The Earth was watching when Prime Minister Rishi Sunak stood up during PMQs last week and made a nasty remark about transgender people. In other words, the story has received extensive media coverage, and those who are aware of the harsh reality of life for transgender people watched in disbelief. The remark was made during a fighting suit with Keir Starmer, the leader of the Labour Party. To applause and sneers from his couch, Sunak listed what he believed to be Labour’s U-turns, one of which was on “defining a girl.” In order to be fair, he added a jibe, saying, “While in fairness that was only 99% of the U-turn,” most likely in reference to Starmer’s earlier remark that “99.9% of women do not have penises.”
Emily Ghey, the mother of British transgender teen Brianna, who was killed in February 2023, was scheduled to attend the Commons in the public exhibition on the day the comment was made. Yet Keir Starmer, whose own track record on transgender rights has been criticized by the LGBTQ+ group, could not help but find Sunak’s decision to mock the right of trans people to choose their own gender abhorrent. “Shame,” Starmer said, “of all the days to declare that.”
Yet stronger messages were posted on social media. Munroe Bergdorf, an activist, described it as “an awful display of stigmatization.” Another urged Sunak to step down. In a society where those with the most energy completely disregard the welfare of those without it, I questioned how my trans friends or my nephew, who is transgender, could be expected to survive.
Since Sunak made the low joke, he has backed off and refused to offer an apology. To make matters worse, the PM appeared to be grinning in a movie in which he was questioned about why specifically in his refusal to apologize to Brianna Ghey’s home (her father has asked Sunak for an explanation). It’s a very disconcerting view. According to Sunak, his note was directed at Starmer. “I believe it is both sad and incorrect to use that tragedy to undermine the very distinct and clear point I was making about Keir Starmer’s demonstrated track record of multiple U-turns on significant policies because he doesn’t have a plan, and it demonstrates the worst of politics.”
Apologizing would mean giving in, and Sunak, the Tory leader, hasn’t shown any evidence of giving up on his ongoing battle against transgender people. He has launched many assaults on transgender people during his two-year career, making light of the situation as he does thus. Sunak claimed that the American public is being “bullied” into thinking that “people can be any sexual they want to be” at the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester in October of last year. “They can’t,” he continued, “A man is a man, and she is the woman.” “That’s only common sense, you know.” The health minister announced Tory plans to forbid trans people from receiving treatment in feminine- and male-only English hospital wards at the same conference.
Sunak’s remark was met with a sense of exhaustion among many trans onlookers, who realized that while it might have seemed shocking at the time, it wasn’t necessarily shocking. It wasn’t even surprising that it might have occurred in front of the mother of a trans girl who had been murdered, as journalist Freddy McConnell put it. “Any trans individual who has lived in Britain over the past six-odd years of continuous, organized, sarcastic, and quite loud attacks, not just on our lawful protections but our very mankind, cannot possibly be surprised.” What really felt novel was the answer to Sunak’s remarks, McConnell continues. “Everyone reacted appropriately when a prominent people figure said something demeaning, false, and insulting about trans people for the first time in years.”
Trans individuals not only exist, but they are also people with capabilities, prospects, and loved ones, just like Brianna.
Transphobia exhibits in the halls of power undoubtedly have a significant impact on transgender people’s daily lives. The Human Rights Campaign declared a federal state of emergency for LGBTQ+ people in June according to an epidemic of crime, and we can observe this play out in the United States, where more than 500 anti-EQL charges were introduced to state legislature across the nation in 2023. I just wrote about how this influx of vehement anti-trans legislation is actually making life unlivable, forcing transgender people and their families to move from Republican states to Democrat states. Studies of hate crimes against trans people in England and Wales reached an all-time deep in the year leading up to March 2023. This setting claimed the life of Breanna Ghey, who was only 16 years old and was killed in a park close to her house.
Trans rights debates are likely to intensify as the UK general election draws near, with both parties risking their lives to show their “stance” on
what has turned into a culture war issue. Those who are unsure of how to express their own opinion regarding stigmatization should exercise caution and call this out when they see it. They are able to email their Members. At the polls, they may express their disapproval of Sunak’s remarks. They may confront transphobia in commonplace situations. They are able to take narratives that do not decrease trans people to data or this particular aspect of who they are. They can make donations to pertinent organizations like Stonewall and Mermaids or to the bank that Brianna Ghey’s mother established in her honor. By reading books that provide context and precision on how transphobia functions, such as Shon Faye’s best-selling book The Transgender Matter or Jules Gill Peterson recently published A Story of Transmisogyny, they can gain a deeper understanding of the problem.
We can all agree that trans people exist and, like Brianna Ghey, are individuals with skills, futures, and loved ones on a basic level. “Hope is a component of the human condition, and trans people’s wish is our evidence that we are completely human,” according to Bristol-based trans writer Faye. “Our life enriches the world; we are not a topic to be debated or mocked.”
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