When Lily Madigan, a 19-year-old transgender woman, was elected as a Labour Party women’s officer and applied for the Jo Cox Women in Leadership Programme, social media squabbles between transgender activists and women’s rights campaigners exploded into the mainstream.
The public must wonder what has been going on. A lot, it seems. The Labour councillor who was a referee on Ms Madigan’s application said the party had decided that “transgender women are women”, and he fundamentally believed that Lily is a woman.
People fundamentally believe lots of things but that does not necessarily make them true. We don’t legislate on the basis of astrology or homeopathy, for example, yet the government is considering reforms to the Gender Recognition Act that may allow people to self-identify their legal sex based on their fundamental beliefs.
As a transgender woman I find that deeply troubling. The mechanism by which our legal sex can be changed underpins the equality legislation that protects transgender rights. I am a science teacher, and that protection was vital when I transitioned in school five years ago.
The same piece of legislation defends women’s rights. Some women have perceived a conflict and they are asking hard questions. If anyone can self-identify as a woman, what does the word woman even mean? My dictionary tells me that a woman is an adult human female, but that does not fit well with the claim that “transgender women are women”. This is painful territory for transgender people, and it is tempting to shut down debate and dismiss concerns as transphobia. But concerns don’t go away, they fester, and we risk transgender-acceptance being replaced by transgender-suspicion.
To command respect, we need to ground our laws in scientific truth and in society. Science cannot be fooled. The two sexes do have different roles in the propagation of our species and women’s officers need to empathise with the issues that females face. Society grants trans people the right to change their legal sex, but we have responsibilities in return. Those of us socialised as boys need to think carefully before taking places in schemes designed to compensate the rather different formative experience of girls.
The Gender Recognition Act does need to be slimmed down and simplified. But no act of parliament can guarantee acceptance of our identities. That comes down to us: how we live our lives as transgender women.
Debbie Hayton is a teacher and transgender activist
* This article was first published by The Times on 29 November 2017: We transgender women cannot self identify our sex.
Debbie Hayton 
4 replies on “We transgender women cannot self identify our sex”
[…] Debbie Hayton, writing in the noted transphobe publication The Times, argued against Lily Madigan, a trans woman taking a place in the Jo Cox Leadership Programme, which is aimed at women. I don’t know what that programme is like, but imagine it will draw out talents of self-expression, and aid in building confidence to use those talents. Those of us socialised as boys need to think carefully before taking places in schemes designed to compensate the rather different formative experience of girls, she says: as if the training will not be appropriate. […]
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I don’t think I could possibly disagree more with you on this subject, Dr Hayton.
You have bought into the false idea that women own the rights to their gender.
You have bought into the groundless scare-mongering tactics of radical feminist groups, that men will take advantage of self-identification, despite where this already occurs there being no evidence for it whatsoever.
You have bought into the false idea that we as human beings are defined by our genitals, not our brains.
You have bought into the false idea that chromosomes dictate gender.
You appear to deny the fundamental biological aspects of gender identity and embrace the easy simplistic notion of anatomical sex determination. By which you appear to confuse gender and genital sex. I would love to know your reasons for transitioning because, by your reasoning, you would seem to have little grounds for such action.
You appear to ignore the scientific research of recent years which provides compelling evidence for gender as a biological and innate aspect of identity, and the further studies that confirm transgender brains to be similar in both structure and composition, and in the way they function, to the brains of the gender with which those trans people identify. The current scientific understanding for which points to developmental issues via hormonal and genetic factors, which are admittedly yet to be understood, but only in terms of how and why.
Obviously much of what you believe/feel is conditioned by your own experiences. I wonder how you view the differences between what you have experienced and what, say, a child growing up today, with their gender confirmed and acknowledged from an early age would feel. A trans girl, for example, never being a boy, never going through male puberty, never being a man?
You have said elsewhere, in so many words, that our identities should not be based on feelings alone. I say that feelings are precisely what we are, even more so than anything physical about us. Feelings, emotions, identity. All are biological in origin.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/cui-bono/201610/biology-determines-every-thought-feeling-and-behavior
The trans condition is different for everyone. everyone is as unique as people are unique. Your experiences are not those of others and you should not assume, or presume to say how others feel about themselves.
I do not speak for you, but a transgender woman who says she is a woman, is a woman, and any denial of that is a form of oppression. Pure and simple.
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Hi Natalie. Clearly we disagree, but thank you for articulating your ideas.
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Thankyou Debbie, as always you speak clearly and sensibly. What Gov/ Boris said recently about self ID is a vote winner to me and millions. Could you please enforce self ID Boris, its physically hurting women in prison to have male rapists and sex offenders with them, because prison service accepts self ID of men. They were men when the committed the offences and on release. I foresee lots of lawsuits from wronged women. Preditor males are already abusing self ID to get to women and girls.
(NB he if legal male, i refer as she if has grc out of respect even tho still male)
The general population will be alienated from transwomen, if the only time they see a transwoman is when he looks clearly like a man with male parts, and is in newspaper as sex offender who did most violent horrific crime, and is put with females in prison, where he assaults terrorises them, or boasts of walking around naked intimidating girls in their locker room, attracted to women, then easily defeats them at their single sex female sport because he says hes a woman. These things do nothing to help trans people, saying they are transwomen misrepresents both transwomen and women.
They endanger how society views transwomen who have undergone transition and women alike. Extremists seem to ignore this, with companies, schools, unis, sports, newspapers, even gov depts, trying to suppress oppress silence attack putting society in a state of fear, seemingly trying to erase women, will only add to the extremism until in the end people liken the movement to the 1930s youth movement & regime in Germany with women the victims this time.
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