Physics teacher and trade unionist.
As Keir Starmer still struggles to tell us what he thinks the word ‘woman’ means, some much-needed common sense has been injected into the transgender debate. The Equality and Human Rights Commission has published guidance for providers of single-sex and separate-sex services: in short, it says bathrooms and domestic abuse refuges can be single sex in certain circumstances. This is welcome news for women – and for transgender folk like me.
Westminster has its first openly transgender Member of Parliament. In the early hours of this morning*, Jamie Wallis, Conservative MP for Bridgend, announced: ‘I’m trans. Or to be more accurate, I want to be.’
As a paid-up member of the Labour party, it’s rare that I agree wholeheartedly with a Conservative politician. But Boris Johnson has spoken some much-needed common sense in the gender debate. ‘When it comes to distinguishing between a man and a woman,’ the PM told MPs yesterday, ‘the basic facts of biology remain overwhelmingly important.’
If you needed any sign that the Labour party is still deeply confused about gender identity and sex, look no further than the Labour leader Keir Starmer’s comments this week.
‘I think I might be transgender!’ How should schools react to such revelations? By the time they find out, the child may already be convinced that their identity lies on the LGBTQIA+ spectrum. Probably with its own multi-coloured flag.
For transsexuals like me, the Scottish Government’s bill to reform the Gender Recognition Act is a disaster. If passed unamended, the bill would introduce ‘self-identification’, sweeping aside the checks and balances that make the process of changing ones’s gender credible in the minds of the public.
Debbie Hayton