And the evidence demonstrates that if you don't challenge this poison, things get worse.

Phoebe:

Oh, she's borrowed talking points about critical race theory from the US. Just being completely racist. You sent me a tweet by Ian Banks and it's a lovely quote and I'm going to read it out. Go for it. I'm not arguing. There are no decent people in the Atari party but they're like bits of sweet corn in a turd. Technically they've kept their integrity, but they're still embedded in shit. They really don't sound a bit like that. Yeah, and speaking of sweet corn, they did actually throw someone out of the conference, didn't they? They?

Rachel:

did. Yeah, not everyone was happy with what Cruella was saying, although she, at the end of her speech, received the standing avation, much like Rishi.

Phoebe:

Feels expected and automatic.

Rachel:

Yeah, the Conservative London Assembly Chairman, Andrew Boff. He was escorted out of her speech and it was meant to be for heckling, but I don't think it was really counted as heckling because he was heard quietly saying to himself there's no such thing as gender ideology.

Phoebe:

Oh yeah.

Rachel:

And he was escorted out by police. Wow, yeah, but all that did, yes, was highlight what he wanted to say, because waiting just outside the conference, well news crews, no kidding.

Annelise Dodds:

Yeah.

Rachel:

He said exactly what he felt about Cruella's speech.

Phoebe:

Do you have that audio? Yeah, oh, let's roll it, let's do it.

Andrew Boff:

Gender ideology doesn't exist. Gender ideology that phrase is used by people who say I don't like, who want to say I don't like trans people, but realize that they're not allowed to say that because a trans person is an individual. And every time they use these phrases all this culture, wars, stuff yeah, they were talking people.

Rachel:

Yeah, that was Andrew Boff and you know it's strange. He's a prominent conservative party member and an openly gay politician. And then another interview. He said this home secretary was basically vilifying gay people and trans people by this attack on LGBT ideology or gender ideology. It is ridiculous. But the thing I don't get he sounds like a decent person who stands up for trans rights and he's been a member of the Conservative Party for decades.

Phoebe:

Yes, and he also said the Conservative Party stands up for equality, which seems anything but the case. Well, I have to wonder what he thought about Steve Barkley.

Rachel:

The health secretary. He was saying that he's going to do the very important thing of not hire more doctors, pay nurses more, find more beds all the important things in the NHS. You know what he's doing in the NHS. What is he doing? Well, one of the things he was very proud of is to remove or woke speech and language from NHS websites and to stop NHS staff offering their pronouns to patients when they first interact with them.

Phoebe:

Because Does that cost?

Rachel:

No. No but Taking away resources.

Rachel:

In. What he's doing in this is taking away a perfectly inclusive language and replacing it with not inclusive language, but on top of that he says that he's going to ban trans women from women-only wards. You or I went into hospital under Steve's new regime. We would go into a male ward. This is despite Right. No woman ever Let me just make that clear no woman ever complaining in 102 hospitals or 102 areas. They checked and no woman ever made a complaint against a transgender woman being in the same ward as them.

Phoebe:

Oh, that's what they've done, isn't it? They've turned us into the Spurgy people who are always a threat just by existing, even though it hasn't actually happened. I wonder how they're going to find all the money to have separate wards, the extra beds, the extra rooms. Hospitals are a finite size.

Rachel:

Yeah, but the interesting thing about this is, although he's come out and said that, there's been several law experts that have sort of said well, actually you can't do that Because we have protected rights under the Equalities Act of 2010. So this then harkens back to when they were trying to change the wording of that to Biological sex, biological sex.

Phoebe:

Yeah.

Rachel:

Yeah, so which all loops back into them, and they're the anti trans people that they've inserted into the EHRC.

Phoebe:

So biological sex is interesting, isn't it? Because most of us don't know our DNA, our chromosomes, and that's just one part of the determination of what becomes our actual sex and that observable sex, let's say we're given a sex at birth assigned to sex which is made through observation and it's not always correct. And, for example, when the Olympics brought in chromosomal testing for athletes, they found a whole lot of female athletes who were not the ideal set of DNA. Yeah, so they had to stop doing that. Of course, now there's a call to have that done at every instance Before you use a toilet. Public toilet would be ideal Little pinprick blood tick.

Rachel:

Yeah, Then let you in.

Phoebe:

Yeah, that's it. Yeah, yeah. So biological sex doesn't actually have a meaning, not one that's legally defined anywhere. No, so it's very difficult to understand how they do that. Now the EHRC could, if the withdrawal is done from the UN, make whatever changes they want, because they no longer have some body that's looking at them and, as we discussed in the last episode, making reports saying they're just finding ways to discriminate. They've forgotten what they're actually meant to do. And now it's just how do we allow the government to legally discriminate? And they may well do that, but where's the silver lining in this? It's going to be very difficult, right?

Rachel:

Yeah, I was going to get around to that, despite everything that's happened at the moment. You know, we've got some more hate to touch on. I don't know if you want to get into that now in the form of Graham Weynum. Oh, weynum, yeah, yeah. So, along with all of the transphobia coming out from the government, this has been a two-pronged attack, and I'm you know. When I think about it, I wonder if there was some kind of planning in the timing of Weynum's press tour for his book. Yes, yeah, so we've had daily reports and excerpts from Graham Weynum's book.

Phoebe:

Yeah, best known for the Father Ted and the IT crowd. They used to love the IT crowd. Yeah, me too, yeah, and he's has been involved in other things since, but nothing as big as those two. And they were a long time ago. They go back 20 and 25 years. Yeah, he now likes to say he's being cancelled, but I think his career kind of stopped ran out of steam at some point.

Phoebe:

Yeah, now the thing that happened with him is that the IT crowd has one episode in there which is very transphobic and I remember seeing it before I'd even accepted who I was and going, wow, this is just off. There was a rerun in 2013, where he was criticised for it. The critic said it used I'm reading from his wiki here used gender stereotypes and trivialised violence against transgender women. Now the wiki also says that he's become involved in anti-transgender activism. He jumps into wiki and tries to change that every now and then to he's a woman's rights campaigner, but it changes back very, very quickly because he is absolutely not. He likes to say he is, but that's the same way that the politicians say they're protecting women's rights by restricting access to abortion.

Rachel:

And, funnily enough, didn't he actually talk at the conference? One of the events connected to the conference, I think he was. That was where he said that his agent ties with him because he criticised David Tennant, a story that we covered a little while back. Yeah, yeah, we did, but since then he was appearing on a panel related to the Tory party conference. I don't know how these things work, but he was up in Manchester anyway, I think, and he opened it by saying that, poor me, I've been dropped by my agent, who happened to be the same agent that David Tennant uses.

Phoebe:

Right, a really big agent actually.

Rachel:

And I think the words that Lyonham used were because I criticised David Tennant. That's why he's been dropped. And obviously David Tennant pulls in more money for the agency. So you know, push comes to shove, they get rid of the little guy. That's basically what he's saying. Poor me, the woke agency has pushed me out because I criticised David Tennant and when actually criticised, he's a pretty light term of what he said.

Phoebe:

Yeah blasphemed.

Rachel:

He called him a pedophile. Yeah, groomer, that was a Groomer, wasn't it? Yeah, insinuated he was a pedophile. Called him a groomer? Yeah, but yeah, it's not his fault. You know he criticised these people and he makes these comments and he stands by them all, but none of it is his fault.

Phoebe:

None of it is his fault, that's true. I want to read you out a piece from the Daily Mail. I know, I know, but they were popping out these excerpts from his blog. Yeah, we had a good laugh, didn't we reading some of this we did. I'm just going to find it.

Rachel:

Oh, I've just read here as well that, wyman, he did in fact tend to the party conference in Manchester. He was originally refused to pass and he was moaning about that. He claimed he'd been refused to pass this year's Conservative Party Conference taking place in Manchester before the party chairman stepped in to reverse the decision. No way, he said he'd made a subject access request to Greater Manchester Police to find out why it initially been blocked and they said it does not make decisions on conference accreditation.

Phoebe:

So Lynam likes to play the victim. It says I lost my career, my wife, friends and reputation when I was engulfed by a tsunami of trans rights madness. None of this was from his own doing. He was merely trying to protect his daughters, who his wife has taken from him. Because he became so obsessed with his people Because he became so obsessed. Yeah, yeah.

Rachel:

It actually led to the breakdown in his marriage, yeah, and now has fueled his hatred for us because he actually said in his book, apparently, that he will not rest. I could never be confident of having a job again until the entire gender ideology movement, which has caused so much misery, was burnt to ashes.

Phoebe:

Lovely. So he called David Tennant a groomer insinuating pedophilia. Yeah, he said the world should remember Daniel Radcliffe, emma Watson and Rupert Grinter's arrogant, ungrateful cowards. But turning on JK Rowling and Trans Row, because they just don't agree with her and say they have an opinion. Yeah, as adults, as adults. Yeah, lynam likes to pretend that he's some sort of innocent bystander who's been engulfed by this wave of trans activism. He's terrorist. He calls us terrorists. He's only crime standing up for women.

Rachel:

Yeah.

Phoebe:

Yeah, but meanwhile every single day he's on Twitter calling us pedophiles or the slang here, nonces.

Rachel:

He's constantly derogatory and what he actually says was he said my feeling is I can't, because it's too important. It's too important to the women in my life and it's too important to me. I'm now in a position where I can answer the question honestly of if you were around at the time of something terrible happening like Nazism, would you be one of the people who said this is wrong, despite being opposed? He feels happy in himself that he's been one of the people saying no, this is wrong, despite everyone telling him not to. Yeah, that's where the reference comes from. Yeah, so he actually feels like we are as bad a blight on history as the Nazis.

Phoebe:

Maybe this is why his version of cancelled is that his friends stopped returning his calls. He's become a particularly vile individual, whilst pretending that he's not, and he likes to claim that he was cancelled even though he hasn't done much work recently. I think I'm quoting from his book here Friends were ghosting and blanking me, not returning calls, giving my wife grief on the phone, writing nasty letters about the importance of kindness.

Rachel:

Nasty letters about kindness. Yes, the importance of kindness.

Phoebe:

Wow, If only he paid more attention.

Rachel:

Yeah but he's just another voice. They are a loud minority. People like him. Posi Parker, the thing I said to you earlier all of this is happening. Wynhem, the Tories, everything that's happening. Yeah, it seems really bad at the moment.

Phoebe:

Yeah.

Rachel:

But if you didn't watch the news, if you didn't go on social media and you just went out into the world, I think it would be a lot brighter place, because you wouldn't know any of this is going on Right. Real life experience suggests that people are okay with trans people. I walk around the town and experience very little in the way of hostility. I hardly experience anything anymore. Sometimes you might get the odd look, but there's nothing's bad as bad as this would suggest.

Phoebe:

Yes, this isn't the real world?

Rachel:

No, no, this is the crucible of social media and online media, where everything's blown out of proportion.

Phoebe:

Yeah.

Rachel:

An amplified echo chamber. Yeah, powder keg, what else can I call it?

Phoebe:

I don't know, but I think it's like can we drop the transphobia and just treat us with a little misogyny? Yeah, that happens to me at work, yeah.

Rachel:

Yeah, you mean your current work. Yeah, my sorry, that happens to me at my current work.

Phoebe:

Yeah.

Rachel:

Just the other night. Yeah, it's great.

Phoebe:

Oh, goodness, okay, so where are we at? Oh?

Rachel:

should we recap Our dossier of height?

Phoebe:

Yeah, let's do that. That should be fun.

Rachel:

Okay, so Rishi denies we exist. Braverman denies asylum rights. And just generally, the Tory party all hating on us.

Phoebe:

Yeah, yeah. It's their platform, isn't it? So the Tories are on tape saying trans issues are their reelection strategy, because they have nothing else to offer. No plan, no plan. The presidential candidates in the US promise blanket bands. At least there were two of them doing that, yeah.

Rachel:

With the 23 states and counting, already banned healthcare for trans minors.

Phoebe:

Yeah.

Rachel:

Wyman blames us for a cancellation that seems to be more about him not having done much of note for the past 20 years and the children's author.

Phoebe:

Oh, you mean she who must not be named? Yes, yes, don't say it. She once claimed to quote love. Trans people would march in support of us. Now denies a core tenant of our existence.

Rachel:

And while this seems remote and should have little daily impact, the hate shown takes root, emboldening the bullies, sometimes the tragic effect.

Phoebe:

Right, so just a little note briefly, for the next moment we'll be talking about suicide. Just this weekend, a tweet by the mother of a 14 year old trans boy went viral after he took his own life due to online bullying.

Rachel:

She wrote. This is my 14 year old son, corey. Today he died. He was successful in his attempt to end his life. Despite family support, he was still targeted and suffered anti-trans hate online GC people. This is the reality of your bigotry. I hope you are proud. Hashtag protect trans kids.

Phoebe:

Now she had an outpouring of love and support. There were many, many messages. It went viral, but it went viral for other reasons.

Rachel:

Yeah, it wasn't just love and support she received. She attracted the attention of the aforementioned GCs, many of them blaming her for her son's death, and this, in turn, caused her to delete her own account.

Phoebe:

Right after they actually doxxed her as well, and I remember seeing a tweet from her saying what does this doxxing mean? She didn't even know what was happening at the time, while they were lining up their attack.

Rachel:

Do you want to explain what doxxing is for an audience, in case they don't know? Good, point.

Phoebe:

It's leaking someone's private address, their residential address, which has too often also led to hate crimes against them.

Rachel:

Yeah, the core isn't the only one. Too many trans youth end their lives after suffering online harassment or a lack of treatment, or have them ended by violent assault.

Phoebe:

Right, and on that, the FBI has just released its report showing that attacks based on gender identity are up 32.9% from the prior year.

Rachel:

The president of the Human Rights Council, Kelly Robinson, described the spike in anti-LGBTQ plus hate crimes as alarming but not unexpected.

Phoebe:

He continued. The constant stream of hostile rhetoric from French anti-equality figures, alongside the relentless passage of discriminatory bills, particularly those targeting transgender individuals, in state legislatures, created an environment where it was sadly foreseeable that individuals with violent tendencies might respond to this rhetoric, and you know, that's why we led this episode off with the speech by Rishi Sunak. Yes, this is what becomes of that.

Rachel:

Yeah, their actions have consequences, but unfortunately the consequences they don't see. It's the trans community that has to bear the brunt of their lies, basically.

Phoebe:

And sometimes it's just someone winding down a car window and shouting hateful things as they drive by, and other times it's much, much worse, ending in death. But we did promise a silver lining. We did.

Rachel:

Ready. So where is the silver lining? Hmm?

Phoebe:

well, I think the first thing is that there are hints of a backlash.

Rachel:

Oh yeah, you had a really good analogy about this. Do you want to do it?

Phoebe:

Sure. So if we consider the state of trans love and trans hate, as a ship, it leans over one way or the other. There is always a kill that will keep it steady, that will write it. This kill is in many ways, the common sense that Rishi Sunak was referring to, except he assumed it went a different way. Now there has been a prevailing wind, the ship has been leaning over, but this backlash is showing that it may just be writing itself.

Phoebe:

For one thing. Right after Sunak's speech, the Tories plummeted five points in the polls, and they're already way, way, way down below labor in the UK.

Rachel:

Yeah, there's actually quite a lot of pushback against what he said, a lot of support.

Phoebe:

Yeah.

Rachel:

There was a letter from Stonewall, signed by around 250 organisations, objecting to what he had said, and you know there's been an outpouring of love for trans people. I've definitely seen it on Twitter and my other social media accounts. But that was what the Conservatives said. Did Labour have anything to say? Because they had their conference right after the Tories, so surely they had plenty of opportunity to counteract what the Tories had been saying.

Phoebe:

Yes, and whilst you would hope that this might have come from the top, from Kier Stammer, he seems to be a bit pussyfooting right now, best way to put it. I think yeah. Instead, they left it to Annalise Dobbs, labour's shadow secretary of state for women and equalities. She counted with this.

Annelise Dodds:

It's been a difficult year for many LGBT plus people Rising hate crime, including physical attacks, a Tory government that treats their lives and their rights as a political football and a Prime Minister who sees them as a cheap plunge line. Labour will never do that. We believe everyone deserves to be accepted without exception and treated with respect and dignity. That's why we will tackle the rising tide of hate with stronger laws, so those who carry out anti-LGBT plus hate crime get the tougher sentences they deserve. We will deliver where the Conservatives have failed by bringing in a full no-loop polls, trans-inclusive ban on conversion therapy. In conference, we will modernise the gender recognition law to a new process, while continuing to support the Implementation of the Equality Act that protects everyone.

Phoebe:

And though Starmer did not back her up specifically with any plan, we hope this shows a sign that the winds have changed, the tide is turning, the ship is riding itself and we might be heading into fairer weather. Yeah.

Rachel:

Yeah, and there's been more positive signs as well. One of our favourite transpirations, india Willoughby. Yes, she was nominated for the Women of the Year Award, the first ever trans woman.

Phoebe:

Yes.

Rachel:

To be nominated. This award has been running since 1955. Yeah, like I said, she becomes the first transgender nominee, and the Women of the Year is a not-for-profit organisation run by a dedicated committee of volunteers.

Phoebe:

So what I loved about this is that India was nominated by an all cis woman panel. Yeah, take that, haters.

Rachel:

Yeah, but it's not just India. There's news of another transpiration, another one of our favourite transpirations, right, dylan Mulvaney? Yes, she is living her best life as the first trans woman to win Attitude magazine's Women of the.

Phoebe:

Year Award. Dylan, of course, got her start with her 365 days of girlhood TikTok series, and what a meteoric rise it has been. She gained even greater prominence because of Bud Light and idiots shooting cans of beer, and so forth, and Nike as well.

Rachel:

Remember Nike's and other sports. Bra.

Phoebe:

Yep.

Rachel:

And they were called for Nike to be boycotted. Yeah, do you see? Boycotts, yeah.

Phoebe:

Oh, we haven't had one this episode because it's not a normal episode. She said that she was delighted to receive the LGBTQ plus publications award for her work in sharing trans joy and positivity, which she does to a T. She also delivered a powerful message of love and acceptance at the ceremony.

Rachel:

To the trans youth out there in America, in the UK and beyond. I love you, I support you. Stay with us. You are so worthy of love. I'm so proud of you. I love you.

Phoebe:

We love it too, and we love you, our listeners, absolutely. So I think this concludes this special episode. Not quite, aha, there's always something more, always something more.

Rachel:

So we've listed the hate, we've listed the silver lining and you know, trans people have been around forever, yeah, and we're not going anywhere. We're going to stay and we will always exist, no matter what, absolutely. But this is going out to our cis listeners in particular. Okay, now, recently I've read a great book you gave it to me, actually called Begin Transmission. It's a trans allegory of the entire four matrix films written by the excellent Tilly Bridges, and I recommend everybody should read this book.

Phoebe:

Another trans author.

Rachel:

Another trans author. Another trans author. Yeah, if you're cis, read it, you know, because it's like a little guidebook of how you can help us and it helps you understand what it's like to be trans. And if you're trans, definitely read it, because obviously you already know about the matrix, but there's so much more in there.

Rachel:

Why I bring it up now is because she specifically mentions there's a part in the book and she's talking about cis allies and how they need to stand with us. She says if you're not with us, you're one of them. If you're not actively helping us, you're actively hurting us. And she also says that if there's one person and four Nazis sitting at a table, then there are five Nazis sitting at that table, right. In other words, if you just if you're an active bystander and you're just going along with the status quo, you're against us, you're not helping us. Yeah, you're part of the problem. We are a minority and we can't win this fight alone. We need allies to stand up against the hate. Call it out when you see it.

Rachel:

Only when there is pushback from voices outside the trans community will the bigoted politicians and media realize their lies and false panic isn't working In real life. Out on the streets, away from the internet and the media, life is normal. I can walk around town freely. There's no evidence that people care whether I'm trans. I can chat with other women in front of the mirror in the bathrooms, discuss the weather with a man in my GP's waiting room. The hate experienced online is just a loud minority and doesn't affect the real world. And that's an interesting point, because I said, we're a minority, but the GCs are also a minority, but they're the ones making the most noise yes, and we all need to pull together to silence them and help everyone see the common sense that trans women are women, trans men are men. It's just common sense.

Phoebe:

That was very, very powerful. I love it. It's not a call to arms, it is a call to allies.

Rachel:

Yes, yeah, but read the book Definitely. And that's it for this episode of the Joy Tuck Club. We want to thank you, our listeners, for tuning in and being part of the community. If you want to talk to us about anything that we've touched on in this episode, where can I reach us Phoebes?

Phoebe:

At 2DampTrans, which is our handle on Twitter, blue Sky threads and whatever's coming up next.

Rachel:

Linktree, linktree, linktree is all on Linktree. Just go onto Linktree, search for 2DampTrans and you'll find links to everything else. I think we've even got social media platforms on there that I haven't even signed us up to. Oh well. Youtube YouTube, tiktok, instagram, yeah, they're all on there. Fb, yeah, at 2DampTrans, yeah.

Phoebe:

And please don't forget to subscribe and rate us on Spotify, Apple or wherever you listen to PodPass.

Rachel:

We're on all the popular platforms there and, of course, as always, some of the unpopular ones too. We appreciate your feedback and support, and so till next time. Remember you are valid, you are beautiful and you are transcending boundaries.

Phoebe:

Bye.

Rachel:

Bye, bye, bye.

People on this episode

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Phoebe du Maurier

Co-host
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Rachel Fishwick

Co-host