There is a big overlap between 'bi people' and 'trans people'.
The latter have been an important part of the UK bi community from day one, and any 'debate' about whether to accept people's self-identity as any gender (or none) was done and sorted in 1993.* Doing so has been as solid a bit of, say, BiCon as the sliding scale or that you don't need to identify as 'bisexual' to attend.
Equally obviously, amongst everything else trans people face is the refusal of some people to admit that what someone wrote on a piece of paper when you are born might be wrong.
So having been surprised at the level of disbelief in bisexuality shown by a YouGov 'tracker' poll (and outraged at those who have effectively allowed it to happen) it was great to see that they're also doing one on this:
Thinking about someone who says they are transgender, which of the following do you personally consider the most legitimate way to define what their gender is?
There's almost no difference between the August 2019 one and the Feb 2020 one, and so just looking at the figures for the latter:
41% said it was "The gender they identify as now" – hooray, that's the right answer! **
20% said it was "Their physical characteristics at birth (e.g. the sexual organs they were born with)" – doubtless all the TERFs picked this one
With the huge disclaimer that I do not identify as trans and may be getting this horribly wrong as far as people who do are concerned.. ***
.. I would say that 20% is the 'official' level of disbelief in trans people that we can compare to the 24% who don't believe in bisexuality.
The reason I have for saying this is that everyone else didn't say that it's impossible to change your gender in the way implied by saying only how your genitals were described at birth count. They just set the barrier higher – which isn't good but also isn't complete erasure – or weren't sure which to choose. Specifically..
13% said it was "Their current physical characteristics (e.g. the sexual organs they have now)" – i.e. typically, they would wait for reassignment surgery
7% said it was "Their legal gender (e.g. on their passport)" – i.e. jump through some legal hoops and bureaucracy
17% didn't know.
It's noticeable that this is specifically about 'out' trans people – "someone who says they are trans" – and as such that 20% probably represents the high end estimate for the figure of bigots.
Sadly, the dates of this and the latest survey on the 'is sexuality a scale' question were different, so there's no chance of using it as confirmation that there is also a big overlap between the transphobes and the biphobes**** but that'd be an interesting thing for YouGov to look at. Hint 🙂
* I'd say that it was only because a couple of people left it to the very end of BiCon 1992 to question this that it didn't happen earlier.
** Don't bother trying to debate this with me, here or anywhere else.
*** In which case, please do tell me!
**** And things like the anti-sex work SWERFs – it's not just B!ndel who has the set of those bigotries.
