correlation-zone

Dear Pippa Heylings,

I am a constituent, a woman, and of a trans background. Last week's supreme court ruling has greatly upset me.

I fear that my access to public spaces will be curtailed through “bathroom bills” introduced undemocratically by the equalities commission. The irony of a equalities commission (re)-introducing the urinary leash for women in the UK is not lost on me, but nevertheless I am deeply fearful.

I fear the call for third spaces will both be deeply insufficient and would publicly out me as a trans women. I am a binary woman and demand to be treated as such.

I fear that my employer will be forced to misgender and “out” me as a trans women in public settings. I am a senior engineer at Nu Quantum, a Cambridge based startup deeply involved the UK quantum computing ecosystem. I have a public presence through this role. For example, I will be representing Nu Quantum on an international conference panel this Thursday, at QCTiP Berlin. I fear that through summary statistics recording me as “male” and other means, I will be forced to reveal my trans identity.

I fear that I will be either “out”-ed or simply forced to withdraw from sporting events. RideLondon, a UCI sanctioned event, currently forces me to register as a man – despite the very limited evidence of a performance gap. As I am not, I cannot attend. I fear this practice will become the default for all organising bodies.

And I fear that in the event of a serious illness, I will be forced to pick between access to healthcare and respect for my lived identity. I deeply fear the end of my life playing out at home, refraining from seeking care due to the proposed discriminatory and “out”-ing requirements proposed in the national papers recently.

Please, in whatever way you find possible, can you defend all of our rights to respect in our lived genders?

Thank you for your time, Coral Westoby