India Willoughby: Trans people in UK face ‘extermination by legislation’ (EXCLUSIVE)

The day after I was suddenly stripped of legal recognition as a woman, I went to my local Post Office, heart thumping, clutching my passport with an ‘F’ for female.

Look calm. Think Gordon Jackson waiting to show his papers to board the tram in The Great Escape.

What if they say no?

“Yes, Madam?” 

“I’d like to renew my passport. Express service please.”

“Of course.” The guy behind the counter took my current one, flicked the pages, then hesitated.

“Ah. Problem.” Few seconds pause. Looked back up at me and then span the passport round through the grill.

“Have you seen this?”

Gulp. “What is it?”

“You have five years left. This passport is still valid.”

Think fast. “Yes, but I’d like a biometric one. So, I can swipe through.”

“OK, Madam. New one should arrive within a week.”

A week? But things are moving so fast. What if the law changes again? What if the government recalls our passports, changing our sex markers – F or M – back to who we once were? As happened in the US under Trump to trans actor Hunter Schafer. That’s why I need a new one. ASAP.  With the full 10 years. By which time hopefully the world has come to its senses again.

Such are the now daily worries of every trans person in Britain, who find themselves stuck in a very real war film.

Our lives are shrinking fast. The space we are allowed to occupy diminishing.

No, no, no. Ban. Ban. Ban. The only two replies we ever get in the UK and US. Along with increasing requests for “papers, please.” 

We are caught in a pincer movement fighting Labour, Conservatives, Reform, UK mass media, cowardly sporting associations, an obsessive billionaire, Donald Trump and the Church.

And it’s not just affecting us. Gay people and cis women deemed to not look atypically female, such as Caz Coronel, are now also in the crosshairs. A week after the UK Supreme Court ruling on the legal definition of “woman”, Caz was aggressively confronted by a man telling her “the men’s toilets are over there” before being poked in the chest at the Royal Festival Hall.

When the gender war erupted eight years ago, lots of good people told me not to worry when I told them about the plans being hatched.

“No, they can’t do that, India – it’s the law. You’re protected. And anyway, Labour will get in this time. Things are going to be much better. You’ll see.”

Well, Labour did get in – but things have got worse. Much worse. Everything I feared and more has come true.

From Wes Streeting (laughably named at number five on The Independent’s recent ‘Pride List of 50 changemakers’, change for good having not been stipulated) operating what amounts to trans conversion therapy via the NHS – where the emphasis has changed to stopping trans people transitioning – to Keir Starmer stabbing us in the back by declaring he no longer believes trans women are women.

The UK trans population now face elimination by legislation. A creeping paper genocide built on manufactured reports and sham studies. Where we simply cease to exist in any meaningful way as far as the law is concerned.

There’s no direct killing involved when you are being Tipp-Ex’d. But it’s just as effective.

Does transphobia even exist now? If trans people have no right to be recognised as the sex we transition to – despite the Gender Recognition Act 2004 saying the exact opposite – what now counts as transphobia, in a legal sense?

With his ruling, UK Supreme Court Judge Lord Hodge – who, shockingly, refused to hear any advocacy from trans people, but allowed five anti-trans groups to address him – has created a ‘live’ conflict in British Law.

I don’t see any white knights riding to our rescue. With Nicola Sturgeon gone, there’s not a single UK politician with the guts or status to save us. Trans people will never get justice in Britain. Which is why we must now turn to Europe for our last roll of the dice.

Back in 2004, The European Court of Human Rights ordered the UK to fully recognise the trans community as the sex we transition to, leading to the introduction of the Gender Recognition Act.

With full trans rights now the norm across the whole of Europe, it’s inconceivable the court will say anything other than “hey, UK – what the hell is going on? It’s 2025. Get with the programme.”

As things stand, a Spanish woman could board a plane in Madrid as female, but land in Britain two hours later as male. Which brings a whole new meaning to trans-European travel. 

Nigel Farage and Kemi Badenoch will of course use the threat of trans people peeing in the Ladies as grounds for Britain to withdraw from the European Court of Human Rights.

Forget Brexit – this will be Sexit. Sounds insane, but that is what’s going to happen.

What happened here? Has there been a trans crime, or some shocking cultural moment, like a trans 9/11? No.

Have all the gold medals at the Olympics been won by trans women? No. Trans women have been in professional sport since the 1970s and won diddly squat. Diddly squat isn’t an event.

Trans people have existed in every country and culture since time began, and – despite the projection of culture war agitators – we’ve never been a problem.

Except for maybe trans Pharaoh Hatshepsut, the daughter of Queen Ahmose. Who had a few people beheaded while living fully as a man in a false beard.

Our depiction in media over the years has been depressingly bleak.

Norman Bates in Psycho, Michael Caine’s character in Dressed to Kill, and Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs. 

The only thing I could ever murder is a bar of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk.

Let’s be Frank. Or Francesca. Trans representation stank then, and stinks now. And that’s what the extremely well-connected and funded Gender Critical movement – the people who oppose trans people leading a full and normal life – have been able to exploit and demonise so successfully over the last eight years. 

In 2017, I was Britain’s first transgender newsreader and an ITV Loose Woman. The world looked so bright then.

Now, both of these things would be impossible.

Our voice and visibility have been completely snuffed out, while those who claim to have been cancelled by the ‘powerful trans lobby’ write weekly newspaper columns and present TV and radio shows.

This is why we are where we are. Losing long-standing rights on the strength of nothing more than fearmongering, trans hysteria, and fantastical hypothetical situations. The anti-trans narrative never questioned.

In 2012, there were 65 articles on trans people in one year in national newspapers. By the time of the culture war, data journalist Eli Folan (Pink News) reported that this had exploded to over 13,000 articles in one year on trans people – 0.5% of the UK population – across the UK press. Almost all of them hostile, barely any written by or quoting a trans person.

How can this be? Statistically it’s impossible. Unless something else is going on.

A week later, my shiny new passport arrived. Still with an F for female.

Some trans people are already using theirs to flee. The UK has sunk from being the best place to be LGBT in Europe in 2015, to 22nd, one place behind Estonia in the ILGA-Europe Rainbow Map.

Last week week, the International Journal for Equity in Health highlighted transphobia in the UK as a “public health crisis … incited by high-level political and government actors and exacerbated by pervasive misinformation in social and press media.”

Next year, I expect the UK to sink even further down the official LGBT rankings. Britain is already the most transphobic country in Europe, given the intense daily fuelling of trans panic, and the attacks from all quarters of ‘The Establishment.’

Sometimes, I feel as if I’m having to balance on tiptoes on a tightrope.

For now, I’m staying put. Clinging on as long as I can. But – depending on who wins the next General Election and how much things improve or deteriorate – I will have no hesitation in using my new passport to perform my own Great Escape.