Panel Summary : Part 2
MB: Michael, those first two witnesses. Erm, the first witness, er, thought that, er you know, transwomen, erm, didn’t er, didn’t represent any, any potential, er danger to er, to women’s refuges or, or prisons or whatever…
MP: Yes
MB: …whereas Kiri Tunks er, well, er Kiri Tunks continued to define them as men and she also defines men as a potential threat, so, so there’s a disjunction there?
MP: Well, I want to go back on a question you asked Mona, because I thought Mona dismissed it straight away. Erm, the, what, what erm, Kiri was talking about was, if the law were changed in the way that Torr wants it to be, so that you self-defined, then there would not be a definition of women, except as people define themselves. Therefore, I think it’s a perfectly logical point to say, you could not protect women’s rights in that, er, in that situation. She also said, and I think this is clear from the Labour leadership, erm, debate, that for holding the view that she holds, she and her organisation have been shut down and harassed. And, I mean, that is really. very worrying. And it makes one believe that this is, erm, a pretty intolerant ideology that is emerging in places. Erm, and that’s important, I think, for everything that follows. Not least, how we behave towards our children.
MB: Rachel, in, in your conversation with Kiri Tunks, towards the end, you, you suggested the idea that this was some sort of proxy war. What did you actually mean by that?
RM: I think what I mean by that is that, as someone who’s spent a great deal of time in feminist circles, as a feminist scholar, erm, I’m conscious that this debate has a history. And it goes back at least to second wave feminism in the 70’s in which, actually, erm, those people who don’t fit very particular narratives of what a woman is, tend to get thrown out, and thrown off the bus. And that might be to do with non-trans women who, erm, are very feminine, but equally it might be transwomen who disrupt ideas of what a woman is. So I’m worried that there is actually further stories behind this.
MS: I think that’s very true and I think it’s something that causes progressivism to have to interrogate itself more. It is not simply the old divide between progressives and social conservatives. It’s, er, am I allowed to go on? Or are you shutting me up?
MB: No, er, because I want…
MS: You’re such an authoritarianism tonight…
MB: I know, I know, I want to get on to this question of, er, children. I mean the, the much larger numbers of, of er, children who are presenting with, er, dysphoria, gender dysphoria and so on. Now what did we make of the second two witnesses. Jane Fae thought puberty blockers, for instance, were useful, the affirmative care, puberty blockers were useful as a pause to, er, to take a look at this. Did you go along with that Mona?
MS: I’m, I, I have to own up that I don’t know enough about this in, in the sense that my concern is that at what age do we start taking children’s sense of themselves seriously? And that’s a really difficult question, I think, in terms of gender and gender dysphoria. I’m not sure that I think puberty blocking is a good idea, er, it depends on the age of the child as well. Because children’s lives are in such flux on so many levels. But I think that the issue is that we, we’re taking sides on this, in this debate. Not as a group, but the whole debate is about ‘which side are you on’? And actually, there has to be some consensus about how we discuss this with a bit more knowledge, and a bit more compassion when it comes to kids.
MB: Our last witness had described this, elsewhere, as Nazi eugenics which seems something of an overstatement. But do you have worries about it?
AM: It’s always a bad thing, dragging the Nazis into things that are not about that. I can see where his argument is headed. I think that was an overstatement and in fairness, I think he said himself…
MB: Yeah, I know…
AM: he got a bit carried, er, carried away with that one. But he has a very strong position. He clearly believes that people are being prodded along a line. Now there, there’s a very much a case here where it is possible that both things are true at once. Some people, and I think probably Jane Fae was in this category, are playing down some things that might be more serious, er, than they want to acknowledge. And at the same time there’s an overreaction from our last witness.
MB: OK Well, we’re going to have to leave it there. It’s a fascinating discussion on every level, I think. That’s it for this week, from our panel, Michael Portillo, Rachel Mann, Anne McElvoy and Mona Siddiqui, and from me.