In this episode, Ashleigh and Alyx break in one of our new hosts, Amber, by talking about:
- Current Health Secretary Victoria Atkins bans the use of puberty blockers for trans young people, but not for cis ones.
- Sarah Jane Baker, held prisoner since July 2023 at the direction of the then-Home Secretary, is freed!
- Attacks on the Equality Act 2010 ramp up as the election looms.
- An update on the UKCP’s decision to withdraw their signature from a key document opposing conversion therapy.
References
Blocking Puberty Blockers
Good Law Project – We’re taking urgent legal advice on mental health guidance for trans youth
Sarah Jane Baker is Freed
Sarah Jane Baker Freed From Prison – What The Trans!?
Attacks on Equality Act
BBC News – Tories pledge to tackle ‘confusion’ over legal definition of sex
Scottish Court Case – https://www.scotcourts.gov.uk/docs/default-source/cos-general-docs/pdf-docs-for-opinions/2022csoh90.pdf
UKCP and TACTT
Telegraph – Psychotherapy body rows with trans activists over conversion therapy memo – hosted on archive.ph
Transcript
[intro music]Ashleigh: Hello everyone and welcome to What The Trans?!
Alyx: What The Trans?!
Amber: What The Trans?!
Ashleigh:What The Trans?! Yes we have an additional voice, welcome to Amber!
Amber: Hey!
Ashleigh: So you’re joining the presentation team, lovely to have you on board, tell us a little about yourself.
Amber: Well thank you very much, Ash. It’s actually very good to be here, I have been doing Who The Trans?! for the past few weeks and been loving doing that so do go over to our Patreon and subscribe and then you’ll be able to hear it. About me, I am an SNP member, I am involved at branch level and I’m also involved at affiliate level. But I’m also a pissed-off trans person and this is the right place to be a pissed-off trans person because in politics you can’t be pissed off. You need to be able to work with everyone, should I say civilly? Because that’s probably a good word to use there. But here I don’t need to do that.
Alyx: As per our slogan, pissed-off trans –
[beeping sound]Ashleigh: By pissed-off trans people, for pissed-off trans people.
[celebratory horns sound]Jesus, none of us can say it.
Amber: I think it’s age that’s doing it because I’m 37 this year and my wife’s just turned 40 so age is catching up to us very quickly.
Alyx: What’s that saying about me?
Amber: You’re just a baby.
Ashleigh: Yeah I turned 40 in November and have a neurological condition so that’s my excuse in as much as I have one. So how have you been, been up to anything fun this week, apart from Who The Trans?!, of course, which you should check out.
Amber: Oh I’ve been having a lot of fun this week on Star Trek Online. I’ve been playing that religiously for the last three weeks by the end of this weekend, I’m looking at you, Alyx. Once we’ll have that bloody fleet up and running because I’ve just found a fifth person that can do it in the name of my cohost for Who The Trans?! So that’s going to be fun, getting a fleet up and then all the fleet invites – I get 30 per week.
Ashleigh: Jesus.
Amber: 30 fleet invites per week, that gets annoying over four characters so it’d be nice to turn them off because I’m already part of a fleet and it’s my own.
Alyx: Yes I think I’ve still got to dust off my old Star Trek Online character, I’ve been leading Amber on a bit here by accident, just going I’ll jump onto it soon and it’s still not installed on my Xbox.
Amber: Yeah we’re actually doing it this weekend so maybe start installing it now would be a good idea. [laughing]
Alyx: I’ll have to see what I can do within the next few days, I’m off to Germany this weekend.
Ashleigh: Oh yes.
Alyx: I’m literally a country away from my Xbox.
Amber: Just take a control pad with you, you can stream it from home.
Alyx: Oh no I’ve got no excuses now from the sounds of it!
Amber: No excuse, seriously, you can stream – get the Xbox app, put it on your phone, and then stream from your phone and use your control pad via Bluetooth on your phone, sorted, there we go.
Alyx: So while I make holiday plans to get away from that, my parents have also been far away from my place, they’re literally on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean in Canada so I’ve just had the whole house to myself.
Amber: If they’re Canadian I do apologise.
Alyx: No my parents are lovely, they should be thanking us for them being here.
Ashleigh: Yes I’m sure you’ve got some cleaning up to do after the many wild parties that I assume you’ve been having if your parents are away.
Alyx: Yes I’ve been going wild. Earlier yesterday I just went and gave myself some extra portions of food which I wouldn’t have usually, it’s been wild.
Ashleigh: Filthy.
Alyx: I’m thinking of maybe making some brownie mixture but not actually putting it in the oven and just eating it on its own.
[laughing]Ashleigh: Well we’ve all done that.
Amber: Classic.
Alyx: So what wild things are you going to be up to, Ashleigh?
Amber: Retirement [laughing].
Ashleigh: Yeah, by the sounds of it, yeah I’ll be having some time off. I played Disco Elysium again because it is just that good. However, we have a job to do, so let’s crack on and do it.
In our last episode, we mentioned a possible ban that the health secretary Victoria Atkins was going to bring in to try and ban puberty blockers. At the time, we didn’t know if it was going to go ahead, mainly as it’s very close to the election, and the dissolution of Parliament. However, the day before Parliament was dissolved, the order to ban puberty blockers did go ahead and with that any prescriptions of puberty blockers from private clinics was also banned.
Now there is obviously a lot more detail to it. It looks to be one specifically for private providers to be banned from prescribing hormones and puberty blockers overseas or in the UK. From what we can see, NHS prescriptions have not been affected. So if you are from the US, and want to carry on your prescription from your doctor in the US, you can’t do that any more. And if you get your prescription from GenderGP, that is also banned.
Cis kids, however, are exempt from this ban. They can get blockers, but trans kids can’t.
And this ban has, as you can imagine, caused a massive amount of panic and fear for trans kids and their parents, something the NHS seems keen to exploit. In a letter to parents of trans kids, it gave:
[classical music playing in background]“urgent information on the implication of new Government policy”.
[music ends]This essentially explained what we’ve just mentioned, but also warned and I’ll quote the letter here:
“From the 26th June 2024 NHS prescribers in GP practices in primary care will only be able to supply – or continue to supply – prescriptions for GnRH analogues (blockers) in the following circumstances:
If the patient is aged 18 years or older;
or
The patient is 17 years or under and has started treatment with these medicines (they will be treated as having started treatment if they have been issued with a prescription for these medicines since 3 December 2023, even if they have not yet actually started to take the medicine);
or
The patient is 17 years or under and is being treated with GnRH analogues for gender incongruence or gender dysphoria by the NHS as part of a future clinical trial overseen by the National Institute for Health and Care Research;
or
The patient is 17 years or under and the purpose of the prescription is for a medical condition other than gender incongruence or gender dysphoria.”
So all in all, not good news there for folks who are with the NHS.
Alongside this, the letter also made sure to link their “National Referral Support Service” in there too. And for those who don’t know, this was a brand new service set up by the NHS to – allegedly – support trans people waiting to get an appointment with the gender identity clinics. However it was found that these would be used to rat out who used private healthcare services like GenderGP, to then refer them to social services for “safeguarding issues”, essentially springing a trap.
And in this letter it made sure to link to the service and essentially use this ban as a way to use a parent’s or child’s panic to catch them out and exploit it which in itself is atrocious. And the Good Law project, of course, also heard about this and is seeking advice on how to fight against this legally. So I guess you saw this one.
Alyx: Yes, I think we and the QueerAF folk have sent out like a big call out. So many people came to us with these letters and we had a good read of them and we saw what the service was going to be. And then a few weeks after this one of them emailed us back, saying, “hey, we’ve just received this letter about the ban, we want to forward this on to you” and we had a look and it immediately rang alarm bells because I’m like, are you going to use this to exploit the panic from the big ban. And it seems that linked exactly to the same service we mentioned previously, which was to catch people who use private services. And quite frankly, I wish I could take credit here, but this was mainly QueerAF’s footwork on this one, we just helped share it out and have written our own piece with some of the data which we helped gather on that one and also thanks to Trans Safety Network for helping with the shout out as well.
Ashleigh: And thank you to all the parents who did share their letters with us at What The Trans?! and at We are QueerAF because you trusted us with this information so thank you. But yeah, pretty grim, this. Isn’t it?
Amber: It is very grim. But there is a little bit of hope considering that, according to Pink News, in this article from today, a major trans advocacy group is planning to take its challenge to the UK government’s recent ban on puberty blockers to court. TransActual announced on Wednesday 5 June 2024 that it had taken the first steps in an urgent legal challenge against Health Secretary Victoria Atkins’ decision to ban puberty blocking hormones.
So we have finally an actual legal challenge on this, which I completely welcome. My worry is though that the UK court will just look at it and go “Nah!” and just kind of bin it and not take it seriously. I mean, that’s what the UK courts seem to want to do with all different things related to trans stuff.
Ashleigh: I don’t know because whenever the “Gender Criticals”, the TERF-y lot, have gone to court; they’ve then usually either lost completely or lost mostly. But they’ve then tried to spin it into a success. So if you ask them, they say “we won in court” and well, no, you didn’t. But they will always try and spin it as a success, I think it could go either way, couldn’t it, to be perfectly honest and that in itself is a problem.
But, QueerAF do great work, as do Trans Safety Network and the Good Law Project – they have been in our corner pretty consistently. I’m pretty impressed, to be perfectly honest, the Good Law Project.
Alyx: Did TransActual say they were working with Good Law Project because I did also read the Good Law Project was also putting a legal challenge?
Amber: Further down in the article: “the Good Law Project which is helping raise funds for the legal challenge, said ‘The consequences of the ban would be profound. A medicine that young trans people have used for decades that is lawfully-prescribed throughout Europe, that is recommended by decades-old international treatment protocols that cis people continue to use, and the NHS can continue to prescribe to young trans people if they have already started, will no longer be available.’ the political not-for-profit group said.”
So you know, it is that Good Law Project are helping raising funds for it, but it’s actually TransActual that are taking the legal action itself. So the good people at all of the organisations we’ve just mentioned, Good Law Project, TransActual, they just need to be commended, really.
Alyx: And what we’ll do is we’ll make sure to link to the fundraiser in the description as well. So if you wanna chuck some money their way, help us overturn this ridiculous ban.
Ashleigh: So I think we can all agree this is really bad, but we shall see. Hopefully it will be overturned like so many things that the government has tried to do.
Alyx: Exactly. It’s like trying to predict what a cat’s going to do, isn’t it?
[Laughing]Amber: I’m not hopeful that it will be overturned, but I’m looking at this from another side where I have seen gender criticals going to court where they have been dismissed from work for their gender critical beliefs, and they’ve actually won their cases in court. So that in itself worries me a lot when it comes to this kind of legislation.
Ashleigh: Again though, I think at least one of those where someone was dismissed, they found that “Yes, fine. You shouldn’t have been dismissed for that. But that doesn’t mean that you can carry on breaking the Equality Act by spouting your gender critical nonsense.” That’s a lot of what they say. There was part of an episode that we did about this where we were just sort of saying “well they spun it as a win, but it wasn’t!” So they make a lot of claims which are not backed up by the law, but they will pretend that they are. Let’s move on, shall we?
Amber: Absolutely!
Alyx: Yes so moving on from the horrid news that was the puberty blockers, we have something rather positive! And we were so excited to run out to tell everyone about this, but on 13 May, What The Trans!? has been told that Sarah Jane Baker and her partner, Anita, that Sarah has now been freed from the HM Prison of Isle of Wight following a probation hearing in March this year.
Ashleigh: Sarah Jane’s free!
Alyx: This is following news back in November that Sarah’s oestrogen treatment had been fully halted. The prison reported that it was “a temporary measure while the healthcare team fulfils their duty of care to ensure that the benefits of any drugs we prescribe outweigh any risks.” Her recall to prison was after an incident on 8 July at London Trans Pride, where Sarah was filmed saying “If you see a TERF, punch them in the fucking face”.
After a meeting with the probation office, it was decided that Sarah would not be taken into custody. However, following the incident, the then-Home Secretary Suella Braverman tweeted “I’m sure the police will consider the evidence carefully”. Sarah was then arrested at her home on 12 July and imprisoned. After almost a year, a nearly £7,000 crowdfunder for legal fees, and multiple protests and court appearances from the Free Sarah Jane Baker campaign, it has now been announced that Sarah is now free.
[Clapping]Amber: That’s better.
Alyx: When I received a call from them, I was like…well, actually to be honest, the first thing we got was a message on Twitter from Sarah to say “I’m now free.” was the exact phrasing. And I was like “huh?”. And then I just called up Anita right away just to double-check in case it was like a random account calling themselves Sarah Jane Baker. But no, it was the real Sarah Jane Baker. And it really made my evening, that call.
Amber: Whilst it’s good that Sarah is free, I do feel compelled to say to our listeners that… punching TERFs, violence; no, that’s not what we need to do. You know, if we’re violent about it, that gives them the upper hand. Whereas if we’re peaceful about it, then it gives us the moral high ground to keep on fighting without doing any violence whatsoever. And this is something that means a lot to me personally. You know, I used to be very, very violent when I was younger and over the years I’ve mellowed and I’ve come to see that things can’t be solved with violence because it just leads to more violence.
So instead, take to protesting. Sure. Take to counter-protesting against people that would see us harmed. But please do not be violent because that’s not going to solve anything. It’s just going to put you in more danger.
Alyx: On that sort of note I remember on that phone call, just as I was about to hang up, she was like “Alyx, just to say: don’t punch TERFs”. I feel like I could quote that because it showed she definitely had a sense of humour after that whole situation. And following that call where I managed to get some nice lunch with her. She’s doing quite well. She’s taking things slowly, acclimatising to being out, mentioning basically staying in bed as much as possible because going from not having much space to then suddenly being “all this” is quite a lot to come to, but they’re very relieved to be free.
Ashleigh: As we commented on at the time back in March, I’m still astonished that she was found not guilty of the offence with which she was charged in March but was then still kept in prison until June. Why did it take so long is my question. What justification is there for someone who’s been taken in at the urging of the Home Secretary, after it’s been decided that no crime has been committed, the Home Secretary said “yes there was, get her back in prison”. And then eventually they decide as a result of a parole hearing that, again, no offence was committed and there was no point jailing her further. They still kept her in prison for another three and a bit months after that hearing.
Alyx: Yeah, that part was the probation hearing, so like once you’ve been found not guilty. And then there was already a big backlog of probation hearings because the Tories broke the prison service anyway.
Ashleigh: Yes, among other things.
Alyx: Quite frankly, because the Tory’s ineptitude, whether intentionally or not, then made it even worse because she then had to wait an additional 3 months, which really made it go on for way too long. It was almost a year to the day, almost. One month later and it would have been on the same day as Trans Pride London again.
Amber: Yeah, let’s be honest about the Home Secretaries that we’ve had over the years, and any member of the Tories’ failed government, and the English Parliament. They’re all babies with rattles. You know, if they don’t get their way, they’ll just toss their rattle out the pram and scream until they get what they want. So it’s just standard to them. They don’t adhere to the rules. We saw that during lockdown with Boris and his cronies. We’ve seen time and time again other Tory politicians saying to people of other parties “you should resign because you didn’t declare this money or you tried to put this money through public purse” when that person that is complaining about that also didn’t declare a large sum of money and has not resigned. So you know, Tories are always full of hypocrisy at every level.
Ashleigh: Yeah, every accusation is a confession, isn’t it?
Alyx: Exactly. Just wanting to make people’s lives worse for those they want to taunt. Like Sarah Jane Baker with the hormone treatment. And quite frankly the fact that they, Anita and Sarah, had to deal with all this, and how they managed to pull through it, is quite admirable in itself.
Ashleigh: Yeah, and all the work that Anita did on the outside to raise awareness, raise funds for that kind of legal defence.
Alyx: Yeah, do protests. I mean, like having a partner do all that work for you is just… I bet Sarah’s feeling really lucky.
Ashleigh: Yeah, she’s a keeper.
Alyx: She’s a keeper for sure!
Amber: Oh, definitely. I would go further and say that it’s heroic how Anita had done all the work that she did outside to get Sarah free. But Sarah’s actions as well: being able to go through all of that, face the hardship with oestrogen and then being put into a men’s prison. And she’s managed to come through that. You know that is damn near heroic.
Ashleigh: Editorial line is that we’re very happy that she’s out and we hope she has a good life now without further bullying from the Home Office. That would be super.
Amber: Not gonna happen. [laughing] Sorry, I’m the pessimist in this group today! [others laughing] Uh, we’re getting rid of one Tory government to be replaced by another Tory government!
Ashleigh: (simultaneously) with another Tory government. Yeah, you’re not wrong… Whoever wins, we lose.
Alyx: [laugh] Yeah and speaking of the Tories being dicks again, there’s been some stuff about the Equality Act as well that they’re doing with the election.
Ashleigh: Yeah….
Amber: Yes! Absolutely y’know, well, the Tories have pledged to reduce the definition of sex under the Equality Act to specifically mean only biological sex. So that sex is based on what’s written on your birth certificate. Their claim is that it is to clear up confusion surrounding single-sex spaces and protecting women and girls. However, the only ones confused seem to be the Tories. Changing the definition to “biological sex” as stated on a birth certificate is not as simple as you would think, as trans people are already able to get gender recognition certificates and apply for new birth certificates with the correct gender marker and other relevant paperwork. So this change is likely to cause more confusion than resolve any. Now, Kemi Badendoch had a disastrous interview when this very issue was brought up to her and she could not give anything resembling a coherent answer as to whether already issued GRCs and changed documentation would be invalidated by the change.
We know how hypocritical the Tories are, and Tories and GCs often say no court decision has been made defining sex in law. However, we know that is not true because a UK court ruled the definition of sex in the Equality Act 2010 was not limited to biological or birth sex. This ruling was made by Judge Haldane and came after a complaint from For Women Scotland who complained about the Gender Representation on Public Boards Act. Now I remember the Lady Haldane ruling because it was done here in Scotland. But, my point of this saying is a UK court. The Tories don’t want Scotland to have independence? Fine. The court in Scotland that this ruling was made from is a UK court, therefore a UK court has ruled that the definition of Sex in the Equality Act was not limited to biological or birth sex. So that’s just really called out the lies of both the Tories and the gender criticals on every single side of the political spectrum.
Alyx: Yeah, cause it’s like, in order to have it the way that they want, they kept saying year after year after year sex means biological sex in the Equality Act, and after that lie ran out of steam and failing because it was categorically untrue, the only way they can make it work is by changing the law itself so they just gave up on that part of their excuses.
Amber: I really hate going down the attacking Tory route, but that’s all we’ve got at the moment is to attack the people that are making these stupid comments
Ashleigh: I don’t think the sleaze ever really stopped in the Tory party, I think they just got better at hiding it when David Cameron was around.
Amber: I must say though, IDS did a good job, as best he could, for people who don’t know who IDS is, that’s Iain Duncan-Smith who was a previous Tory leader down in England.
Alyx: I was way too young to know that time.
Amber: IDS was very good actually in the Commons, holding Tony Blair to account and so on and so forth. I miss those days, where the Tories weren’t as corrupt as they are now, y’know? I miss the days where, if you had been charged and been issued with a fine, that you would resign as an MP or as a Prime Minister or as a Government Minister but these days, people that want to break the law who are MPs, they come left right and centre especially from the Tory Party!
Ashleigh: Yes, as you say left right and centre it’s more like centre and right, because there isn’t really anybody on the left anymore in the Commons [laughing]
Amber: Well no, maybe not in the Commons, but in the Scottish Parliament I can see Jamie Greene being more centre-left than the hard right that his bosses take these days.
Alyx: I suppose we can see the trajectory of it with the conversion therapy bans and how long that took, and there’s been a whole thing about conversion therapy with the UKCP.
Ashleigh: Yes indeed! Fun times! So, over the last few episodes, we’ve spoken a little bit about the UKCP and the MoU2 and the TACTT –
[short clip of Respect by Aretha Franklin playing]And we have developments on that. But first, let’s clarify those acronyms. The UKCP is the UK Council for Psychotherapy who recently announced that they had withdrawn their signature from the MoU2, which is the Memorandum of Understanding of Conversion Therapy in the UK. The MoU2 is basically setting out in black and white that no signatory would conduct conversion therapy and would report it if they saw it. Good, moral stuff in other words. And the UKCP is a professional body of psychotherapists with thousands of members, none of whom were consulted about the signature withdrawal. The decision to withdraw was made solely by the UKCP’s Board of Trustees, which will be important later.
Which is where TACTT comes in. TACTT –
[short clip of Respect by Aretha Franklin playing]Stands for Therapists Against Conversion Therapy & Transphobia and while they’re not a professional body like the UKCP, they describe themselves as “a grassroots collective of therapists, counsellors, psychotherapists, psychologists and other therapeutic practitioners who oppose conversion therapy and transphobia in the therapy profession.”
After the UKCP pulled their signature, TACTT immediately wrote an open letter objecting to it, which we covered in episode 103 in April. In the weeks since then, TACTT has been trying to oppose this decision by the UKCP, to no avail, with their efforts being derided as “a coup” and “bullying” by the Chair of the Board of Trustees of the UKCP, who complained to the Telegraph about it.
Amber: TORYgraph.
Ashleigh: Mmm, quite. However, TACTT have now succeeded in raising the alarm among the UKCP’s members, who have triggered a “no confidence” vote, meaning the Board of Trustees will have to survive that vote in order to stay in place. We have no input on numbers here so we’re not able to theorise how this might go for the Board, but the vote will be open from 20 June to 3 July of all of the members of the UKCP.
Amber: [laughing wickedly]
Alyx: So many important votes happening around the start of July, it’s crazy!
Ashleigh: I know, right?!
Amber: Yeah! I couldn’t help but laugh there when you said 3 July, because the next day we’re all heading to the polls to send the Tories packing!
Alyx: [laughing] Hopefully!
Ashleigh: Fingers crossed! Yes. So did you hear about this, with the UKCP fun bunch?
Amber: I did not actually, this is one of the stories that I have managed to miss, surprisingly, considering that I am reading the news every 20 fucking minutes of every day looking for stories, but this one escaped me.
Alyx: I get told off at work for looking at my phone, because I’m trying to keep up with the news. So for anyone listening, if you see a story that you think should go on the pod, message us and we will make a decision on whether it gets added to the script, but it helps us avoid me getting told off and also helps with Amber’s sanity.
Ashleigh: So I obviously hope the UKCP change their leadership. So what it looks like, from a reading of a couple of the statements that have been put out, particularly by TACTT and the way they’ve described how just being completely blocked and, well, stonewalled by the leadership of the UKCP suggests that the Board of Trustees and particularly the Chair are in support of not having their signature on the MoU document. They’re in support of essentially allowing conversion therapy to take place and that certainly seems to be what it looks like because why else would you remove your signature from a key document about it and not tell your membership that’s what you’re doing. It certainly looks bad for the leadership so I hope they’re sent packing as well.
Alyx: And also it might even lead to the slow creep of conversion therapists if it’s not undone because if they can see that oh, we’re no longer actively forced out of this organisation, we’ll creep in and corrupt it from the inside like we’ve seen from numerous political parties, some other organisations.
Amber: The one thing that I find very disingenuous is under Theresa May’s leadership gender recognition was going to be following a self ID system under Theresa May. Theresa May also, to my knowledge, has never turned away from the position of being against conversion therapy and wanting a ban to go through but she never managed to actually get it through in the first place. But there are some Tories in there that are fighting for, in their own way, trans-inclusive legislation and for trans rights but there’s too few of them. It seems to be always the really far-right gender criticals that are getting in position so if any of you listening are in the Conservative Party, why don’t you look for those who actually do support trans rights, and I know there’s not a lot in the Conservatives but there are some and see if they actually will be willing to run for leader because I do believe that the Conservatives will be looking for a new leader in about six weeks’ time.
Alyx: That’s if Nigel Farage doesn’t get in there.
[laughing]Amber: Milkshake man.
[laughing]Ashleigh: We’ll see, but I just…
Alyx: I think we’ve all lost hope in the Tories, haven’t we?
Ashleigh: I certainly have from a long time ago in fact because I’m from a former mining town so I grew up being instilled with a justifiable hatred of the Tories.
Amber: Absolutely.
Alyx: Mm.
Ashleigh: So I think that anybody that runs for leader now may well lean harder into the culture war stuff. There’s a couple of options, the main two are they lean even harder into the culture war shit and embrace, essentially, Trumpism, or someone will say “that’s enough of that shit, you absolute swivel-eyed loons”.
Amber: We’ve got a word here in Scotland for that called bawbag which works really well.
Ashleigh: Yeah, you absolute bawbags.
Alyx: Or there’s another option which I saw from TLDR News which is what if they fail so badly that they in-fight themselves to the point that they’re no longer a political party that becomes a mainstream party.
Ashleigh: That sounds good, let’s do that, please. But even the people who did commit earlier to progress, people like Penny Mordaunt, for example, who I’ve actually met and she was –
Amber: Oh, I feel sorry for you.
Ashleigh: I know, right, I couldn’t get the smell of brimstone off my clothes for weeks, but she at the time was the Women and Equalities Minister and she made a commit literally to my face that she would support the trans community and try and push legislation forward and then x number of years later very much backtracked and was running for leader of the Tory party very much on an explicitly anti-trans platform. So I think principles have gone out the window for them and I think that happened a while ago.
Alyx: When she was holding that sword, the power went to her head, I think.
Ashleigh: Yeah.
Amber: She did not have the power when she held that sword, I’m sorry, she is not here.
[laughing]Alyx: Poor King Arthur or whatever.
Amber: See I’m blessed with the fact that I’m in Scotland so I do just want to come quickly to GRR. During that vote in Parliament there were three Conservative members who voted in favour of the GRR bill and those three I have the uttermost respect for. Those are the three people that if I were ever elected to Holyrood which maybe I one day will be, don’t know, these are the people that I would reach out to and work with because they have proven to me that they are willing to stand up to the transphobia that is coming from their party and their party leaders and actually do what is the right thing to do and backing trans rights is that. So Sandesh Gulhane was one of those, I mentioned Jamie Greene earlier on, he is another, and then we’ve got a previous leader of the Scottish Conservatives, Jackson Carlaw, those three voted in favour of the GRR bill. So while all hope seems to be lost for the Tories down in England, there is at least three very small, sometimes very dim lights of hope for the Tories here in Scotland.
Ashleigh: Well, we shall see of course.
Alyx: The next thing we’ve got is the election special we’ve got coming up in episode 108.
Ashleigh: Yes indeed, so we’ve started pulling together that already, we hope to have a bunch of interviews lined up with different people from different parties which is why this episode is a little bit shorter because we just finished quite a lot of work about the Cass Review and now we’re going straight into an election cycle so we needed a less intense week, basically, so that is this week.
Ashleigh: For now I think that’s it for us, that’s our show. Thank you all for tuning in, all of our work goes to our website, we’re on Twitter, we’re on Facebook, we have a Discord now, a link for which we’ll put in the description and if you’re able to support us or share what we do on Patreon that would be splendid. It allows us to go to interviews, to go to Pride and interview different people. It covers operating costs for that fancy website that we maintain.
Amber: It allows us to travel to events that are then cancelled when we’re in that city.
Alyx: Oh we’ve had one of those ones come up and also we’ll make sure you get really well compensated. We’ve got a fantastic news series called Who The Trans?! we’re continuing on, you’ll get some nice podcast episodes of Who The Trans?!, I think we even released episode 100 a day or two early on there because we needed to get the release date just right.
Ashleigh: But for now that’s it, thank you all for listening, goodbye.
Alyx: Goodbye!
Amber: Goodbye everyone.
Ashleigh: This episode of What the Trans?! was written and produced by Leigh Flint, Amber Roberts, Ashleigh Talbot and Alex Bedwell, and was edited by Amber Devereaux and Olly Morris and our opening theme music composed by Waritsara Yui Karlberg. We would especially like to thank our producer-level Patreons, who are…
[end credit music begins]Ashleigh, Alyx and Amber: Genevieve Dickson, Rachel Harrison, Katie Reynolds, Georgia Holden-Burnett, Grabilicious, Alex T, Rootminusone, Grey, Elisabeth Anderson, Bernice Roust, Ellen Mellor, Jay Hoskins, Trowan, Ashley, Matty B, Setcab, Jane, Roberto de Prunk, Rose Absolute, Sarah, Sina, Kiki T, Dee, Skye Kilaen, Eric Widman, Bee, Jude, monsieur squirrel, Fergus Evans, anubisajackal, Camina, Brandon Craig, braykthasistim, Sian Phillips, Heidi Rearden, Ezra, Sophia VI, Lentil, Philippa Taprogge, clara vulliamy, Amelia, Corvina Ravenheart the trans metal DJ from Twitch and VR chat will play St Lucifer for props ([snaps] – props to you babes!), Tabitha Jo Cox (AKA Candy), Fiona Macdonell, Torikuso H, Murgatroid, ontologicallyunjust, Stella, Cyndergosa, Rebecca Prentice, CRAZZEE RICHARD, danoblivion, Florence Stanley, TheCthulhuKid, Helen_, Elle Hollingsworth bought too many magic cards, Nick Ross, Melody Nyx, Fiona Punchard, John, Nick Duffy, CB Bailey, Gordon Cameron, Ted Delphos, Wen Riverop, Vic Parsons, Patreon User, Vic Kelly, Katherine, Sabrina McVeigh, Cassius Adair, Melissa Brooks, Karaken12, April Heller, Sofie Lewis, Alexandra Lilly, Claire Scott, Ariadne Pena, Lauren O’Nions, Bernard’s Pink Jellybean, Leynos, Chris Hubley
Ashleigh: Thank you to you all.
Alyx: [extremely high-pitched] Bye!
[music ends]
