International Women’s Day Q&A with Penny Mordaunt MP, Secretary of State for International Development NOW CLOSED TO NEW QUESTIONS

[JustineMumsnet]

[EDITED BY MNHQ: Questions have now been collated and sent over - new questions may not be answered]

Hello all,

We’re very pleased to announce a Q&A with Penny Mordaunt MP, Secretary of State for International Development and Minister for Women and Equalities.

Please post your questions on this thread by lunchtime on Wednesday March 6. We’ll send on a selection to the Minister and we will post up written answers from Penny on this thread this coming Friday (March 8), International Women’s Day.

In her role as Secretary of State for International Development, Penny Mordaunt oversees DFID’s work ending extreme poverty overseas, including programmes focused on girls’ education and women’s health. DFID has been in the news recently, facing calls for its budget to be spent partly on encouraging projects that would aid British business overseas, and for it to be folded into the Foreign Office instead of being a standalone department.

In her role as Minister for Women and Equalities, Penny is also responsible for work including gender pay gap reporting and possible changes to the law concerning gender recognition.

Penny campaigned for Brexit in the run-up to the 2016 EU referendum and is a Royal Naval Reservist. She has previously been Minister of State for Disabled People and Minister of State for the Armed Forces.

Please add your questions for Penny here by Wednesday lunchtime. And although it’s not a live webchat please stick to the spirit of our webchat guidelines and keep it civil.

If one topic is overwhelmingly dominating responses we might request that people don't continue to post what's effectively the same question or point. Rest assured we will ALWAYS make the recipient aware that it's an area of concern to multiple users and will encourage them to engage with those questions.

Thanks
Justine

Nb existing members will be able to post on this thread. Thanks.

I'm also appalled that Penny Mordaunt ignored this question:

You announced an enquiry into the numbers of young girls experiencing gender dysphoria, after the huge and concerning rise (4000%) was revealed in the press.Could you tell us more about this research and when the findings are likely to be released?

Exactly six months ago:

An urgent investigation has been launched into why soaring numbers of girls aged as young as four want to change gender – and whether social media is to blame.

Equalities Minister Penny Mordaunt has ordered officials to discover the reasons why the number of girls being referred for 'transitioning' treatment has increased by 4,415 per cent.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6172097/Investigation-ordered-number-transitioning-referrals-increase-four-thousand-cent.html

Oh dear, I didn't bother posting a question because I expected inane non answers.

I can't tell you how much I wish I'd been proved wrong.

Oh yes Pencils. Quite the omission.

and so trans people must, in order to legally be recognised in the gender they live their life in, change the sex marker on their birth certificate.

They don't actually. A number of post-op transsexuals have chosen not to obtain a GRC, stating that this is not necessary any more. Same-sex marriage is now legal and pension age has been equalised.

A GRC is now useful only for gaining access to single-sex provisions, spaces and services.

For almost all other intents and purposes, both passports and driving licences are sufficient if one needs to show proof of identity, and both can be changed much easier.

There is no need for the legal fiction of legally female males then, other than validation of their innermost feelings.

As amply demonstrated and evidenced in countless examples on FWR, this elevation of male feelings to a matter in need of and entitled to state protection, comes at an unacceptably high price for the rights of women and girls.

It effectively abolishes our right to define ourselves - in language and in law - in a category of our own, separately from males.

Through the GRA and the misrepresentation of the EqA, the thoughts and feelings that certain males have about themselves have thereby been elevated over and above the equality and the safety, dignity and privacy of females.

As is clear from the answers given by our Minister for Women and Equalities, the rights of female people to be protected from male violence and from discrimination on the basis of their sex, have uneqivocally and publicly been relegated to a secondary concern.

It is notable that the minister chose to fudge all safeguarding related questions and that she ignored questions like mine asking for impact assessments before trans policies are implemented.

Impact assessments are part of the government's duty to its citizens. They are established best practice in scrutinising policy to ensure that the human rights of all are upheld and that no rights of protected groups are breached under the EqA.

There is only one reason to ignore questions related to impact assessments and for this abject dereliction of duty on the part of the Minister for Women and Equalities:

CRIAs and EQIAs would show, indeed one already has shown, that the human rights of females are being breached by the government's decision to implement trans policies.

That's because they work from the premise that rights for male people supersede the rights of female people if those males identify as trans. And the Minister agrees.

At the time it was world leading for not requiring trans people to be sterilised in order to legally change their gender – because of course that is what genital surgery effectively does.

And also what putting children on puberty blockers followed by cross-sex hormones does.

Oh Penny . This is truly appalling

A GRC is now useful only for gaining access to single-sex provisions, spaces and services.

This is exactly what is meant by 'trans acceptance' and Penny's 'living life in their gender'.

That's because they work from the premise that rights for male people supersede the rights of female people if those males identify as trans. And the Minister agrees.

Openly. Meet the minister for the elimination of women and equality.

I have one follow up question for her. Why are you still Minister for Women?

I have one follow up question for her. Why are you still Minister for Women?

Seconded.

Thirded

And also what putting children on puberty blockers followed by cross-sex hormones does.

This. But perhaps Penny had no idea?

Fourthed

This is an area for my colleagues at the Ministry of Justice… We need to be sensitive…

No, we need to be fair and just.

What is wrong with people? It’s like saying no and hurts feelings are the worst possible thing we can do. It’s ridiculous.

You have a duty of care to prisoners. Sensitivity doesn’t come into it. You keep prisoners safe. that means no males in women’s estate.

The issue of males committing suicide in male estate is also serious and requires a solution within the male estate.

This is an area for my colleagues at the Ministry of Justice… We need to be sensitive…

Or - I'm petrified of men telling me I'm wrong.

As I said in answer to the last question, the Gender Recognition Act 2004 does not require trans people to have genital surgery to legally change their gender. This law has been in place since 2005. At the time it was world leading for not requiring trans people to be sterilised in order to legally change their gender – because of course that is what genital surgery effectively does.

Guardian interview with founders of Press For Change and prominant TRAs includes indication of why the 2004 GRA was passed without full scrutiny:

2013 'Voices from the trans community: 'There will always be prejudice'
It's more than 50 years since the UK's first trans person was outed in the press. So how do members of the community think life has changed for them since?'
(extract)

"In the 90s, when [Christine Burns] was chair of the Women's Supper Club of the local Conservative party association in Cheshire, she quietly joined Press for Change. Even then, the new activists dared not be openly trans. "The thing that held us back in the 1990s campaigning was that fear of being out," admits Burns. Eventually, she came out in 1995; she jokes that she realised she was more embarrassed to be a member of the Conservative party than openly transsexual.

Much of their campaigning remained on the quiet. The passage of the 2004 law to give trans people legal status was "remarkable," says Burns, because "the government was able to pass an entire act in parliament without anyone throwing a fit in the press".' (continues)

www.theguardian.com/society/2013/jan/22/voices-from-trans-community-prejudice

Penny Mordant MP Minister for Women & Equalities or her SPAD, should revisit the Parliamentary GRA debates, though as they are no doubt 'super-busy', Vulvamort @ HairyLeggedHarpy has done great deal of actual research to assist. (good idea to follow her & give a heads up to Matt Hancock and colleagues in Health as the research re their sex/gender deliberate obfuscation has been done too)

twitter.com/HairyLeggdHarpy/status/1049340616881180672

"Tweets from 2003: The Gender Recognition Bill

I'm going to tweet out a few of the illuminating comments from the debates that led to the GRA 2004, to save you all ploughing through Hansard.

One of the primary motivations (if not the foremost) for the bill was to avoid legalising same sex marriage. This featured VERY heavily in the discussions.

It was, in the Govt's eyes, FAR preferable to convert a same sex couple into a heterosexual couple via 'sex change' than it was to make same sex marriage legal:

And the justification of "if we allow sex to change we can sidestep same sex marriage" appeared over and over again...

One of the obvious flaws in the entire process was the deliberate confuscation of sex and gender. The govt admitted that the two concepts were NOT THE SAME

Note the NO.
And then note the utter balderdash that follows. In this order:

1. Gender is not sex.
2. Govt will legally recognise gender
3. Gender should be legal sex
4. Acquired gender = legal sex
5. Something unexplained about man, woman and male and female
6. Sex = Gender

To recap, sex and gender are not the same, govt acknowledges, but we'd like to create a law that pretends they are, whilst still knowing they are not. Cool. This paved the way for what we've now seen evidence for: that 'female' people with penises can commit rape. As we now know, this happens

Tebbit anticipated it, and the Govt acknowledged this would happen

(What is even more disturbing is that long before the EA2010 was created, the Police were recording 'female rapists' by their preferred gender identity without them having a GRC. The Met started doing this in 2009)

It's like the GRA was just a foot in the door.
The govt doubled down on every opportunity to confirm that yes, criminals could compel everyone to pretend they were the opposite sex. It's not like nobody thought this through. The Govt saw the consequences and accepted them.

(although again, this was ONLY EVER supposed to apply to that tiny number of legal transexuals that the GRA was meant to create)

How's that working out, do we reckon?
Several members pointed out that sex and gender were being hopelessly conflated and confused. They received answers like this one.

Nope, makes no sense to us either.

Each time someone raised concerns about prisoners and gender, they'd get a response like this one from Lammy.

Tiny number, hardly ever gonna happen, only certificated transsexuals.
Right.

Ann Widdecombe asked a pertinent question about what happens to children affected by the legal lie. Does a mother who becomes a man render a child motherless?
Check out the superb bodyswerve in this answer.
Anyone any the wiser?
Nor me.

There's one particular mention that stopped me in my tracks.

Read this comment from Tebbit. He references how easily Ian Huntley dodged justice by changing ID. Urging caution with the GRA.

This comment was made in 2003... (continues)

Lord Moynihan was an absolute trooper in making the case that this was a VeryBadMove for Sports.

In fact, Moynihan WARNED everyone that resorting to 'testosterone levels'instead of SEX was a truly crap idea

He makes the point that the numbers don't matter as much as the fact that it is BAD LAW.

The level of foresight was impressive.

Even he didn't anticipate that this would all be extrapolated way beyond his worst fears. Not just the GRC holders...everybody. (continues)

Baroness Cathain got it.

She knew this would be a legal fiction.

Cathain also realised that since you can't ask to see a GRC, you can't prove your entirely valid position of refusing someone on the grounds of sex. Leaving you open to being sued.

Sometimes whilst reading these comments, I feel queasy. Because where we are now is pretty much exactly where some people saw us going.

Cathain: "A basic human right for individuals to be free to believe fact rather than fiction"
"coerced, totalitarian-style law making"

threadreaderapp.com/thread/1049289194370002945.html

H/t & thanks to Vulvamort

Dressing policies up as progressive when they remove the rights of 50% of the population, presenting policies as as inclusive when they lead to the exclusion of women who have no say and no voice.

I no longer believe that politicians and other supporters of self ID don't understand how their policies will impact women and children; I believe they think they can change society by this covert, backdoor method instead of just stating it upfront and asking people to vote for it.

2017 HuffPost article, '9 Completely Irrelevant Things You Might Not Know About Penny Mordaunt'
(extract)

1. She Once Lost A Bet And Had To Say ‘Cock’ Six Times In The Commons Mordaunt is a Royal Nay Reservist and as well learning everything needed to become an acting sub-lieutenant, she has also fallen victim to some good old fashioned armed forces japery.

In 2014, she said: “During our mess dinner at the end of the course I was fined for a misdemeanour, and the fine was to say a particular word, the abbreviation of cockerel, several times during a speech on the floor of the House of Commons and mention all of the officer’s names present.”

She even won a Spectator Speech of the Year award for it but said she felt “a bit of a fraud” because “let’s face it, the reason I won this award is not because of the hours I put in or the carefully crafted speech, it’s because I referred to male genitalia during the course of it.” (continues)

www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/penny-mordaunt_uk_5a045422e4b0937b510ff2a3?

I was very busy yesterday and had given up waiting for the answers anyway.

So imagine my excitement this morning that Penny M had answered my question. Except, she hadn't.

I had posted a very carefully worded and measured question which Penny studiously failed to answer. She came back with "not all women mentruate" etc when I had specifically dealt with that in my question (she didn't copy that part of my question in to the post when she "answered" me.) She claimed to understand what I was getting at but her so called answer demonstrated no such understanding.

Penny, if you're reading, please please get back to me/us with a simple answer to the question: how do we protect women from discrimination if we can't define what women are?

eleanorscottarchaeology.com/els-blog/2019/3/14/the-day-that-mumsnet-took-down-penny-mordaunt-mp

[MESSAGE EDITED BY MNHQ because we had our wires crossed]

Afternoon, everyone.

We're going to close this thread now as it's been open to comment for a while and there have been a few deletions. Do feel free to discuss this elsewhere on the boards, though, if you wish. There are one or two discussion threads running already.