A Statement from Architecture Fringe Concerning the Supreme Court Ruling and Trans Solidarity

At its heart, architecture is about providing shelter; about imagining and creating spaces that support and enhance our lives, in all their richness and diversity. At its best it creates spaces that are safe, hospitable, inclusive, and welcoming to the diverse plurality of human life and expression.

In the UK in the 1980s bigoted homophobic prejudice stereotyped lesbian women as predatory, gay men as peadophiles, and bisexual people as a fiction. The UK Government weaponised legislation to demonise, debase, and diminish lesbian, gay and bisexual people in all spaces associated with public, civil life.

Today, in the 2020s, transphobic prejudice stereotypes transgender, non-binary, intersex, and gender non-conforming people as threats to society. Akin to the 1980s marginalisation of gay, lesbian and bisexual people, this generalised perceived threat is not true and never has been.

Contemporary discourse is dominated by cis voices, and skewed by wealth, privilege and access to massive platforms. Transgender, non-binary, intersex and gender non-conforming people are routinely spoken about in derogatory and demeaning ways - on purpose - by people who should know better.

Transgender, non-binary, intersex and gender non-conforming people have always been here and always will be. Our work will continue to be intersectional, drawing attention to the complex and systemic alliances of rampant capitalism and material extraction that is destroying the natural environment in tandem with the required work to dismantle and overcome the ill-treatment of people based on their personal characteristics.

The ruling of the UK Supreme Court is not a win for women or feminism but for a nostalgic patriarchal system reliant on bioessentialism. ‘Female’ and ‘woman’ are not the same thing, and defining women through biology alone regressively makes women (all who identify as so) more vulnerable and at greater risk of manipulation and control than before. You do not create a safer environment for one group by the suppression of another. The real and consistent threat to women’s safety is men. Not transgender women. On average in the UK, a woman is killed by a man every three days.

In imagining, designing, and creating spaces the Architecture Fringe seeks to fully support everyone, and this includes transgender, non-binary, intersex and gender non-conforming people. We are an LGBTQIA+ co-founded and co-led organisation, and we will continue to support our community through our work, our programming, and our activism.