Previous articles by James Kirkup:
Feb 2018
"So a couple of weeks ago, when I wrote here about the way fear is chilling the debate about Britain’s laws on sex and gender, I really meant the fear of reputational damage. I referred to the fear that MPs and journalists feel that if they question moves to allow people to decide their own legally-recognised gender they will be accused of transphobia and bigotry.
That fear is real, and troubling, but there are worse things to be afraid of. Fear that you will lose your job and your livelihood. Fear of physical attack.
And that is what some people in this debate feel here. They fear that if they are seen to speak out and question the trend to change the law to allow ‘self-identification’, they will come to harm. Real harm."
blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/02/the-violent-misogyny-of-the-gender-debate/
March 2018
"Bluntly, why the hell is no one in politics shouting from the rooftops about this stuff? We’re talking about people trying to put the frighteners on Mumsnetters, for goodness sake. In any other area of public life, politicians usually fall over themselves in their rush to speak up for middle-class working mothers. Yet the politicians who were desperate to talk biscuits at Mumsnet Towers are curiously silent about the intimidation that some women now report there." (cont)
blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/03/fear-and-loathing-grips-the-gender-debate/
May 2018
Are girls who might otherwise grow up to be lesbians being nudged or pushed into thinking themselves transgender? I do not have a conclusive answer and nor, so far as I can establish, do any of the clinical experts who work in this field. I do think it is legitimate question to ask, and that the people – lesbians and others – who ask it should be heard.
But I’m not sure they are being heard, because some people make too much noise shouting about transphobia, while others who should be speaking up stay silent. I know a fair number of MPs who privately acknowledge and share some of the concerns and questions I’ve outlined here. None is willing to speak about this publicly.
Perhaps that will change. Perhaps politicians will surprise me and show willingness to do their jobs properly and give voice to all sides of a complex, difficult debate. MPs will get two chances to do so tomorrow. First, Penny Mordaunt, the new minister for women and equalities, takes her first questions in the Commons. Then there’s a backbench debate on “homophobia, transphobia and biphobia”. Both sessions will offer some clues about how willing MPs are to acknowledge the complexity of the gender debate and the interests of the different people and groups concerned. Perhaps some of the things I’ve mentioned here will be raised. Perhaps."
blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/05/the-silencing-of-the-lesbians/
May 2018
"Surely a bright, thoughtful chap like [Stephen Doughty MP] didn’t mean to imply that it was his job as Member of Parliament to tell newspapers what they can and cannot write? Surely he had no intention of acting as if it is in any way appropriate for a politician to decide what is and is not acceptable for journalists to say, and how they say it? And I can only hope that it was by a simple accident that he singled out by name a female journalist and suggested that her employers stop her saying the things that she thinks – because Doughty happens not to like her saying those things?
As I say, I must assume that he meant none of these things, that he had no such moronic and bullying intent when he spoke and acted as he did. I assume that Doughty is an honourable politician determined to do his job in a democracy and ensure that matters of public policy are debated fully and honestly, whether or not some people find such debate offensive. Because, as I am sure Doughty knows, there is no right not be offended and if we ever let hurt feelings stop us discussing matters of public interest on the basis of the facts, everyone loses." (cont)
blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/05/why-are-some-mps-trying-to-shut-down-the-transgender-debate/
July 2018 "Why has the Government decided to say it will listen to grassroots feminists? That brings me to the less public bit of the story. Some people have been listening to the women’s groups, even if they don’t say so publicly. They include quite a lot of MPs, of all parties. The steady flow of letters and emails from constituents has helped some see that quite a few voters are unhappy about this. (This poll from Pink News underlines that point: 18 per cent of all voters, and 13 per cent of Tories, support allowing people to change their legal gender without medical approval.) That sort of feeling does tell on politicians, even if many aren’t keen to say so publicly, for fear of being accused, like those women’s groups, of nasty transphobia.
(If you doubt the extent of that chilling effect, consider that bomb threat I mentioned. It was made against a Woman’s Place UK meeting in Hastings, in Amber Rudd’s ultra-marginal seat. Even though it would only take a few hundred angry women to switch votes to topple her, Rudd hasn’t yet responded to campaigners’ requests to speak about what the police call a “serious” incident. I find it hard to think of other circumstance in which a former Home Secretary would stay silent about a bomb threat made against a public meeting in their constituency.)
blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/07/labour-and-tories-finally-see-the-truth-about-the-gender-debate/
August 2018 "Since I started writing about this issue here, I’ve spoken to several BBC journalists who say that the Corporation’s output in some cases fails to apply proper journalistic scrutiny to the issue, or to air a full range of opinions. (I should also say that I’ve appeared on BBC outlets a couple of times talking about this; sometimes it seems easier for a man to get on air talking about the silencing of women than for actual women to do so…) Some of my friends at the BBC say the BBC is institutionally scared of criticism by vocal and eloquent trans-rights groups, and so there is a tendency to shy away from the potential disagreement and tension that commonly arises when journalists do their job and put pursuit of the truth above the comfort of their subjects. This isn’t always the case, of course, and some BBC output is first-rate here. It’s possibly invidious to single out individuals, but Nick Robinson has, for example, done some outstanding work on the transgender issue.
The examples of failure I’ve given here, by contrast, are all about timidity; instead of applying proper journalistic scrutiny and scepticism to the information at hand on sex offenders and Cllr Murray, the BBC treated the transgender issue more softly, more cautiously. That is no small matter, and its importance goes beyond the narrow issue of the BBC, in these cases, falling short in its journalism."
blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/08/is-the-bbc-scared-of-the-transgender-debate/
Sept 2018
I’ve written tens of thousands of words about this subject this year, all with the same basic theme: this is an area of politics and policy where people in positions of power and responsibility are failing. Failing to apply basic critical thinking. Failing to scrutinise, failing to analyse. Failing to speak, to debate questions that need full and careful discussion. Failing to do their jobs. Failing to listen. Failing women. This case, this stupid, awful case is just another part of that failure.
It was, after all, not just predictable but predicted. All sorts of people have been warning that prison rules written to accommodate trans offenders could have the consequence of putting vulnerable women at risk from male-born sexual predators. Some of those warnings, generally the ones made by men with clinical or legal expertise, were simply ignored.
Others warnings, made by women, were actively dismissed as hate-speech and bigotry. When Dr Nicola Williams of Fair Play for Women first suggested last year that around 40 per cent of the transgender prisoners in the female prison estate were sex offenders, she was scorned and accused of transphobia. When the BBC uncovered official records that showed the real figure was actually higher than that, it tried to bury its own story. (Incidentally, at the time of writing, the BBC has so far managed only six sentences of reporting on the Karen White case.)
When Ann Ruzylo, a former prison officer, said she feared female inmates were being put at risk of attack by male-bodied offenders, she was subjected to a sustained online campaign of abuse and vilification that continues to this day. And when the Sun first reported the case of the rapist Karen White, a Labour women’s officer called Lily Madigan dismissed the report – and thus the accounts of Karen White’s victims – as “transmisogynistic fearmongering”.
blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/09/why-was-a-transgender-rapist-put-in-a-womens-prison/
Sept 2018
"To recap: the State put a rapist in a jail full of vulnerable women. That rapist then sexually assaulted four of those women. MPs wanted to know how that happened, and to question the ministers responsible for those events. The Speaker of the House of Commons said they could not do so.
The story of transgender policy in Britain today is a story of political failure, where many people fail to do their job and speak openly about matters of clear public interest. Writing about it this year, I’ve grown accustomed to that failure, though no less angry about it.
But even by the dismal standards of the trans debate, where supposedly responsible figures routinely shirk their duties to appease a small, aggressive group of activists and lobbyists, John Bercow’s decision strikes me as repulsive, a disgusting abdication of responsibility that brings shame on its author and his office."
blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/09/the-state-has-failed-karen-whites-victims/