The parliamentary commissioner for standards has launched an investigation into a Tory MP after he held an event with feminists who are opposed to planned transgender legislation.
David Davies, MP for Monmouth, called the inquiry “sinister” and “unbelievable” and said parliamentary rules were being “abused” by transgender activists to deny freedom of speech.
Members of the We Need To Talk group say potential legal changes allowing people born male to “self-identify” as women will threaten biological women’s spaces and rights.
Their meeting took place in parliament on March 14. Davies agreed to host them when Millwall football club, the original venue, cancelled after pressure from transgender lobbyists.
“This was a meeting with women who’ve got perfectly legitimate concerns about legislation the government has said it’s bringing forward,” Davies said.
“Of course they’ve got a right to discuss it in the legislature. There is an important principle of freedom of speech here.”
2 comments so far
I look forward to hearing the outcome of this ridiculous inquiry. If the HoC is gonna say that hosting feminist debates on issues that affect us is breaching parliamentary standards, I would really like to know how they intend to explain this kind of discrimination against women.
What I think will more likely be the case is that they have had a bunch of trans activists - who do not represent trans people it must be noted - calling to complain that this event was literally killing them, and that feminists want them dead. No, you read that right, lots of trans activists have tweeted that feminists discussing our sex based rights is literally and deliberately killing trans people.
Any inquiry will, hopefully, be dealing with the real world where biology is not bigotry, and where women do not need to reject the whole of science and our lived experiences in order to pretend that men can be women (a contention which is not necessary for trans identity, as the many gender critical trans people are testament to).
Trans women are trans women. They are not females and never can be. This is a meaningful difference. Women are a distinct class of people precisely because we have experiences that only women can have, and we are oppressed due to our bodies and live under a climate of male violence. Predatory trans women have done everything to women and girls that other predatory men have (most trans women remain fully male bodied and are given all the same rights of transsexuals) and predators don't come with a warning, so it's around the male body that women are in danger and indeed need to manage this threat, however they identify.
So we deserve our own spaces, services, initiatives etc, and we have the right to freedom of speech and to organise as a class to address our rights. And we will not submit the abusive tactics of males who would silence us. Hopefully the HoC won't either.
And
Well done David Davies for hosting this event. This sinister legislation is being allowed to pass under the radar of public scrutiny. Legitimate objections should be aired, and more importantly, publicised.
The ramifications of allowing men to 'self declare' they are women are enormous and potentially disastrous for women on so many levels - personal safety, career equality, legal status are just the tip of the iceberg.
Commentators are not credited because more people are reading this than the Times article behind a paywall.