Plumbers Wanted

To carry out intimate inspections.

Falmouth Pride Day yesterday. Big, happy, noisy, colourful, deeply felt family day, as it is every year. Flags, megaphones, and many people dressed up as the butterflies they are. The placards were clear. This is my quick snapshot, used with the permission of the person holding up the placard.

In the UK, the Supreme Court has just ruled that trans people can’t use the restrooms they want to use. They have to use the facilities that are appropriate to the biological gender that was “assigned” to them at birth.

“Assigned.” Huh. I imagine somebody crying out “It’s a boy!” and then looking closer and saying “No, wait, sorry, it’s…” I imagine that baby growing up legally obliged to use the little boys’ room. “Assigned.” Huh!

[Assign. To give a particular job or piece of work to someone. Thank you, Cambridge English Dictionary. “Assigned” refers to the job you’re given, not to the person you are.]

Thank you, Supreme Court, for such a one-size-fits-all answer to such a deep and very personal issue in the lives of so many potentially vulnerable people. And thank-you, Equality and Human Rights Commission, for promising to “pursue” nurses who help patients to go where they want to go. What an attitude!

I get that safe spaces are a thing. I get that there’s a vulnerability inherent in what happens in restrooms. But — can’t we meet a demand for safety without taking the whole personal-identity question right to the top of the law and imposing a blanket rule?

Arguing about it all the way?

I suppose not.

But my big question is, seriously, how will you tell?

Yes, okay, “trans” has become an identity in itself in the recent past, but if the aim is to transition, the end-point is to be, surely?

So that once you’ve gone through all that, you are?

Don’t tell me — we’re so focused on the actual plumbing that the visible clues, the behaviour, the whatever else, won’t be enough.

There’ll be Equality and Human Rights Commission agents stationed outside every hospital restroom in the country, inspecting…

And my follow-up question is — given that this ruling has been dropped onto the heads of potentially vulnerable people coping with a crisis of identity — what damage will you do?