Physics teacher and trade unionist.
Labour politicians who cannot give straight answers on sex and gender will need to get their thinking caps on, assuming they find themselves in charge on Friday morning*. The ‘what is a woman?’ question was just the start. The debate that has now moved on to toilets – and Labour needs to come up with some answers and fast.
Is Keir Starmer trying to snatch an unlikely defeat from the jaws of victory, or is he so confident of winning that he thinks he can ignore sense and reason – certainly on the issue of sex and gender?
Perhaps JK Rowling should be the leader of the opposition. She describes herself as ‘left leaning’, she has a huge following, and she also knows what a woman is. Writing in the Times this morning*, Rowling defends her friend Rosie Duffield – the Labour candidate for Canterbury – following the appalling abuse she has suffered both in the past and during the current election campaign:
Alex Kay-Jelski is the latest individual to realise that the internet never forgets and, when it suddenly remembers, the impact can be spectacular – and not in a good way. Kay-Jelski is the ‘soon-to-be Director of BBC Sport’ according to his account on X (formerly Twitter). But that’s as much as a casual observer will find out; the account is protected, presumably because of an all-to-familiar pile-on. The journalist has found himself in the centre of a Twitter storm over sex and gender, amplified in part by JK Rowling.
The opinion polls might be projecting a massive Labour majority, but there is a dynamic to this election that could yet derail Keir Starmer’s plans for government. Yesterday*, J.K. Rowling spoke for many women when she fired off a volley of tweets on sex and gender. Her frustration was palpable, but also notable was her defence of Kemi Badenoch.
If the country has not had enough sex by now, it may have by the election*. Political sex, that is – Rishi Sunak has clearly spotted an opportunity for a fully frontal attack on one of Labour’s weak spots. This morning, the Prime Minister promised that if re-elected, his government would rewrite the Equality Act to make it clear that sex means biological sex.
When the Tories start talking about national service they really are grasping at straws. The concept might possibly appeal to some older voters nostalgic for an earlier time, but Rishi Sunak’s ideas are quite different from the military conscription of young men that lasted from 1949 to 1963.
My name is Debbie Hayton and I am an evangelical Christian. It is perhaps a sad indictment of our society that I feel more vulnerable talking about my faith than about my transsexualism, but here we are.
Debbie Hayton