Suzanne Harrington: Trans women are not a threat — there is plenty of room for all

Suzanne Harrington: "Perhaps women who identify as TERFs are getting trans women confused with the real threat to all women; the violent men who assault, rape and murder us all, day in, day out, year in, year out." Picture: Andrew Dunsmore.

Outside the Houses of Parliament in London last weekend, an unplanned gathering happened. It was huge. 

Police weren’t prepared, roads hadn’t been closed off, yet people were pouring out of Westminster station in their hundreds, their thousands. 

Pink blue and white flags fluttered in the breeze, as trans people gathered, surrounded by their allies.

There were a lot of allies — friends, families, loved ones, gay people, straight people, non-binary people — with not as much as a microphone between them. 

There’d been no time to organise. Just a shout-out on social media to turn up, to show support for the fact that two days earlier, a judge had decided that in the UK, trans people no longer legally exist.

People who have been living peacefully as women were now legally men, and vice versa. 

Like the lady standing in front of me, whose passport, driving licence, health and credit records are all registered as female, because she’s lived as a woman for decades.

Except now she’s legally a man. She might as well be legally a hatstand or a banana.

Other women, who identify as TERFs, have been celebrating this judgment. 

They have been worried that women like the trans woman standing in front of me, in her floral dress with her legal paperwork, will bombard and overrun female spaces, posing a danger to all women.

That trans women are dangerous and invasive to cis women, like Japanese knotweed in gardens. A genuine threat.

This is genuinely baffling. Trans men and women are estimated to be between 0.44% and 0.55% of any given population. They are a micro minority. 

Yet these other women, the ones who identify as TERFs, are overjoyed to have caused the legal erasure of this tiny group, a minority statistically far more likely to be on the wrong end of discrimination and male violence than cis women. How is this a cause for celebration?

TERF stands for Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist, but there is nothing radical or feminist about othering and excluding, about making another person a non-being. 

It’s not feminism, says feminist philosopher Judith Butler — it’s fascism: “Once you decide that a single vulnerable minority can be sacrificed, you’re operating within a fascist logic. That means there might be a second one you’re willing to sacrifice, and a third, a fourth. Then what happens?”

Perhaps women who identify as TERFs are getting trans women confused with the real threat to all women; the violent men who assault, rape and murder us all, day in, day out, year in, year out. 

Also – and here again is the utter illogicality of the UK’s legal ruling — do TERFs want trans men in the Ladies, as we send trans women to the Gents? Who polices this? Who gatekeeps? 

Will they be scanning genitalia at the door? Because that’s what this ruling decrees.

Outside the Houses of Parliament, amid the fluttering flags and people hugging each other, a large square of turf is surrounded by crash barriers, so that everyone is squashed onto narrow pavements. 

In a moment of exquisite symbolism, a lone woman carrying a trans flag moves a barrier, opening the space for everyone.

Everyone files peacefully onto the turf. Nothing bad happens. There is plenty of room for all.