Transvox - The EHRC Guidance and how to Respond

[00:00:05] Hi and welcome back to Transvox and in front of me resplendent from two weeks holiday is my colleague Jenny Harvey. Not only Jenny Harvey but the one and only Jenny Harvey. How are you, Jen? I'm very well thanks, Gill. I mean it's two weeks holiday from the part but not a holiday from work I'm afraid. And there is another Jenny Harvey because there's another one that works for my employer.

[00:00:28] It's not often you meet somebody. I used to go, they worked on reception, I used to go into reception every day and say hello Jenny Harvey. Hoping she would say hello Jenny Harvey back at me. But I think she just thought it was a bit weird. But very nice lady, Scottish lady. I can't hear anyone rushing to disagree with the story a bit weird. Definitely true. And, but yes I aren't the only one, but I'm the only one here today. Anyway how are you, Gill? How are you?

[00:00:53] I'm good. I'm good. I enjoyed hosting two different people, but it's always nice to see you or be back in the warm familiar bosom of the real Transvox which is the pair of us. I love holding people to my bosom. Anyway, look, I wanted to give you an interesting start. Oh, please do.

[00:01:10] I've been doing some maths. And I reckon, based on last year's figures and the fact we're halfway through this year and assuming no increase, there have been around 55,000 incidences of crimes, sexual or violent crimes committed against women and girls by men. Okay. That's horrible isn't it? Awesome. And there have been approximately none committed by trans people. Yeah.

[00:01:38] But however, we need to protect the UK population. And as there was a, as we both know, the Supreme Court decided to take this issue by the throat and clarify things. The EHRC decided to make things even better by giving interim guidance and have now embarked on a series of consultations with a massive, supposedly a set of invitations to organizations, allowing people to come and fill in this consultation.

[00:02:05] And of course, the first thing is that no one's been invited, not a single trans organization has received an invite, but we've all discovered where it is. It's a bit like the old Douglas Adams thing about the planning laws for the planet being demolished, being downstairs under on the bottom drawer and a lock filing cabinet, God by a leopard. I think it was something like that. That's something like that, but it was always on display. Yes.

[00:02:26] Clearly they haven't been encouraging, I guess it seems to me, the government or the Equality and Human Rights Commission in people to respond, but it is there. So I think you can go on the website to just go onto Equality and Human Rights Commission. If you Google that with consultation, you'll find the page and you can respond as an individual or an organization, can't you? And is it the end of June to close in date? The end of June. But let's remember that this is all about protecting women and girls.

[00:02:55] So all this effort is about women and girls. Remember that. And it's the irony, isn't it? And I think it's what's so galling for us trans people because we have to respond to this thing. Yes, that's what they'll say. It was about women and girls. The truth of the matter is, the Supreme Court judgment was brought, was to do with whether a trans woman could sit on a health board. It was about admin and politics and stuff. That wasn't about, but so that was what they were asked to define.

[00:03:23] What seems to be has gone well beyond that. So that was all about whether a trans woman could sit on a, in a public position as a woman, right? It wasn't about, that wasn't about safety or any other stuff, which obviously is what the anti-trans groups try and pretend is the issue.

[00:03:41] What the Equality Human Rights Commission done in their initial vomited statement and subsequent consultation is they're just going into all that stuff about somehow there's a threat in having trans rights. But also it goes beyond that because it also talks, it also marginalizes trans men, it changes sexual. It does so much, so there's so much beyond that. But we always, I think it's always worth coming back to this. I was thinking about this when we were looking at the consultation.

[00:04:12] I think it's important we do it, but it's all predicated on a mistruth and a sort of conflated trans panic. It's not based on anything substantive that this needs doing. This change in the guidance that they're submitting for how we work in the UK, how the law works is not any demonstratable need for it, be that safety or anything else. It's been working fine for years. It's been working fine for years. Yeah.

[00:04:41] And it's important to say that actually National Council for Civil Liberties, I think known as Liberty now, aren't they? Yes. They're trying to, we've extended the times that helped them. They're basically launching a case basically saying this breaches human rights. And I think, you know, these, there's a couple of different legal cases which are attacking both the Supreme Court ruling and the EHRC. Because actually normal consultation should be 12 weeks. And this was originally two weeks. Yes. And now it's been put into six weeks.

[00:05:11] So I think there's still, I mean, they're committing every single mistake in the book in terms of its own, you know, jurisprudence. And there is a legal duty for them to actually follow their own laws. And I think it was very funny this week because I think the Good Law Project were moved on for protesting completely legally outside the EHRC offices. And they're saying it's quite interesting that the guardians of free speech are the ones closing down free speech for demonstrations outside of their office. But I think what you're saying here is absolutely critical.

[00:05:38] The reasons for it, for the reasons for the consultation are shrouded in all sorts of cant and falsehoods and such. But it's really important we do it. We have to do it. And a lot of people are saying we should boycott it, but it's just a terrible mistake to boycott these things. No, no. We have to do it. I think it's interesting you mentioned the human rights because I was doing a presentation on the law within my employer and looking back about the law over the last sort of 15, 20 years.

[00:06:06] And it was, I think it was Goodwin versus United Kingdom that went to the European Court of Human Rights on the basis of disclosing somebody's gender identity through national insurance numbers, this was.

[00:06:46] It's still an issue. This is definitely trans rights or human rights. Yeah. Interesting, isn't it? And I think, I think good, the good law project is an organization that has its critics, but it's another organization that is visibly and effectively and powerfully campaigning for all sorts of rights for us. And I think it's doing good work.

[00:07:09] It's highlighting the sort of issues around West Streeting and the degree to which West Streeting is supposedly accepting a lot of money from private health and such. But it's also fighting the cases for the trans community. And they launched a massive funding campaign. And what they've done is got a lot of funding to be able to start raising different cases. And they're now looking at different cases against HRC, Supreme Court and such and various places around the country, organizations who have been carrying out the law.

[00:07:37] Because actually, the reason you can see that, the reason that organizations might have taken HRC advice was a risk of litigation from non-trans people. I think that maybe, I think a lot of them just weren't thinking it through as well. Most NHS trusts, from my understanding, haven't acted on it, on the interim advice. I know a couple have. And I think it was just, in a sense, maybe they took some legal advice and did that without thinking it through. There's no reason for you to change what you do.

[00:08:05] But I think, I think you're absolutely right, though, in terms of we have to get the responses in. And that, that needs to be from obviously our community, but organizations and people who aren't our allies. I'm going to be saying to my friends, if you care about our lives, I know it can be onerous, please try and take a bit of time to, to engage in this.

[00:08:27] And I'd encourage any listener who's got friends and family to get them to do responses, because whether it does change things or not, it's difficult to know. And we could be cynical about it, but doing nothing certainly weren't. I think you're right. And I think, I personally think that it probably has more power that organizations are responding. So if you work for an organization, being able to use their email or whatever, obviously having cleared it with them first, I think is powerful. And let's just be really clear.

[00:08:53] Sex Matters and the gender criticals are also out there pushing their communities to fill in the guidance in a diametrically opposite way to ours, focusing on this idea that. And let's be really clear about this, Jen. It's not just an attack on trans people. It's an attack on gay and lesbian people as well. And the definition is sexual orientation. It's an attack on everybody. We know that, so it's an attack on everybody.

[00:09:18] We know that this is going to lead to, to people, to, to women who don't present traditionally feminine being challenged. We know that we've already seen that there's a risk. Trans men might end up having, if there are two single services, one for an organization provides services for men and women, like two separate groups. A trans man might be excluded from both. For instance, people's sexuality seems to be, they seem to be suggested in their guidance that it would be based on biological sex.

[00:09:47] I know loads of gay people and their sexuality is not biological sex. Some it is. Some gay men will be attracted to biological men. Some gay men will be attracted to masculine people, gender. My friend said to me, I've read that and it's different. Suddenly I'm bisexual now because of what this act said. So, but we need desperately, I think, people to engage in it. I think you don't have to do every part of it, do you, Jill? You can pick and choose which bits you respond to. Is that right? I think it's interesting. I think there's two or three things to think about.

[00:10:16] First of all, there's a bunch of organizations like Transactual, LGBT Foundation have published guidance on how to complete it. And I think it's worth having a great look at that. And what they say is if you've only got 10 minutes, do these things. If you've got 20 minutes, do this. You've got 30, do this. Excellent. And I think, you know, what's really interesting here, I think, personally, I filled it in from a corporate perspective. And I focus very heavily on the comments about the cost to business because actually the cost of this bureaucracy is actually very high for organizations.

[00:10:45] And especially at the time when the Labour government's going for growth, allegedly. Actually, this is yet another layer of bureaucracy they're putting in place. Now, it may well be the case that the emotive stories and such like I think are going to be important. They're going to have an impact. But I think on an audience that's not really interested in listening to those stories, I think going to hard facts, going to things which affect the actual government are the things which actually they're going to listen to. And I think that's really clear and important.

[00:11:14] So from my perspective, a big focus of my written statements were about that. So what happens is you get the opportunity to answer a question. You can take yes or no. If you say no, then you can't do anything about it. And then it basically asks whether the guidance itself is clear, which are held in additional documents on the side. You don't really need to read them to actually understand it. It's obvious from the descriptions of things what's going on. And then you can submit some evidence and you can, as you said, Jen, you can submit as an organization or you can submit as an individual.

[00:11:44] And it's something like I think there's 40 or 50 questions. Are there something like that? There is. I think what was interesting, we started this off and when I started it, we were going through it as an organization. Actually, some of it sounded, some of the stuff in the first few are not unsensible. There was one or two things. And you're going through this and you think, oh, it's not too bad. And then actually there's a third, now an infamous chapter 13 that has loads of really crazy problematical stuff in it and takes you ages.

[00:12:12] So you go through these and think I'm making good progress. And then suddenly, because you're absolutely right. So there is a section on sport, but our organization doesn't provide competitive sports. So we're not going to. Single sex services. Single sex services. Single sex services we do. And there are. And then you're definitely right in terms of some of the potential costs and I'm in around this, but just how unworkable. You're right. They give examples, don't they, through the guides of things.

[00:12:37] One of them early on is about, do they think a receptionist, for instance, should make a judgment about who's coming into a place, a service, about whether they're trans or not. And if that receptionist believes they're trans, would ask them what their birth sex is. Yeah. But they need to do that without being insulting or offensive insulting. It's impossible because if you're making, and certainly for my members who work on reception, if you're asking them to make judgments on people. Right.

[00:13:06] And how on earth is that not? How on earth is that not insulting to say to a trans woman, particularly, I don't think you pass well enough. I don't think you're not woman enough. Or a cis woman. Or a cis woman. Or a cis woman as well. Even worse. Imagine if you're a cis woman and you're walking into a place and someone says to you, are you really a woman? It's unbelievable, isn't it? So there's no way to do it without it being insulting and humiliating. And there's no way I believe that, I represent members of the world, but I hope our staff are going to want to do that.

[00:13:36] Make that judgment. Yeah. It is, it is good. That's before actually. It does. And before you actually exclude anybody. Because that's the whole nonsense of this is, nobody knows who's trans. We don't have data about it. Unless we're all going to wear badges, who knows who's trans? So you're going to have, somebody at some point is going to have to make a judgment based on aesthetics. Because they're not going to be asking everybody to produce the birth certificate. And I think this is the challenge we've always had in our population, isn't it?

[00:14:03] This idea of being trans enough or being passable enough. So for someone like myself, I'm not passable. And I am unashamedly trans and I'll say I'm a trans woman and I don't pretend otherwise. And I speak at conferences and I say, I'm the enemy within that. I'm the sort of person you're trying to get rid of. I'm a trans woman. But there are, and what it's doing, it's, there are a bunches of trans women who have been transitioned for a long time. And they do pass. They become comfortable in their lives.

[00:14:32] And it's not always about how pretty you are or how you dress or whatever. Sometimes that inner confidence of just being used to being out and yourself for a long period of time. As there are also younger people who are maybe had puberty brokers and such, and they've actually been able to transition and it's never going to be an issue for them. So it's really focusing. It's really creating a problem with people who are new to transition or to who are a bit older and have had hormone poisoning for a longer period.

[00:15:02] Trans men and trans women. It definitely does. I don't, I'll say the word, I don't like the word. I find a better word because it implies somebody is trying to be something they're not. But when we're talking about aesthetic, you're absolutely right. You talk about those judgments that people make and try and make that judgment. Well, it actually says, and there's a question later on when it's looking at services and looking, and I think it gives an example about whether you would exclude a trans woman from a women-only group, for instance.

[00:15:30] And part of it talks about you might want to weigh your presentation. So basically it is insane that, and they're talking there about the discomfort or dignity of others. So basically they're saying that if you don't look typically pretty enough, you don't look typically male enough, right? If you're a trans man, that judgment should be made about whether you should be allowed to come in because you might make other people feel icky or something.

[00:15:56] It's at that base level of stuff that, in a sense, all of us, when we transition, worried about and struggled with about being accepted. And I remember when I transitioned, I had that.

[00:16:08] And I think my heart breaks for people thinking about transitioning now, because if I was in that position, would I be strong enough if this, if what is in this became becomes what how society works, that judgments are being made about you every time you go into a building or access a service or anything else? Yes, but that's what I mean.

[00:16:29] It's women who look punky or short or a bit tall or just judgy or trans or men who look a bit more offensive might be asked their birth sex because they… But the annoying thing is that, and I really bang on about the rights of intersex people and more intersex people than trans people, and their rights have been absolutely wiped out by this legislation. And as for non-binary people, they have been absolutely erased. There's no shape or… You're absolutely right in that.

[00:16:58] And you're right, it could affect all people. It definitely affects us. When talking about transition, I was looking at this and thinking, would I be brave enough to transition if I was going to be faced with not being able to just live and be accepted? Because there was no doubt when I transitioned, I was nervous about some things, but I knew I was able to access women's space without any… Everything was on the side because there's never needed to be. And the stuff I really value, particularly when I first transitioned, socially, about socialising with other women…

[00:17:28] For instance, I remember with other women, went along to a women-only swimming session, right? With a group of friends. Would I now be said, oh, you can't go with your group of friends now because you're not actually one of the group of friends? I was thinking about this really deeply, about how the sense of belonging when I transition, particularly about socialising with other women… And I had a women friends, great group, and I was one of the gang. I wasn't… It was never an issue that my gender history was different than theirs.

[00:17:56] And it does break my heart to think people are facing that now because I'm not sure I'd have been brave enough. And it's hard to say that. If I was facing what could come out of this, not just the law, but how society works, the default is that we're not allowed into spaces. It's awful to think about. I mean, I would have still transitioned, but I would have thought a long and hard for it.

[00:18:23] I knew it was always going to be difficult, but at least I knew that the law was on the side, really, that the law… Nobody was going to be trying to kick me out. I don't know, Jill. I don't know. I mean, is that how you're feeling, personally? Because as somebody who's more new to transition, yeah? Yeah. It must be horrible to have to… I think it's a real problem. I think actually it's a genuine problem, especially for older trans women. I think it's a genuine problem. And I have talked to… Because I work in a charity that helps trans people.

[00:18:50] I'm talking to people who are just putting off transition for the moment. They're actually not starting, or they have started and they're deciding to unwind for the short term, or just go underground. And it's a problem. It is a real problem. It's heartbreaking. Our network… We had a network meeting and there was somebody in the network who's non-binary and said, I feel like maybe I just don't bother trying to tell… Explain to people now. Yeah. And go back into the closet.

[00:19:19] There was a… We've got a friend, a trans woman who transitioned in the 90s, who's living their life… And I think only one person knows at work. Is now worried about the fact that they might not be able to provide services to women. But heartbreaking said to me… This has got a young daughter… Her daughter said to me, you'd still be able to take me into the public toilets when I go in. She takes a daughter in, right? It's heartbreaking to hear those stories. However, we also need to be balanced with this.

[00:19:49] And I'm not saying it's raining and let's bring an expert outside and saying it's not. But the process for this… Someone was explaining to me the other day the process for this. So what happens is the consultation… Whatever happens, the guidance from the consultation, there is a recommendation produced by the HRC. That has to sit, I think, for 40 nights or 40 days as a piece of legislation before it can be enacted. Oh, right. And government has to vote on this because it effectively is affecting a government act of parliament. So there are… And then it goes to laws and it comes back.

[00:20:19] And we know the lords are pretty anti-trans people, given the recent legislation on data that the lords have passed again. But what we do know is that there's a long way before this actually becomes litigious, which means this. Which means that the vast majority of trans organisations are recommending we fill all this documentation in. And what we do is we have to accept it's going to take a long time. It's going to be a grindingly long process to probably get what we want,

[00:20:46] which means there's got to be a lot of discomfort and there's going to be a lot of angst, as you're just talking about there, Jane. But actually, the chances are we're more likely to get what we want if this process is strung out. And there are lots of appeals and objections and all that sort of stuff. So this could be many… It could be even like up to a year before this stuff hits the statute book. So there's a long way to go. And that's interesting, isn't it? But you've seen some of the opposition to it. And the people are raising objections.

[00:21:12] Politically, we've already talked previously about people who were on the previous Supreme Court that said this is not banning people from anything. I guess the worry about it would be that if they do publish their response, although it might become law, because the law is vague anyway, that you suddenly start… Organisers suddenly start acting upon it, even though it's not become law. And this is what… Exactly. But this is what is likely to happen. There is going to be a long, intractable carry-on,

[00:21:41] but lots and lots of litigation backwards and forwards. So basically, a lot of people aren't going to know where they're going to stand. So I think there's… Yeah. All we can do is we can just say to people, and to trans people, you're just going to grit your teeth on this and hang fire for the moment. At the moment, the law hasn't changed. The guidance is interim and it's guidance, and it doesn't need to be acted on. So actually, organisations that are acting on it probably wanted to act on it anyway. So most organisations that didn't want to act on it haven't.

[00:22:09] Now, there's been guidance which continues to go through the National Health Service, which is anti-trans, but that's not linked to this. That's something separate. I think we have to be careful not to get into that narrative of it's always… It's running around, we're all doomed, we're all doomed, we're all doomed. No, I absolutely agree. No, we're not. But it is going to be tough. And I think that's the thing we have to say. And there are two or three things we can keep writing to our MPs because it's MPs that exert political pressure,

[00:22:36] and it's MPs who in the end will make the decision on this, not the EXRC. And they will only produce guidance and the parliament has to vote in it. And we're not going to be able to vote in it. We're going to vote in it. We're going to vote in it.

[00:23:00] And we're going to vote in it. And we're going to vote in the moment. And I think the decisions will be enormous. And no one's talking about that. And it's the thing that business cares most about is actually bureaucracy and effect… Because bureaucracy affects the bottom line. Yeah, I can see that. As somebody who's not worked in business, I can see that being a problem. And you're absolutely right on this.

[00:23:30] It's going to be difficult. What I would say is we do need to encourage those of us that love us, people talk about being allies, right? This is about now actually being an ally because what we want… If we can encourage people who know us to spend half an hour responding to this, every bit will help. Every response will help because it will be the weight of responses. And I think at the moment it feels like it's been left to our community to respond.

[00:24:00] And organizations that are already… Charities will respond, I'm sure. But we can lobby my organization, my employer to try and respond. And we'll be doing that. Or at least engage in it. But also just individuals, our friends and family. Every one of them matters. There's a big sort of movement. I think it's called… I don't know if it's called Not My Name. Because I think the initial is something like N-I-O-R or something.

[00:24:28] Well, what is this bunches of cis women who are coming together particularly who are signing… Yes. Not an R-N-E-M. Yes, I've seen them. Yeah. And I know the person behind that. And they basically went from zero to something like 10,000 signatures in less than a day. So I know it's about 40,000, 50,000 signatures at the moment. And again, you know, what's happening is women or cis women are grieved that people like sex matters are representing their views. Now, there's a lot of people in this country whose views are represented by that, but not everybody.

[00:24:56] And I think it's that thing about we can see from the states… I bang on about this all the time. We can see from the states the way this narrative plays out. And these laws are being used against trans people so they can then be used against gay people and lesbian people and then against cis women. So for goodness sake, let's stop the rot here and now. I think that's a lot of people. The more our rights are defrayed as an excuse, the more we're going to suffer further on down the line. I agree. But it's like I tell people don't see that.

[00:25:25] People don't see the bigger picture. It's like everything else particularly that's happening in America about a government that is behaving as fascists, right? In all sorts of people's rights. People are just… Don't realise that if immigrants' rights are attacked, your rights are going, your rights. You've seen that in America. You've seen it in this country, it's always been the case. I think people find that difficult to engage with. I think… And I don't know that many people will just go, I'm going to respond to this on the basis of this is a human right. I think…

[00:25:54] I just think we need to just make sure that people that are on our side are engaging in it and not put off by the fact it looks like quite a big piece of work. Half an hour is not much if you call yourself an ally, if you care… To be honest, you can go through the tick boxes in 10 minutes. Yeah. Just do that and just do the closing summary. So basically, Dan said you could do 40 tick boxes and then one paragraph. But if you just tick the boxes… So you can help me on this because usually just the tick boxes, you're just saying whether it's clear or not.

[00:26:24] You're not saying whether you agree with it. That doesn't necessarily help. I think we need people to… If they can respond with some… Yeah, but the general comments at the end. They could fill in the general comments at the end. Okay, you could put in the general comments at the end. So you do need to say something along the lines of… In fact, you can actually say that I don't want to answer all those questions and you can fill in the general comments at the end as well. Yeah. That is the work of five minutes. No, that's true. But I do think as much as you can do will make them have to consider. And as much as they consider some of the nonsense in there, and then we could be saying…

[00:26:51] So I get that and I'm sure everybody hasn't got the time to do that. So not… Because the issue is whether it's clear or not. It might end up being clear. The issue is whether it's right, fair, it's against human rights, whether it's a moral… It's clearly a legal practical, but also a real moral decision. And so yeah, if you can do that in a narrative at the end. But if you have got time now, and people have got time to actually do it piece by piece, I think that's useful as well. Because you can respond into what they're actually saying and say, that doesn't work.

[00:27:22] That is nonsense if you're going to ask receptionists to ask people if they're trans or not. Yeah. So we need to think about that. But yeah, I hope we haven't put people off, Jill. And because as I say, you can do something in 10 minutes. And I tell you what, I'd rather someone did something just… Exactly, yes. …say either I think it's wrong or whatever. Just go to those general comments and such. There's two other issues you want to talk about in terms of this week.

[00:27:45] And the first is that one of the EHRC commissioners, Akua Reindorf, said the law never permitted self-ID, but trans campaigners call remarks profoundly unhealthily. It's an issue in something in The Guardian this week that was reported about basically the Reindorf talking about this idea that we never had the rights we thought we have. And we have to accept that we're going to lose rights.

[00:28:10] And saying that there's been a huge farce organizations up and down the country wringing their hands, creating working groups and so on. People in society worrying they have to have nowhere to go to the toilet. And saying that this has all been created by trans people who have been overextending. They've been lied to over many years about what their rights are. That's inherent nonsense because it is such nonsense. Because when you're talking about rights, you're talking about things that are expressed in law.

[00:28:38] But also you're talking about just how society operates. And none of that's changed. So before we had the Equality Act, before we had the Gender Recognition Act, trans people were using that. It was a right because it was accepted. It wasn't codified in law. So the rights have always been there. And the rights have always been there. Whether they're codified or not, whether the laws weren't well enough, you could argue it's not because otherwise we wouldn't have been in this situation. But it's inherent nonsense to say our rights weren't there.

[00:29:07] Because what about all the people that transitioned before the Gender Recognition Act? What about all the people that transitioned just a year after it? The Equality Act wasn't in place. But my point is, although the EHRC have said this is a person speaking at a private capacity, at a private event, people like Jane Fay from Transmedia Watch have come out and really been hostile about this. Liberty have as well. And Amnesty International have actually criticised this. And it's this thing, isn't it? It's about who was in that EHCR.

[00:29:37] Who was on that panel? Who are the people who are making decisions? And that's why it's really important for us to fill this thing in. That's why it's important for us just to take that 10 minutes, an absolute minute. Because what we want to do is we want to create this overwhelming amount of evidence that there is, that this is just not. This is an erosion of human rights. And these people are meant to stand for them. And the Tory party are already out to get rid of this legislation altogether and get rid of that organisation.

[00:30:05] And they're already desperately trying to unsign up to the European Convention on Human Rights. This is, it is quite bizarre. It's this classical thing about, again, the people on that board are going to vote for their own demise if they're not careful. And I think the other bit in the news this week, of course, that the government's announced that Dr. Mary Ann Stevenson is the government's preferred candidate for the new, to be the new chair. Now we know that the old chair was a pretty, pretty on record of being anti-trans.

[00:30:32] Dr. Mary Ann Stevenson seems to have an interesting track record, but has made negative statements about anti-trans people in the past. So there's a bunch of people now who are saying we've got to welcome the fact that this person's coming on board. But let's make sure that, let's make sure that actually, that it's fair. And I think it's one of the interesting things that the last pope said. The last pope wasn't a massively empathetic man and it wasn't a massively charismatic person.

[00:31:02] But he said once he became the pope, he acquired all these wonderful views. And I'm just hoping that becoming the chair allows you to acquire this sense of fairness and legitimacy and such. Now, you know, one can hope. Yeah, you can. But one would hope, yes, maybe if there's a sense of duty there, because surely a body like the Equality Human Rights Commission is about rights for all humans. Right. And not taking an ideological point of view, which is what they seem to have been doing on this.

[00:31:32] As we go back to the Supreme Court judgment in many ways could have been seen as quite a narrow judgment based on a bit of the act. They've taken it upon themselves to decide to insert themselves and change our rights. I think you're absolutely right. We need to make it difficult for them, at very least. We need to make them uncomfortable in their, if they are going to come out with this attack on us, at least make them feel difficult for them, I think. And that's all we can do at the moment.

[00:32:00] I'm still hopeful there's enough political will out there to move this needle at least some way, Jill. Maybe I'm naive, but I do think if there's enough of a response and enough of a noise... Yeah. We can't but hope. But I think even if the sign it's going well, it's a sign that's going to take a long time. And I think that's the thing for us to... Well, the fact that they were pushed to go from two weeks to a month is something. And if we can get them, if it can... Because it's absolutely right.

[00:32:29] And certainly a consultation of this size, it's not two questions. It's huge. What on earth can that be expected to be done in a month? And the fact is where the actual terms of the consultation is that people were going to be invited to complete it. And I've spoken to our trade bodies and transaction, no trans person, no trans body has been invited to complete it. So we're finding it and we're completing it. And that's why it's really important. Because what we don't want is a small response from the gender criticals looking as if it's the only responses.

[00:32:58] And their guidance is diametrically opposite to ours. And they're saying, yes, it's clear and it's fine. It's absolutely fine. We should remove sexual orientation as something that's protected. We should... And the guidance is horrendous. Basically, you will see a complete attack on LGBT rights right across the board. Of course. Absolutely. And go back to my statistic. The idea, the excuse for all this is violence against women and girls. And the issue is not trans people.

[00:33:28] This is an ideology that's been put against trans people. And it's nothing to do with anything we're talking about. And the question never has been and never will be. It never has been. And you're right about it. It never has been because there's no evidence of it anywhere of this approach. It has always been about people who don't want us to exist for whatever reason. Be that far right bigotry, a general hatred of anything different.

[00:33:53] Or be that some twisted form of what they would see as a twisted form of feminism that sort of seems to... That was written about in the eighties. It's never been about touching anybody. What it's been about is marginalizing people. And part of me, as we said in pods previously, just admit to it if you want. If you just admit that you just hate, don't like trans people because they're icky and weird. Say that. Don't pretend it's about protecting anybody else. Because it isn't.

[00:34:22] Anyway, that was a fun one. That was a fun one, Jill. But we're in a month. It is a bit of a slight emergency to get these things done in this month. So hopefully... There's Pride Month as well. So normally we talk about pride and we talk about the joy of pride. But we have to remember that pride... Actually, pride was a protest. Pride is still protest. This is the manifestation of protest is actually completing this documentation. Maybe we can do that for the next pod, but definitely pride has always been protest. Yeah. Until we have... We've never had true equality.

[00:34:52] I know, and I told you that fantastic fact about the Stonewall rights and who won the Stonewall Cafe. Do you remember that? Oh, that's right, yeah. Yeah. It's always been. I do this with the training. It's still not the case that my friends can't hold their partners hands walking down some streets. So whatever the law changes, we still haven't got true equality. And that's what pride was born out of. It's celebration, but also protest. Yeah, that maybe for next week. We'll see. You never know. All right, then.

[00:35:19] But please don't forget to do what you can on this, everybody. So see you next time, Jen. Yeah, bye everyone. Thank you. Thanks for listening to this episode of Transvox. It's been a joy to have you with us. If you want to make contact with us, you can contact us at gillian at transvox.cov.uk and all of our money goes to our nominated charity.

[00:35:46] And Jen, you've chosen the charity for the next number of episodes. Which one have you chosen? Our charity is called Beyond Reflections, which is a charity that provides support and counselling to trans people, non-binary people and their friends and their families across the UK. An amazing charity doing some amazing work. Really important. So please, if you can give. Great. And if you want to go and have a look at Beyond Reflections, it's beyond-reflections.org.uk

[00:36:13] And, but as I say, if you'd like to make a contribution to what we're doing, because we love to help the people who help us. Again, if you've got ideas for the show, things you'd like to ask us, questions, comments, applause, or brick baths, feel free to send it all in to gillian at transvox.co.uk. Until the next time, goodbye. Bye-bye.