Trans vs TERFs: scrabbling for the victim highground

Feb 16, 2018 by

by Joanna Williams, spiked:

The argument over who is a woman has descended into ugly victim politics.

To most people, this question is so ridiculous it takes us beyond the realm of common sense. A woman is a biological female. Not someone who has been randomly assigned the label female at birth in some odd bureaucratic act, but a person with a vagina and XX chromosomes. To members of the Labour Party, however, defining a woman is proving to be anything but straightforward.

Labour has opened its all-women shortlists to self-identifying transgender women – in other words, to men who feel like they fancy a go at being women for a change. This has prompted a row between those who think the lists should be preserved for real women (or at least those with a Gender Recognition Certificate proving their womanly credentials) and those who think wanting to be a woman should be qualification enough for inclusion in the women-only line-up.

Thankfully, women in the Labour Party have spoken out against ‘transgender males’ being allowed ‘to push biological females out’. In response to this pushback, Labour Against Transphobia was formed. In acts reminiscent of the Stasi, this group drew up secret lists, gathered evidence and hatched plans to oust ‘transphobes’ from the party. Labour member Jennifer James was suspended and has, in turn, set up a crowdfunding site to launch a legal challenge to the party’s decision.

In the eyes of Labour’s transgender militants, wanting all-women shortlists to be the preserve of biological females (or women with a gender recognition certificate) makes you a transphobe. And the party hierarchy is, it appears, standing firm behind gender as a matter of self-definition. To the Labour Party it seems that to be a woman means nothing more than having declared you are a woman. Whether or not you were been born female is irrelevant. All that matters is how you feel.

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