Opinion: RTÉ's Prime Time Examining Transgender Legislation Proves Controversial

Last night, Ireland’s national television public service broadcaster, RTÉ, aired an episode of Prime Time that examined a variety of perspectives on transgender legislation.

In the Gender Recognition Act (2015), Ireland already has legislation in place, which recognises gender reassignment as a right, and which facilitates the self-selection of gender identity on the part of individuals. Against that background, the Prime Time programme focused primarily on proposed new legislation, which is currently being examined by the Government, that would allow adolescents to seek out gender reassignment treatments, and to acquire the resulting necessary legal certification.

The fundamental issue here now relates to the age of consent. And there is no escaping the reality that it is an issue. If a five-year old, biologically a girl, declared herself as a boy, surely no one would think: that’s it then, gender re-identification is required. The same is probably true if a similar declaration were made at, say, the age of ten. The further into adolescence the individual is, of course, the more real the question becomes. But to debate the issue is not in itself prejudiced.

With that as the guiding principle, the Prime Time special featured interviews with transgender people and parents of transgender teens, as well as psychiatrists, academics and activists from either side of the issue. There was a lot of good, thought-provoking stuff in there. There is in Ireland, it seems, widespread acceptance of the right to gender self-determination. Most of the mental health professionals interviewed were cautious, emphasising that there were sometimes at least other mental health issues at play with the individuals concerned.  The interviews with family members were sometimes very moving, the difficulty and anxiety which even the most loving parent experiences when a child begins to suggest that he or she was born into the wrong body being impossible to conceal at times.

There was a very interesting contribution from Stella O’Malley, an adolescent psychotherapist who identified as a boy when she was younger and would meet the criteria of gender dyspohria, but said she outgrew this feeling and is now confident in her identity as a woman. While O’Malley believes that transgender children exist, these experiences have led her to fear that hastily diagnosing children with gender dysphoria, and starting them on medication, may have irreversible consequences for those who might “outgrow” it. O’Malley also stated that, based on statistics, “the child that takes puberty blockers at 12, thinking that they’re just taking a pause from puberty, is actually going into a group that is high 90’s-stroke-100 percent likely to transition in their adult lives.”

Trans activists and individuals will likely be upset at the contribution to Prime Time of the self-styled feminist Heather Brunskell-Evans, who seemed to be dismissive of the bona fides of those individuals who decide they want to transition from a male to a female body, insisting that they are not actually women. “Some trans women, they tell me I have to accept that they are women. They’re not. They’re biologically male. They’ve been socialised as male, too, as it happens,” Brunskell-Evans told the interviewer, and went on to explain that nothing would change that. “You have the XY chromosome. Nothing is ever going to take that away from you.”

The producers also thought it appropriate to invite Graham Linehan, the creator of The IT Crowd, to share his opinions on the issue, a move that led to protests outside RTÉ’s Donnybrook campus before the Prime Time show was aired – a response no doubt to the snippets of what Linehan had to say in the trailer for the report which were aired extensively in advance on RTÉ.

There had been 25 minutes of decently balanced and multifaceted reporting before we heard from Linehan. Among the concerns he voiced was that increasing freedoms for transgender people could create dangerous situations in bathrooms and taint the integrity of sports, among other things. He also offered a rather strange equivalence. “You do not tell kids that they’ve been born into the wrong body,” he declared, “just as you do not tell anorexics that they’re fat.” But, of course, it is the adolescents themselves who are facing a dilemma – and it is they who are, in many cases, asking for the right to proceed to what is for each of them a deeply personal decision about their long-term gender identity.

Let me be honest. I arrived in Dublin from the US about two weeks ago. I’m not going to act like I understand the intricacies of transgender legislation here after watching a 30-minute programme, or to pretend that I fully comprehend how public opinion on such legislation might fall. I’m not going to try to speak on behalf of trans people in any way, shape or form. I’m gay –and as a gay man, I know that, while our communities should lift each other up with support, being trans and being gay are two different experiences.

What I will say is that it is perfectly understandable that trans people are upset about the inclusion of the somewhat strange perspective offered by Graham Linehan on Prime Time. I grew up in a conservative environment and coming out at the age of 16 was not a pleasant experience. There were so many voices coming at me from all angles, telling me how I should act, whether I should identify a certain way and how my “lifestyle choice” would impact on my future life.

These voices were so loud at times that it didn’t matter what I said or how I said it, I was simply not being listened to. Yet these, often strident, voices had the power to impact on my life in profound ways. In circumstances like that, where your very identity and how you relate to the world is at stake, you start to feel desperately powerless when it seems like every other voice – talking about you and your identity – is assumed to be valid, except your own.

I suspect that trans people probably feel the same about Graham’s inclusion on Prime Time. He has no discernible expertise to offer on the topic. And when he talked, in particular, about predatory men inveigling themselves into women’s changing rooms, he seemed to be pushing a fear-mongering narrative that he will likely never feel the effects of.

For trans people, this will have come across as the voice of yet another person that is unlikely ever to understand what it is like to go through life as a trans person; and who seems unlikely, too, to find the empathy that might be needed to learn more.

The strange thing is that even one of the trans activists protesting outside RTÉ’s Donnybrook studio last night could have provided a more meaningful insight into what it means to be trans – and thereby to be disenfranchised by those who have not had to struggle, or fight, just to be themselves.