Why We Can’t Have Nice Things

I was feeling a bit guilty yesterday being so happy about the Galley Beggar fundraiser because there are so many people in dire poverty in the UK. Now that they’ve reached their target, Sam and Ellie are directing people to this fundraiser which is raising money for the Trussell Trust, a food bank charity. They’ve been going for longer, and have raised considerably less money.

But the scale of the problem was brought home to me later yesterday when I saw news of an important court case. An anti-trans activist had gone to court to claim that her belief that I, and women like me, are “really men”, is a protected belief under the Equality Act, and that she has the right to tell us so to our faces whenever she wants. Freeze Peach and all that. The judge threw the case out, in no uncertain terms.

But the point is that in order to bring this case the woman has raised £80,000 through crowdfunding. And she’s already raised a similar amount to appeal the case. One of her vocal supporters is JK Rowling, so there’s clearly no practical limit to the money she has access to in order to pursue this case. If she can’t win in the courts, I’m sure the current government will be only too happy to change the law for her, once we are no longer beholden to the EU.

So there you have it. £160,000 raised to bring legal cases so that people can have the right to harrass trans folks. How much good could that money have done for food banks? Or for women’s refuges, or rape crisis centres? Where are those three ghosts when you need them?