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00:00Now turning to an issue that is polarising the UK and beyond, globally in fact, in the US,
00:05Donald Trump has signed executive orders to prohibit the participation of transgender athletes in sport
00:11and called for a rigid definition of the sexes and not gender to be used.
00:17Two weeks ago, the UK's highest court ruled that the definition of a woman was someone who was born biologically female.
00:23And at the weekend, transgender women were banned from cricket and football teams in England and Wales.
00:28As the world questions the rights of a very small minority, we can get more insight on it all
00:33from co-director of the LGBTI Plus Observatory here in Paris, Flora Boulter.
00:38Thanks so much for your time and joining us here on France 24.
00:42Maybe let's get some things straight, first of all.
00:45Could you give me an idea maybe of what percentage of the population do you think is transgender?
00:51Well, that's a very difficult question because it really depends on the type of question you ask
00:57and how you define trans.
01:00In France, for instance, we tend to go with the 1% estimate of the population.
01:07This has been used in the UK as well.
01:12Overall, you can have estimates that go from 0.5% of the population to up to 2%.
01:19This, of course, varies a lot in terms of generations.
01:23So people, so in generation alpha, you have more people identifying as trans and non-binary
01:30than in previous generations.
01:32So this is changing a lot in terms of demographics.
01:37Okay, very interesting, but still a tiny, tiny percentage of the population.
01:41And as you're saying there, clearly there's always been transgender people
01:45as far as humanity goes back.
01:48Yes, absolutely.
01:50It's something, yeah.
01:51You can, tell me, tell me, Agawant.
01:54It's always been part of us.
01:55Yes, well, yes, it has absolutely.
01:58It is something that we have been able to see even in archaeological finds,
02:03people living in a gender that does not necessarily match their DNA
02:08or the analysis we can do of their bones.
02:13That's something we know we have in history, which is to say with documents
02:18and with recorded history, we have traces of people living in another gender
02:23than the one they were identified with at birth very early on.
02:28And certainly this has been the case in situations where they were very heavily repressed.
02:33So this is a given.
02:34And it's part of human diversity and it's something that has been part of diversity
02:40for as long as we have known, for as long as there have been societies.
02:45So, yeah, so now it's more visible because people are expressing it more
02:49and being accepted more and therefore are more visible.
02:52But it's something that has always been there.
02:54So on the one hand, people are being more open about it perhaps,
02:57but the lives of transgender people have become a political issue.
03:02And who or what do you think is behind that?
03:04Well, what we see is from 2016, 2018 on, there has been a very strong focus
03:13specifically on trans issues, which was a shift from the American ultra-conservative groups
03:22such as the Heritage Foundation or the American Principles Project, for instance.
03:27They have deliberately targeted trans persons because they realized they were getting nowhere with the marriage equality issue.
03:37And this is very well documented.
03:40So there has been a focus and it's very clear in the press coverage in many different countries.
03:46And this is certainly the case in the US and in the UK.
03:48It's also starting to be the case in France.
03:52There has been an increase of polarizing stories and misrepresentations on the general scientific consensus,
04:02as you know, the consensus that WHO is working from.
04:06And so there has been an onslaught of junk science and various narratives,
04:16such as the idea that trans women would have an unfair advantage in sports
04:21or that they would represent a danger in single-sex settings,
04:27which is not supported by facts.
04:29This is not something that we have seen in data.
04:34And so there has been a wave against the recognition of the legal recognition of gender,
04:42which is very strange because many countries have moved toward more self-determination models of gender recognition
04:50as corresponds to the consensus in human rights and the human rights decisions,
04:59including the European Court of Human Rights decisions on the matter,
05:03and have seen absolutely no issue and no raise in the assorted problems that these people have been claiming.
05:13But unfortunately, this has reached an audience which goes a bit beyond the traditional circles of the anti-gender, anti-abortion groups.
05:25And unfortunately, because it sounds, you know, it works, it plays on fears,
05:30and it's on a very small percentage of the population that many people do not know.
05:35Unfortunately, some people are buying into this narrative and spreading it.
05:39And that is very problematic.
05:41And we've seen this in the UK, for instance, where the reports,
05:47where the incidents of transphobic hate have been on the rise in a very serious way.
05:53And this is also something that the Fundamental Rights Agency of the European Union
05:57has definitely been able to evidence and to show across the European region.
06:07But what do you think the ultimate goal of the groups that started to attack transgender people is?
06:15Well, there is a very strong correlation between trans rights, LGBT rights,
06:21and also women's rights in terms of the right to choose,
06:25in terms of access to medication, access to care, and sexual and reproductive rights,
06:31because hormonal treatments are hormonal treatments.
06:34And that could be, and basically what people have done in the UK, for instance,
06:41has put into question the tests that people had been using for access to abortion
06:49and to contraceptives for teenagers.
06:53And they have been, and they have broken this test and saying that it wasn't valid for teenagers for a while.
07:00This is no longer the case.
07:03This has been overruled.
07:05But for a while, that was certainly the object, that was certainly what they were fighting against.
07:10And that is very problematic.
07:12So there is this aspect.
07:13We see this also in the United States, where the bills, the anti-trans bills,
07:18have become more and more linked with, don't say gay or trans bills,
07:22and linked with other bills claiming to protect the rights of women or children
07:29by banning so-called LGBT propaganda and, you know, any kind of sexual education,
07:38comprehensive sexual education.
07:40So that's a whole continent of rights, which is very interconnected.
07:49And, of course, the trans issues are the most, not the weakest link,
07:53but they're the easiest target in terms of demonizing a group
07:57and getting people to agree and getting people on board with the notion that this should be stopped.
08:03And the rules, the bans put forth, you know, the executive orders and the different bills in the U.S.,
08:12for instance, have also harmed quite strongly all LGBTI persons.
08:17And they correlate with the attacks on women's rights in the U.S. and in the various states.
08:24And this is also what we're starting to see in various European countries, such as Hungary, for instance.
08:30You mentioned it there a few times, but a lot of people, notably politicians or others,
08:36say they're protecting children or defending women's rights when they propose anti-trans policies.
08:42You say that there's proof to the contrary. Tell us a bit more about that.
08:47Well, yes, the idea is that when they say that they are defending,
08:51they have the notion that they are defending women and children from a group that is discreet,
08:56which is to say that it's separate from them, and a group of dangerous people,
09:01which, of course, is not the case because there are, of course, trans children,
09:05there are LGBTI children, and these persons can be women.
09:09Whatever your definition of woman, this can correspond to situations.
09:15So it's also an attack on these children and these women.
09:21And there is no demonstrated incidence of no negative impact on self-determination legislation,
09:34for instance, on the rights of women or on the living experiences of women.
09:39For instance, when Ireland changed its legislation, this is not something that anyone has seen.
09:45There has been no major abuse of the situation.
09:49And in sports, the claims that trans women are kicking women out of sports,
09:56other women, cis women out of sports, is also untrue.
09:59It's not something that we've seen in a very big way.
10:02People have been cherry-picking a few cases, but they're simply not necessarily valid.
10:10And certainly there is a way to deal with the advantages or so-called advantages linked to testosterone
10:18in a different way in sports, which everybody can understand,
10:22but not outright banning a whole demographic from sports altogether.
10:28So, yeah, so there has been absolutely, there is no reason to say that trans rights are in any way
10:35a problem for women's rights.
10:37We have always been working, as you said, there was a decision by the Supreme Court the other day,
10:44which is basically not defining women by saying that it is defining women,
10:49that it relies on a biological definition of women, whatever that means,
10:53because biology is huge and there are many ways in which you can define biologically a woman.
11:00And so, yeah, so there's this notion that there needs to be a definition
11:06and that this will protect women, but that's not true.
11:10We have had protections in the Equalities Act and in the Anti-Discrimination Act
11:15that have protected both women's access to care and to specific elements that correspond to,
11:25for instance, the fact of being able to have children and things of the kind,
11:30while at the same time also protecting the rights of all women from discrimination,
11:34and that very much includes trans women as well.
11:36So there simply was no problem to begin with that a definition of womanhood or women would help clarify,
11:47especially since it doesn't clarify anything if you look at it really.
11:51And there certainly is no issue with children's rights.
11:55People are pretending that there is this very strong movement toward more visibility
12:03and more awareness of the population of trans persons, and that includes children very much.
12:10And that's a good thing.
12:12That means that people feel safe enough to express who they are
12:16and to ask perhaps for respect for their pronouns from their parents, from their friends.
12:24So people have seen that there is not an uptick,
12:27but that there are more trans and non-binary children or young people today
12:32than they were yesterday, and they've been saying,
12:34oh, yes, there's a contagion and it's a bad thing in and of itself,
12:37which is absolutely not the case.
12:40It's not in and of itself a bad thing.
12:42It is a marginalized identity.
12:44So, of course, you can be a victim of discrimination, but it's not a bad thing to be.
12:49And they've misrepresented this fact and saying that there is an epidemic,
12:54that people are grooming children or convincing them somehow magically to become trans,
13:00which, of course, cannot be substantiated and does not correspond to what the children are saying
13:09and what the young adults are saying and what adults are saying of what their experience as a child was.
13:16And also, we're demonizing children because social transition for a child,
13:22people are manipulating images of surgical interventions and other assorted treatments.
13:29But for children, it's just a social change.
13:32It's just accepting them for who they are.
13:34And that's something that has been accepted as the best practice.
13:37And it's what all research into the matter, and I do mean that because this is something
13:43that can be checked with all major medical and health-based societies.
13:52It has been proven to increase their well-being, to respect them for who they are.
13:56And it has been proven to have extremely good outcome, much better than refusing, than having a negative attitude to it.
14:03And we are jeopardizing this by using junk science that has very small samples,
14:11that is very biased and has not been peer-reviewed or has been retired from circulation because of major flaws.
14:23And this is, for me, very dangerous for children's rights overall because people are intent on having a more aggressive
14:32and negative stance on being trans, being non-binary, being gender diverse for children and young people.
14:41And this can harm them very strongly in the very short term.
14:46Flora Bolter, we'll have to leave it there.
14:47But thank you so much for coming on France 24 and bringing us your insight.
14:52Very much appreciated.
14:54You're watching Daybreak here on France 24.
14:57A quick break now.
14:58I'm back with more updates in just a few minutes.