Featuring Sklyar Pridgeon, our video this week looks at what it’s like to be a trans woman in the UK today. Aside from the interview with Skylar, conducted by Liam Macdevitt and produced by Lauren Chancellor, the piece below sets out some of the context which people such as Skylar are having to deal with.
In a recent issue of House magazine shadow equalities minister, Dawn Butler, said that: “If a trans woman wanted to be included in an all-women shortlist then that should be considered.” But only a few days later, 15 Labour Party members began a campaign to remove all transgender women from all women shortlists; and it managed to raise £14,000 in three days.
Despite claiming to be “absolutely committed to trans people, as a marginalised group, living free from discrimination and violence”, just a few lines later the campaign’s opening statement goes on to say: “trans representation must not happen at the expense of female candidates”. Despite transgender women (with a gender recognition certificate) being legally classified as women, the group are horrified that they are “having to fight another battle for women’s representation, just 100 years after the suffragette victories.”
The group is aiming to raise £100,000 to mount a legal challenge to the inclusion of trans women in all women candidates’ lists. 
The crowd-funding page was set up by Jennifer James, a member of Liverpool Momentum and a member of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy’s ruling executive. She responded to Tweets declaring that “all women are women” with the banal remark that “women don’t have dicks.”
Such is the world that trans women have thrust upon them.
