Trans people looking to escape the UK, claims Dutch refugee group
Trans people are increasingly trying to escape the UK, a Dutch NGO has said. (Getty)
Trans people are increasingly trying to escape the UK, a Dutch NGO has said. (Getty)
Transgender people are seeking refuge away from the UK, following the Supreme Court’s ruling on the definition of a woman, a Dutch not-for-profit organisation has reported.
Trans Rescue, a non-governmental organisation that helps refugees, said that it has witnessed a dramatic rise in the number of requests to help trans men and women leave the UK.
Last month, the UK’s top judges ruled that the definitions of “women” and “sex” in the 2010 Equality Act related to “biological women” and “biological sex”.
Announcing the court’s unanimous decision, Lord Patrick Hodge said the judgement should not be considered “a triumph of one or more groups in our society at the expense of another”. Despite this, businesses and organisations have begun to bar trans people from single-sex spaces, including public toilets and changing rooms.
Anne Ogborn, a director at Trans Rescue, told PinkNews that the organisation – which has helped more than 165 trans, intersex and genderqueer people flee transphobic countries – was “concerned” by the increasing climate of fear and hate in the UK.
Systemic attacks on trans people in the UK have caused a 40-fold increase in British trans people asking for help to flee the country, she claimed.
“We have been concerned for a long time about the climate of fear and hate stoked in the UK media and government by anti-trans forces,” Ogborn said. “The Supreme Court decision, however, changes conditions from vilification to danger.”
Ogborn went on to condemn the UK for having “shamefully joined the list with Yemen and Afghanistan as a source of refugees”.
In a statement following the Supreme Court’s ruling, prime minister Keir Starmer welcomed the judgement and made it clear that he believes trans women aren’t women and trans men aren’t men.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission later issued non-statutory guidance based on the ruling, calling for trans women to be banned women’s facilities and trans men from men’s facilities. In “some circumstances,” trans women should also be banned from the men’s facilities, and trans men from women’s facilities, it went on to say.
Green Party co-leader Carla Denyer condemned the guidance, calling it ill-considered and ill-thought-out, and claiming it had been rushed through. “It’s obvious that they have not listened to trans people,” she told the BBC.
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