When Minority Rights are Wrong

This week there was a ‘dad fight’ on Twitter. Long-forgotten Labour Party strategist Alastair Campbell, rose from the depths to take a bite at right-leaning “white, male, middle-aged, under-achieving men.” He named journalist and founder of the Free Speech Union Toby Young as a prime specimen. In a tweet, the former master of spin, (who is pale, somewhat stale and presumably identifies as male himself,) complained that an article shared by Young was an attempt to get his followers “really steamed up and angry at 0.2% of the population who are already among the most abused/discriminated”. The journalist took a swing back, telling Campbell he’d “misunderstood the point” before inviting him to retire. One could almost see the slightly flabby chests expanding as the pair faced off from behind their respective screens.

The 0.2% who Campbell and Young referred to are the 96,000 respondents to the 2021 England and Wales Census who say they have cross-sex identities. Data show this is divided equally between the sexes. Smaller numbers claimed to be “non binary”, and a further 118,000 people indicated that they were trans but did not specify how they identified. The Census revealed that in total, there were 262,000 people living in England and Wales in March 2021 who ‘identified with a gender different from their sex registered at birth’.

For the first time information was also collected on sexual orientation. Alongside a voluntary question which asked respondents whether they were “Straight or Heterosexual”, “bisexual”, or “Gay or Lesbian”, was the option to “write in sexual orientation”. Notably, it seems areas with the highest proportion of respondents who claimed to be “pansexual”, “queer”, and “asexual” were in London, as well as university towns and cities. At present, there is no way of disaggregating the data on sexual orientation and gender identity by age.

Perhaps what is most surprising about these figures, is just how minuscule they are. In 2017 the Government Equalities Office put the numbers of trans-identified people between 200,000 and 500,000, whereas trans lobby group Stonewall estimated that around 1% of the UK population “might identify as trans”, meaning that there are “about 600,000 trans and non-binary people in Britain”. As Steerpike pithily observed in The Spectator, “Stonewall has been overstating the number of trans people in the UK by at least 100 per cent”.

From Trans Day of Visibility to the ever-extending Pride celebrations, today the calendar is punctuated by a tawdry parade of trans awareness raising. Local councils raise “progress pride” flags in town centres, and funding bodies dole out grants. Yet there are no glittering awards ceremonies for the single parents who juggle childcare and careers, nor for people with disabilities who battle not only with prejudice on a daily basis but with physical barriers. And yet, experienced political operators like Alistair Campbell persist in spreading the myth that 0.2% of the population are the most “abused” and “discriminated” against.

Gender identity is toxic; a single drop can poison a population. Within the time it takes to pin on a pronoun badge, the sensibilities of just one student, customer or co-worker can overturn the established policies and practices of institutions. It only takes one fetishist to mark his territory in a Ladies’ loo to make a previously women-only space mixed sex. It only takes one student to demand that teachers refer to ‘her’ as ‘them’ and a school will fall. It only takes one editor to pander to the language of transactivists and a newspaper will become a propaganda mouthpiece.

Like a speck of grit in an eye or a stone in a shoe, the purported interests of this tiny group have blurred the vision and impeded the progress of society. Law, language and truth itself have had to be bent and broken to accommodate the feelings of 0.2% of the population. Most notably, the needs and interests of the 51% of UK citizens who are female have been jettisoned for the 0.1% of men who claim to ‘feel female’.

To make matters worse, today a generation who have been brought up being taught that ‘gender identity’ is a medical fact are entering workplaces. Standing up against them, against what is in effect institutionalised madness, takes adamantine ovaries. At an impersonal, political level it is relatively easy to say that men, regardless of their identity, ought not to be allowed into women’s facilities. In the abstract, the truth that teenagers don’t know what’s best for them is unremarkable. But the line is harder to hold when it’s your workplace, school or social circle.

In this age of weaponised victimhood, we are supposed to believe that minorities are, by definition, marginalised. But this is not always the case. There was understandable anger when the 0.4% of the British public who are members of the Conservative Party were charged with the responsibility of choosing the Prime Minister following the resignation of Boris Johnson. This tiny, unrepresentative group were allowed to seal the fate of the nation. Yet, unlike the machinations of transgender lobby groups, however undesirable the result at least the process was transparent.

Ultimately, whether or not an individual is political, the label ‘transgender’ is. That an astute political operator like Campbell claims not to see this speaks more of obscene privilege than of prejudice.