Is it transphobic to criticise or be anti-Stonewall?

Stonewall UK describes itself as “stand[ing] for lesbian, gay, bi, trans, queer, questioning and ace (LGBTQ+) people everywhere. We imagine a world where all LGBTQ+ people are free to be ourselves and can live our lives to the full.” It started as a small group of LGB individuals fighting against Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988 at a time when discrimination on the grounds of sexuality was legal. Since then, Stonewall has come under fire for “giving bad advice to universities” and other public sector organisations, and stands accused of being little more than a protection racket promoting a highly controversial ideology of gender identity and an equally controversial route to trans rights (what is commonly known as ‘self-identification’).  Stonewall and its advocates have presented criticism as being anti-trans. So the question must be asked:

Is criticism of Stonewall transphobic?

The short answer – no and in the context of universities, it is ludicrous to suggest that it is.

Let’s start by reminding ourselves that Stonewall is first and foremost a political lobbying organisation. Back in the 1980s and 1990s LGBTQi people had no employment rights. As a campaigning organisation back then Stonewall was a beacon of light, offering support to LGBTQi people who were experiencing employment discrimination. This is important because it shaped what Stonewall politically lobbied for - formal legal equality in employment for LGBTQi people. As Matthew Parris (one of the founder members of Stonewall) pointed out recently, once the goal of formal employment equality for LGBTQi people was achieved though, Stonewall lost its way and became predominately trans rights lobbying organisation.

As I know from personal experience at University of Essex, Stonewall has used its position to make imperialistic incursions into Universities in order to promote its understanding that sex is a ‘social construct’, that transwomen and men are literal women and men, that it is transphobic to even question these claims and that the main routes to trans rights is a policy of self-id and for transwomen to access women-only spaces. Stonewall’s advice to universities butts up against the bedrock of laws and principles of that define academic freedom and freedom of speech. Indeed, as the Reindorf Report concluded, Stonewall interpreted the Equality Act 2010 as they would like it to be rather than what it actually is. Not only did this advice end up with me being unlawfully cancelled and my freedom of speech unlawfully restricted by the University of Essex, it might also have sat underneath the claim made, in an open public letter signed by 360+ members of The Open University, that I and other members of the Open University Gender Critical Research Network are “anti-trans”. For, it would seem in both instances the main accusation is that I stand on record as stating that Stonewall’s policies recommendations and strategy are problematic.

Does it matter that Stonewall (a political lobbying organisation) misinterpreted the Equality Act 2010?

In the context of a university the incorrect interpretation of the Equality Act matters a great deal. The purpose of universities is to challenge orthodoxies wherever they come from and to engage in debate (not unwarranted name calling or trading in pernicious stereotypes of gender critical scholars). In this context criticising the effect of Stonewall’s strategies, tactics and work in universities is a perfectly legitimate exercise and cannot possibly be transphobic. Yet, the accusation of being anti-trans or transphobic is a powerful one. It serves to delegitimise and silence the person who is so accused. And so, if criticism of Stonewall by an academic in the context of their work in a university is ipso facto ‘transphobic’ then the message is that Stonewall is above reproach.

Formal versus substantive equality

There is another line of argument relevant to answering the question whether criticising Stonewall is transphobic. As stated above, Stonewall has pursued formal legal equality in much the same fashion that civil rights organisations in the 1960s and 1970s pursued formal legal equality for marginalised communities. That Stonewall have actively pursued a trans rights agenda is not particularly surprising. The act that established formal legal employment equality for LGB people also established the only condition on which it is legal to discriminate against people who have had undergone gender reassignment (i.e. those who possess a gender recognition certificate and have acquired the legal fictive state of being a woman). The Single Sex Exemptions in Equality Act 2010 allows organisations to legally discriminate against members of the opposite sex or transgendered individuals where there is a reasonable purpose in doing so. For a lobby organisation committed to establishing formal legal employment equality, this is a problem because any legal form of discrimination means that formal legal equality has not been achieved. Hence, Stonewall’s insistence that transwomen ARE women (and all that follows from that such as use of pronouns, accessing single sex spaces etc).

But, here is the point, formal legal equality is not the same as *substantive* equality, the latter referring to actual or real equality (of opportunity, of access and critically of outcomes). Those concerned with a struggle for substantive equality are usually more concerned with social structures of inequality than they are in achieving this, that or the other legal policy reform. Stonewall promotes a stance on gender identity that reduces the struggles of trans and gender diverse people to the right of individuals to identify as they choose and Stonewall places this over and above the rights of a sex-class (i.e. women) in a society structured by profound sex-based inequalities (as evidenced by current campaigns around violence against women). There is nothing radical or revolutionary here and there is no pursuit of substantive equality for anyone. In this light, Stonewall is simply a deeply individualistic and neo-liberal political project.

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Whatever the case, the point I am making here is a simple one: to conflate critique of Stonewall with transphobia is nonsensical. As a sociologist and criminologist whose work focuses on the intended and unintended consequences of policy reform as it affects marginalised and excluded people it is my job to highlight these sorts of issues, to shed light on them and to think about how things might be otherwise. It is not my job to take the word of a political lobbying group (including those that I support) as The Truth, without debate, and then ensure that my colleagues and students do the same or face denunciation as a transphobe. That job I leave to the propagandists.