Raging gender debate is not a zero-sum game

SARA GIBBS COMEDY WRITER

The transgender community is under attack. They need and deserve Jewish solidarity. In 2021 in the UK alone, antitrans hate crimes increased by 16 percent compared to the previous year. This comes as no surprise to me. Anti-trans rhetoric is everywhere.

I have watched on in horror as countless columnists, colleagues, friends and family members, have begun to regurgitate transphobic talking points, seemingly with little or no understanding of trans issues.

I have felt helpless as hysteria, hyperbole and, often, outright lies about the fight for trans rights have been splashed across front pages, gleefully retweeted and have been left unchallenged by apparently otherwise right-thinking people.

I have looked on in dread as so-called ‘reasonable concerns’ become radicalisation, as transgender friends are labelled ‘groomers’, ‘perverts’ and ‘child mutilators’.

Jewish people know how this feels.

After millennia of persecution, we know the template. We’ve been on the receiving end of it time and again.

The ancient blood libel, accusations of harming children.

The inherent mistrust simply by virtue of our Jewish identities.

And when we speak up about the discrimination we face, being told we are inventing it all.

The truth is that many transphobic arguments follow the template of dehumanisation and disinformation that feels sicken- vulnerable children.

It’s the same old hatred in a di erent hat.

At a recent gender-critical rally, one speaker quoted Mein Kampf, calling trans identities “the big lie”.

This should send a chill through the soul of anyone with a passing knowledge of history.

The sad irony is that the lies are not coming from transgender people.

Most of the transphobic arguments I encounter are debating an imaginary scenario that does not exist.

The examples are too numerous and complicated to outline here, but one particularly fact-free facet of the debate pertains to the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill. The government recently took the unprecedented step of blocking legislation passed by the Scottish parliament to make it easier for transgender people to obtain a gender recognition certificate.

Its detractors claim that they’re afraid of what self-ID would mean for women’s safety and spaces.

Rarely heard is the fact that transgender people may already use gender-appropriate spaces by self-ID under the Equality Act of 2010, that reasonable exemptions are already allowed, that transgender people can already apply for other forms of ID, such as passports and that none of this has resulted in malign cisgender men pretending to be transgender in order to access women’s spaces.

The most ludicrous of all the anti-Gender Recognition Reform arguments is that public toilets will become unsafe – as if an abuser would update their paperwork to show to the nonexistent toilet guard in order to attack women instead of just walking through the door.

The reality is that the Gender Recognition Reform Bill is so benign that the noise around it would be laughable, were it not so dangerous.

It simply grants transgender people the right to more easily obtain paperwork that allows them to update their birth certificates, get married, pay taxes and be buried with dignity. That’s it.

Transphobia and antisemtism are so deeply enmeshed that, even for those who cannot muster the empathy to support transgender people simply because they are human beings who deserve our solidarity, it is imperative to oppose it.

NICOLE LAMPERT JOURNALIST

Ionce made the mistake of attempting nuance on Twitter. I wrote that most Zionists were pro-Palestinian too.

To me it is obvious that those of us who believe in the two state solution would like the Palestinian people to have their own land and peace – just as we would like for Israel.

But you can’t reason with extremists. For 24 hours I was mercilessly trolled; called an idiot, a liar, a hasbara troll and an apartheidloving Nazi. The same happens every time I enter what is known as the gender debate: I am accused of being a transphobe, a bigot, a Nazi. But being concerned about the erosion of women’s rights doesn’t mean I hate trans people. Indeed, I feel for the pain they are going through because, as Jews once found ourselves targeted because of Corbynism, trans people are at the centre of an incredibly toxic culture war.

I’ve got to know quite a few trans people since I started writing on this subject. All of them are upset at the extremist demands being made in their name. They understand that males can be dangerous to females and opening up safe spaces such as prisons, rape centres, refuges to any person who claims to be a woman is a safeguarding risk.

These trans people are often – astonishingly – accused of being transphobes or Terfs (which stands for trans-exclusionary radical feminist) when they dare mention what is, to most of us, common sense.

How did this start? Some say with the theory by Jewish American academic Judith Butler that ‘gender’ which was once interchangeable with sex, is a ‘social construct’ and open to change.

In the old days – about five years ago –you had transexuals who were mainly males who had gone through a process involving surgery and taking medication to become women. They are the people who required a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) –although born male they were in the world of officialdom now female.

that is where the conflict with safeguarding lies. It brings up several questions which trans rights activists refuse to answer: ingly familiar to me as a Jewish woman.

How can you tell the di erence between someone who identifies as female and means us no harm, and someone who is a pervert who wants to see naked women, film them and even attack them? And no, this isn’t hysterical fear mongering; women have been sexually assaulted in women’s prisons, on single sex hospital wards, flashed at in gyms and filmed undressing in changing rooms.

Is it fair that women and girls feel obliged to share an enclosed area with someone who is likely to be taller and stronger than them and who still has fully intact male genitalia?

How will this a ect Orthodox and other religious women? Anecdotally they are already disappearing from ‘women’s only’ sessions in gyms and pools because they cannot be certain that they will be surrounded only by females.

The proposed Scottish law which is causing a constitutional kerfu e means it will be a lot easier for people – both genuine and malign – to insist they are a di erent sex.

Unfortunately the Equality Act of 2010, in which sex is a protected category, never envisaged what would happen a decade later; if you change sex legally you can breach those protected safe spaces (lawyers are still arguing this point).

This Scottish law proposes anyone over the age of 16 simply has to live as the opposite sex for three months to get a GRC. How do you live as a woman? Nicola Sturgeon says it could be as simple as changing your name on your gas bill. Then a man – any man–becomes legally female and able to insist their way into female spaces with their bit of paper. Those who cannot see the possible dangers in all of these are – at best – dangerously naïve. To be clear, I am not calling trans people perverts, I am saying perverts will take advantage because that’s what they do.

In fact, transphobia itself relies upon age-old antisemitic conspiracy theories and tropes, with white nationalists accusing Jews of committing “white genocide” by targeting

Bigots will not stop at the transgender community, and we should be standing side by side with our trans siblings, transgender Jews and anyone facing the marginalisation we would not want turned on ourselves.

And then you had transvestites who were men who liked dressing up as women. Now both are under the same ‘trans umbrella’ along with around 70 – I kid you not – other genders. These include ‘affectugender’ in which a person’s gender depends on their mood and ‘aerogender’ in which a person’s gender identity changes according to one’s surroundings.

Around 90 percent of trans people who identify as a woman still have a penis and

Trans rights extremists are the real bigots; they are misogynists who fight facts with slurs and threats and attempt to shut down another marginalised group – women. They don balaclavas, stop women speaking, threaten violence and consistently compare themselves to Holocaust victims.

This weekend alone, Scottish MPs were pictured next to placards saying ‘I eat Terfs’ and ‘decapitate Terfs’ while a Scottish councillor invoked the history of Auschwitz.

We Jews should stand beside the trans community and the female community who both feel at risk. It is only fanatics who believe you can’t do both; and we Jews know more than most how dangerous fanatics, hyped up by their sense of rightness, are.

1 Jewish Care Goes Purple For Week

To chase away the January blues and raise awareness of its work, Jewish Care challenged members of the community to participate in fun, purplethemed activities for #GoPurple week. Local school and nursery children, residents, volunteers, staff, community centre members and shops all got involved visiting care homes and community centres.

2 Meet Some Young Bread Winners

To conclude their Shabbat Project and in preparation for the forthcoming Seed Immanuel College Primary School Friday night Shabbat experience, Years 1 and 2 plaited their own challah. The youngsters had lots of fun and were very creative making different-shaped loaves.

3 Heads Together At Pajes Meeting

On 16 and 17 January, PaJeS (Partnership for Jewish Schools) held its seventh annual headteacher conference, welcoming 52 leaders from 41 Jewish schools around the country for the two-day event, held at The Grove Hotel in Hertfordshire. The event was generously supported by UJIA Ashdown Fellowships, UnitEd, The Pincus Fund and The Wohl Foundation.

4 NIGHT-TIME WALK FOR CLUB13

Club13, the barmitzvah club at Whitefield Shul in Manchester, went on a night-time forest walk in Phillips Park. About 30 people enjoyed physical challenges including army style training in a muddy field, blackout scrambling, as well as a bonfire with singing, uplifting stories and a great atmosphere.

5 Kosher Meal For Muslims And Jews

The Muslim Jewish Forum of Greater Manchester, created almost 18 years ago, held its annual kosher meal for 33 guests at Celia’s Kitchen restaurant in Prestwich. Adil Navaid, a barrister and first-time Muslim attender said: “The Forum clearly does really well in putting people together in a room and focusing on Muslims and Jews in Greater Manchester.”

6 Aleinu Event Attracts 200

Close to 200 rabbis, rebbetzins and educators gathered together at The Grove Hotel in Hertfordshire for the annual Aleinu conference, focused on their joint mission to help Anglo Jewry. Now in its 10th year, Aleinu is a joint initiative of JLE (the Jewish Learning Exchange, an educational and social centre for young Jews with little or no Jewish background), Seed (the adult and family education charity), Jewish Futures and the Rabbinical Council of the United Synagogue.

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