On the 10th September 2021 you wrote a Twitter thread, in response to an opinion column in your local paper written by a Tory councillor. In it you set out you “gender critical” views, none of which was a surprise to anyone being that they reflected your comments and tweets over the previous years.
I hope that you will listen to some opposing views, and might consider why people think your views are damaging to trans people and therefore why people consider you to be transphobic.
[Please note that while the following are the words as used by Rosie Duffield (copy and paste from Twitter), I have added punctuation and split the sentences as appear to make sense to me.]
This same Tory councillor was happy to support, work with and campaign for our last Tory MP for several years. An MP who actively sought to outlaw equal marriage and was openly against gay rights for which he cited his conversion to Catholicism.
To start off, a fair enough comment. I think everyone in the LGBTQ+ communities will call out Tory hypocrisy such as this. The party of Section 28, who equivocate on every purportedly pro-LGBTQ+ announcement so as not to infuriate their conservative backers are not friends to the LGBTQ+ community, but let’s not shoot the messenger, let’s actually address the message.
I have actively fought for gay rights (and all human rights) all of my life. A fact that is well-known, well-documented and everyone who knows me can testify. I chose to make my first MP speech, after less than 2 hours sleep, at Canterbury’s first Pride event. It went viral.
Let’s start with some accuracy. While your first speech as an MP may have been at (the SECOND) Canterbury Pride, was it a choice, or were you already scheduled to speak at pride and serendipitously (and unexpectedly) you had won your seat at the 2017 General Election 10 days before? As for it “going viral” … an appeal to popularity of a speech 4 years ago has little bearing on events more recently.
But your argument “I have actively fought for gay rights all my life” is somewhat a red herring. Whether or not you are “well-known” for and that it is “well-documented” you have supported “gay rights” in the past is irrelevant. It is also notable you say “gay rights” because that implies you are selective in who from the LGBTQ+ communities you actually support. There are many people who claim to support gay rights, yet disagree with certain aspect of gay rights such as voting against same-sex marriage because it undermines the family; it appears to me that, as a cis-heterosexual person, you either support gay rights as campaigned for by the majority of LGBTQ+ people, or you do not support gay rights.
In addition, and while it is not a point you make here, it is often claimed that Stonewall has abandoned supporting gay rights, despite those involved with, and supporting, Stonewall have also “actively fought for gay rights all my life”. Ironically you are “self-IDing” as “supporting gay rights”
I also have feminist and gender critical beliefs which mean that whilst I’ve always fully supported the rights of all trans people to live freely as they choose, I do not accept self-ID as a passport for male-bodied biological men to enter protected spaces for biological women.
There’s a lot to pick out from this sentences. There are a lot of dog-whistles in here.
First: being a trans person is NOT a choice. It’s no more a choice than being gay is a choice, or being cis gender is a choice. It has long been recognised by biologists/doctors as well as social scientists that being trans is a natural variation of humanity. The only choice is whether the trans person comes out to a society hostile to differences, or whether they find a way to remain closeted their whole life. So the arrogance to think that you have the ability to approve of a trans person is outstanding.
Second: what do you mean by “self-ID”? If you mean the proposed amendment to the Gender Recognition Act – rejected by the UK government for England and Wales but accepted by the Scottish government – to allow for a statutory declaration to form the basis of the issuing of a GRC as opposed to the current situation where in depth, invasive diagnosis from a medical doctor for something which, according the the WHO, is not a medical condition; then by now you really MUST be aware that the GRA does not affect entry to “protected spaces”, that is the Equality Act 2010
The Equality Act 2010 allows for spaces and services to be limited to people of a single sex, or provided to men and women separately – where it is a “proportional response to a legitimate aim”. The Equality Act also provides an exception to the prohibition of discrimination on the grounds of Gender Reassignment to restrict trans people from those spaces again, where it is a “proportional response to a legitimate aim”. The EHRC Services, Public functions and Associations: Statutory Code of Practice states that:
If a service provider provides single- or separate sex services for women and men, or provides services differently to women and men, they should treat transsexual* people according to the gender role in which they present. However, the Act does permit the service provider to provide a different service or exclude a person from the service who is proposing to undergo, is undergoing or who has undergone gender reassignment. This will only be lawful where the exclusion is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate.
Para 13.57
* transsexual is defined in the Equality Act as someone with the protected characteristic of Gender Reassignment. Whether someone calls themselves trans, transsexual, transgender, or using another term doesn’t affect if they are covered in this statement so long as they are covered under the characteristic of Gender Reassignment.
This (and the subsequent two paragraphs) were recently the subject of a judicial review, with the judge rejecting their arguments at the preliminary stage including stating that “However, it is in my view clear beyond argument that Parliament has chosen, in the 2010 Act, to place transsexual persons in a different position from the generality of persons of their birth sex.” (Para 25)
So when you say “male-bodied biological men to enter protected spaces for biological women” not only are you being pejorative by using terms “male-bodied biological men” to describe trans women – which I’m sorry makes you transphobic – but you are also arguing against laws as they currently exist and have existed for 10 years, building on previous 1999 amendments to the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 and (in most cases) have been how society worked for much longer; to wit Justice Ormrod in Corbett v Corbett observed that April Ashley was treated as female by society.
In my opinion the only reason to state “male-bodied biological men” is in order to justify your prejudices. We do not regularly go around in society checking people’s genitalia before assessing how to treat them. So in conclusion, your sentence here is contradictory, you cannot be “fully support[ive of] the rights of all trans people to live freely” while rejecting the current law which allows trans people to use the facilities they deem appropriate. Indeed to enable a diagnosis and to move forward with transition, trans people must show they are living within society in a manner aligning with their gender identity (and yes we can argue a long time about whether that essentially means reinforcing stereotypes)… refusing them the ability to use those facilities makes transition impossible.
That includes DV refuges, women’s prisons, single-sex wards and school toilets.
You’re mixing a lot of different situations here and all need different approaches.
DV refuges are places which NO-ONE self IDs into. In the main, people do not know where refuges are and, even if you do, turning up at the front door as a woman will not gain you entry. Places at DV refuges are allocated based on need: if a trans woman is at a DV refuges, she’s there because she is a victim; to refuse a place simply because she is a trans woman IS discriminatory. Thats not so say there may be other reasons to refuse a trans woman, just as there are reasons to refuse a cis woman a place – criminal record being primary. But any refusal must be a proportionate response and the reason for refusal must be seeking to uphold a legitimate aim.
Women’s prisons again do not work on any form of self ID, beyond the fact that a trans woman may make herself known to HMPSS. Following making herself known, there is then a process to go through to assess where in the prison estate to house her. The same process will occur if a trans person with a GRC is identified.
Single-sex wards do work more by self-ID (as per the Equality Act 2010). The first policy (I am aware of) which explicitly stated that trans people should be accommodated according to their gender identity was in 2009 as part of ensuring that wherever possible ward were single “sex” were used. Prior to that though it was still standard practice that, where wards were separate, trans people were accommodated in the same way.
As for school toilets… what are you suggesting about trans girls that you think they need be excluded?
I believe the majority of people also support this view.
You may believe that, but research and poling don’t support your view that “the majority” of people support your view. It’s not even a view supported by the majority of women as poling consistently finds that women are more accepting of trans inclusive policies than men.
The mostly male aggression and verbal abuse about this has resulted in changes to my personal safety and security arrangements. That is misogyny.
The amount of abuse women, especially prominent women such as MPs, face online is abhorrent which everyone I know supporting trans rights condemns. It’s also not a one way street… trans-inclusive feminists are facing similar abuse which suggests that those perpetrating abuse are not motivated by trans rights campaigning, but simple misogyny.
However this another irrelevant appeal. Just because you face abuse doesn’t mean your views are correct, or that you are justified in pushing your anti-transgender views.
Some angry strangers, none of whom have ever met me, have decided what I believe and that it is ‘transphobic’, which seems to others piling on to be the worst of all possible crimes.
No one has “decided what [you] believe”. They may have drawn conclusions based on your public statement (tweeting) but that is not deciding what you believe. Through the last year or so you have been criticised for your views and tweet on this matter. From time to time you have even apologised – so we’re you lying when you apologised? You deny it is transphobic, but on what basis are you declaring that: why do you think you should get to decide what is and isn’t transphobic?
My sins? To agree that male-bodied people should not be included in lists of murdered women; to have ‘liked’ tweets such as @piersmorgan’s ‘You mean women?’ when he read a health advice post about ‘people with a cervix’.
Again here is the dog whistle: male-bodied people! A statement which is as far from fighting for human rights as you can get. It seeks not to inform, but to justify exclusion.
And then we have piersmorgan. Given his past, do you seriously believe his intention in posting was to inform and improve women’s rights? Is it not more likely he was fully aware of the response his comment would have and tweeted it exactly because he wanted to illicit that response? Just like he knows exactly the response he would get when he began his diatribe against Meghan Merkel. How you can think you are on the side of quality and human rights when you promote such an individual?
While there may be a very small number of people who now identify as men and still have female organs, the vast majority of women should not have to rename our bodies or ourselves accordingly.
We have fought forever for our own names, our own spaces, to own our own bodies, our rights and our votes.
This is a bit of a nonsense isn’t it? It’s about your feelings be offended by language to include everyone? Is your sense of identity really that fragile that a health campaign, encouraging “everyone with a cervix” to be aware of risks, undermines it? In any case, equality legislation is replete with examples of where we have adjusted society to ensure that small groups are not disadvantaged: is your claim any different to “why do I have to adjust so that disabled people can access this”.
This second sentence really has no meaning. The fight for votes and the removal of real sex-based rights (that is rights which men had over women) is totally separate from anything else. Another appeal to irrelevances.
Does referring (accurately) to “people who menstruate” or “those with a cervix” really affect that? Is not one of the keys to feminism removing the link between bodily functions and womanhood. No one is disputing the fact that the vast majority of people who menstruate or have cervices are women, but not all women women menstruated and some people who aren’t women have a cervix. In any case, in the vast majority of cases, inclusive language is not replacing older language but adding to it: the furore around Brighton hospitals inclusive language a prime example. If people actually read the guide, it was suggesting the use of language when talking generally such as “women and other people who are pregnant” to replace “pregnant women”; and its only in addressing individuals that language such as chest feeding to replace breast feeding was suggested as appropriate.
You cannot “supported the rights of all trans people to live freely” while campaigning against them being included in public health information and campaigns.
As for “our own spaces”: I think you’ll find that these came into being NOT because women wanted their own spaces, but wanted access to the same public spaces men had. Separate spaces was something that men forced on women.
As have all gay people too.
Yet most gay people are today fighting against the kind of divisive rhetoric you are pushing.
If my views of feminism, women’s rights and women’s basic physical safety offend some men like this cllr (or this newspaper) then that reflects pretty badly on him. I did not ask him what his views were on women’s rights. But this newspaper did not hesitate to print them anyway, despite not asking me for my views.
I would ask you to consider what your views here actually have to do with feminism and women’s rights. What does trans inclusion do to affect women’s basic physical safety? Indeed I would ask you to consider if trans-exclusionary policies do not damage women’s rights. If you say (for example) that should a trans woman not “pass” they shouldn’t be allowed in women’s facilities; does that not then mean that cis-women who do not match classic western stereotypes also get challenged? If you are pushing a “gender critical” view that only biology matters; what do you say to an anti-abortionist campaigner who say that its biological that a woman gets pregnant and should be forced to carry it?
And what evidence can you point to to support your assertion that “self-ID as a passport for male-bodied biological men to enter protected spaces for biological women”? This has been one of the problems throughout the “debate” which has happened since the Women & Equalities Committee inquiry reported in 2015. While it is right that concerns of women are listened to, the responses must also be listened to.
No one asked you what your views on trans rights and LGB rights are, but you didn’t hesitate to write them on twitter anyway.
I will continue to support LGBT rights as I have done all of my life, whether stranger men say so or not.
But how are you “continu[ing] to support LGBT rights”, when you are standing against the majority of the LGBT community. Oh there are definitely outliers who will agree with your position, but on what basis have you decided these outliers are right and everyone else is wrong about what LGBT rights are?
Erasure of women’s views, voices, and work in the community is why feminism is now more important than ever and misogyny such as this is growing. We must always speak up 💜
You state “misogyny such as this” … but excepting the abuse faced by you and any woman mentioning trans rights on either side, what misogyny are you talking about? Or are you suggesting that simply by having trans-inclusive policies they are being misogynistic? And why does hatred towards women who adopt a position on trans rights matter, but the hatred towards trans people not matter?
As I stated above, women’s voices and views are important. But that means women’s voices and views when they are trans inclusive too: Ruth Hunt, Lala Moran, Nancy Kelly, Baroness Featherstone, Nicola Sturgeon Judith Butler, trans-inclusive Gender Based Violence workers, trans-inclusive academics, and the many ‘ordinary’ feminists are all as important as those trans-exclusionary women’s voices. All these women (or groups of women) have faced the same kinds of abuse as you have.
Selectively listening to a small group of women, who are presenting (IMO) unevidenced claims spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt and using that to formulate a policy, is wrong. If there is evidence that a policy aiming to improve trans people’s life will inadvertently affect other women, that needs presenting so that policies can deal with that issue; but we cannot live in a world where we deny people rights because a completely separate group may abuse them. That is not democracy, it’s something else entirely.
We must speak up yes… but we must speak up about all discriminatory practices.
A World Weary Woman Writes 
My goodness what does she hope to gain from being transphobic? The adoration of the Grobians?
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