Baroness Nicholson: ‘This movement isn’t for trans people – it is for liars who don’t need science’

Jul 30, 2023 by Jill

by Hayley Dixon, Telegraph:

The 81-year-old peer has backed many campaigns, but feels her fight for sex-based rights is one of the most important – and vitriolic.

[…] The accusations against her dwarf those made against all other peers combined, but she remains characteristically sanguine. Could any number of complaints convince her to stay silent?

“No, I don’t think that they could,” she smiles. “I was particularly amazed to see that they wanted me out of the House of Lords, which really made me see the value of the House of Lords.”

The ire against her has been fuelled by the fact that she was one of the first – and remains one of the most vocal – parliamentarians to have engaged in the ever-toxic row over sex-based rights.

In the face of a torrent of abuse, she has stood by her belief that it is not possible to change biological sex. She has sent endless letters to ministers raising concerns, and spoken long into the night in House of Lords debates calling for the protection of single-sex hospital wards, toilets and changing rooms.

She has put pressure on ministers to produce the much-delayed trans guidance for schools and warned the education secretary that teachers should not be “telling schoolchildren that a bearded man with a penis can be a lesbian”.

Whilst the campaign by trans activists that has followed is like water off a duck’s back for a “tough cookie” like her, she worries about the impact that such action is having on others and on debate in public life.

“It is terrifying. So many parents, doctors, nurses, so many people, have been overwhelmed by this sewage, this tide of rubbish which is choking freedom of speech and freedom of thought. It is choking normal people’s lives and incapacitating them, preventing them from speaking out,” she says.

“You have young people going to universities who have no opinions because they are too afraid to offend, but that is because you have this bizarre situation where there are organisations waiting to be offended.”

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