Two teenagers convicted for the murder of trans teenager Brianna Ghey are pawns of a larger and more vicious political game. If you want justice, let’s look at the games masters.
I know. In answer to the pedantics who would like to point out that Brianna’s murder predates much of Rishi Sunak’s various ramblings on trans rights; I know. Just as I know that honouring her memory, alongside the countless other trans people who have lost their lives before and during the Tory’s thirteen years of neglect, was the last thing on his mind when he stood at the Tory conference in October, tried his darnedest to pull off a stern demeanor, and promised a ‘common sense’ approach to transness in Tory Britain. Earlier in that same conference, plans had been announced to ban trans women from female hospital wards, after a record breaking zero formal complaints wanting trans people to be excluded had been filed.
In February, following the initial headlines announcing the murder of Brianna Ghey, I was one of thousands who gathered in a vigil outside government buildings in a mourning protest. Systemic negligence and inaction had now led to the murder of yet another innocent girl. Candles were burnt, tears shed, cigarette lighters held high, and speeches given, with any member of the crowd welcome to take hold of the megaphone and say their piece, so long as it was respectful.
Much to my surprise, in the following days after the vigil, complaints began to surface online about the congregation, and the nature of some of the speeches given. People criticised the speakers for supposedly making the vigil political. Many had led chants stating varying displays of disgust at the Tories and at Sunak in particular, which some people claimed to find insensitive. We, they said, were there to remember a life, not to assert a political agenda.
This left me both frustrated and a little bemused. The point that the critics were making was, after all, in many ways a perfectly valid one. Vigils are nothing if not respectful remembrances for those lives lost too soon. But why, I couldn’t help feeling, did they think I was there? Or for that matter, any of the other thousand plus people who came out into the cold that night? After all, I never met Brianna. My mourning was that of a collective loss felt by our community. And though I agree, it would be nice to have the comfort to mourn in silence, to resort to infighting about whether or not such an event should be political is to entirely miss the point. The point in question being that, so politicised is our existence, to do so little as to mourn as a community is, inherently, to assert a political message.
The ‘transgender issue’, as it is so disconcertingly referred to, is unique from many previous and ongoing issues of human rights because it is still in the stages of being regarded by many as a largely philosophical debate. What is a man? What is a woman? When, then, does a trans person cease to become one and hatch, like some freaky butterfly, into the other? And w-hu-ut is a non-binary, and where does he, sorry she, sorry they fit into all this, then? The central debate of trans issues at the moment is not, should this woman (who happens to be trans) have the same rights as all the other women? Because that, of course would seem an entirely nonsensical debate. Of course, the answer is a (hopefully) universally resounding yes. But instead, what seems to be weighing on the public’s mind is not this question but rather, is this trans woman a woman? A question which, while equally nonsensical and self-evident, creates a debate not around rights but around existential gender theory and philosophy; fields that very few of the general public, and even fewer politicians are sufficiently well read up on, but that nearly everyone seems to believe they have a say an equal say in purely by virtue of existing in a society that contains a notion of gender. I am not saying that the opinions of the general public are of no importance, merely pointing out that in reality the notion that someone must have an invaluable opinion on gender purely on the basis that they have one themselves makes about as much sense as me thinking I can take on Carlo Rovelli in a debate about ‘The Order of Time’ simply by virtue of the fact that I own a watch. Even if I was said to be able to grasp the basic concepts of theoretical physics, surely I could not claim to be any sort of authority on the matter. And yet Rishi Sunak is free to make such self-evident statements as ‘a woman is a woman, that’s just common sense’, and have the crowds on their feet in awe of this brave and bold affront on the wokerati.
The women Rishi talks about here, of course, refers exclusively to those brought into this world with a functioning vagina. And in making this ‘clarification’, he erased in real time the identities of countless trans people in the eyes of countless more of his viewers. By denying Brianna her agency, even posthumously, Rishi gave, if not a direct green light, then a flashing amber one to many just like the teenagers who committed this senseless crime. Because if a trans ‘woman’ can’t exist, then Brianna Ghey did not exist. Rishi does not condemn murder, at least as far as we know. But over and over again, he and his government whispered to the masses that it’s not murder if the victim doesn’t really exist.
Pomelo 
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