Member-only story
Three wasted years
Derailed by a bunch of self-absorbed women whose only response to a proposal to make life easier for trans people was to talk about themselves, it was foregone conclusion that the GRA consultation would do nothing to address the large and growing issues at the heart of the Gender Recognition Act
How do I feel about yesterday’s damp squib of an announcement on Gender Recognition reform? Inevitably, the ink was barely dry on the statement from the Minister for Inequalities when the usual posse of chancers and ne’er-do-wells, aka the Fourth Estate, was texting me, asking for “a reaction”. For that is all I am to most of them: a “reaction”; a handy tag on which to build a re-reaction and thence a dramatic confrontation with anti-trans ideologues.
Does it matter that I might be unhappy, upset? If being trans has taught me one thing, it is this: that the vast majority of journalists do next to zero research before launching themselves at a subject. What they lack in awareness, they yet make up in ballsy self-confidence and the knowledge that they control the exchange in the studio, and in the edit suite after.
Relief — and disappointment
In fact, I was not that upset. Relieved, yes. Because the myth of what Gender Recognition Act (GRA) reform…
