Gillian Keegan has declared that she will no longer use the slogan, ‘trans women are women’ because, as she explains, her understanding of the issue has ‘evolved’. Good for her; it is far better that politicians develop their positions than dig their heels in and refuse to countenance the concept that they were ever wrong.
In 2020, the Education Secretary went further than the slogan when she told an LGBT+ forum in her Chichester constituency that ‘trans people should have equal access to safe spaces’. Assuming she meant that trans women should be able to access women’s spaces, that was wrong. Biological females should have an absolute right to single-sex provision whenever it is a ‘proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim’. That’s the legalese, and it’s surely a legitimate aim for women to be able to protect their boundaries.
By 2020, it seemed that the scope of the term ‘trans woman’ had expanded to include any man who decided to claim it, and for purposes known only to himself. As a member of parliament, Keegan should have recognised that and understood the consequences. Other MPs did – Rosie Duffield and Miriam Cates, for example – but they faced opprobrium for speaking the truth.
Much has been said about the toxic nature of the transgender debate, but perhaps it was inevitable when matters of identity were at stake, and everyone worries that words as basic as ‘man’ and ‘woman’ are at risk of being redefined, and to their detriment. Two teams emerged – let’s call them team trans and team terf – and there was pressure to pick a side.
As late as 2020, it seemed that team trans was winning. Perhaps that is why so many politicians signed up to the team that spouted nonsense. A man cannot become a woman by wishful thinking, however glossy the brochures churned out by the likes of Stonewall. But now the tide appears to have turned – certainly in England – and team terf is in the ascendency. The cynical view might be that Keegan has changed her allegiance to be on the winning side.
She is not alone. On the other side of the Commons, Wes Streeting has performed a similar U-turn, now admitting that he had been wrong to say, ‘trans women are women, get over it!’ Perhaps the next fully-signed-up convert to team terf will be Penny Mordaunt, whose words from the despatch box, that ‘trans men are men [and] trans women are women’ have not been forgotten.
However, our politicians need to do far better than shift their positions when the wind changes. They need to understand the issues so that they can develop sound legislation that works for everyone, and without creating absurdities. Make no mistake, it was ludicrous to develop any policy from the flawed principle that trans women were women, and by self-declaration alone. We all know what a woman is, and it is not a man who does little more than demand ‘she/her’ pronouns and threaten the law on anyone who refuses to comply. I think that should now be clear to anyone who has engaged their brain.
What might not be so clear are the potential follies arising from the other position and the slogan, ‘woman is an adult human female’. That is true, but Keegan, Streeting, Mordaunt and the rest might want to reflect on what people actually mean when they use the words woman (and man) before rushing headlong into another position that may lead to absurdities of another kind.
We have been using those words – and others with the same meanings – since the dawn of time – long before we understood anything about chromosomes. Like other sexually dimorphic species we need to know the difference between the two kinds of the species and respond to them differently. Keegan’s thinking might have evolved, but so has our gut feeling of who is a man and who is a woman. Rishi Sunak came close to articulating that when he said, ‘a man is a man and a woman is a woman – that’s just common sense’.
But what happens when common sense diverges the from the hard facts of biology? Away from the furious debates on social media, in real life people take trans people as they find them. Medical science has moved faster than our evolved instincts and if a someone looks more like a woman than a man, then despite their sex, other people are going to have a hard time not calling them a woman and – inevitably – relating to them as a woman. Society could of course ban medical transition and impose rigid dress codes on each sex, but that is unlikely. Laws that insist that everyone is treated according to their biological sex for all purposes would open the door to a new set of problems.
We can and must do better than that, but to do so we need to move beyond a debate between two teams. We might be able to change the words, but the concepts currently labelled by ‘man’ and ‘woman’ are buried so deeply in psychology that they cannot be redefined. Any law that says otherwise will be an ass sooner or later.
Lasting solutions require more than backing the right team, they need to be rooted in an understanding of human nature. The sooner politicians realise the better it will be for everyone.
Debbie Hayton is a teacher and journalist.
Her book, Transsexual Apostate – My Journey Back to Reality is published by Forum
* This article was first published by The Spectator on 26 April 2024: Why do politicians keep getting gender politics wrong?
Debbie Hayton 
3 replies on “Why do politicians keep getting gender politics wrong?”
“A woman is an adult human female” has never had any meaning to me. Both words “woman” and “female” are being appropriated by some men. The phrase I use is, “A woman is an adult human with a female reproductive system”. And to block those activists who would argue that that doesn’t include women after menopause, I sometimes say “A woman is an adult human with a female reproductive system, whether it works or not.” Of course, people can always have their genitals removed and/or replaced.
Regarding “trans people should have equal access to safe spaces”, that idea sprang up when no one could imagine that a man might assume the appearance of a woman to get to women and victimize them. The early image of trans women was of emasculated doe-like creatures doing their best to be passive and feminine, but that didn’t take into account the cleverness of predators. And if all a male predator has to do to get access to women is to say he’s trans (without changing his appearance in any way), then that makes his job of predation all the easier.
You know, I’m still shocked by the behavior of trans activists. Who knew that screaming “transphobe!” all the time would actually intimidate people? Or that they could ever influence so many people to agree with them? I’m also shocked that business and industry is getting involved in this. Amazon is carrying your book, Debbie, but there was a similar book before yours that they wouldn’t carry. And I recently found out that PayPal cancelled the account of Colin Wright, a biologist who openly disputed transgender ideology. PayPal??? Why do THEY care??? Not long ago, there was a female singer whose record company cut her from their catalogue because she said the wrong thing on social media. We’ve definitely gotten to the point where many people are too frightened to make even obvious statements if those statements express a belief in science.
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Very true, and all the rest of the cancelled – is someone collating a list? It must be quite substantial by now. I’m boycotting any of the worst offenders. I think Colin Wright had an Etsy – or maybe I’m thinking of someone else – and had that deleted for selling merchandise with unspeakable biological facts on it. Others have had their online shops disappeared for supporting detransitioners. Comedians like Graham Linehan had their careers (temporarily) wrecked. Writers like JK Rowling, academics like Dr Kathleen Stock…the list goes on. It’s gratifying that many have become even more famous as GC activists, and may go on to have even more success.
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“Any law that says otherwise will be an ass sooner or later.” – Yes indeed, although laws seem to be made and remade now as mere political expedients.
I imagine there was a time, in my childhood or some time earlier, when politicians decided what their heartfelt policies would be and advertised them to voters, competing with other similarly honourable and passionate believers. Or perhaps that’s just a myth I picked up. Either way, politicians now simply try to figure out what will get them votes, using focus groups, and spout those platitudes to the public, and even that prostitution to public opinion is probably secondary to what they can gain from sucking up to big business, usually Rupert Effing Murdoch. This is why it’s hard to get a cigarette paper between the parties’ actual political positions, while of course they pretend there are monumental differences.
Just about everything they say is a deceit, designed to navigate between various critics and appeal to various potential supporters, like this: ‘a man is a man and a woman is a woman – that’s just common sense.’ Well, no, it’s just a tautology. Even a raving TRA could sign up to that. It can avoid all criticism, because it means literally nothing. I may be being unfair, depending on the context – Sunak may have clearly risked offending trans activists – and the Conservatives have pushed back against the ideology more than any other of the main parties. But that is probably also just cynical manoeuvring, since most of the British population are gender critical, or would be if they gave it half a moment’s thought. Team trans was always playing for extra time.
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