Words Stripped of Meaning

In a powerful article, Nicky Bandini describes what it is like to be “a transgender person in the UK over the past two weeks,” waking up “daily to discussions on how your life must be made smaller.”

The equalities minister Bridget Phillipson used that word dignity for a promise made by Labour to give trans people “what previous administrations had denied.”

“Is this what ‘dignity’ means in 2025?” Bandini asks.

Or do Labour “not know the meaning of the word”?

Or do we have to wait to find out “what they think that word means”?

I hear her questions, each so sharp, rhetorically.

Yes, you can promise dignity when telling trans women they should use men’s toilets, to put themselves in a place where they risk being harassed or assaulted. We know they can because they did. Yes, you can promise dignity when telling some people they are not who they say they are. We know they can because they did.

Dignity: the worth and the value given to a person and a life, to a people and how they live. When you welcome a decision that harms the people to whom you have promised dignity because it gives you clarity, then you are making it clear what your promises are worth.

Or not worth.

When dignity is that promise, it is stripped of meaning.

When dignity is that promise, it covers over the truth, smiling over a hostile environment.

When I read Bandini’s important words, I was reminded of what happened when I gave a lecture on complaint. Viola, who had shared her story of complaint with me, was in the audience. I knew she was going to be there. I was conscious of what it meant to give back to her the words she had given to me. “It was only after the lecture,” Viola wrote later, “that I realized how undignified these complaint processes are, and how, yes, my dignity was stripped.” She explains, “In my dealings with the union, they had advised me at the time that my dignity at work had been breached, but that word did little then for me, as it felt like another procedural piece of jargon ‒ but when I felt a swell of pride at the lecture, indeed, when I felt a sense of dignity about it all, I realised that this must have been somewhat lost.”

When you ...