The women’s vote counts – so why don’t women?
There is now a huge number of floating voters who are not anti-trans, but simply want to keep our sex-based rights and protections
Women are the majority of the population, so our votes count. Obviously we are not a homogenous group. Yet increasingly I hear women voice their political homelessness. Many such women are Left-leaning and have previously voted Labour, Lib Dem or Green, but now they feel unwanted. They feel alienated – dumped by the political parties they once supported, for their refusal to discuss women’s rights under the guise that these discussions are now ‘transphobic’. The Stonewall tactic of ‘no debate’ has been highly successful.
We saw it recently when Sadiq Kahn was asked by a member of the London Assembly about the definition of women he’d once put in a tweet: “You’ve said trans women are women – so do you think some women have male reproductive organs?”. Six other members of the Assembly jumped in to shut down debate and supported a subsequent motion to prevent him from having such a discussion with the mayor. His speech was deemed discriminatory.
Whether this member of the Assembly was genuinely interested in women’s rights, or just wanted to pick a fight with Khan isn’t the issue. For me, it is that respectable politicians aren’t willing to define what a woman is. And they are certainly not shy about putting definitions to other people and causes.