Since 2017, we have witnessed a concerted political campaign to degrade and humiliate trans and gender non-conforming people in public life. For some, Labour’s election victory offered the opportunity for a reset, with senior cabinet members signalling a desire to ‘detoxify’ the debate. In practice, Labour’s paltry offer to LGBTQ+ communities puts it significantly out of step with the labour movement and social democratic sister parties, indicative of the party’s kowtowing to the forces of reaction.
Despite an election campaign which relentlessly promised change, one of Wes Streeting’s first acts as Health Secretary was to uphold his predecessor’s ‘emergency’ ban on puberty blockers, implemented without consulting a single LGBTQ+ group.
Puberty blockers remain available and are considered safe for young people who experience precocious puberty or differences in sexual development. Streeting’s primary concern, he says, is that their use amongst trans people risks altering ‘the trajectory of normal gender identity development’ and putting them on a dangerous, irreversible path to transition.
Here, Labour has endorsed the suggestion transition is an undesirable outcome for young people, reinforcing the fiction there exists a ‘normal’ (read: not trans) gender development during puberty. By doing so, Labour is actively furthering the alienation and stigmatisation of a vulnerable group already facing constant demonisation by the British press and an increasingly well-organised anti-trans movement. Banning gender transition cannot be considered a ‘neutral’ option.
In deploying his power to uphold traditional gender norms, Streeting is telling trans people they will be criminalised if they dare deviate. Labour’s ban politically aligns them with the 25 U.S. states, all with Republican-controlled legislatures, that have introduced laws barring trans youth from accessing gender-affirming healthcare. It feels impossible to imagine the Labour government issuing a similar statement to Joe Biden’s White House, which expressed support for the fight to overturn such state bans on gender-affirming healthcare.
Most notably, Labour’s manifesto has accepted wholesale the findings of the contested review into NHS gender services for young people authored by Dr Hilary Cass. Aside from the significant methodological flaws in her report, and emerging evidence she was handpicked for the role because of her sympathy to so-called ‘gender criticals’, her argument relies on offensive and conservative notions of trans people.
Cass reinforces a medicalised view of being trans, much as homosexuality was once considered a psychiatric abnormality. Her Review consistently refers to those wanting to transition as suffering from ‘gender-related distress’, and she explicitly rejects the idea that medical care for trans people is a ‘social justice’ issue, suggesting the effectiveness of treatments for such distress should be measured like those for any other disease. Her medicalization of trans identity implies that it is trans people themselves who are inherently dysfunctional for their non-conformity, leaving the real dysfunction and source of distress–the enforced gender binary–unimpeached.
This grants the medical profession carte blanche to continue acting as gatekeepers for transition-related care. It’s for this same reason that activists campaigned to remove homosexuality as a medical disorder in the 1970s. Plainly, it is a profoundly reactionary view that anyone should be denied the fundamental right to freely determine and make decisions about their own body–whether over their gender, sexuality or reproductive functions.
In supporting the Cass Review, Labour are drawing on a significantly different political tradition to either Harold Wilson’s ‘permissive society’ that led to the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality in 1967 or Tony Blair’s limited ‘progressive’ agenda that scrapped Section 28 in 2003.
Indeed, the fact Keir Starmer expressed support for Conservative plans to prohibit the teaching of ‘gender ideology’–a de-facto ban on classroom discussion of the existence of trans pupils–means the party’s manifesto commitment to ‘protecting the freedom for people to explore their sexual orientation and gender identity’ rings hollow.
And while details of Labour’s plans for Gender Recognition Reform are yet to fully emerge, Labour Equalities Minister Anneliese Dodds reversed her stance on legal gender self-identification, insisting that trans people have a ‘diagnosis of gender dysphoria’ which, under existing waiting lists, could take more than seven years. Dodds has even met with anti-trans hate groups campaigning to scrap legal gender change altogether.
This comes in stark contrast to the positions of centre-left parties in Germany, France, and Spain–all of whom have shown support, or legislated, for trans people to legally change gender without intrusive and degrading questioning. Even Theresa May, as Prime Minister, held the kind of progressive view in support of self-ID that would place her in the pro-trans fringes of the debate today.
Labour has also positioned itself in stark opposition to the UK’s major trade unions–the British Medical Association has highlighted its significant concerns with the Cass Review, education unions have widely condemned ‘trans bans’ in schools, and the TUC supports a simplified, free, statutory gender-recognition process based on self-declaration. Labour might be offering a new deal for working people, but apparently not if they’re queer.
Taken together, Starmer’s offer to LGBTQ+ communities fits neatly within his wider social agenda. Whether it’s removing the whip from MPs over opposition to the two-child benefit cap, cracking down on migration or upholding Tory anti-protest laws, social authoritarianism appears to be a driving force of this government’s agenda.
So why is Labour adopting this approach? Firstly, Labour has completely abdicated its role in challenging the hateful narratives promoted by the right-wing media. The party is desperate to keep millionaire media barons and those doing their bidding on the side–no matter the impact on the most marginalised groups in society.
And despite polling consistently showing that voters see the trans debate as blown out of proportion, Labour continues to think it advantageous to abandon trans people so they may appeal to socially conservative voters. Huge swathes of progressive voters are left unrepresented, with LGBTQ+ activists leaving the party in droves.
Much of the history of LGBTQ+ activism has involved limited representational ‘wins’ at the expense of the disenfranchisement of the most marginalised–like the introduction of gay marriage by a Cameron government simultaneously pursuing class-war austerity and implementing a hostile environment which has been repeatedly condemned as institutionally homophobic.
It is imperative that LGBT+ campaigners do not throw trans people under the bus in exchange for incremental policy changes. We must recognise that without building a powerful movement alongside trade unions, environmental protestors, migrant justice organisations, anti-poverty campaigners and others, our liberation will always remain contingent and readily discarded when the political winds change direction. The current government’s anti-trans agenda teaches us that we cannot and should not rely on Labour to be a bastion of inclusion and progress.