This was my reply:
Dear Caroline
I won’t be disappointed if you can’t make the debate on the 12th June. I don’t think women need more people campaigning against them.
The equality act already – and rightly – protects the rights of transgender people so it’s not clear why you think biological sex should not also be clearly protected. I do not believe that being trans makes someone a threat. I do, however, believe that it does not make them change sex. Spaces should only be segregated when there is a compelling reason to do so. However, when there is if segregation is not meaningful, it cannot protect women.
I believe you are right that trans people are often subject to serious employment or other discrimination, ridicule, harassment and hate crime. There are already mechanisms in place to protect trans people. There are currently, however, no mechanisms in place to protect women who are also often subject to discrimination, hate crime, harassment and ridicule. It is disappointing to hear that you are happy with that lack of protection for women.
Your concern for transmen potentially having to use women’s spaces is not matched by any concern for women having to share those spaces with transwomen. This is of particular concern in the modern era when a transwoman can be a fully intact male, dressed in the usual (for most people nowadays) gender-neutral clothing of jeans and a shirt and with a beard. Many transwomen take no hormones and have no surgery and indeed should not be required to so consider themselves trans. You condemn women to sharing their intimate spaces with a person who appears, in every sense, to be like every other male. Have you found out from women whether it is more distressing to them to share their spaces with a transman or a transwoman or have you just assumed that women should budge over and prioritise the needs of others?
I disagree with this “the EHRC Chair appears not to have considered the extensive negative ramifications of their position, including that trans people would no longer have legal assurance of being treated as the correct gender”. Spaces are, and have never been, segregated by gender. Given the array of gender identities that there are, this clearly is not a feasible position. They are segregated by biological sex.
Whilst you say that you “I remain of the view that it is both necessary and possible to promote and protect improved trans people’s rights, whilst at the same time defending and advancing hard won women’s rights”, your statements do not defend women’s rights. As an example of the regression of women’s rights which you support, this happened in your constituency and on your watch: www.crowdjustice.com/case/help-sarahs-legal-challenge/
No friend to women would support Sarah being treated in this way.
Finally, I would ask that you show a great deal more respect than your current categorisation of women as either trans or cis does. Cis does not mean ‘not trans’: it means people who identify as the sex they were born (see Stonewall definitions). Like many women, I do not have a gender identity. I consider myself a woman only because that is what we call adult human females – people with my biology who are over the age of majority. This means my gender cannot match my sex. To call me cis is to mis-gender me. I am an agender biological female.
I will not be voting for you again and to the best of my ability, I will be ensuring that other people who support women’s rights in your constituency are aware that you are supporting moves which will potentially require, for example, a sexual abuse survivor, to be required to share a two-person hospital ward with a fully intact biological male in order to access any healthcare, or to share a prison cell, or a ‘female only’ rape crisis centre.