International Men’s Day

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Thursday 21st November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Alex Sobel (Leeds Central and Headingley) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Sam Rushworth) for securing this important debate. As we know, International Men’s Day was on Tuesday. My hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Mr Bailey) talked about his service and the horrors of war, and Tuesday also marked 1,000 days since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. I want to put on record my thanks to all the men serving on the frontline in Ukraine, and to those who have been injured or lost their lives in that awful conflict.

Many important men’s issues have been raised, and I am in agreement with much of the sentiment of the debate, particularly on the issues of health and the dangers of social media platforms. However, this debate should be inclusive of all men, and I want to affirm that trans men are men. I would like to commemorate the Transgender Day of Remembrance, which was yesterday, which is an opportunity for us to honour those murdered as a result of transphobia and the many more who have died by suicide. This includes many trans men, and the issues we have heard debated today, including mental health and suicide, are experienced by trans men.

[Dawn Butler]

Does my hon. Friend agree that trans men are often missed out of the trans debate, that they are also subjected to some really cruel behaviour and often suffer violence, such as rape, and that that is under- reported?

--- Later in debate ---

[Alex Sobel]

I absolutely acknowledge that and will be coming on to some of those issues in my speech.

Men and boys face incessant pressures to live up to myths and stereotypes about what masculinity is and what being a man is. There is a fracture between the images we see in films and television of what being a man looks like and the qualities we promote and value in our male role models. As we know, this gap is dangerous: it has made men vulnerable to increased mental health problems and death by suicide. Debates such as ours today help us understand the range of experiences of, and differences between, men across the world. So I thank everyone for being here and for their honesty.

I want to use this opportunity to talk about the unique issues trans men and transmasculine people face in the UK. I am not an expert by any means, but I do know that addressing the significant marginalisation of trans men and transmasculine people benefits everybody. I want to thank all those who have educated me and continue to do so. TransActual, for example, has been doing fantastic advocacy work in Parliament, with a drop-in just last week.

Transmasculine people have historically faced erasure and a lack of representation in society and continue to do so. They are largely invisible in the media, on TV and in films, whereas we see a hyper-fixation on trans women in certain parts of the media. As a result there is a big gap in understanding the material issues that transmasculine people face. It means their access to healthcare is poor, and they face an increased risk of abuse, including domestic violence and, of course, transphobia. In the world of sport, for example, gender-critical feminists are expressing high levels of concern at the possibility of including trans women and are fighting for this same exclusion of trans women across other sex-segregated spaces, but there is silence surrounding the experiences of trans men in these same conversations.

This erasure leads to dangerous myths developing about the experiences of trans men and a reluctance of people to try to access support or feel part of the community. TransActual told me that generally trans men are less likely to respond to surveys, despite the most recent census revealing there are largely equal numbers of trans men and women in the UK. We must really listen to trans men and transmasculine people’s needs and feelings to even begin to improve wellbeing and liberation.

Trans men and transmasculine people face a number of barriers in accessing equal quality healthcare on the NHS. Waiting lists to receive top surgery on the NHS are now in excess of four to five years just for a consultation in England, and waiting lists are growing. This leaves a situation where trans men and transmasculine individuals are forced to pay for private care, which not everyone can do, or to put up with dysphoria and the associated mental health impacts, for which there is a sector-wide lack of support and training. Top surgery drastically improves wellbeing and saves lives; it is not just something that is “nice to have” for transmasculine people.

Across the NHS there needs to be a greater awareness of trans men and transmasculine people who have given birth. If, for example, a trans man is not asked whether he could be pregnant before receiving a dose of radiation, there could be serious consequences. We can begin by removing gendered vocabulary from pregnancy care and parenthood. In the well-known situation of Freddy McConnell, for example, he was unable to be listed as his child’s father. The High Court ruled that even though he was considered a man by law and had a gender recognition certificate to prove it, he could not appear on his child’s birth certificate as “father” or even “parent”.

The same problems occur in access to cervical cancer treatment. Currently, any trans man or non-binary person with a male sex marker on their NHS record will not be included in the recall system. In this area, the law is all over the place, and there needs to be more input from trans people themselves. By moving to a greater awareness, we can significantly improve health outcomes for all men.

Male privilege—patriarchy—is bad for men. By speaking out about the varied experiences of men, we will all become more liberated. Gender diversity is a gift, and to truly expand how society understands masculinity we must bring together everybody’s experiences.