Bristol University in gender row

A row about access to women’s toilets has catapulted Bristol University to international attention.

The row about a sign that appeared in toilets warning students to be vigilant against trans students who might rape them is about trans women, but it is a particular sort of row with its roots in 1970s feminism. 

The idea that trans women are “really” heterosexual men who wear women’s clothing solely to be able to sneak into ladies’ toilets to peek at girls having a pee, or to rape them, is now recognised to be a myth, believed only by Fox News and evangelical preachers.

Nevertheless, bathroom panic continues to raise its head whenever trans people are mentioned, so last year Bristol University’s LGBT+ group ran a hugely successful poster campaign aimed at reminding people that policing access to toilets on the basis of what you think someone else looks like is not very polite. The campaign drew worldwide praise and went viral on social media.

Returning after the Christmas break, students in Bristol were horrified to discover a new poster campaign, mocking the LGBT+ group, suggesting that they were a male plot, and warning that “transgender males” (meaning trans women) were rapists in disguise. These posters have been widely condemned by the Students’ Union and various other groups such as the University’s Feminist Society. But to understand the origins of the posters we have to delve into feminist history.

Back in the 1970s, separatism was a big idea in feminism. Some so-called Radical Lesbian Feminists believed that sexism could never be eradicated, and that the only way for women to live safe, happy and fulfilled lives was to do without men. Even male babies were suspect. It gave rise to the sort of thing that still causes some women to say, “I’m not a feminist, I don’t hate men”. While we can sympathise with the anger and despair of our 1970s sisters, modern feminism has little truck with separatism. Nevertheless, its influence lives on.

In order to sustain a separatist ideology you have to have a hard and fast means of distinguishing between your people and the Others. Trans people, with their crossing and blurring of gender boundaries, were a threat to such ideas. An American academic called Janice Raymond wrote a book called The Transsexual Empire, in which she put forward the theory that trans women were a cunning plot by men to replace real women with compliant, manufactured fakes. It sounds more like an episode of The Twilight Zone than serious social science, but Raymond and her allies put the cause of trans rights back decades.

These days Raymond’s ideas have been relegated to a small, extremist fringe of feminism known as TERFs (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists), and it is these people who are suspected of being behind the recent anti-trans-women poster campaign. TERFs have protested against trans women at other feminist events such as some Reclaim the Night marches, and even at last year’s Dykemarch in London.

Their claim that one of London’s biggest lesbian events was somehow a patriarchal plot did not go down well. One of the protestors was once a researcher in the School of Policy Studies at Bristol but, thankfully, no longer has a connection with the University.

The problem that the TERFs have is that their attempts to draw a firm dividing line between men and women are becoming less and less tenable. Biologically it is nonsense. At least 1% of the human population is biologically intersex, having some features of both male and female forms. The medical profession has mostly given up on the idea that trans people are mentally ill, because psychological treatments have proved to do more harm than good, whereas gender reassignment procedures are remarkably successful in making patients happier.

The TERFs have also tried to claim that trans women are somehow culturally conditioned to maleness, and can never shed this taint, even after decades of living as women. The trouble there is that trans people are transitioning earlier and earlier in life. Social conditioning that was once held to be the result of a couple of decades of being raised as a boy is now put down to the magical effect of being declared male at birth.

And it is here that the true cruelty of the TERF campaign in Bristol is revealed. The targets of their hate are not older trans women like myself who may well have benefitted from a few decades of male privilege before transitioning, they are young women coming to university who probably transitioned at school and have never been (socially or biologically) adult males.

Transitioning at school is a hard thing to do. I know a few trans youngsters. Some of them have been bullied, not just by their classmates, but also by the parents of their classmates, and by their teachers. Parents of trans kids sometimes have to home school their children to keep them safe and sane.

In going to university, young trans girls doubtless hope to make a fresh start. There they will leave behind traumatic school days and make new friends, none of whom will ever have known them in childhood, or will even have any idea that they were once thought to be boys. It will be their big chance to make a new life as the women they know themselves to be.

Instead a small group of TERFs at Bristol University decided to make them feel unwelcome. They wanted them to live in fear, not just of discovery, but of being accused of being potential rapists bent on victimising their fellow students. It is no wonder that the rest of the student body has denounced this vicious campaign.

Next month, Bristol University Students’ Union is hosting a couple of public debates that may touch on these issues. On February 16, trans activist and punk rock star, Ruth Pearce, will be part of a panel on intersectionality. And on February 25, Cheryl Morgan and Bristol Pride Director, Daryn Carter will join a panel to ask What Next for the LGBT+ Movement Following the Passing of the Same Sex Marriage Act?

The LGBT+ acronym refers to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans people, plus those whose biology, sexuality and/or gender is outside of the heterosexual gender binary but who do not feel themselves included in any of L, G, B & T.