Campaign logo for the Yes side in the gender identity referendum.
Eoin Silke | YES campaign manager
Sometimes it can be hard for caring people to understand transphobia, the deep-rooted intolerance and discrimination towards transgender people. After all, why should it matter to society how a person experiences or expresses their gender? Transgender people are for the most part just like non-transgender people: they go about their everyday lives, working, studying, meeting friends. And yet transgender people live daily under the spectre of ridicule, violence, and murder; of being turned away from jobs; of being denied healthcare.
To be transgender simply means to be someone whose gender identity or gender expression differs from conventional expectations based on the sex assigned to them at birth.
This rather complicated-sounding idea is really quite simple. Most people have a deeply felt sense of what gender they are, be it male, female, or some other gender (many societies have a “third gender”, for example). This is their gender identity.
Society considers certain characteristics – certain ways of dressing, acting, speaking – to be masculine or feminine. This is a person’s gender expression, how they manifest to the world their internal sense of gender.
For some people, gender identity, gender expression and the sex they were assigned at birth all “match up”. In my case, I was assigned male at birth, I identify as male, and I usually act in a way society considers reasonably masculine. But for a significant number of people, things are not this simple.
Transgender is used to describe a wide range of experiences and people. Probably the most familiar to many people is the transsexual experience, but it can also encompass crossdressers, drag performers, genderqueer people, and gender variant people. But whatever a person’s experience of their own gender, it is clear that everyone deserves respect, and everyone deserves to be free from discrimination.
This referendum represents a small change to the SU constitution. It adds “gender identity” and “gender expression” to the grounds the SU does not discriminate against, placing these alongside age, disability, sexual orientation, and many others. But without these kinds of formal protections, transgender students are open to discrimination in future. Trans people have long been invisible in society. They should not be invisible to our institutions.
A recent Trans Mental Health and Wellbeing Survey was a stark indicator of the difficulties faced by transgender people in Ireland. It showed that 78% of trans people in Ireland had considered suicide and 40% had attempted suicide at least once.
It is hard to know exactly how many trans people experience violence in Ireland. Transgender people are not protected by any hate crime legislation, and statistics are not kept on the number of reported transphobic crimes. The majority of these incidents go unreported in any case, as many trans people do not feel confident in the Gardaí.
We rely instead on anecdotal reports of violence, like those given in the Supporting LGBT Lives study, in which one trans woman describes a vicious assault which left her cheek bone fractured in four places. Recently, delegates visiting Ireland for the European Transgender Council held in Dublin were physically and verbally attacked. An attacker also spat in the face of one of the delegates. Research from the UK suggests three quarters of trans people have experienced harassment of some kind.
Trans people in Ireland cannot legally change the gender on their birth certificate, a situation which leaves Ireland as one of the only remaining countries in the EU that does not afford legal recognition to trans people. This situation was ruled by the High Court to be incompatible with Ireland’s obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights.
While the current government has committed to introducing gender recognition legislation, this has been repeatedly delayed, and the proposed form of the legislation has been heavily criticised by organisations representing the interests of trans people.
Trans people also experience many difficulties in the healthcare system. In one US survey, 19% had been refused medical care on the basis of their gender identity. In Ireland, there is still no HSE policy for trans people, meaning that trans people may receive inconsistent service, and may not be fully informed of the treatment options available to them.
We can secure a better future for everyone, transgender and cisgender alike, if we take to heart the principle of respect for all people. That may be something simple like respecting a person’s preferred pronouns (he/she/etc.), or it could involve lobbying your TD to get the best possible gender recognition legislation.
Revising our guiding documents to be inclusive of transgender people is a good first step in the fight against institutional transphobia. This is why your Yes vote in this referendum is so important.
