Which side is winning the debate over transgender rights in Britain?
Some indicators suggest it’s the pro-trans side – the side that believes transgender people should be able to use women’s bathrooms and compete in women’s sports. For example, various gender critical feminists have been petitioned, cancelled and bullied out of their jobs. In addition, you have once-great journals like The Lancet requiring authors to use the ridiculous term ‘sex assigned at birth’.
However, some indicators point in the other direction. As a new report makes clear, public opinion has become substantially less favourable to the pro-trans side of the debate. (The report is based on data from the British Social Attitudes survey – a long-running survey based on high quality sampling methods and face-to-face interviews.)
Consider the table below, which shows the percentage of Britons who agree or disagree that “a person who is transgender should be able to have the sex recorded on their birth certificate changed if they want”.
Back in 2016, a sizeable majority of 58% agreed that a transgender person should be able to change the sex recorded on their birth certificate, compared to only 22% who disagreed. Fast forward to 2023 and the percentages have almost flipped. Now, 50% of people disagree and only 24% agree. This is a remarkably large shift in public opinion in such a short space of time.
Okay, but does it only apply to the rather specific issue of sex recorded on birth certificates? Apparently not.
The British Social Attitudes survey also asked respondents in 2021 and 2023 whether “attempts to give equal opportunities have gone too far or not gone far enough for transgender people”. In 2021, 33% of people said such attempts have “gone too far”, compared to 32% who said they had “not gone far enough”. Just two years later, these percentages have switched to 47% and 22%.
Interestingly, increasing scepticism about transgender rights has not coincided with a decline in support for same-sex marriage. As data from the same survey shows, the percentage of Britons who believe that same-sex marriage is “not wrong at all” has actually risen since 2016. (There has been a very slight fall in the last few years, which could just be a blip.) So increasing scepticism about transgender rights does not reflect a general decline in tolerance of sexual minorities.
This is hardly surprising, since the ‘LGBT community’ is, in fact, no such thing. Many of the L’s (that is, lesbians) don’t want T’s (that is, transgender people) intruding in their social spaces, such as gay bars. Rather than being part of some grand rainbow alliance, lesbians and transgender people are often on opposite sides of the debate.
What caused the dramatic shift in public opinion? Consciousness-raising by gender critical feminists like Kathleen Stock, Maya Forstater and J.K. Rowling seems like an obvious candidate – although one shouldn’t discount the role of news stories about biologically male rapists being sent to women’s prisons.
While academia might still be an unwelcome place for those who favour women’s sex-based rights, the country as a whole has moved in a gender critical direction.
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