The UK’s only out transgender judge has called for independent genocide prevention groups to investigate the “systemic oppression” of trans people.
Retired high court judge Dr Victoria McCloud asked international not-for-profit organisations Genocide Watch and The Lemkin Institute to review attacks on trans rights by the UK government and public bodies.
Following her keynote speech at Pride In London’s Human Rights Forum on Saturday (28 June), McCloud said it was her “sad duty” to ask the groups to confront “the systematic oppression of the trans community of the UK.”
She went on to say: “We in the UK face bathroom bans, violence, abuse, deliberate social exclusion, strip searches of trans women by male police, and calls to photograph us in toilets and other spaces.”
The call comes after the UK Supreme Court decided that the 2010 Equality Act’s definition of sex related to “biological sex.” The verdict was welcomed by prime minister Keir Starmer.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) published non-statutory interim guidance in the wake of the ruling, which called for the exclusion of trans people from facilities corresponding to their gender identity and, in some cases, their birth sex.
McCloud, a vocal opponent of the ruling, wrote that “the time is approaching” for the UK to be “red-flagged” as a country “engaging in steps tending towards cultural genocide for the purposes of the definitions used by these well-respected early warning systems”.
Cultural genocide, also known as ethnocide or culturcide, refers to the systemic destruction of a culture which does not necessarily result in the destruction of its people. It was first coined by Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin, in 1944.
The Lemkin Institute has previously highlighted the “genocidal nature” of gender-critical beliefs, claiming that the ideology “simultaneously denies that transgender identity is real and seeks to eradicate it completely from society”.
McCloud’s announcement comes after leading UK-based trans groups called for a European investigation into the UK’s treatment of the transgender community.
Trans+ Solidarity Alliance, TransActual, the Equality Network, Scottish Trans, Trans Safety Network, and the Feminist Gender Equality Network (FGEN), wrote to the Council of Europe’s Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights, to express “grave concerns” regarding the trans rights policies in the UK.
The open letter specifically took issue with the EHRC’s interim guidance and proposed changes to its Code of Conduct, which, the groups claimed, “encourages and, in some cases, mandates the exclusion of trans people from single-sex spaces and services, in violation of their human rights”.
It cited a case before the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), Christine Goodwin vs UK, in 2022, in which it was argued that the UK had violated a trans woman’s rights by refusing to recognise her gender identity, instead placing her into an “intermediate zone” where she was not quite recognised as one sex or another.
“We believe that in the UK, trans people are being returned to this intermediate zone, placing the state once again in violation of its positive obligations under the convention,” the letter read.
“We ask that the Council of Europe take immediate action to protect the human rights of trans people in the UK. We ask that you conduct a report into the state of trans human rights in the UK.”
The outcome of the ECHR case played a part in the introduction of the 2004 Gender Recognition Act.
Jess O’Thomson, a legal expert for Trans+ Solidarity Alliance, told PinkNews that the EHRC’s proposed changes to its single-sex guidance amounted to an “egregious violation” of transgender people’s human rights, adding that the “practical impacts” were already being felt before it even become law.
“Trans people are being told at work and by service providers, and even on the parliamentary estate, that they can no longer use the toilets they have been using for decades. This is a huge rollback of our rights,” O’Thomson said.
