I think the mystery of Starmer’s reticence here is very easy to solve: Starmer is a lawyer. He’s not a populist like Boris Johnson (or to a less obviously mendacious extent Rishi Sunak)
Starmer can’t truthfully say, ‘Yes of course, I know what a woman is just as everyone else knows, a woman = adult human female, end of story.’ Because by that definition for as long as we still have the GRA in the UK, actually a woman (legally) could perfectly well be a man who has got a GRC. Women in the UK therefore legally absolutely can have penises. Men can have vaginas.
If Starmer denied that, then logically he’d have to propose to get rid of the GRA. As logically which the Tories should be doing but haven’t. Funny how the individuals of the Tories who now say in a self-congratulatory way that they know what a woman is and ‘women don’t have penises’ may say they think that, but none of them actually have pushed their party to get rid of the GRA in 14 years in government with a big majority.
So actually the question we need to ask all the general election candidates is ‘Why should a woman have a penis?’ or ‘Why should a man have a vagina?’ or more directly ‘why do we need the GRA when we have the Equality Act?’
Because we all already know that women have vaginas and men penises. That’s not the question at issue. The issue is who gets to call themselves a woman, or a man, and what are the consequences of the law giving them that choice- for the individual and for everyone else in society?
I don’t think Starmer is in any way likely to scrap the GRA (which needs to be repealed for lots of reasons!). I think he just wants to get candidacy questions in this area over with ASAP because they are so fraught because he wants to please everyone in the current legal context, which is impossible. So I very much doubt that Labour will action anything on this area at all if they do get into government. Doing nothing is the least controversial thing to do. They know how hugely unpopular self ID is. They’ll behave exactly like the Tories have been doing since they saw their self ID proposal get panned in the media. It’s not worth the pain coming for Labour from either side if they do anything more than nothing.
Starmer will hedge his bets on this as a candidate and still will not criticise the abuse and threats to Rosie Duffield as he should, because that would upset TRAs, which is shameful of him. I totally agree with him when he said he wants to give ‘respect and dignity to everyone’ though. That is the ideal aspiration we all want to get to.
Starmer and the rest of the political class just haven’t accepted that you can give everyone respect and dignity without allowing people to legally change their sex- because that step creates a serious impact on the rights of others in society.
But of course everyone should be able to dress or name themselves just as they wish without repercussions, relying on the legal protections that everyone has already got via the Equality Act. An EQA which needs amendment to clarify sex vs gender as Sex Matters have long advocated for. A amendment which the Tories (who have apparently known for ages ‘what a woman is’) have not implemented…