15. Trans women care about all women's flourishing

 

Trans women care about all women's flourishing. Why wouldn't we? I am one. I have deeply cared about women all my life: my aunts, my mother, my daughters, my colleagues, my friends. All of us, as women (and as human beings) deserve safety, and respect for who we are and what we can give to society and to those who we love. As a nurse, all my instincts have been to care about every woman who's unwell. I have tenderly care in long, hard shifts like so many health workers do. And as a woman, I know the unwanted attention of people on the street, and misogyny. I don't appropriate every experience of every woman, but as a woman I care about other women. And I care about men as well. That's just rational. It's being a decent human being.

But psychologically, hormonally, and in the loveliness of my body, I identify with other women in my life. This is true of the vast majority of trans men and women. We have been through a lot to be who we are, but yes we care, deeply, as decent people: to suggest otherwise is to insinuate a lie.

 

16. The world is beautifully and wonderfully diverse

 

We should celebrate that. The human race is so diverse, and the Equality Act set out to protect that diversity, not to promote exclusion but inclusion. Trans people just want to get on with their lives as part of diverse manifestations of men and women: or indeed of non-binary lives that some people live. Diversity is seen in life throughout our planet, in countless species, and colour, and in human diversity too. It is wonderful. We can either share that diversity together and accommodate each other's differences with kindness, or we can go down the road of populism, division, hatred, othering, and the exclusionary policing of tribal boundaries.

It doesn't have to be that way. Instead of meanness of spirit I urge you to find the best of yourselves in: generosity, kindness, responsibility for one another, balance… and proportionality. We should help one another to be the whole and best of who we really are. Sadly I believe the EHRC guidelines demean. They literally 'other' trans people, and that was never conceived or intended by the Equality Act, which was drafted in the context of the Gender Recognition Act's affirmation of trans women as women and trans men as men. It was a part of opening up to diversity and inclusion.