The villains smirk in plaid shirts...

The UK Supreme court's decision and its real world impact

I don’t really want to write this. I am currently lost in the land of fiction, ghost-writing a novel that’s all seduction on yachts, overflowing jacuzzis and wayward fake tan exposing long-held secrets. It’s silly, frivolous, pure escapism… and it’s set in 2010. Long before today, long before this news. I want to stay there. Please, can I stay there?

Today, The UK supreme court has ruled that the terms “woman” and “sex” in the Equality Act refer to a biological woman and biological sex.

My dad is a transgender woman. She is, and always will be, a woman.

I can remember, before she came out, when I was a child, waking up in the middle of the night, and seeing her standing, staring at herself in the mirror. She was in a white silk nightie. She was looking at herself: her short hair, her sharp jawline as if she was not real, as if she was a ghost. I ran back to bed. I convinced myself that I had seen a ghost, not because of the nightie (I was used to the nightie) but because of the haunted look in her eyes. That person couldn’t be my jolly, happy, silly dad who made up rhymes with me, and held onto me while I roller-bladed to the shops. They had to be a ghost.

I now know she was haunted. I saw her in the throes of pain, as she tried, desperately to figure out what she could do. Could she keep living this way? In a body that did not fit? Could she survive?

I have memories of friends of hers, coming to our house, or names that floated in the air. People that did not survive. People who wanted to live, who were loved, but who could not keep breathing, in the body they were forced to exist in. I’m not going to list the suicide rates for transgender people, I can’t look them up right now. But they’re there. They’re terrifying.

My dad once wrote about a friend of hers…

The one the doctor said wasn’t serious and so they refused to help her.

She was someone whose shame was so extreme

She never could come out in her public life

Someone whose true life - whose women’s life -

Mostly happened behind closed doors.

And who finally drank herself to death.

Before she went, she said:

There comes a time when you can’t go on

You have to choose

Between living as a woman

And dying as a man

My mum died in February, 2005. The Gender Recognition Act (allowing people to legally change their gender in the UK) came into place in April, 2005.

For many reasons, I know, that if my dad could not live as a woman, she would have died.

I would have been made an orphan. Maybe not that year, or the year after. But, I believe it would have happened.

This decision, that will ramp up transphobic abuse, push people further into shame, into the closet, into hiding who they are until they can take it no longer… it will kill people.

People are going to die.

They’re going to die… and women, women who call themselves feminists, are celebrating.

I wrote in a poem once: “we believe lies when we are at our most afraid. You’ve taped the mask of a monster onto the innocent, while the villains smirk in plaid shirts.”

And, oh, they’re smirking right now. As those in power have successfully distracted us all, yelled '“look over there” to distract from their own long-list of failures.

These feminists said they wanted to ‘protect’ women, and women’s spaces and…

In 2021, Women’s Aid showed that in 2019-20, 59% of councils in England had cut their domestic abuse services budget: by November 2020, there were 24.5% less refuge spaces than there should be. I’ve reported on this, charities are reluctant to be too vocal about how tight services are, how impacted they are by cuts. They don’t want anyone to feel they can’t reach out and receive help. But it’s a crisis.

Then there’s this…

According to UN women, globally, an estimated 736 million women - almost one in three - have been subjected to physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence. Most violence against women is perpetrated by current or former husbands, or partners. Men they knew, men they once loved.

This is the fight. This should always have been the fight.

I can’t keep writing. I normally like to take my time on pieces, not just write reactively, in rage.

I also always, always want to find a positive and seeing the outpouring of fury on social media right now is one, I guess. But will it be enough? Or will tomorrow we move on and post about something else, direct our fury elsewhere? Will we take that anger and place it elsewhere, somewhere useful that will actually bring about change?

I’ll leave you with my poem. It’s all I’ve got right now.

Here’s also some links to other articles I’ve written, when I wasn’t typing in sadness and rage.

What happened when my dad came out as transgender

The NHS is crumbling, pointing the finger at trans people is not the answer

And please, above all, follow my dad on Substack. She’s a remarkable person who writes beautifully about life, and the human experience.

Jo Clifford

- The Light Inside.

Lots of love.

Oh hello my love
It's how every message from her begins
She hopes I had a nice day, then she tells me of hers 

It's bitter in Edinburgh
There's a sheet of ice waiting for her
Just beyond her doorstep

It will thaw soon, the crocuses tell us it's nearly Spring
But when it has weakened
To a puddle
Another threat remains

I want to speak of her joy, she has so much of it
These stories shouldn't just capture pain
But the lies, they're multiplying
So I must imprint the facts

There's the one in two
Abused, attacked
Remember the nine in ten
Their young lives very nearly cut short

Numbers are hard to quantify
Examples spell it out
But she shouldn't have to bleed
For you to believe

Cruelty is gift-wrapped as comedy 
Peeing safely seems up for debate
Snatching human rights to win an online war
The happiness true identities bring
Lost to a keyboard

Yes, we carry keys with our trembling fingers
That matters, it will always matter
We believe lies when we are at our most afraid 
You've taped a mask of a monster onto the innocent
While the villains smirk in plaid shirts

Please stop swallowing that red herring 
Over and over again
It's fed to you as a distraction
From what will really help
Won't you join us as we create the day ahead?

When we
Me, you, her, him, them
Can fling our doors open
The enemy neither in, or out
The safety of the sunshine calls
Let's link arms and take those steps together