A new poll conducted by the U.K.-based firm YouGov, on behalf of the LGBTQ+ publication PinkNews, found that a majority of cisgender women in the U.K. believe in transgender rights.
The poll revealed that 57% of cis women surveyed believe that trans people should have the right to self-identify their own gender identity, compared with 43% of cis men.
Just 21% of cis women said they were against trans people self-identifying, compared with 44% of cis men. On average, 50% of those surveyed said they were in favor, compared with 27% who said they were opposed. Another 23% of respondents were unsure how they felt about trans people self-identifying.
The poll comes as “gender critical feminist” campaign groups and TERFs continue to launch transphobic attacks at the transgender and gender-nonconforming (TGNC) community in the country. Last month, Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling drew massive criticism for such attacks, and just this week, Rowling was one of over 100 prominent journalists and academics, including many known transphobes, who signed an open letter many interpreted as designed to push back against public resistance of transphobia, under the guise of rejecting “cancel culture.”
Transphobia continues to be a problem among elites in the country. Last week, Baroness Nicholson, a British politician, came under scrutiny after launching a transphobic tirade against transgender activist Munroe Bergdorf, in which she misgendered the former L’Oréal model and referred to her as “a weird creature.”
“Transgender and non-binary people know that we are who we say we are,” wrote Vic Parsons, a gender and identity reporter for PinkNews.
“Public support for self-identification doesn’t change this — but it is still somewhat of a relief, given the horrifying levels of anti-trans rhetoric in the media, to see that a clear majority of the public back us continuing to self-identify as who we are without the need for medical evidence of our transness,” Parsons continued.
According to a study conducted by Stonewall, a U.K.-based LGBTQ+ rights charity, 1 in 5 LGBTQ+ people and 2 in 5 trans people have experienced a hate crime in the past year in the country due to their sexual orientation and/or gender identity.
Dawn Butler, a Labour MP and former shadow minister for women and equalities who has pushed for reformation to the country’s Gender Recognition Act in the past, found the study reassuring.
“It’s reassuring to find out that so many women believe the same as I do,” she told PinkNews. “That trans women are women, trans men are men, and that trans rights don’t and shouldn’t come at the expense of anyone else’s rights. As the saying goes, me having my rights doesn’t stop you from having your rights.”
She continued: “The fact that so many more women believe in trans people self-identifying as a gender different to that they were assigned at birth shows that often the transphobic rhetoric we constantly hear about trans people being a danger to single-sex spaces is only being spoken by a vocal minority.”
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