Kicking off a difficult Pride month for LGBTQ people in the UK, trans women are now banned from playing football in England. The FA ban, which came into force on 1 June, follows a Supreme Court ruling on the definition of ‘sex’ in the Equality Act 2010 and subsequent guidance by the UK’s Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) on how to interpret this decision.
Though representing a tiny proportion – around 0.4–0.5 per cent – of British adults (but note the difficulties of interpreting responses to gender-identity questions), in recent years transgender and non-binary (trans*) people in the UK have found themselves at the centre of a moral panic, political footballs in the ongoing culture war against ‘woke’.
Anti-trans* rhetoric in British media and politics has only amplified since we conducted research on the impact of voter ID on the trans* electorate in 2023. But our findings, which point to how administrative violence undermines trans* citizenship in the UK, have become all the more salient in the current climate.
Barriers at the ballot box: The impact of voter ID on trans* people
The English local elections in May 2023 were the first under the new Elections Act 2022, which required voters to produce photo ID to cast votes at the ballot box. While voter ID had long been in place in Northern Ireland, this was a marked change in the conduct of elections in England, Scotland and Wales.
Our paper draws on research with over 200 trans* people eligible to vote in the UK who took part in a survey about the impact of voter ID in the aftermath of the English local elections in May 2023 and 15 in-depth interviews. A quarter of our participants said the introduction of voter ID had made them less likely to participate in future elections, with many more indicating they were less comfortable voting in person and likely to use postal votes in the future.
The qualitative data offer clues around what’s deterring trans* people from in-person political participation: fear. The introduction of photo ID for in-person voting caused widespread anxiety among our participants. It was most acute among people who, due to the financial and bureaucratic barriers involved in updating mainstream photo ID like passports, had not yet changed their photo, name or gender marker to reflect their lived gender and presentation.
The dysphoric potential of having to present unrepresentative ID, the possibility of having their ID scrutinised, being ‘outed’ as trans*, or being challenged by polling clerks who did not recognise their ID as valid was a powerful deterrent to electoral participation, even among some people who had previously been highly politically engaged.
The take-home message of our study was clear: Lack of access to appropriate ID makes it harder for people to participate in democratic processes, and an atmosphere of political and media hostility creates a legitimate fear of transphobic discrimination or hate crime where gender records are scrutinised.
‘Sex’ and the Supreme Court: A bathroom ban by the back door?
The Supreme Court’s recent decision on the meaning of ‘sex’ in the Equality Act, published in April, ruled it to mean ‘biological sex’, by which it means sex recorded on a person’s original birth certificate. Trans* people who have obtained a Gender Recognition Certificate – which had been understood to change their gender ‘for all purposes’ – are excluded from their acquired sex (now ‘certificated sex’), for the purposes of the Act.
The case centred on provisions that allow sex-based discrimination to achieve certain legitimate and proportionate aims. And there is a narrow interpretation of its implications, consistent with expert readings and supported by the Supreme Court’s statement that it should not ‘cause disadvantage to trans people, with or without a GRC’, wherein very little should have changed for trans* people. Sex-based exclusions have typically been used in relation to genuine occupational requirements such as personal care, and have had little impact on other areas of public life.
But the EHRC has said otherwise. Its interim guidance, published less than two weeks after the Supreme Court decision, mandated that access to single-sex spaces such as gendered toilets, hospital wards, and prisons should also be determined by ‘biological sex’. Moreover, it states that in some circumstances the law can even prevent trans* people from using the services associated with their sex assigned at birth.
In the wake of this guidance, organisations in the UK have instituted sweeping changes in their treatment of trans* people. For example, the British Transport Police announced trans women would be strip-searched by male officers, Scottish Parliament banned trans women from female toilets, and, as noted above, the FA banned trans women from women’s football.
Trans* citizenship in the UK
Described by trans* scholars as a ‘programme of mass segregation’ and ‘barring trans people from public life’, the picture in the UK is increasingly reminiscent of the US ‘bathroom bills’ that have made it nigh impossible for trans* people to safely inhabit public space. We are witnessing heightened anxiety among trans* people in our communities, as they face new uncertainty around how to navigate gendered public spaces and ordinary acts such as getting a drink with friends become a potential minefield.
Our research on the impact of voter ID on trans* people showed photo ID requirements undermined trans* people’s political citizenship. Voter suppression effects were not limited to issues of ID possession but reflected anxieties around increased scrutiny and prospects of challenge. The Supreme Court’s Equality Act ruling has extended these considerations across public life, stripping trans* people of legal and social rights and forcing us to think much ‘more carefully about where and when we are out, and when and where we are visible’.
Ash Stokoe is a Teaching Fellow in Political Science and International Studies at the University of Birmingham. Stokoe specialises in interdisciplinary gender studies, with a particular focus on feminism, trans studies, and queer theory.
Kit Colliver is a Research Associate at York Law School, University of York. Colliver does policy-relevant work on social inequalities, with a particular interest in queer and non-normative perspectives in social policy.
Trans* people’s perceptions of political participation in the wake of voter identification requirements: evidence from the UK by Ash Kayte Stokoe and Kit Colliver is available to read open access in the European Journal of Politics and Gender on Bristol University Press Digital.
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