The Labour Party No Longer Represents The Interests Of Women
The British Labour Party is in thrall to a new Militant Tendency. I am not the first to say so. This time, however. the leadership is fully on board and in the grip of the ideologues.
Dawn Butler MP famously told Richard Madeley that. “A child is born without a sex”. In September 2021 Sir Keir Starmer appeared on the Andrew Marr show on the BBC and said that the words ‘only women have a cervix’ “should not be said.” This was in response to a direct question from Marr that arose from the fact that one of Starmer’s Labour MPs, Rosie Duffield, had said precisely that. In early March this year, Starmer gave an interview to the London Times where he stated categorically that ‘trans women are women.’ These are three of many examples that demonstrate unequivocally that Labour has succumbed to gender identity ideology and the consequences of this abject surrender could be catastrophic. For some, they already have been.
The cervix is part of the female anatomy. Males are not born with a cervix any more than they are born with a uterus or ovaries. Thus everyone with a cervix most definitely was born female. On the face of it, therefore, saying ‘only women have a cervix’ is not only permissible but scientifically accurate. However, the proponents of gender identity ideology cannot allow the norms of biology and sex to go unchallenged as this would fundamentally undermine the ‘theory’ upon which it is based. Thus it is essential for the gender activist that it is generally accepted that trans men are men (and trans women are women). It is Labour’s adoption of this mantra that enables Starmer to distance himself from Rosie Duffield, for if trans men are men then men can have a cervix too.
In the real world of course, as opposed to the virtual world of the social justice warrior, trans men are not men and trans women are not women. This is so obvious to the average person because few people actually confuse the concepts of gender and sex even if they might struggle with defining them. They know that a person cannot change his or her biological sex.
The debate began in academia, moved into esoteric political circles and is currently having a disproportionate effect on real life policy-making. Powerful lobby groups, such as Stonewall, have convinced political parties, not just Labour, that gender identity is more important than biological sex, that the trans cause is equivalent to the long-since successful battle for gay and lesbian rights and that if you are not fully behind this cause then you are a bigot, a TERF (trans exclusionary radical feminist), a transphobe or worse. Anyone with a different view is bullied, hounded and silenced. They are prevented from speaking on university campuses, targeted by campaigns aimed at getting them fired, intimidated into silence in the workplace, threatened openly with violence, told to ‘shut the fuck up’.
The gender ideologues are on a mission to replace sex-based rights because the binary nature of biological sex is inconvenient. Unless the primacy of sex is overturned then the central claims of trans women being women and trans men being men will be exposed for the nonsense that they are. The activists know this full well – cue the all out assault on language, science and rational thinking in the guise of a rights campaign. It has been a slick and successful one. The propaganda has infiltrated not just the political parties but major institutions such as police forces, business organisations, even the NHS. It is a seductive message of victimhood and oppression fuelled by misleading claims and targeted at the susceptible audience of the ‘enlightened’ left. Those of us who consider ourselves to be occupants of the liberal end of the political spectrum pride ourselves on being champions of the downtrodden and those who are society’s outcasts. It is a badge of honour for us, not because it makes us feel virtuous (although it does) but because we know it is the right thing to do. This is why the activists’ message is almost irresistible, but resisted it must be.
Those pushing this ideology say that trans people are the most vulnerable members of the community. In support of this they often state with certainty that trans people are more likely to be murdered than others or face greater levels of discrimination and thus need better protection, more rights. The objective is to change the law to permit simple gender self-identification where living as the opposite sex for three months and a statutory declaration that you identify as a man or a woman will be sufficient to enable you to be recognised in law as the opposite sex. Therein lies one of the biggest ironies of all. For while the activists denigrate the whole idea of sex-based rights and promote the primacy of gender, they want to be able to say that their feelings of identity mean that they ARE the opposite sex.
The truth behind the lies is illuminating. As far as it is possible to ascertain, there were seven trans-identified individuals murdered in the UK in the ten year period from 2008 to 2017 making trans individuals about one tenth as likely to be murdered than the average person. Of the seven identified murders in these figures three victims were sex workers and three others were killed by drug dealers or fellow drug users. Both of these lifestyles vastly increase the risk of being a murder victim (by 18 times in the case of sex workers in London). Only one of the cases suggests that the gender and/or sexuality of the victim may have been a major contributing factor in the crime. All of the victims were biological males as were all of the murderers.
Interestingly, over the same period there were more trans individuals who were perpetrators of homicides than victims. All of those perpetrators were biological males. There is thus no evidence to support the claim that trans people are at greater risk of murder in the UK than the general population. Indeed, quite the opposite, and being a trans man seems particularly safe.
As far as discrimination is concerned the fact is that transgender individuals have exactly the same protections as all other groups at risk, as the Equality Act 2010 makes being transgender a protected category. What the activists really mean is that when their dogmatic view is challenged by critics of gender ideology, they consider this to be hateful, transphobic and discriminatory. Being gender critical is categorised as heresy and the promulgators are harassed and hounded with all the zealotry one might expect from the fervently religious. Far from being the oppressed, trans activists are the oppressors. How else is it possible for someone to lose their employment merely for holding gender critical views, as Maya Forstater did? Why was it necessary for there to be an appeal court hearing to establish that her gender critical views are a protected belief? Without trans ideology having become the new norm, how does a respected academic like Kathleen Stock end up being forced out of her position?
Gender identity theory is leading political parties and major institutions down a path towards disaster. The insistence upon a change in the law to facilitate gender self-identification without any gatekeeping will lead to, amongst other things, unfairness in women’s sport, the elimination of sex-based rights and greater levels of violence and abuse, with women and children, in particular, being the victims. We know this because the perpetrators of such violence are adept at exploiting loopholes in the safeguarding processes.
The deleterious effects of gender identity theory are not a problem for the future because they are happening already. Trans offenders are placed in prisons according to their self-identified gender, leading to sexual assaults on female prisoners. The NHS has denied that a rape took place on a female ward on the basis that no male patients were present when, in reality, a trans woman was on the ward in question. The NHS has had to concede that the rape occurred. Sporting competitions have become farcical because male-bodied athletes have been allowed to compete in female only competitions. Lesbians are targeted because their same-SEX attraction is ‘transphobic’. Children are put on puberty blockers and a pathway towards hormonal and surgical transition with lifelong consequences.
The common thread here is that the victims of this new orthodoxy are, overwhelmingly, biological females or, as they themselves rightly describe themselves, women. Once again, the rights of women are being suppressed in favour of the rights of men and the ultimate responsibility for this rests with policy makers and politicians who have chosen to prioritise the dogmatic claims of a numerically small but noisy lobby. This is being done out of fear. They are afraid of being the next target of the cancellation process, fearful of being on the wrong end of the bullying and intimidation reserved for the heretics like Rosie Duffield, Maya Forstater, Kathleen Stock, JK Rowling and many others. The Labour Party, above all, has to find its collective backbone and it can only do so if it begins to listen to real women.