In praise of Stonewall

This morning saw a profound breakthrough in the trans debate. I say that on the basis of an interview Nancy Kelley, Stonewall's CEO, did with the BBC’s Emma Barnett on Woman’s Hour. 

What’s important is not really anything that Kelley said, though some of that was indeed interesting and I’ll come to it in a second. What matters is that the interview took place at all, since that constitutes a significant shift in the way Stonewall does its work.

Stonewall's instinct has been to largely avoid mainstream media and other political debates about its work on trans issues that is now its primary focus. Kelley has given a handful of interviews since she took over the charity last year, but Stonewall’s presence on the airwaves remains more of an exception than a norm.

These tactics appeared to follow the model set out in a still-remarkable document that I wrote about for The Spectator two ago, a trans lobbying manual that advised campaigners to avoid media scrutiny of their plans:

“Avoid excessive press coverage and exposure: another technique which has been used to great effect is the limitation of press coverage and exposure. In certain countries, like the UK, information on legal gender recognition reforms has been misinterpreted in the mainstream media, and opposition has arisen as a result.

When I wrote about that document, which was assembled with the support of the law firm Dentons, I suggested that lobbying in private could mean short-term success and long-term failure, because policies made without full debate would lack legitimacy: walls built on sand.

The setbacks Stonewall has faced in recent months bear that out. Its ejection from various public bodies and growing media scrutiny, most recently by Stephen Nolan of the BBC, are the inevitable consequences of winning your political battles without even trying to win the arguments.

Yes, this is me saying ‘I told you so’. But I did, and so did many others. They faced and still face routine accusations of bigotry for nothing more than wanting policies to be debated in public and on the basis of facts, not privately and on the basis of contested claims.

So it is welcome that Stonewall has seemingly decided to move beyond ‘limited exposure’ and engage in conversation about its actions and positions. That Woman’s Hour interview followed Kelley’s appearance at a dinner in the Middle Temple this week to discuss the law around conversion therapy. Both are laudable things to do and entail no small courage, especially the former. I’m a former colleague of Emma Barnett and very fond of her, but the idea of a prolonged interview by her on live radio would terrify me, because she’s very, very good at what she does.

And what she does is interrogate ideas and positions, calmly and clearly. That’s always a good thing, but especially needed on issues of sex and gender, where the complexity of the issue and the strength of feelings among those involved can be bewildering and off-putting to the casual observer.

The trans debate often captures all the worst features of the way public policy is discussed these days: instead of conversation, it’s often people shouting at and about each other on the (implied and sometimes even unconscious) assumption that those who disagree with them do so because they are bad people doing bad things.

I’m sad to say I do hold Stonewall responsible for some of that toxicity and coarseness. The fact that a prime mover in this field has largely declined to engage in conversation with people who take contrary views is neither helpful nor admirable, especially when it is accompanied by the suggestion that people who want to discuss the implications of changing laws are actually ‘erasing’ the existence of trans people. ‘Limited exposure’ puts people with reasonable, well-intentioned views and questions beyond the pale of acceptable conversation.

Consider, for example, the suggestion from Kelley herself that dissent from the Stonewall view of sex and gender is comparable to antisemitism:

“With all beliefs including controversial beliefs there is a right to express those beliefs publicly and where they're harmful or damaging — whether it's antisemitic beliefs, gender critical beliefs, beliefs about disability — we have legal systems that are put in place for people who are harmed by that.

See also: Stonewall’s frankly jaw-dropping response to a BBC feature that quoted several lesbians saying they’d been coerced into sex with male-bodied trans women. That response:

“Nobody should ever be pressured into dating, or pressured into dating people they aren't attracted to. But if you find that when dating, you are writing off entire groups of people, like people of colour, fat people, disabled people or trans people, then it's worth considering how societal prejudices may have shaped your attractions.

Yes, that’s the country’s biggest gay rights campaign group suggesting that homosexual women who refuse to consider sex with people who have male genitalia is comparable to racism.

I know some people with gender-critical views consider such things unforgivable. Likewise Stonewall’s sustained lobbying to amend the Equality Act 2010, as stated in 2015, to ‘remove exceptions allowing female-only services such as shelters and refuges’.

Among some of the people who founded and worked for and depended on Stonewall when it set itself up in opposition to Section 28, there is profound anger at its recent work and at comments such as those above. I would not dream of telling those people they are wrong to feel that way.

But as someone who wants this issue to be debated in a mundane and ordinary way, the way that other fields of policy are, I hope that my friends who hold those feelings can also recognise that this is a good day, because of Stonewall’s decision to join the conversation.

Never mind why that decision was taken — my guess is that it is a tacit acceptance that keeping shtum has become counterproductive — because actions should always matter more than motives. The result of that decision is that Kelley went on the radio to answer questions and explain her organisation’s actions and positions in the public domain.

Some of those answers and explanations were good — accepting the antisemitism comparison as clumsy is a good start. Others were not — sticking with the implication that sexual attraction based on anatomy is prejudice, for instance. But those answers were given. They can be heard, discussed, scrutinised, talked about. And that is a small step on the road to a genuine conversation about sex and gender. Well done, Nancy Kelley — I hope you keep talking.