Transcript part 2:
JG: OK. Right. Thank you very much, let's move on to Rosa Freedman, and as I've explained, if this does seem slightly unfair it's because Alex wasn't really keen to discuss in a debate form with Rosa. So we move onto Professor Rosa Freedman. Hasn't Alex actually got a point? If there were loads of transwomen out there committing hideous crimes we would indeed all know about it, and we don't know about it because actually it's not happening.
RF: I mean, the starting point is that Alex says that there's a moral panic and it's a moral panic being set by gender critical feminists. However what we've seen in the last six months is women organising on the streets - women who are teachers, who are nurses, who are midwives, who are shopkeepers. And these women aren't spreading moral panic, they are simply fighting for the sex based rights that women and girls have to fight for around the world, the rights that we have, because society has always subjugated and oppressed and disempowered women.
JG: Yes well god knows we talk about that on this programme as an - absolutely we do, we've talked about it even this morning. There is no denying that women and girls, around the world are still vulnerable. However, are they actually vulnerable to violent attacks from trans people?
RF: Women and girls are vulnerable to violent attacks by male bodied people. And the male bodied people are the dominant group. Trans people might be vulnerable to those attacks by male bodied people, but women and girls will be vulnerable when any male bodied person may enter their space without serious, high-bar regulation, which we have under the Gender Recognition Act.
JG: Alex pointed out that actually the law isn't going to change significantly. Transwomen have already been able to access so-called female only spaces, they've been doing it for years and we've never even talked about it.
RF: Transwomen have been accessing bathrooms and toilets and we're not talking about bathrooms and toilets here Jane, we're talking about prisons, we're talking about rape crisis centres. We're not only talking about the violence that might be perpetrated against them, but also the trauma that might happen. If you're a rape survivor and you access a refuge, or you access counselling, and there are male bodied people there, and not people who have a GRC, who have had a meaningful transition, who are living as women, but people who say that they might want to have their gender identity as a woman even if they're not presenting in any way, shape or form as a woman. Think about the type of trauma that might cause psychologically, let alone the type of dangers that might put you into.
JG: What do you think is wrong with the law as it stands?
RF: Currently the law's very uncertain. We have a definition of sex that goes back to the 1970s - the case of April Ashley who was a transsexual model, who married a high society man, and the marriage was annulled because even though April Ashley lived as a woman, and had had a vulva constructed, and grown breasts through hormone treatment, the courts said no, biological sex is about chromosomes, and that is - and the judge in that case was actually a medical man who went through very carefully the difference between psychological sex and biological sex, and said it was about chromosomes. So the law is very clear that sex is about chromosomes, you can't change your biological sex. You can change your legal sex in very specific circumstances, if you've accessed medical treatment, if you've lived as a woman or as a man for two years, but this is, as Alex says, for less than 5000 people, fewer than 5000 people have accessed this. Opening this up to gender identity opens this up not only to lots of people who self identify, but also to many non-binary people. Now, on the one hand -
JG: well is that a bad thing?
RF: No, on the one hand that's not a bad thing, so long as we keep sex and gender separate in law. But the minute that gender becomes the same as sex, then all these people start accessing female spaces.
JG: Right, in simple terms then, sex is a so-called - I think it's called a protected characteristic under law. Now, I'm a woman, cis female - well this is all - it's not - I wish it was funny, it's not, is it? How am I protected in law?
RF: In law, we all have fundamental rights by virtue of being born human. And then there's the right not to be discriminated against, based on characteristics that make us more vulnerable, so if you have a disability, if you're a racial minority, if you're born a biological woman. There are also protected characteristics that no-one should be discriminated against on how they present their gender, or their sexual orientation or anything else, but these are all separate categories. The minute that we start conflating race and religion, or sexual orientation and gender identity, or gender identity and sex, we're removing the specific protections for those vulnerable groups and we're bringing them all together, and that's what we're really seeing amongst many of the trans rights activists, is that they understand that gender identity does not give them access to sexed spaces. So what they want to do is conflate sex and gender, remove this idea of what it is to be a biological woman, or to be a biological man, and to lump everyone in together so that they can access these spaces.
JG: But with the aim of doing what?
RF: The aim I think is that they want to take away sex as a characteristic. Stonewall said this very clearly a few years ago, it's on A Woman's Place website, they want to remove sex as a characteristic. They don't like that there is a definition of sex in law that says it's your chromosomes, because that goes against the narrative that sex is something fluid, that sex isn't a fact or a material reality.
JG: And in brief, you are concerned that that might lead, really bluntly, to more women being abused?
RF: It's not just about abuse, it's about statistics. If we allow anyone to identify their gender, how do we know whether ovarian cancer's gone up or down, or whether it's simply that people with ovaries, or without ovaries are identifying that way? What do we do with women's sports if people may identify as women -
JG: Well that's something else we're going to be talking about, yeah, carry on -
RF: - and there's a whole range of things, this isn't only about violence, this is about recognising that women have been disempowered throughout history, and that these protections are in place for a reason.
JG: Thank you very much Rosa. And if you missed our earlier conversation then you can listen again on BBC Sounds, get the Woman's Hour podcast to hear the views of Professor Alex Sharpe. And tomorrow, we're looking at what's happening in practice, and that controversial claim that the current legal situation might well leave some vulnerable at risk, possibly.