The recent Supreme Court ruling on the legal definition of a woman shows again how tenuous minority legal rights are in a system based on the exploitation of the majority by a small elite, who ultimately can only maintain their power through the methods of divide and rule. One year on from its publication SARAH SACHS-ELDRIDGE assesses the role of the Cass Review in the ‘culture wars’.
The context in which the Cass Review was published in April 2024 is years of whipping up of anti-trans hate by capitalist politicians and the big business-owned media.
The 2021 census in England and Wales found that 0.5% of the population, or around 262,000 people, identified as a gender different from their sex assigned at birth. In the year ending March 2023, 4,732 hate crimes against transgender people were recorded – up 11% on the previous year and an indication of how bigoted rhetoric affects trans lives. However, it is also necessary to note that the Tories’ decisive eviction from government was not prevented by their enormous investment in divisive ‘culture war’ tactics, with vicious attacks on trans women very prominent.
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