They also stressed that trans, intersex and non-binary people are people with equal rights, not a ‘political agenda’.
The statement condemns the pathologising of people who question or do not identify with the gender assigned to them, arguing that such rhetoric reproduces social stigma.
The Equality and Rights Sector and Akrita also stressed that no politician or commentator has the authority to determine who is entitled to equality and visibility, and called on society not to return to older, more conservative attitudes towards gender and rights.
The statement in full
‘We have heard it from ministers, government representatives and television commentators. As if human existence were defined by the politics of homophobia and transphobia.
But life cannot be squeezed into their ideology. Science does not obey their political expediency. And most importantly, trans, intersex and non-binary people are not an “agenda”, nor a field for the exercise of conservative reflexes. They are people with rights.
And when a television journalist refers anyone who “has an issue with their gender” to a “psychiatrist”, he is not simply expressing an obscurantist view. He is pathologising the right to equality and reproducing a stigma that society has fought for decades to eradicate.
No minister, no government spokesperson, no ignorant commentator gets to decide who has the right to exist.
Pride and the assertion of rights cannot be forced into two boxes simply because that suits the narrative of far-right rhetoric.
Come to our century, because we will not return to yours.’
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