James Kirkup Spectator article July 4th 2018 (Govt consultation opened)
'Labour and Tories finally see the truth about the gender debate'
(extract)
"So what changed between the autumn of 2017 and this week? There are two factors, one public, one largely private. The public change was brought about by women. Quite a lot of them worry about a system that allows male-born people to take on the legal status of women (transwomen) and thus access spaces and services that the law reserves for women. Especially when some of those transwomen retain male genitalia.
For all that some people suggest it’s somehow prurient or distasteful to talk about penises in this debate, there is, as Nick Robinson put it in some excellent interviews on the Today Programme yesterday, no way to avoid this. The simple fact is that people with penises, whatever word we use to describe those people, are biologically different to people without penises, and that difference matters to many women in a way that cannot be dismissed as bigotry. It is, again, a simple fact that people with penises have the potential to commit certain acts of violence and abuse against others. That fact is the reason Parliament and society accept the concept of single-sex spaces: women have a right to keep someone with a penis out of those spaces.
Upholding that legal right is possibly the founding principle of several women’s groups that have sprung up since the Government first announced its intent to make it easier for people to change their legal gender. Unlike the charities that lobby for transgender rights, the women’s groups — Woman’s Place UK, Fair Play for Women and ManFriday — have no corporate or public sector funding, and not much money at all. They are genuine grassroots political organisations that have sprung up from a concerned public. Those groups have made a difference. Back in the autumn, that point about female-only spaces was either often ignored or dismissed in political debate. Women talking about penises were ridiculed as bigoted cranks, accused of transphobic misinformation. Their meetings were subjected to violent protests (one person has been convicted of assault) and a bomb threat, threats that went shamefully unremarked on by most politicians. Nevertheless, the women persisted: the meetings continued; the campaigns went on; and it made a difference." (continues)
blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/07/labour-and-tories-finally-see-the-truth-about-the-gender-debate/