Debbie Hayton is a British science teacher and a transgender campaigner. Hayton, who struggles with gender dysphoria, identifies as a trans woman but still acknowledges that trans women are men. Denying this fact, Hayton argues, is harmful to transgender people since society is unlikely to build trust and respect with a minority group if said group coerces them into denying science and safeguarding provisions.
“At this very moment, Scotland is considering a change to the law that would allow people to change their legal sex without producing evidence of a psychological need,” Hayton notes in a recent piece for UnHerd:
Allowing male people to declare themselves female for reasons known only to themselves is open to abuse, and any law that relies on well-meaning people declaring that (abusive) men wouldn’t do that, would they? is questionable at best.
Women’s spaces are not protected because all men present a hazard, but a few do. In the same way, we don’t lock our doors at night because all passers-by are a hazard. But in both cases, some people will abuse trust and women need to take precautions just like householders need to take precautions.
The inconvenient truth is that transwomen are male, and — as a group — we present the same hazard that men present. Women can no more differentiate nice trans from nasty trans than they can distinguish nice men from nasty men. Allowing us to declare ourselves to be trans and then immediately self-identify into women’s spaces makes the boundaries meaningless. It is a safeguarding nightmare.
Live-and-let-live is a two-way street. Hayton’s common-sense perspective on trans issues is not only refreshing but desperately needed.