Panel Summary : Part 1
MB: So, erm, there’s a number of things to go for here, aren’t there, to discuss that we’ve, that we’ve heard. Er, Torr Robinson, our first witness. Er, I mean a, a lot of it was to do with definitions, isn’t it, and er, and erm, er their definition was if you live as a woman, er they are a woman. Michael, you seemed rather unimpressed by this at the time?
MP: Erm, yes I, I, I don’t think that will do as a legal position. Erm, I thought when I presented Torr with some of the consequences, the reply was not particularly well-thought through. It seemed to be, said er, that, well that they’ll be protocols in prisons. Erm, but I think we weren’t just talking about that, we were talking about, a very different situation from what we have today, where you simply declare that your gender to be what you say it to be, and I didn’t feel that those implications had been thought through. And I think there is a lot of thinking to be done, so I was also very worried that Torr says of the Woman’s Place organisation that, since it’s trying to constrain the rights of others, it’s right to describe it as a hate organisation. We then went on, of course, to hear that, in it’s view, it’s not trying to constrain the rights of others, it’s trying to defend the rights of women.
MB: Rachel, on this basis of definition. I mean, you must have an , a , an informed view?
RM: Well I have a take, and my take is this, that definitions always leave things out. I’m much more interested in, in another philosophical idea which is family resemblance. So there are lots of ways in which my story’s different to Anne’s, or Mona’s, but actually we do have a family resemblance sufficient that it’s OK for me to be identified as a woman. And I think that’s partly because of the way in which I’m treated in this society, actually. I am a woman.
MB: Anne, the definition-ism?
AM: I think there’s a challenge to that which is, that might be true as we, any of us speaking, feels it ourselves. It’s what follows from that is where I think things get much more contested. Which is what I think is where we got to with the first witness. And for some people, saying ‘well I, I’m a woman, I’m a transwoman and that’s it, that’s it, ’ you know, like, like it or lump it’, misses out the sort of extraordinary biological journey of, of women who are born women, natal women, you might put it. Now I, I don’t think it excludes rights for transwomen but I think you could see many people would say that there might be some differences that follow from it. And that particularly then, about, when rights and entitlements clash. So, I think you’re being very nice Rachel, I think it gets difficult in the areas where there is competition of belief.
MB: Mona, the reason I was er, er, dwelling for a time on the idea of defining in this particular case, a woman, was possibly because of the second witness, Kiri Tunks from the, from the woman’s group there who, who said, I thought it resonated with me, ‘if you can’t, if you can’t actually define what a woman is, how can you defend women’s rights? Did that have any impact on you?
MS: Well, she’s defending women’s rights, on the grounds that she can define what a woman is. Erm, so I’m not really sure I follow that. I think that what, to me the, the gap in this discussion, I think with all of them, was well, once you’ve decided who can own what term to define themselves, and the other side says, ‘no you can’t, as our last witness, ‘that term’s already taken’, what, where do these people go? How do we address them, beyond the they and them, how do we actually address them? And, and Kiri didn’t say, she said, ‘I want rights for everyone’, but rights are lived realities. You have to make physical space for people. You have to give them ownership. It isn’t just an abstract thought. And I don’t think she, she had an answer to that. She said, ‘no, we want everyone to have rights’, and that somehow we’re reducing it if we’re just looking at spaces. But spaces are really important to how people feel about themselves and how they’re viewed.