ANNE RUZYLO, a 52-year-old trade unionist, had been a member of the Labour Party for many years. But at a meeting in Cambridge on November 23rd she cut up her membership card before a cheering audience. The gathering, organised by a group called A Woman’s Place, was held to discuss government plans to amend the Gender Recognition Act to make it easier for people to change their gender. Ms Ruzylo worries that this may pose a risk to the safety of women. For voicing her fears, she says, she has been the victim of a smear campaign within the party and branded “transphobic”.

52岁的工会活动者安妮·鲁济罗(ANNE RUZYLO)多年来一直是工党的成员。但在11月23日剑桥举行的一次会议上，她在欢呼的观众面前剪掉了她的党员卡。这次集会是由一个名为“妇女之家”（A Woman’s Place）的团体举办，讨论政府为使人们更容易改变性别而修改性别认知法案的计划。鲁济罗担心这可能会对女性的安全构成威胁。为了说明自己的担忧，她说，她一直是党内诽谤运动的受害者，并被打上了“变性恐惧症”的标签。

Hers is the latest skirmish in a war on the left about the rights of transgender people, who identify as a gender that is different from the sex of their birth. Linda Bellos, also at the Cambridge meeting, was recently disinvited from speaking to a student society after revealing that she planned to discuss the changes to the law. Helen Steel, another speaker, says she was harassed after defending the right of two women to distribute leaflets about the reforms at a book fair. The broader debate about transgender rights has become so acrimonious that A Woman’s Place kept the location of its recent meeting secret.

对于左派有关跨性别者——即那些视自己的性别与生理性别不同——权利的观点方面，在最近掀起了一阵争。出席剑桥会议的琳达·贝尔洛斯(Linda Bellos)因透露了会谈及修改法律，后失去了受邀给学生社团演讲的机会。另一位发言者海伦·斯蒂尔（Helen Steel）表示，她在一个书展上支持两名妇女散发有关修改法律的传单后，遭到骚扰。有关跨性别者权利争论扩大并变得非常激烈，妇女之家没有公开公布最近的会议的地点。

Currently, those wishing to change their legal gender must have a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, the distress arising from the sense that their true gender does not match their sex at birth, and have lived according to their chosen gender for two years. The government would scrap those requirements and have applicants “self-declare” their gender identity instead.

目前，那些渴望改变自己法律性别的人必须被诊断有性别焦虑症，这种焦虑需来源于他们的真实性别与出生性别不匹配，同时他们按照所选择的性别生活时间持续了两年。英国政府未来将取消这些要求，并让申请人“自行申报”自己的性别身份。

It also wants to revise the Equality Act, which allows organisations running gender-sensitive services—from hospital wards to prisons—to discriminate on the basis of sex, as long as it is “a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim”. It is legal to turn away a transgender woman from a domestic-violence shelter, for instance, if her presence would frighten others. The government proposes to ditch these exemptions for trans people.

它还希望修改《平等法案》（Equality Act），只要它是“为了合法的目的并采用的适当的方式”，则允许各涉及有关性别的服务机构——包括病房和监狱等——在根据性别提供不同的服务。例如，如果一个变性妇女的出现吓到了其他人，那么把她从家庭暴力庇护所赶走是合法的。政府建议取消对跨性别人的豁免权。

Some feminists think such changes would threaten the safety of women. Ms Ruzylo worries that abusive men would find it easier to enter women-only spaces if they could change gender by declaration alone. The worry is not merely hypothetical. Ms Ruzylo cites the case of Paris Green, a transgender woman from Scotland, where self-declaration is, broadly, in place. Convicted of murder as a man, Ms Green was permitted to transfer to a women’s prison, before being moved after having sex with female prisoners. James Barrett, the lead clinician at the National Health Service’s gender-identity clinic in London, says that half of the prison service’s transgender inmates have been convicted of sexual offences (though he cautions that the numbers are small).

一些女权主义者认为这样的修法会威胁到妇女的安全。鲁济罗担心，如果有暴力倾向的男性单独宣布转换性别的话，会更容易进入女性独有的空间。这种担忧绝不仅是假设。她引用了苏格兰跨性别女性帕丽斯·格林（Paris Green）的案件。在苏格兰，自我声明转换性别的情况很多。在作为男性时，格林被判犯有谋杀罪，后转移到女子监狱，却与多名女囚发生性关系，之后再次被转移。伦敦国家卫生服务(National Health Service)机构的性别认定诊所首席临床医生詹姆斯·巴雷特(James Barrett表示，监狱服刑中一半的跨性别囚犯都被判犯有性侵犯罪(不过，他提醒这些囚犯的数量很少)。

Yet the case of Vicky Thompson lends weight to the other side of the argument. Ms Thompson, a transgender woman who was convicted of theft, failure to surrender to court and breach of a suspended sentence, told friends she would kill herself if she was sent to a male prison. She was, and two years ago she committed suicide. Ms Ruzylo, a former prison officer, believes that anyone born male should not be imprisoned in a women’s jail. Others at the meeting thought cases should be evaluated on their merits, as under today’s law. Whatever the government does, the argument will rage on.

然而， 薇琪·汤普森（Vicky Thompson）的案件支持争论的另一方观点。汤普森是一名变性妇女，被判犯有盗窃罪，不认罪以及违反缓刑规定。她告诉朋友，如果她被送进男性监狱，她将自杀。事实上，两年前她真地自杀了。前监狱官员鲁济罗认为，任何出生为男性的人都不应该被关在女子监狱里。会议上的其他人认为，在现行法律下，应该根据案件的情况评估。无论政府做什么，争论都将持续下去。

编译：邓思琪

审校：程馨莹

编辑：翻吧君

来源：经济学人