It’s dangerous to conflate the gay and trans rights struggles

Far from being a repeat of the fight to repeal Section 28, the activists’ demands actually reduce the rights of gays and lesbians

Once again, a Guardian columnist has compared the resistance to radical trans ideology with homophobia in the 1980s. Why do people – and in this case Owen Jones, a gay man who, by virtue of his age, was not involved in the long fight against Section 28 – rely on that argument? It might pull at the heartstrings of some liberals, but to conflate the two struggles is dangerously misleading.

Previously, the comparison was made during a rant in which Jones decried the fact that trans people have to endure waiting lists to access NHS care – much like anyone else you might think. In fact, what he was describing was not emergency treatment but “gender-identity clinics”, which are extremely controversial. It is here that we find the confusion at the heart of the debate over trans issues. Attempts to evoke a gush of sympathy disrupt the critical thought processes that should occur, especially when children are involved.

I have yet to come across a sensible way to compare gay liberation and trans issues. Each has its own sensitivities. Unlike someone trying to change who they are physically, gay and lesbian people were fighting to be recognised as their current selves. We were not seeking taxpayer-funded access to surgery or hormone treatments, but simply to be acknowledged as equal under the law. There was no question of impeding on the freedoms of others, and we did not insist that there was “no debate” to be had, or claim people who questioned us wanted to make us invisible.

Some rightly highlight that much of the bigoted discourse around gay men was that they were sexual predators and therefore a danger to children. The claim is that this is what feminists are saying about trans women. This is not true. The homophobic accusation was general and inaccurate, but what we are saying is specific and accurate: that women need single sex spaces because a significant enough minority of men are perpetrators of such acts. We recognise that this is the same when it comes to men identifying as women.

Trans women do not suddenly shed their male biology or socialisation when they declare themselves women. At times, efforts to deny this reality have led to the use of “trans rights” as justification for putting biological males in highly sensitive women’s spaces, such as prisons. Who can forget the Scottish Prison Service policy that “a male-to-female person in custody living permanently as a woman without genital surgery should be allocated to a female establishment”.

That poses a threat to lesbian and straight women alike. Indeed, many of the demands made by trans activists harm lesbian and gay rights. Where extreme ideologues speak about “same gender attraction” as opposed to “same sex attraction”, this effectively means that a lesbian could be a man who claims to be a woman who is attracted sexually to women.

And nothing distinguishes the gay rights struggle and the trans issue more clearly than conversion therapy, which I experienced as an undercover reporter. Gay conversion therapy is telling lesbians and gay men that we are evil, twisted, damaged and freakish. We are told to ignore our feelings and sexual attraction or be condemned to a life of misery. But when extreme trans activists talk about trans “conversion therapy”, what they are actually attacking is the support that is offered to young people to help them explore their feelings when they present at gender clinics. That is how we fail children, again with the use of language designed to prioritise sympathy over all else.

Trans people are already protected under the law. At the time of the fight against Section 28 I was afforded little such protection as a lesbian. Extreme trans activism is becoming increasingly hostile to the needs of other marginalised groups.