We were joined by Ant Lexa, who plays Abbi Montgomery in the hit Netflix series Sex Education, and Charlie Craggs who is an activist and the author of ‘To my Trans Sisters.’
Krishnan Guru-Murthy: Ant, first of all, how has this left you feeling tonight?
Ant Lexa: I would describe it as heartbreak. I feel heartbroken. Like, getting myself out of bed this morning was hard after receiving this news this morning. And the only thing keeping me afloat is that I have received so many messages of support and solidarity from people within my community and outside of it.
Krishnan Guru-Murthy: And heartbroken, why? I mean, is it about your place in society?
Ant Lexa: I am, first and foremost, a woman. That doesn’t feel like some political stance. It just feels like who I am. And it has always felt like who I am. So not being recognised within law, especially a law that is designed to protect us, and that was why it was there, just feels terrifying. Not even about today, but the precedent that it’s setting for not just the UK, but across the world. It just has left me feeling unprotected.
“Not being recognised within law, especially a law that is designed to protect us, and that was why it was there, just feels terrifying.”
– Ant Lexa
Krishnan Guru-Murthy: Charlie, I mean, you do lots of things, but you are more of an activist, I suppose, than Ant. So where do you place this historically in terms of your struggle?
Charlie Craggs: I mean, historically, we’ve been through so much. So I’m not worried about all that our community’s going to be able to get through this. I’m more worried about the community of the women campaigning for this law change, of what they’re going to do with their time now, because so much of their time has been spent campaigning for this, for this win for them. But what have they actually won?
Krishnan Guru-Murthy: So you don’t feel set back?
Charlie Craggs: Honestly, no, I’m more bored than anything. I think they’ve been campaigning for the last five or so years under the guise of, as JK’s always saying, it’s not transphobia, it just about protecting women from predatory men who, as you can see in that video just played now, it’s all about how predatory man could lie about being trans and put on a dress and go into a bathroom. So really they’ve always said like, this isn’t transphobic. It’s not about trans women. It’s about predatory men, but in banning us from women’s spaces, and forcing us to use men’s spaces with those predatory men, I don’t see how this is a win for anyone, and I don’t see how these people can sleep with a conscience knowing they’re sending trans women into bathrooms with predatory man who are gonna harass them.
“I don’t see how this is a win for anyone.”
– Charlie Craggs
Krishnan Guru-Murthy: Will this change your daily life at all?
Charlie Craggs: I think it won’t really change my daily life at all because I mean, what are you going to do? Put me in prison. Um, okay. Put me in a men’s one, please. But I think, it’s going to affect a lot more people than just trans people’s lives. And that’s actually what I’m looking forward to, because I think when people realise that it’s going to be butch lesbians being asked why they’re in women’s bathrooms, because that’s already happening, I have many friends who have been stopped in bathrooms who are just cisgender born women lesbians, women… There was a viral post recently going around about a woman who’s going through chemo who was affronted in a bathroom and asked why she was in there and they assumed she was trans because she was bald. We see women from different cultures, who are built differently to like the kind of Western ideal of femininity, being constantly pleased over their gender.
We see it in the Olympics. Every time there’s an Olympics, there’s a female athlete who is policed over. Are they really a woman? These are.. it’s going to hurt, lesbians, it’s going hurt women going through things like chemo. It’s going hurt women from different cultures. It’s going to hurt a lot more than trans people. And if anything, I look forward to that because then we can all rally together and prove that this was just absolute nonsense and it’s not protecting anyone.
Krishnan Guru-Murthy: Ant, will this change your life at all ,on a day-to-day basis?
Ant Lexa: I second Charlie in that it doesn’t necessarily change my life in terms of the protection I was already receiving, because transphobia has existed for a very long time. But it breaks my heart to wake up every day thinking that when I grew up in rural Devon and I didn’t see queer people, surrounding me in the adults and in the community, I felt so isolated. And the only thing I associated with transness was fear and danger and… Like, having our identities constantly questioned just makes me so entirely worried for the young trans people who already feel alone in countries.
“Having our identities constantly questioned just makes me so entirely worried for the young trans people who already feel alone in countries.”
– Ant Lexa
Krishnan Guru-Murthy: And do you think this makes it easier to question your existence, because there’s a legal legitimacy to it now?
Ant Lexa: Yeah, and when it’s a headline and you see these women who are proclaimed feminists celebrating that we are being not protected by law, how is that going to make a young trans woman feel who’s already terrified and confused?
Krishnan Guru-Murthy: So just briefly, for both of you, what is the goal for you both now in terms of the trans rights movement? Should it be legal recognition, or have you hit a brick wall on that and that’s gone?
Ant Lexa: I think being recognised as a woman legally is really important.
Krishnan Guru-Murthy: You still want that?
Ant Lexa: I still want that because I think it means that then we can start looking at the things that intersect how we are affected as women and as trans women, because there is a difference.
Krishnan Guru-Murthy: And Charlie?
Charlie Craggs: I don’t care too much about being recognised as a woman because I just don’t want to be recognised or I just want to be left alone and I think that’s what we all want after this war against our tiny community. We are less than 1% of the population and it’s been a constant onslaught against us and we just want to be left alone.
Watch more:
Supreme Court legally defines ‘woman’ – what now for the trans movement?
Debate: Will gender ruling on biological sex inflame transphobia?
What does Supreme Court ruling mean for the trans rights movement?