Here is the original article Dame Jenni Murray wrote for the Sunday Times (split into 3 as it is long). She didn't say anything offensive. She spoke respectfully about transwomen, but simply made the very obvious point that there are big differences between those of us born girls and socialised as girls, and someone who is born male and socialised as a male. It is so deeply unfair that extremist trans activists are now trying to write her achievements out of history simply for her "wrongthink".
Jenni Murray: Be trans, be proud — but don’t call yourself a “real woman”
Can someone who has lived as a man, with all the privilege that entails, really lay claim to womanhood? It takes more than a sex change and make-up
Let me make something absolutely clear at the outset. I am not transphobic or anti-trans. Not a Terf in other words. That’s trans-exclusionary radical feminist, to use one of the often-confusing expressions that have entered the language in this age of gender revolution.
I’ll admit to feminist, but radical or separatist? No, on account of spending the past 37 years of my life as a woman married to a man and, together, raising two fine sons. I make my position plain because I know that in writing this article I am entering into the most controversial and, at times, vicious, vulgar and threatening debate of our day. I’m diving headfirst into deep and dangerous waters. I’ve no difficulty with men doing whatever they choose to express their feminine side. Indeed I welcome it. I find Grayson Perry and Eddie Izzard quite delightful and a glorious antidote to those men who obey the more familiar and often unpleasant rules required of conventional masculinity.
I firmly believe that transsexuals, transvestites, gays, lesbians and those of us who hold to the sex and sexual preference assumed at birth should be treated with respect and protected from the bullying and violence so many of us have suffered. But I do not approve of the more extreme statements that have been thrown around by both sides of the debate.
I can’t agree with Julie Burchill or Germaine Greer, whose language in their expression of revulsion at the trans woman (a man who becomes a woman) claiming to be a real woman has been unacceptably crude. Why demean yourself and the feminist politics to which you’ve devoted your life by saying, cruelly and distastefully, “Just because you lop off your penis … it doesn’t make you a woman,” (Greer) or referring to transgender females as “screaming mimis” and “bed wetters in bad wigs” (Burchill)?
Equally, I’m appalled at the repulsive misogyny evident in the response of trans activists who have accused Nimko Ali, a Somali and a courageous campaigner against female genital mutilation, of “practising white feminism” or who have demanded the “no platforming” (banning from speaking in public) of women, such as the lesbian feminist Julie Bindel, who have questioned the claims of trans women to be real women. But my concern, which I know is shared by numerous women who are now to be known as “cis” (short for “cisgender” — natural-born women, in the language that’s more familiar to most of us), is for the impact this question of what constitutes “a real woman” will have on sexual politics. And for who has the right to be included in gatherings or organisations that are defined as single sex.
The first time I felt anger when a man claimed to have become a woman was in December 2000, when the Rev Peter Stone announced he had undergone the radical surgery to transition from male to female and was now called Carol. Her primary concerns, she told me, were finding the most suitable dress in which to meet her parishioners in her new persona and deciding if she should wear make-up or not.
Her transition had taken place a mere six years after the Church of England ordained the first 32 women priests, at a time when the idea of a female bishop was still regarded as impossible and when parishes were allowed to refuse a female vicar if there were objections.
I remember asking Carol what she owed those women who had struggled for so long to have their calling to the priesthood acted upon. His calling, as a man, had never been questioned. I had nothing but a blank look and more concerns about clothing. “I know it sounds silly,” she said. “But I’ve nothing to wear.”
Too right it sounded silly. I thought of all those women who had spent years and years challenging what being female had meant as they sat in the pews on a Sunday morning: 2,000 years of institutionalised patriarchy; no woman but a virgin mother and a handful of tortured saints to look up to; women only good for refreshing the flowers, raising the kids and making tea for the vicar.
Even after women’s ordination had been allowed, the discrimination continued to rage. In 2000, the Rev Vivienne Faull became provost of Leicester Cathedral, the most senior woman in the Church of England at the time. She told me then that the church was awash with believers who thought a woman’s place was in the home or in a pew, wearing a hat. She had to contend with a canon who refused to celebrate services with her and would not receive holy communion from her hand.
I wondered when Carol would experience what so many newly ordained women had heard from fellow priests as they passed through the vestry. “Pulpit pussy”, they told me, was the favoured insult, and they found it demeaning, disgusting and it hurt.
It was news to Carol that life as a woman, especially a middle-aged woman, stepping into male territory in which she was unwelcome would be extremely tough. I prayed Carol would not find it so hard. Experience told me otherwise. It wasn’t going to be all about frocks and make-up. It was about sexual politics and feminism — ideas of which she seemed woefully unaware.
The fury that a male-to-female transsexual could be so ignorant of the politics that have preoccupied women for centuries hit me again last year — 16 years after I had met Carol. This time I was speaking to another trans woman, India Willoughby, who had hit the headlines after appearing on the ITV programme Loose Women.
India held firmly to her belief that she was a “real woman”, ignoring the fact that she had spent all of her life before her transition enjoying the privileged position in our society generally accorded to a man. In a discussion about the Dorchester hotel’s demands that its female staff should always wear make-up, have a manicure and wear stockings over shaved legs, she was perfectly happy to go along with such requirements. There wasn’t a hint of understanding that she was simply playing into the stereotype — a man’s idea of what a woman should be.