Lockdown hasn’t stopped Milton Keynes’ delivery robots

From dispatching food, to ferrying medicine, these mini machines are becoming a vital service amid the pandemic, write Cade Metz and Erin Griffith

Wednesday 3 June 2020

The sudden usefulness of the robots to people staying in their homes is a tantalising hint of what the machines could one day accomplish ( Getty )

If any place was prepared for quarantine, it was Milton Keynes. Two years before the pandemic, a startup called Starship Technologies deployed a fleet of rolling delivery robots in the small city about 50 miles northwest of London.

The squat six-wheeled robots shuttle groceries and dinner orders to homes and offices. As the coronavirus spread, Starship shifted the fleet even further into grocery deliveries. Locals like Emma Maslin can buy from the corner store with no human contact.

“There’s no social interaction with a robot,” Maslin says.

The sudden usefulness of the robots to people staying in their homes is a tantalising hint of what the machines can one day accomplish – at least under ideal conditions. Milton Keynes, with a population of 270,000 and a vast network of bicycle paths, is perfectly suited to rolling robots. Demand has been so high in recent weeks that some residents have spent days trying to schedule a delivery.

In recent years, companies from Silicon Valley to Somerville, Massachusetts, have poured billions of dollars into the development of everything from self-driving cars to warehouse robots. The technology is rapidly improving. Robots can help with deliveries, transportation, recycling, manufacturing.

Watch more

Amazon rolls out new delivery robot called Scout

But even simple tasks like robotic delivery still face technical and logistical hurdles. The robots in Milton Keynes, for example, can carry no more than two bags of groceries.

“You can’t do a big shop,” Maslin says. “They aren’t delivering from the superstores.”

A pandemic may add to demand but does not change what you can deploy, says Elliot Katz, who helps run Phantom Auto, a start-up that helps companies remotely control autonomous vehicles when they encounter situations they cannot navigate on their own.

“There is a limit to what a delivery bot can bring to a human,” Katz says. “But you have to start somewhere.”

Industry veterans know this well. Gabe Sibley, an engineer and a professor who previously worked with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, started Zippy for sidewalk deliveries in 2017. But the San Francisco company quickly ran into challenges. The robots can move only at the pace of walking, around 1mph. That severely limits the delivery area, particularly for hot food, Sibley says.

The company never deployed any robots, selling in 2018.

“In this country, where we designed our cities around the car, the solution to sidewalk delivery is to use the roads,” Sibley says.

Founded in 2014 and backed by more than $80m (£63m), Starship Technologies is based in San Francisco. It has deployed most of its robots on college campuses around the US. Equipped with cameras, radar and other sensors, they navigate by matching their surroundings to digital maps built by the company in each location.

Currently, machines are not able to hold much (Reuters)

The company chose Milton Keynes for a wider deployment in part because the robots can navigate it with relative ease. Built after the Second World War, the city was carefully planned, with most streets laid out in a grid and bicycle and pedestrian paths, called “redways”, running beside them.

When the Starship robots first arrived in Milton Keynes, Liss Page thought they were cute but pointless. “The first time I met one, it was stuck on the curb outside my house,” she says.

Then, in early April, she opened a letter from the NHS advising her not to leave the house because her asthma and other conditions made her particularly vulnerable to the coronavirus. In the weeks that followed, the robots provided a much-needed connection to the outside world.

It just seemed like a vanity project before. The pandemic has given them a platform to launch a real business

Smaller deliveries suit Page because she lives alone. A vegan, she can order nut milk and margarine straight to her door. But like the grocery vans that deliver larger orders across the city, the Starship robots are ultimately limited by what is on the shelves.

“You pad out the order with things you don’t really need to make the delivery charge worthwhile,” Page says. “With the last delivery, all I got were the things I didn’t really need.”

Residents like Page set deliveries through a smartphone app. They typically pay £1 for each delivery, but in Milton Keynes, Starship has raised the price to as much as £2 during the busiest times in an effort to spread demand across the day.


The robots deliver groceries to doctors, nurses and other employees of the NHS for free. They even join the Thursday night tribute to the NHS, blinking their headlights as residents clap and cheer from their doorsteps. The fleet of 80 robots will soon expand to 100.
There is the potential for the robots to become a viable business (Getty)

Though this may be the most extensive deployment of delivery robots in the world, others have popped up in recent years. In Christiansburg, Virginia, Paul and Susie Sensmeier can arrange drugstore and bakery deliveries via flying drone. Wing, a subsidiary of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, has been offering drone deliveries in the area since the fall.

They can order penne pasta, marinara sauce and toilet paper. But they can’t order prescription medicines via Wing – the drones are stocked at a Wing warehouse, not at a drugstore – and like the robots in Milton Keynes, the drones can carry only so much.


“I can only get two muffins or two croissants,” Susie Sensmeier, 81, says.

Companies like Wing and Starship hope they can expand these services and refine their skills. Now there is new impetus.

“Overnight, delivery has gone from a convenience to a vital service,” says Starship’s chief executive, Lex Bayer. “Our fleets are driving nonstop, 14 hours a day.”

In Milton Keynes, Starship has gradually expanded the reach of its service, doubling its fleet and teaming up with several new grocery stores. It recently started at a service in Chevy Chase, Maryland, not far from Washington.


Page, a business analyst who has lived in Milton Keynes for more than 25 years, believes the service can become a viable business.

“It just seemed like a vanity project before,” she says. “The pandemic has given them a platform to launch a real business.”

Companies have poured billions into the sector (Reuters)

But as much as the pandemic has lifted startups like Starship, it has also hurt them. Many of the college campuses where Starship deployed its robots have shut down. Though the company has worked to shift those robots to nearby locations, it has been forced to lay off employees and contractors. Janel Steinberg, a company spokesperson, says the cuts were “primarily about rebalancing our workforce to adapt to the demand in different locations”.

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Nuro, a startup in Silicon Valley, has long promised larger robots that can drive on public roads. But it has not yet deployed these robots, and like most self-driving car companies, Nuro has been forced to curtail its testing. Rather than making deliveries, its robots are shuttling supplies across an old basketball stadium in Sacramento that has been converted into a temporary hospital.

Sidewalk robots and flying drones also require human help. Starship and similar companies must monitor the progress of each robot from afar, and if anything goes wrong, remote operators take over. With social distancing, that has become more difficult. Remote operators who once worked in call centres have moved into their homes.

Katz’s company, Phantom Auto, is now helping companies make the transition. “This is a very, very difficult problem to solve,” Katz says. “We are in the autonomy-doesn’t-quite-work-yet business.”

© The New York Times

AMAZON ROLLS OUT NEW DELIVERY ROBOT CALLED SCOUT


An Amazon employee will accompany the autonomous machines at first to ensure they can safely navigate around pedestrians and pets

Anthony Cuthbertson

Thursday 24 January 2019

Amazon has launched a new robot delivery service in the US using a six wheeled machine that is "the size of a small cooler".

The Amazon Scout uses self-driving technology to navigate through neighbourhoods to deliver packages to Amazon Prime customers, though its initial roll out is limited.

The first deliveries are taking place in Snohomish County, just to the north of Amazon's headquarters in Seattle, Washington.

Deliveries will be limited to daylight hours between Monday and Friday amd only six of the Scout delivery robots will be deployed at first.

Each will also be accompanied by an Amazon employee to ensure they can safely navigate around any pedestrians or pets it might come across.

Inside the Amazon Fulfilment Centres
Show all 15

YOU CAN CALL THEM WHAT YOU WANT BUT THEY ARE

STILL WAREHOUSES.

Sean Scott, vice president of Amazon Scout, said the Scout robot will be part of a growing number of delivery solutions for the online retail giant.

"We are happy to welcome Amazon Scout to our growing suite of innovative delivery solutions for customers and look forward to taking the learnings from this first neighborhood so Amazon Scout can, over time, provide even more sustainability and convenience to customer deliveries," Mr Scott said.

Snohomish County executive Dave Somers added: “We are delighted to welcome Amazon Scout into our community. Similar to Amazon, we are always looking for new ways to better deliver service to our residents.”

The Scout robot is being tested near Amazon's Seattle headquarters (Amazon)

Other delivery methods Amazon is currently working on include autonomous drones, which are already being tested in the UK.

It is hoped such technologies will dramatically reduce delivery times, with the first Prime Air delivery in 2016 dropping off a package within 13 minutes of being ordered.


"It looks like science fiction, but it's real," Amazon said at the time. "One day, seeing Prime Air vehicles will be as normal as seeing mail trucks on the road."

Amazon is yet to reveal if and when the Scout robot or Prime Air will be introduced to customers on a wider scale.

'Like teleporting your consciousness': Could Japanese robots be the answer to loneliness while social distancing

In a time of social distancing, robots could be just what the doctor ordered, write Simon Denyer, Akiko Kashiwagi and Min Joo Kim

Students practise dance moves with a robot at Wooam Elementary School in Seoul ( Photography by The Washington Post )

As the coronavirus pandemic rewrites the rules of human interaction, it also has inspired new thinking about how robots and other machines might step in.

The stuff of the bot world – early factory-line automation up to today’s artificial intelligence – has been a growing fact of life for decades. The worldwide health crisis has added urgency to the question of how to bring robotics into the public health equation.

Nowhere is that truer than in Japan, a country with a long fascination with robots, from android assistants to robot receptionists. Since the virus arrived, robots have offered their services as bartenders, security guards and deliverymen.

Read more

Lockdown hasn’t stopped Milton Keynes’ delivery robots

But they don’t necessarily need to supplant humans, researchers say. They can also bridge the gap between people mindful of social distance – now or when the next major contagion hits.

Want to drop in on your elderly parents but are afraid of passing on a coronavirus infection? Maybe you’re missing your grandchildren, and finding Zoom chats a little limiting?

Ideas are brewing.

Hugging the bot

The Newme robot developed by Japanese company Avatarin is basically a tablet computer on a stand, with wheels. The user controls the avatar from a laptop or tablet, and his or her face shows on the avatar’s screen.

“It’s really like teleporting your consciousness,” says founder and CEO Akira Fukabori. “You are really present.” 

Akira Fukabori demonstrates his company's Newme robot avatar (The Washington Post/Simon Denyer)

Already available commercially, Avatarin’s robots have been used by doctors to interact with patients in a Japanese coronavirus ward; by university students in Tokyo to “attend” a graduation ceremony; and by fans of the Yomiuri Giants baseball team to remotely interview their favourite players after games held in empty stadiums.

There are even avatar robots that have just arrived at the International Space Station.

But it’s the way the robot is already being used by families separated by the coronavirus that really underscores the heart of the technology – starting with the family of the company’s chief operating officer, Kevin Kajitani, whose parents live in Seattle.

“His parents can’t always come and visit their grandson,” Fukabori says. “But they always access the avatar, and can even chase their grandson. And the grandson really hugs the robot.”

Avatarin is part of Japan’s ANA airline group, and the company has joined with the X Prize Foundation to launch a $10m (£8m), four-year contest for companies to create more complex robots that could further develop the avatar concept.

“You need to move,” Fukabori says. “This is really important, because we forget the freedom of this mobility. You can just walk around, and people will talk to you about really, really natural things. That creates human trust. That isn’t as easy in Webex or Zoom, where if you don’t know each other it’s really hard to keep talking.”

Work is underway on prototypes that allow users to control a remote robot through virtual reality headsets and gloves that allow the wearer to pick up, hold, touch and feel an object with a distant robotic hand, with potential uses ranging from space exploration to disaster relief or elderly care.

While robots can sometimes seem disturbing and alien to westerners, they are seen in a more welcoming light by many Japanese people

But Fukabori says the cheaper, lightweight avatars offer more immediate and affordable uses. What sets this project apart from existing avatar robots, the company says, is the ability for users to access the robots easily from a laptop, by renting them out rather than having to buy them.

Avatarin hopes to install the avatars in more hospitals and in elderly-care centres, shops, museums, zoos and aquariums. The company also aims to have 1,000 in place for next year’s Tokyo Olympics.

Cleaning patrol

In Tokyo, robotics lab ZMP has been developing three small bots to help compensate for Japan’s shrinking workforce, employing the same technology as self-driving cars.

A delivery robot aims to transport goods ordered online from local warehouses to customers’ doors; a patrol robot, with six cameras, does the job of a security guard; a self-driving wheelchair can be programmed to take users to specific destinations. The wheelchair is already available and approved for use on Tokyo streets. The others still await official permission to venture out alone in public.

Now, the patrol robot has been adapted so it can also disinfect surfaces as it patrols, and is attracting interest from Tokyo’s Metro stations as well as other businesses.

In May, prime minister Shinzo Abe noted surging demand for unmanned deliveries and pledged to carry out tests to see if delivery robots were safe to use on roads and sidewalks by the end of the year.


Even the self-driving wheelchair can come into its own amid a coronavirus-filled world, the company says, potentially helping elderly people move around more independently without a helper who might be a vector for the virus.
A robotic bartender makes coffee and mixes drinks at the offices of Qbit Robotics in Tokyo (The Washington Post/Simon Denyer)

“Before corona, most customers wanted to reduce workers,” says Hisashi Taniguchi, ZMP’s chief executive. “But after corona, our customers changed drastically. Now, they want to accelerate unmanned systems.”

Bot bartender

Qbit Robotics, also in Tokyo, has programmed a robotic arm and hand to interact with customers and serve them coffee, mix cocktails or even serve a simple cup of instant pasta.


President and chief executive Hiroya Nakano says he aims not to replace human interaction but to supply robots that can communicate and entertain in a “friendly” way.

While robots can sometimes seem disturbing and alien to westerners, they are seen in a more welcoming light by many Japanese people, Nakano says.

“Until now, expectations have been high for what robots can do in the future, but they haven’t been able to do what humans do,” he says. “But now we are living with the coronavirus, the idea of no contact or automation has become especially important. And I feel there is an extremely high expectation for robots to meet that demand.”


And one can dance, too

In South Korea, a Chinese-made robot is already greeting children in Seoul’s schools as they reopen.

The Cruzr, with eyes that beam a neon-blue light and a video screen on its chest, takes kids’ temperatures and reminds them to follow anti-virus rules.

“Please wear your mask properly,” the robot tells a student at Wooam Elementary School whose mask wasn’t covering his nose.


Chinese robot maker UBTech launched Cruzr in 2017 as a humanoid service robot for businesses, but the pandemic has given it added value as a personal assistant free from infection risks.

It is also being used by medical institutions for mass temperature screening, patient monitoring and medical record-keeping, helping overwhelmed medical workers.
Three robots developed by ZMP are seen in the company’s office lobby in Tokyo (The Washington Post/Simon Denyer)

In June, Seoul’s Seocho district government deployed Cruzr robots to the district’s 51 public schools, helping reduce the burden on overworked teachers.


Before the robot came to school, teachers had taken kids’ temperatures as they arrived, creating long lines and raising infection risks from human contact. Now, the robot checks the temperature of multiple students as they walk by and immediately sounds an alarm if anyone has a fever.

“At first, students were ill at ease with the robot greeting them at the school gate, but in a matter of weeks, students have embraced it as part of the school community,” says Yoo Jung-ho, the head of Wooam’s science department.
But this robot is actually the same height as I am and also displays goofy dance moves, and I realised I can befriend him and share a fun time

At the school, students wave towards the robot at the gate as they walk into the school, and nod in agreement when it reminds them about the mask rules.


The robot can also provide basic academic help and entertain students by teaching them simple dance moves.

“Of course, robots can’t replace teachers at classrooms yet, but there is significant and rising potential for ‘contactless’ teaching with the pandemic,” Yoo says.

Nine-year-old Lee Hye-rin says she “befriended” the robot after they danced together.

“When I first saw the robot standing in place of our teachers greeting us at the entrance, I found it cold and disorienting,” she says. “But this robot is actually the same height as I am and also displays goofy dance moves, and I realised I can befriend him and share a fun time.”

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But Lee feels the robot is not so friendly when it orders her to wear her mask properly.

“If I fail to follow the mask rule, my teacher’s warning will be followed with a smile telling me to behave better in the future, but the robot doesn’t smile when it warns me about the mask,” she says.

© The Washington Post

How robots are increasing the gender pay gap

'There is a growing body of evidence that automation is disproportionately impacting women, with the overwhelming majority of high paid, high-tech jobs taken up by men,' says researcher

Maya Oppenheim Women's Corresponden

Researchers at King’s College London and London School of Economics discovered introducing robots into the workplace has had a 'sizeable' detrimental effect on the gender pay gap in Europe ( AFP/Getty )

Robots are increasing the gender pay gap because women are more vulnerable to the adverse effects of automation, a study has found.

Researchers at King’s College London and the London School of Economics say the use of robots in the workplace has had a “sizeable” detrimental impact on the gender pay gap in Europe.

The study found that for every 10 per cent increase in the number of robots being used by a company, there was a 1.8 per cent increase in the conditional pay gap between male and female workers.



But researchers did find both men and women saw their pay increase overall due to automation. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) defines automation as tasks currently performed by workers being replaced with technology – potentially involving computer programmes, algorithms, or robots.

Dr Cevat Giray Aksoy, one of the report’s authors, said: “At a time when policymakers are putting increased efforts into tackling gender gaps in the labour market, our evidence is important.

“Our results suggest that governments not only need to ensure that education and vocational training systems provide people with the right skills demanded in the future, but also need to pay attention to distributional issues. They need to increase efforts to make sure that women and men are equally equipped with the skills most relevant for future employability.”
The study, titled Robots and the Gender Pay Gap in Europe, discovered the impact on the pay gap was especially pronounced in what researchers referred to as “outsourcing destination countries”, where gender inequality was already more noticeable at work
“Outsourcing origin countries” – predominantly Western European countries – did not witness a striking rise in the pay gap comparative to automation.
Men were found to be more likely to be in job positions which were higher-skilled and higher in the work-related pecking order which, when coupled with advances in automation, compounded the pre-existing pay gap.
The study analysed data on workplace automation between 2006 to 2014 from 20 European countries and 28 million observations

Researchers looked at patterns in the UK, Spain, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, and Sweden.

Fabian Wallace-Stephens, of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA), raised concerns about the study’s findings.

Mr Wallace-Stephens, who is senior researcher at the RSA Future Work Centre, said: “Far from creating a level playing field for the workforce, there is a growing body of evidence that automation is disproportionately impacting women, with the overwhelming majority of high paid, high-tech jobs taken up by men.

“While we are still waiting to see how the pandemic will impact the economy in the long-term, it is likely that this process will accelerate in the coming months. Improving the infrastructure around retraining and re-skilling, alongside a wider culture change, will be necessary if automation is to benefit everyone in our post-pandemic economy.”

A previous report, carried out by the RSA and the Women’s Budget Group, drew attention to the dangers of new technologies worsening existing gender divides in the workplace – calling for recent cases of women suffering from in-built bias in artificial intelligence systems to be met with a “robust response” from policymakers and employers.

The study, which came out last August, warned “algorithmic prejudice” could become one of the new giants of modern poverty if it is left unchecked.

In March last year, the national statistics office announced women in the UK are considerably more likely than men to be working in jobs endangered by the advance of technology.
The ONS said 1.5 million people in England are at high risk of losing their jobs to automation – with women holding more than 70 per cent of those roles believed to be at high risk.

The three occupations with the highest probability of automation were found to be waiters and waitresses, shelf-stackers and basic retail roles – all of which are low-skilled or routine. However, well-educated women were also found to be more at risk than men.

PHOTOS
US Police clash with people protesting over racism and police brutality

Show all 30  
TO ENLARGE RIGHT CLICK

COPS USE BICYCLES AS MOBILE WALL AGAINST PEACEFUL
PROTESTERS. NOTICE THAT THE ARRESTING COP HAS
BLACK TAPE COVERING HIS NAME AND ID NUMBER!!!

THEY TEACH BATON USE IN COP SKOOL, TIME 
TO WATCH OLD ROBIN HOOD MOVIES WHEN HE 
 MEETS LITTLE JOHN AT THE BRIDGE.

PEACEFUL FEMALE PROTESTER GETS PUNCHED OUT
BY COP WHILE FRIEND PHOTOGRAPHING WARNED OFF
BY COP

IN YOUR FACE THIS IS WHAT VIOLENCE LOOKS LIKE 

BEEN THERE DONE THAT, TUG OF WAR BETWEEN
PEACEFUL PROTESTERS AND COPS

WHY YOU SHOULD NOT TAKE A BACK PACK TO
A DEMONSTRATION

POLICE MANHANDLE PROTESTERS AFTER BEING
SUBJECT TO ASSAULT BY NON LETHAL PLASTIC
BOTTLES OF H2O AND AN APPLE 

SUPER COP CCS MK-9 MACE SPRAY, NON LETHAL
 RUBBER BULLET, TEAR GAS CANISTER, PROJECTILE GUN, 
KEVLAR VEST, GUN, TASER, KEVLAR HELMET GASMASK, GOGGLES COMBINATION, BULGING ADRENAL STEROID MAN MUSCLES VS. UNARMED PROTESTERS, PLASTIC WATER BOTTLES, OH YEAH AND THE APPLE.

COPS ALWAYS INTENDED TO STOP THE PROTEST
HERE THEY CHARGE UNARMED PEACEFUL DEMONSTRATORS
NOTICE THAT NON LETHAL PLASTIC WATER BOTTLE
A PROTESTER IS THREATENING THE POLICE WITH

THERE WAS NO RIOT UNTIL THESE GUYS CREATED ONE

EVEN BICYCLE COPS CAN BE DANGEROUS, ESPECIALLY
IF THEY ARE ALSO A BOOGALOO BOI LIKE THE COP IN
THE HAWAIIAN SHIRT IN THE LOWER LEFT CORNER !


CANISTER GUN, USED FOR FIRING TEAR GAS, PEPPER BALLS,
RUBBER BULLETS, ALL CAN CAUSE IMPACT INJURIES IF 
THEY HIT YOUR BODY, THESE ARE CALLED 'NON LETHAL'
YOU DON'T CALL THEM THAT IF THEY FRACTURE YOUR
SKULL, OR INDENT IT. AS YOU CAN SEE THE COP CAN
AIM IT WHERE HE WANTS IT TO GO, YOUR HEAD 
YOUR CHEST, YOUR LEG, WAIT WHY IS HE FIRING
MUNITIONS AT PEOPLE, THAT'S VIOLENT.
HE ALSO WEARS ARMOURED GLOVES OR BRASS
KNUCKLES IN LEATHER AS WE USED TO CALL EM
BUT STILL HE IS A NICE GUY, CAUSE HE IS WEARING HIS
PINK BREAST CANCER BRACELET.

A DUMPSTER FIRE IS NOT VIOLENCE IT'S A DUMPSTER
FIRE. BUT FOR THESE GUYS ANY EXCUSE WILL DO

POLICE BATON TWIRLING CLASS OF 2020
VS SINGLE PROTESTER WITH NON LETHAL
PLASTIC WATER BOTTLE

INVISIBLE MAN DISTRACTS BATON WIELDING COP
AS HE IS ASSAULTED BY A PROTESTERS SIGN

Why are so many black women still dying in childbirth?

As the RCOG launches a taskforce to look at racism in maternity care, sexual and reproductive health registrar, Dr Annabel Sowemimo, asks why black British women are five times more likely to die in pregnancy or childbirth


Getty Images

In 2018, Serena Williams gave birth to her first child via caesarean section. The day after the birth, the world-number-one tennis player became breathless and told doctors she believed she had developed a pulmonary embolism (a blood clot on her lungs), which she has a history of. She later described how she had to plead with her medical team for a CT scan, which showed she was correct. The blood clots could have been fatal if not treated.

Nine months later, Beyoncé opened up about her experience of pre-eclampsia when she was pregnant with her twins, Rumi and Sir. Her babies were delivered via emergency c-section, and had to stay in intensive care for weeks. Despite being two of the most successful women in the world, their stories resonate with black mothers everywhere.

Rachael Buabeng, founder of Mummy’s Day Out, a community for black women to network and share experiences, had a pregnancy plagued by hyperemesis gravidarum (nausea and vomiting which can lead to reduced fetal growth) and a difficult childbirth. She describes how her husband had to advocate for her when she was not offered alternative pain relief after declining an epidural; she went on to deliver her baby without the midwife in the room.

Read more

Boris Johnson says the UK isn’t racist. Black Britons disagree

“The midwife said the baby wouldn’t come for another nine hours. So she left the room and the baby came, with the midwife nowhere to be seen,” she tells The Independent. “Luckily, my husband screamed and people came to help but they were asking my name as my baby was coming. They hadn’t met me before. I didn’t really realise how bad it was until after.”

In November 2019, a report into maternal morbidity in the UK from researchers at Oxford University, found black women are five times more likely to die in pregnancy, childbirth or in the postpartum period, compared to their white counterparts. Asian women were also twice as likely to die compared to white women. This data was up from previous years, which still staggeringly showed black women were three times more likely to die than white women.

In the United States there are similar racial disparities in its maternal deaths with black and indigenous Americans being two to three times as likely to die of pregnancy related causes. The data confirms what black women have known for decades; pregnancy is at best challenging and at worst may be fatal.

The 2019 statistics were so appalling that they could no longer be ignored; BBC Woman’s Hour featured a special episode on the issue and a parliamentary petition was launched in March 2020, in the hope that there would be greater government support in tackling the root causes.

Despite the petition reaching 180,000 signatures, it is still awaiting debate, and the deaths of black mothers continue. Pregnant nurse Mary Agyeiwaa Agyapong died on 12 April shortly after delivering her baby son. The coroner ruled that the 28-year-old nurse died as a result of Covid-19, and giving birth.

Medical professionals have long assumed the death rate can be explained by pre-existing conditions amongst black women such as high blood pressure, or the higher prevalence of complications such as pre-eclampsia. Rather, research from the US points to a more complex picture. The likeliness of an adverse outcome for someone like myself – a black, healthy, middle-class professional – increases, rather than decreases. So what is really happening?

For years black motherhood has been presented in an unfavourable light, both in popular culture and academic circles. Studies have shown the media uses “concern for children as a rhetorical tool to define poor and minority women as bad mothers,” and statistics show black children are overrepresented in the care system, making up 16 per cent of all looked-after children and young people. This is despite society being built on the care services of black women; 20 per cent of black African women work in the health and social care sector often in lower paid jobs that require longer shift patterns.



US academic, Dorthy Roberts in her book Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction and the Meaning of Liberty describes how stereotypes of black motherhood persist, from “welfare queens”, who are presented as “immoral, neglectful, and domineering” to “hypersexual” women that are accused of “overbreeding”. In the UK, the media has routinely linked households with single black mothers to increasing youth violence and London’s knife crime epidemic; with little regard for the other structural factors at play.

Black women are categorised according to a white perspective; they are not believed, this notion of them having a higher threshold for pain..."

In March, the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology (RCOG) hosted an event entitled ‘We need to talk about race’ for International Women’s Day, following an article of the same name written by obstetrician Dr Christine Ekechi. The RCOG event was well attended, yet there was a noticeable absence of white healthcare professionals.

At the event, Dr Ekechi shared her own powerful experiences of navigating the health system as a black woman whilst sharing those of other women who had felt “dismissed” by healthcare professionals or reduced to “complainers”. A phenomenon also written about by Candice Braithwaite, author of bestseller, I am Not Your Baby Mother.

Janet Fyle, a senior midwife and professional policy advisory, is adamant that underlying prejudice among midwives is a crucial factor in the deaths of black mothers: “Black women are categorised according to a white perspective; they are not believed, this notion of them having a higher threshold for pain and these biases mean that we miss serious conditions or the opportunity to escalate serious changes in the woman’s condition in a timely way.”


Fyle says this goes back as far as when people are studying medicine. “They practice as students on white women and with no opportunity to understand differences,” she says. “People are getting things wrong because they are not culturally competent, for example, doctors, nurses and midwives have the standard patient profile in their heads as being a woman who is blonde, blue eyes and size 12. It’s everything about the concept of medicine.”
Read more
‘Death by a thousand cuts’: How microaggressions fuel racism

The problem isn’t exclusive to women’s experience of childbirth either: the RCOG has highlighted racial disparities within gynaecology services, including the late diagnosis of gynecological cancers and lower uptake of cervical screening amongst black women.

In the age of social media, younger midwives are seizing the opportunity to educate their peers on the gap that exists in the midwifery curriculum. Georgia and Sheridan, both 26, are both registered independent midwives who co-founded the My Midwife Initiative which encourages reflective practice amongst midwives and challenges their own prejudice.


Georgia is passionate that a new approach to midwifery is required: “We feel it is important as a new midwife to acknowledge, and have an awareness, that racial inequalities in healthcare exist and we all have the responsibility to examine our own personal practice and our beliefs to tackle the disparities; the evidence shows black and brown women face when they access maternity care. ” They self-fund and deliver this intervention to universities in their own time.

Rather than wait for an improvement black women have also started to set up their own safe spaces to discuss black motherhood including Buabeng’s Mummy’s Day Out; she continues to advocate for greater cultural competence amongst the medical workforce; she continues to hear poor birth stories from others on a regular basis.
Believe women when they say that they are concerned about something and don’t brush it off..."

On 15 July the RCOG launched a race equality taskforce to better understand how to tackle racial disparities amongst patients as well as understand the effects on racism on staff working within the sector. The taskforce plans to collaborate with groups across healthcare, government and individuals to ensure new ways are developed to tackle racism and racial disparity.

Dr Ekechi, co-chair and the RCOG’s spokesperson on racial equality says: “[It] sends a clear and brave message to our members and the women that we serve, of our strong commitment to equality in outcomes for all obstetricians and gynaecologists in the UK and for the health of each and every woman.” Ekechi says she is “confident” it will “ultimately save lives”.

Whilst these changes suggest that those in authority are finally hearing black women’s voices, the frustration from mothers remains. Buabeng says: “What maternity services need is very, very straightforward. Treat every woman as an individual. Believe women when they say that they will feel pain, believe women when they say that something is not right. Believe women when they say that they are concerned about something and don’t brush it off.”

INTERVIEW
Clemency director Chinonye Chukwu: ‘Society doesn’t care about black women’s humanity’

As her award-winning and chilling prison drama comes to UK screens, the writer and director tells Kuba Shand-Baptiste about creating complex female leads and why it’s time to smash the system

'We're not used to seeing black women as fully realised human beings who are not solely defined by their race and gender' ( Photo by Michael Buckner/Deadline/REX )

They say dying by lethal injection feels like being burnt alive. The deadly, usually three-drug cocktail has the highest botch rate of all the methods used to kill prisoners in the United States.

It is also the most commonly used. That’s the ugly truth we’re confronted with mere minutes into Chinonye Chukwu’s gut-punching film Clemency. We watch a prisoner die slowly and painfully, his howls at the various attempts to jab him haunting the rest of the film. As tough a watch as it is, there’s no looking away, no matter how much you, the viewer, or Bernadine, the prison warden protagonist played by Alfre Woodard, wants to.

It’s no wonder that Clemency took the Grand Jury Prize Award at Sundance last year, making Chukwu the first black woman to do so. The cast is heavyweight, with Aldis Hodge, The West Wing’s Richard Schiff, The Wire’s Wendell Pierce and Danielle Brooks of Orange Is The New Black appearing alongside Woodard. And Chukwu’s thoughtful storytelling pulls you into the punitive, unforgiving hellscape of the US prison system in a way that few film-makers have done in the past. On the phone from LA, she calls her Sundance win “bittersweet”, adding, “I wish I was the 10th black woman, you know?”

Chukwu isn’t yet a household name but she is a part of some of the most anticipated projects this year. She’s directing the first two episodes of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s long-awaited TV adaptation of Americanah, starring Lupita Nyong’o, and the biopic of Elaine Brown, the first and only woman to chair the Black Panther Party. She speaks animatedly about this all from the off, and if she’s weary about sitting through yet another interview of several that day, her cheery demeanour masks it entirely. “I feel great!” she exclaims. “It’s been an incredibly exciting time since winning but it’s also been incredibly growthful”.

For Chukwu, it’s important to stay as true to herself as the characters in her films. The 35-year-old film-maker was born in Nigeria, and moved to Alaska when she was a baby. There, she grew up navigating her experience as a black girl in a city with a tiny black population, and an even smaller Nigerian-American population. She oscillated between the two experiences of Americanness and Nigerianness, feeling ill-matched for either one at various points of her life, which she says “has really made me live in a lot of grey areas when it comes to identity”.
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Those grey areas have come to inform her work, too. Her characters have a rich complexity that is no doubt partly inspired by unique experiences she had growing up – her 2012 film Alaska-Land depicted two estranged Nigerian-American siblings who reunite in their hometown of Fairbanks. “What makes some of the most compelling storytelling,” says Chukwu, “is when we’re not so binary but show the paradoxes that make up our human existence. [Those are the] areas that I tend to live in, in my filmmaking and in my storytelling. And so, my background has forced me to really live in that when I create characters.”

The story of Americanah particularly resonated with her, she says. The book follows a Nigerian woman who goes to university in the US and wakes up to an entirely new world, not just in terms of culture, but how she sees herself. Chukwu says the story in many ways parallels her childhood experiences of being othered. “I have a deep connection and passion for Americanah, for obvious reasons,” she says. “I’m so excited to bring it to the screen because [Hollywood] tends to essentialise or stereotype ‘Africa and Africans’. But Americanah explores a lot of layers and identities of self within a very specific cultural context that I think a lot of people will be able to see themselves in.”

She’s enthusiastic too about bringing the first female Black Panther leader’s story to a wider audience. “Elaine Brown’s is another story that we haven’t seen on screen,” she says, particularly “this powerful journey of self that this black woman character goes on”.
The powerful journey of self is also central to Clemency, which follows Bernadine Williams, a prison warden who carries out executions in a maximum security prison. She is tortured by her death row duty and how it infiltrates and contrasts with every aspect of her life outside her work. Her profession requires unflinching stoicism, while her humanity and personal life is every bit as gentle and fragile as the lives she’s in charge of ending. That sense of duality could easily work as an analogy for the experiences of black women in the US and beyond. Not only does society view us as unbreakable or incapable of vulnerability, it requires us to fit into those moulds, betraying the full, delicate and complicated lives we’ve always led.

Chukwu says that casting Bernadine as a black woman “inherently complicates” Clemency’s narrative “because we’re not used to seeing black women as fully realised human beings who are not solely defined by their race and gender”, or by male characters. She says that these are “stereotypical and archetypical expectations” that audiences have developed about black female characters and Bernadine “subverts” them all. She is dutiful and professional to almost infuriating degrees. She is loved. She is loathed. She is also terrified.

Despite some recent, marginal improvement in the film industry when it comes to representation, Chukwu says that black female characters are largely still not given the space to be complex. When I ask why, she tells me, matter-of-factly, “I mean, society doesn’t regard black women. Society doesn’t care about black women’s humanity and so we see the extension of that on screen. We’re disregarded and dehumanised and discredited in real life every single day. That doesn’t stop in cinema.”

The dehumanisation of black women and people more broadly is something Chukwu has pushed back against throughout her career. After graduating from studying film at university, she made 2012 short film Bottom, about the push and pull of power between a lesbian couple. A Long Walk in 2013 followed, based on an excerpt from her former professor’s memoir about a boy who wishes to dress in feminine clothing but is punished by his father.

Clemency, however, is considered her most hard-hitting film yet. Chukwu was inspired to write the story after the execution of Troy Davis in 2011, one of many cases now thought of as a precursor to the establishment of the Black Lives Matter movement. Though it was released in the US in December 2019, she says that looking back at it now, against the backdrop of ongoing protests following numerous incidents of racist police brutality in the US and around the world, makes her film all the more urgent.

“One of my intentions with making Clemency was to inspire audiences to question the prison industrial complex and specifically capital punishment,” she says. “What we’re [seeing] now is that same thing. We’re interrogating criminal legal practices and wondering: are they really forms of justice, or are they an extension of white supremacist capitalist systems that are connected to enslavement?”

The answer to the latter, at least in Chukwu’s opinion, is yes. It’s the same when it comes to police abolition. “Part of what the call for defunding the police is rooted in,” she continues, emphatically, “is also this larger abolitionist framework where we need to rethink what the function and the necessity of policing is and realise that the historical roots of policing came from enslavement.”

Alfre Woodard as prison officer Bernadine in ‘Clemency’ (Neon)

She says she opened Clemency with a scene that questions the ethics of the death penalty because she “wanted to set up the stakes from the beginning” and it’s a chilling reminder of another practice that she says is in desperate need of dismantling.

Are people coming around to that possibility these days?

“Slowly but surely,” she says. “I think that some states are questioning it more on economic grounds because it’s incredibly expensive to maintain. But I also think morally, more and more people are starting to go against it, or at least question if it really does help provide any form of justice in our society.”

Chukwu’s films certainly make you question everything about society: the systems we unreservedly accept as gospel; the atrocities we ignore; the identities and communities we fail time and time again. But the film has more poetic moments, too. The part of the film that particularly stayed with me was a passage from Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, read by Wendell Pierce as Bernadine’s school teacher husband Jonathan:

“I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allen Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fibre and liquids – and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, because people refuse to see me…”

Those words encapsulate the film’s themes, says Chukwu, because “we invisibilise people who are incarcerated. We invisibilise black people, poor people, marginalised groups of people.” For now, at least, Chukwu is making the task of being invisible in cinema that much harder.

BREAKING NEWS 

SOMEONE LIKES THE CENTRE OF THE UNIVERSE

‘I can’t wait to travel to Toronto, where my race is less of an issue and I feel at home’

LIFE AFTER LOCKDOWN
Lots of people miss the opportunity to travel during the pandemic, but for Ellie Abraham the chance to go back to her beloved Toronto isn't just about a holiday

Friday 3 July 2020 

Credit: Jacek Zmarz ( Jacek Zmarz )

Ever since the UK government imposed a coronavirus lockdown, many of us have been surprised to discover that it’s the little things – not the extravagant or the particularly earth-shattering – that we’ve missed the most. The Independent lifestyle desk’s new essay series, Life After Lockdown, is an ode to everything we took for granted in the pre-Covid world – and the things we can’t wait to do once again when normality eventually resumes.

***
“Ellie, you know I’ve been waiting for you to come back to Toronto since you left, but I’m wondering if you should reschedule your trip,” the message dropped into the group chat. It’s three days before I’m due to fly out from Gatwick and, in Covid-19’s new world where nothing makes sense, reading those words is actually a relief.

“I’ve been thinking the same,” I admit, sensing long before this exchange that I’d be staying on terra firma, due to the spread of the pandemic. On a video call, the three of us are in agreement: we’re disappointed, but it’s the right thing to postpone.

As we say our goodbyes, I get that same pang of sadness every time I’m reminded of the physical distance. Ceremoniously, I begin putting away the pile of Easter chocolate I was planning to take as a gift. For months I’d clung to the anticipation of seeing some of my best friends and my favourite city again after 15 months apart. And now, because of a microscopic virus wreaking havoc on the world, it could be another 15.

Michelle, Bianca and I met at a tech start-up in Toronto, a few months after I’d moved there on a two-year work visa, in 2017. Bianca hired me and the three of us quickly bonded over our love of music. During one of our Friday night drinking sessions, which helped solidify our friendship, I was told it was a Frank Ocean article I’d written that clinched me the job.

Soon enough we were hanging out all the time, playing Catan or listening to music and cooking. They introduced me to their friends who then became mine. It was revolutionary to be surrounded by peers who were also people of colour, and to be seen. As cliché as it sounds, for the first time in my adult life, I’d found my tribe.

Growing up, I felt in a perpetual state of ‘otherness’. Being mixed-race in a very white area meant never quite fitting in with any community, resulting in some very awkward teen years. But as I settled into my new home with wonderful roommates in Toronto’s vibrant Kensington Market, I felt less and less out of sorts. With the atmosphere of Brighton Lanes, this neighbourhood of the city is hands down the quirkiest.
It’s clear that unlike here in the UK, forms of ‘otherness’ and self-expression aren’t looked down upon or judged in Toronto...

Encapsulated in a few streets you’ll find Salvadoran, Hungarian, First Nations and Chilean cuisine, to name just a few, alongside vintage shops and greengrocers. In the warmer months, the pleasant smell of cooking emanates from jerk chicken grilled on barrel barbecues outside Rasta Pasta – the market’s Jamaican Italian fusion spot.

You might even see the guy dressed as Spider-Man on a longboard, a market regular who the residents don’t bat an eyelid at. Through our small living room window, I witnessed hundreds of naked cyclists go by on the street below (for a climate change demonstration), a man unironically wearing a T-Rex costume, more brawls than a Wetherspoons pub at closing and insanely talented musicians playing for the joy of it.

It’s clear that unlike here in the UK, forms of ‘otherness’ and self-expression aren’t looked down upon or judged in Toronto. Broadly speaking, the British way is to blend in, stick to the status quo and make as little fuss as humanly possible. It can make us quite prudish and at times self-conscious.

But in Toronto differences are embraced and celebrated as part of the city’s identity; because of this, it’s where I feel most like myself – where I’m not an outsider in my brown skin. There’s a ubiquitous aura of kindness, confirmed by the many protests and spontaneous gestures of love.

From protesting for marginalised communities at Women’s Marches and rallies against Islamophobia, to the small but touching gestures honouring victims of the Westminster and Manchester arena terrorist attacks– I’ve never experienced such an inclusive city.

The freedom of expression the city affords gave my friends and me permission to dream big. One week, we’d try to pen a TV show like Toronto’s answer to "Broad City". The next we’d want to start a podcast. We’d plot our futures over plates of dim sum in our favourite Chinatown restaurant and be those annoying people who buy one pastel de nata between three and use the Wi-Fi for hours in a café in Little Portugal.

Despite all the praise, the city is not without its faults: what they call “cheddar” is an orange abomination, you’re lucky if your house hasn’t seen at least one kind of pest, the summers are suffocating and the winters make you want to hibernate like a bear.

But when it comes to Toronto, it’s not simply about going on a holiday, it’s about going home..."

But even with the many imperfections, I’d often walk the residential streets with headphones on, at that hour just before curtains close, looking at the beautiful Victorian houses and dreaming up a world in which I could stay beyond my limited visa.

Now lockdown here is easing slightly, it’s frustrating to know it may still be a while before long-haul travel is possible (or desirable). Until then, I look forward to the day I can see my friends again and slip into the same rhythm as when I lived there, making the most of the city on a budget with free movies in the park, panel talks, beach evenings and DJing our own parties, singing Carly Rae Jepsen into the night.

After over 100 days in lockdown, I understand the widespread appetite for foreign travel because I’m one of them. I certainly wouldn’t turn down two weeks in the Italian countryside but when it comes to Toronto, it’s not simply about going on a holiday, it’s about going home.

It's all over. America has lost its battle with coronavirus

Neither Trump's delusions nor Fauci's ridiculous ego will save us

John T Bennett Washington DC
THE INDEPENDENT 

It’s over. America has lost its half-hearted struggle with coronavirus.

The virus showed up to the fight. But, as a country, we never really did.

The federal government never took the kinds of steps other countries were prepared to take. President Trump rarely talks about the virus, in fact, other than to essentially declare victory despite a laundry list of evidence to the contrary.

“Things are coming back, and they’re coming back very rapidly — a lot sooner than people thought,” Trump said during a press conference that quickly morphed into a campaign event Tuesday evening in the Rose Garden. “People are feeling good about our country. People are feeling good about therapeutics and possible vaccines.”

He has never talked about contact tracing, which the leaders of other Western countries used to help pare their confirmed Covid-19 cases. He has vowed the United States will not shut down again, even though that’s up to governors and not him.

His always-loyal vice president, Mike Pence, was sure to rhetorically bathe him in the kind of praise he so craves on Wednesday during a coronavirus-themed visit to hard-hit Louisiana.

“This is a serious time with rising cases across Louisiana and all across the Sun Belt. But as all of you know, because of your efforts, because of the unprecedented national response marshalled by our president, because of the seamless partnership with your governor, and because of the extraordinary support that we've received from members of Congress, we have more resources today to deal with this pandemic than ever before,” Pence said at Louisiana State University.

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But the ever-in-line VP is not suggesting states or cities should re-institute stay-at-home orders or mandate that bars or gyms shut down as coronavirus cases surge in some states. He’s out there parroting Trump that schools should reopen in a few weeks and America has done a stellar job battling the virus, despite the fact that Covid-19 has infected at least 3.5 million in the United States and killed at least 137,000 people.

While Trump prefers to mostly press for steps that might fuel a partial economic recovery before Election Day, Pence has the unenviable chore of leading a counter-virus task force that his boss has never been that into. But when Pence speaks, he reveals where the administration is – and, by extension, where we as a country are headed.

“PPE has been made available in the hundreds of millions of supplies,” he said on Wednesday. “Therapeutics, like remdesivir, continue to be distributed to states, including Louisiana. And I'm proud to report that we're moving forward aggressively, at warp speed, on the development of a vaccine.”

Make no mistake, within those handful of sentences is a clear signal that America’s only hope is getting that vaccine. Until it is deployed to high school gymnasiums, superstore parking lots and doctors’ offices, expect nothing more than the same mediocre – or worse – response at just about every level of government.

California, Texas, Oregon, Arizona and 16 other states have rolled back measures intended to get their staggered economy rolling again amid skyrocketing cases, hospitalizations and deaths from the virus. But folks are bored and cooped up, while others feel masks represent tyranny, so there’s just too much public pressure from all sides of any governor’s electorate to completely shut down again.

Over 30 million people have filed for unemployment benefits since the pandemic forced Trump and governors to, in the president’s words, “close it down.” The economy, predictably, showed signs of bouncing back after states opened, with the unemployment rate shrinking from nearly 15 percent to around 11 percent.

But as states shutter at least some of their businesses, workers again will be let go. Trump has focused on the economy since the virus started to spread from sea to shining sea, but he continues to fail to ignore the fact that it always was going to be the things that just about every other developed country did early in their outbreaks that was going to produce an economic recovery ASAP.

Now, without a roaring economy as the backbone of his floundering re-election campaign, polls of his job performance and handling of the pandemic suggest he will be SOL come Election Day. The rest of us likely are, too, until someone in a HAZMAT suit can inject us with a vaccine.

So enjoy sporting events in empty stadiums – until players and coaches get sick in numbers too large to field teams – and enjoy the strangest presidential election, probably ever. Don’t get too attached to your favorite restaurant or bar. And don’t book too many personal training sessions if you have to pre-pay. It’s all probably closing down again.

After all, our chief executive seems to have no idea how people actually get sick from the virus or much empathy for those who do – and any empathy he displays for those who die from it is directed at his own bleak political plight. “We test more than anybody, by far. And when you test, you create cases. So we’ve created cases,” he said this week, his latest logic-free statement about Covid-19.

There is no white knight about to walk through any door that will flatten the curve of US cases. Not until someone walks through it with the first shipment of a vaccine, anyway.

And don’t look to federal officials like Anthony Fauci to put this surreal and disappointing moment of American failure behind us. He’s too busy posing by his pool for magazine interviews in his shades, and waging an utterly sickening and unproductive war of words with the White House.

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The Brooklyn-born Fauci is willing to throw rhetorical bombs at others, including the president and his team. To be sure, some of his criticisms are spot-on. But he has been wrong plenty of times, as well. Yet, somehow he has become such a national darling that not even Trump allies like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell or Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham will offer anything but glowing reviews.

Asked by an interviewer for that InStyle magazine piece – the same interviewer who let us know she’s been pals with Fauci and his wife for years, the kind of inside-the-Beltway chumminess most Americans loathe – what he and other officials did wrong, the top US infectious disease official didn’t dare criticize himself.

“You know, that’s almost an unanswerable question. There are so many possibilities. I don’t like to phrase it in the context of what we’ve done wrong, as opposed to let’s take a look at what happened and maybe we can have lessons learned,” he said, in a rambling answer that absolved himself of any responsibility. “I can’t say we did anything wrong, you know, but certainly we’ve got to do better.”

Spoiler alert: We won’t do better. Not until we all have a get-out-of-jail-free card coursing through our veins. The VP promises that at “warp speed,” which no doubt gives little solace to the 855 people who died here from coronavirus on Wednesday.

UK 

The trans campaigners fighting for their right to be legally recognised

Yas Necati and Angela Christofilou explore how trans activists are trying to reform the gender recognition act

Yas Necati Angela Christofilou

Trans rights: London protestsShow all 20  

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/photography/trans-rights-campaigners-photos-gender-recognition-act-a9621191.html

Over the past few weeks, there have been marches across the country for transgender rights. The protests follow government proposals to scrap changes that would improve the legal rights and recognition of trans people. Campaigners are concerned about rollback on changes to the Gender Recognition Act (GRA) 2004. The GRA is essentially the bit of legislation that allows trans people to legally change their gender.

“The protest was created in order to make a strong, visible stand against the government's proposals that make it clear they pose a serious threat to the health and well-being of trans people,” says Thaniel Dorian, who started one of the London protests. “For a lot of people it was the first time that they had ever felt safe and proud to be transgender in the UK, and the government should feel obligated to ensure that people feel that way every day.”

Despite 92 per cent of trans people being interested in a gender recognition certificate, currently only 12 per cent have one. Under the current act, it is a lengthy and difficult process for someone to change their legal gender. Trans people must have a medical diagnosis of “gender dysphoria”. The government website states that “this is also called gender identity disorder, gender incongruence or transsexualism”. The current legislation makes very explicit that being trans is considered a medical disorder. “This is the section 28 for our generation,” says one trans man, Charlie. “I’m scared for trans youth. A lot of us are old and used to this level of hatred, but there are young people who are desperate to be themselves and all they see is their government trying to remove their rights.”

Trans people must also prove to a panel of medical professionals that they have lived in their gender for at least two years. Reforms to the GRA would make the process of changing gender on legal documents much easier, with no need to be diagnosed by doctors or go through lengthy consultations.


Campaigners are also asking for non-binary people to be recognised under law. Pip Gardner, a non-binary person who works with LGBTQ+ young people, says “I need GRA reform which recognises me legally as not male and not female. When I apply for ID documents, when I renew my car insurance, and so many other things, I have to lie about my gender.”
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The Outside Project, the UK’s first homeless shelter for LGBTQ+ people, is one of the groups campaigning for GRA reform. Its founder, Carla Ecola, feels the delay on approving changes is one of many examples of the government ignoring the needs of LGBTQ+ people: “Ultimately this needs to be resolved so that we can focus on our community’s crisis needs of housing and healthcare,” she says.

Government announcements about the GRA reform have been delayed a number of times, and are now due next week. Tom, a trans protester, says: “Like those who marched against Section 28 in the late 1980s, we must resist this attack on the dignity of trans people, or risk our current moment becoming a stain in the history of LGBT liberation.”