Is Britain a hostile environment for trans people? The United Nations’ independent expert on sexual orientation and gender identity has delivered his verdict – and it isn’t good. Victor Madrigal-Borloz, a lawyer from Costa Rica, said following a ten-day visit to the country: ‘I am deeply concerned about increased bias-motivated incidents of harassment, threats, and violence against LGBT people, including a rampant surge in hate crimes in the UK.’
But his statement was stronger on rhetoric than evidence.
During Madrigal-Borloz’s visit, in which he assessed the state of LGBT rights in the UK, he explained that he had ‘received information about thousands of articles spreading misinformation and witnessed first-hand the casual appropriation by top-level political actors of rhetoric deeply associated with the questioning of legal protections on the basis of gender reassignment’. A key example? The question ‘what is a woman’. This seemingly unacceptable discourse, he declared, ‘is commonly asked by “gender-critical” actors to challenge the legal recognition of trans women under UK law’.
Let’s just stop there. It is a perfectly reasonable question with a perfectly clear answer: a woman is an adult human female. That doesn’t challenge anybody’s rights – it is a statement of biological truth. But in these strange times, it seems that even science might be seen by some as transphobic.
A wise government would simply just dismiss Madrigal-Borloz’s statement – all 94 paragraphs of it – as the opinion of someone who spent his time listening only to those who reinforced his worldview. For example, while the UK government is preparing transgender guidance for schools, Madrigal-Borloz held a meeting with ‘a leading organisation working with LGBT youth in the UK’. This mysterious outfit was alarmed that schools might be advised to report ‘trans children’s gender identities to their parents’ and that those children might be excluded from single-sex spaces and sports activities.
Of course, parents should expect to be told when their children are dabbling in a culture that celebrates the medical and surgical transition of youngsters. And female pupils also have rights, specifically to single-sex spaces and single-sex sport, something that that the so-called independent expert appears to overlook.
Source: The UN is wrong about Britain’s treatment of trans people | The Spectator