The brilliant Critic columnist Victoria Smith wrote this week asking for trans-identified men to show women some empathy, arguing that whenever women ask for boundaries to be respected she says it is “instantly translated into an attack on trans women”.
I think she’s probably wise enough not to really be expecting any empathy from the men who are holding signs outside women’s toilets and calling for the death of JK Rowling, but what about the politicians? Are we going to have a national day of repentance with a service in St Paul’s Cathedral led by Sir Keir “men can have a cervix” Starmer?
Not likely. Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson was quick to commit an act of breathtaking dishonesty when she tweeted: “We have always supported the protection of single sex spaces based on biological sex”. Thankfully Twitter’s “Community Notes” was quick to link the lie to comments she made in opposition where she said biological males with a certificate should be free to use the ladies. Our Prime Minister, after a few days of silence, has also welcomed the judgement without an iota of shame, telling broadcasters: “It’s real clarity in an area where we did need clarity. I’m pleased it’s come about.” So Oceania has always supported Eastasia’s right to single-sex spaces, as one wag put it.
The problem with never punishing anyone is that it legitimises the “only following orders” mentality
The Supreme Court clarifies the law rather than makes it, mostly, and Parliament is free to legislate absurdities like “black is white” and “men can become women”, but after such momentum behind the Terfs, it is unlikely Labour want to keep pressing the sore. So the Cabinet plot to oppose the ruling will probably turn out to be as effective as UK Border Patrol. Most likely the waters will close over this moment as if the past never happened — as if Tavistock didn’t exist, boys and girls were never put on puberty blockers, and men weren’t affirmed in their desire to cosplay women and cheat at sports at the expense of the fairer sex.
Perhaps this is a better approach to politics. After all, what’s the alternative? Golden bridges and all that. And maybe a series of Nuremberg Trials wouldn’t help to heal the divide. After the event it’s perhaps easier to let people claim they said things they were definitely not saying at the time: “Of course, I never thought Brexit was going to literally lead to WWIII”, “I said at the time those Covid lockdowns were a bit excessive”, and now “I also had my doubts about ushering men into the women’s loos”.
The problem with never punishing anyone for this stuff is that it legitimises the “only following orders” mentality and gives no incentives to the least brave among us to do anything. Next time there’s something similar going on, you have a choice to stand up, potentially lose your friends and job, and know that you’ll probably never get them back or receive any acknowledgment you were right. Or you can go along with the lie, confident that there will be no consequences when it turns sour. With no incentive to be brave except that it is right to do so, the NPC’s are only going to do one thing.
We all know there will be little chance of true vindication. Only the Right would ever have the inclination to enact even a modicum of vengeful justice, and they’re far too tangled in the trans lie themselves — think Alicia Kearns and Penny Mordaunt. Consider the Chagos sell-out: the Tories talk a good game about it being a “betrayal of Britain” but they don’t actually believe it because, as Critic editor CD Montgomery points out, if they did, they’d promise jail time for everyone involved. Parliament is completely free to pass laws that retrospectively punish those who did wrong, even if those things were legal at the time and, obviously in the Supreme Court decision, for illegal things that everyone thought legal.
No. The Right has neither the power nor desire to — misquoting Conan the Barbarian — crush their enemies, see them driven before them, and hear the lamentations of their (trans)women. They’d need to get their house in order to do that. When you hear Kemi Badenoch speak about this issue, you’d have thought this whole thing hadn’t developed over the Conservative Party’s time in office. Saying they were always against it is part of the same pretence Labour politicians are involved in, only worse because it not only went wrong on their watch, it went right on somebody else’s. When even Tony Blair manages to outflank you from the right you know you’re in trouble.
In the meantime, three cheers for the truth, and boo to the golden bridge.
