THE POLITICS OF GENDER

Why Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart need to do their homework

(This is a very long post because it includes a transcription of a podcast).

I’m a fan of Rory Stewart and Alastair Campbell’s podcast, The Rest is Politics. As a postcolonial African Scot who left school at fifteen, I eventually did a PhD on theology and gender studies and even became a Professor, but I remain woefully ignorant of European politics and history. So I trust their erudition and experience on politics and always look forward to their podcasts. But do I trust them to speak on issues of gender? Hmmm.

I was apprehensive when I saw that they were going to discuss the recent Supreme Court ruling that affirms the sex-based rights of women as defined under the Equality Act 2010. They also discussed Pope Francis’s legacy in the same podcast, but I’m not engaging with that here apart from this correction which is relevant to the subsequent discussion about transgender issues. (I also want to point out somewhat pedantically to Alastair Campbell, linguist extraordinaire, that “dubia” is pronounced with an “ee” as in “dubious”, and not with an “eye” as in “Dubai”. )

But here’s the correction re the discussion about Pope Francis:

Rory Stewart: So people would say, you know, what do you think about, you know, transgender and he would say, “who am I to judge?”, which on the one hand is a very good humble Christian message. On the other hand, they would argue, well actually that is slightly your job because you are the pope, right? You're supposed to give us a bit of a bit of a guidance on this stuff.

This exchange with the Pope was not about transgender. It was a response to a journalist’s question about whether there was a gay lobby in the Vatican. In a radical departure from the language of his predecessors, Pope Francis famously used the word “gay”. “If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge?” He warmly welcomed LGBT+ representatives and emphasised the inclusivity of all in God’s love and mercy, but he clarified several times what he meant when he said “who am I to judge?”, with reference to gay people. Given the previous popes’ reluctance to admit gay men to seminaries for training to the priesthood, Pope Francis’s attitude has significant implications for the priesthood as well as wider society.

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Now to that discussion about the Supreme Court ruling. Let me set out my credentials for commenting (and apologies for repetition in what follows for those familiar with my work).

My main academic research interests have focused on the relationship between sacramental theology, sexual embodiment, and gender theory. My support for same-sex marriage earned me censorship from the Vatican, the cancellation of a research fellowship at a Catholic university in the United States, and banishment from speaking in various dioceses around the UK. More recently, I’ve been censored by a liberal Catholic university in the US for my questions about some aspects of transgender activism and women’s rights, and an invitation to run a workshop for a group in Canada was withdrawn because of fears that I would upset their 2SLGBTQ+ members.

ON SILENCING AND CENSORSHIP

I have had trans people credit my work for encouraging and supporting them through the process of transitioning, and more recently some of those same people have felt betrayed by the questions I raise. I have supervised PhDs and taught gender studies in universities and in online courses with students from around the world. Through all this, my position has not changed, though the emphasis has, because the context has changed.

From being a small and vulnerable minority, thanks to trans activism there has been a major social, legal and political shift in attitudes towards trans rights. There has been widespread censorship, hounding and abuse targeted at women such as Kathleen Stock and J.K. Rowling, women like Jo Phoenix, Maya Forstater, Alison Bailey and Roz Adams have had to fight for their jobs through employment tribunals—the list is long. This is why I’ve shifted my emphasis, from promoting trans rights and inclusivity to defending women’s sex-based rights, without denying any of the rights and protections owed to trans people.

Against nominalists such as Judith Butler who would dissolve all distinctions between sex and gender, and sexual essentialists such as the last three popes who would deny any fluidity between the two, I continue to argue that this distinction is important.

The human is a sexually reproductive mammalian species, not a clownfish, and we cannot change sex. Gender is fluid, diverse and potentially creative. The mapping of gender stereotypes onto sexed human bodies is restrictive for both sexes whose personalities do not conform to such stereotypes—for boys and men who are not sufficiently masculine, and for girls and women who are not sufficiently feminine. Effeminate men and butch women both suffer the effects of misogyny, because the dominant, normative human in modern western society was and remains the white, heterosexual, educated male.

I agree with Judith Butler and others who argue that challenging these oppressive stereotypes which sustain the status quo can be a creative and expressive act of political subversion, though if that is how they were actually functioning, I doubt that they would have such extensive corporate sponsorship and publicity! The Trump rampage shows that this was indeed an issue of explosive political significance, but liberal utopianism around sex and gender has cleared the way for a truly dystopian regime to take control.

I also agree with those who argue that some trans women adopt extreme forms of feminised behaviour and presentation which perpetuate rather than challenge these stereotypes in ways that undermine decades of feminist struggles to break free.

There are social trends and pressures that affect young people struggling with adolescence, sometimes with additional mental health issues, especially girls, which have led to trans identities being adopted with little or no basis in a young person’s life story before adolescence. The Cass Review offers analysis of these issues, and the more recently published Sullivan Review makes clear that failing to identify biological sex has detrimental implications for females across a range of medical and safeguarding issues.

I say all this to make clear that what follows is not a media-driven intervention by a bigoted transphobe, it is most certainly not an intervention from a Far Right sympathiser (politically, I’m far to the left of Rory and Alastair), and I hope it will not confirm Alastair’s fears that they are going to get “absolutely sort of lacerated”. This is not a laceration, but it is an informed intervention.

I’d begin by pointing out that, while they are usually so careful with sources and references in their political commentaries, all the evidence Rory and Alastair offered in this podcast was anecdotal.

In what follows, I’m using the transcript from the YouTube video of their podcast, with minor tweaks to edit out mumbles and mutters and to correct some of the spelling in the automated transcript. (Note the “balanced” title of this podcast with the image of two women celebrating the Supreme Court ruling.) More about that later. AC and RS refer to Alastair and Rory respectively, and my interventions are in italics. I’ve highlighted in bold the particular points to which I’m responding.

AC: Welcome to the rest is politics with me Alastair Campbell

RS: and me Rory Stewart.

AC: And Rory, I think in common with virtually every public media organization in the world we should talk about his holiness Pope Francis RIP, funeral to be on Saturday it’s just been announced. I think then we should talk about this Supreme Court ruling in the UK seeking to answer the question what is a woman which it is claimed has brought clarity to the debate. I’m afraid I don't think it’s brought clarity to this debate at all.

The judgement makes clear that the definition of “man” and “woman” pertains to clarification of the Equality Act 2010. It is not a generalised attempt “to answer the question what is a woman”:

From the Supreme Court Ruling (with my added emphasis in bold):

1. This appeal is concerned with establishing the correct interpretation of the Equality Act 2010 (“the EA 2010”) which seeks to give statutory protection to people who are at risk of suffering from unlawful discrimination. The questions raised by this appeal directly affect women and members of the trans community. On the one hand, women have historically suffered from discrimination in our society and since 1975 have been given statutory protection against discrimination on the ground of sex. On the other hand, the trans community is both historically and currently a vulnerable community which Parliament has more recently sought to protect by statutory provision.

2. It is not the role of the court to adjudicate on the arguments in the public domain on the meaning of gender or sex, nor is it to define the meaning of the word “woman” other than when it is used in the provisions of the EA 2010. It has a more limited role which does not involve making policy. The principal question which the court addresses on this appeal is the meaning of the words which Parliament has used in the EA 2010 in legislating to protect women and members of the trans community against discrimination. Our task is to see if those words can bear a coherent and predictable meaning within the EA 2010 consistently with the Gender Recognition Act 2004 (“the GRA 2004”).

3. As explained more fully below, the EA 2010 seeks to reduce inequality and to protect people with protected characteristics against discrimination. Among the people whom the EA 2010 recognises as having protected characteristics are women, whose protected characteristic is sex, and “transsexual” people, whose protected characteristic is gender reassignment.

Continuing with the Rest Is Politics transcript (after the discussion about Pope Francis):

AC: Now should we turn to the Supreme Court and the judgment last week, essentially saying that in relation to the Equality Act 2010, which was I think the Gordon Brown Government’s last act of Parliament, that when that Act refers to gender and sex [hesitation and fumbling with words here], they're talking biological sex, and Lord Hodge, who is the deputy president of the Court who read out the judgment, and he did it in a very careful, judge-like way, and then, good luck on this one, Lord Hodge, he said this should not be taken as victory for one side against another in this argument and trans people still have rights, etc. etc. But I guess where I come from, well, first of all what what was your initial reaction on hearing that judgment, and what it made you think about the issue.

In what follows, I think it’s Alastair who slants the whole discussion to make it very much one side against another. He says nothing about any legitimate concerns and causes that might have led For Women Scotland to take on the Scottish Government in the courts.

RS: The first thing is that I’m in the States, and interestingly in the States it’s not the same debate. This is very much a debate in the States where most people on the progressive left are on the side of transgender, and most of the opposition to transgender comes from the conservative right. Britain is very unusual because it’s in Britain that you have figures like JK Rowling and others, who are feminists from the left who are strongly opposed to what they see as the excesses of transgender ideology. So this whole dynamic doesn’t exist here, and actually explaining to an American audience why left-wing progressive feminists like JK Rowling or Kathleen Stock are troubled by transgender ideology is actually quite difficult. So I've spent a lot of the last two days trying to explain it.

This is spot on from Rory, and an important distinction to make with regard to socio-political differences between the US and the UK. See the discussion of this in my review of Judith Butler’s book, Who’s Afraid of Gender?

AC: Do you understand it because, you know, I get the thing about women feeling they want quote “safe spaces”,

This “feeling” is based on abundant evidence that women and children are at growing risk of abuse, sexual violence and extreme pornography by male perpetrators:

From The Guardian: “An “epidemic of violence against women and girls” in the UK is getting worse despite years of government promises and strategies, a highly critical report from Whitehall’s spending watchdog has said.”

From the Cambridge Rape Crisis Centre:

Note that 98% of adults arrested for sexual offences are men. Statistics obtained under freedom of information requests show that, if anything, trans women are over-represented among those imprisoned for sexual offences compared with cis men. The figures are too small to be taken as firm evidence, but they do show that trans women are also sometimes guilty of sexual violence and therefore pose the same threat as cis men to women inmates in prisons, as borne out by a letter to The Times from former Prison Service Area Manager Nick Pascoe CBE (see below):

Back to AC in the transcript:

AC: and I get that, and I also get, although I think it’s completely blown out of proportion, I get the thing about women in sport and transgender a man becoming a woman and then competing against women.

Sportswomen such as Martina Navratilova, Sharron Davies MBE and Stephanie Turner might disagree that “it’s completely blown out of proportion”. The tide is turning as sporting bodies recognise that trans women have an unfair advantage in sports involving strength.

AC: I can see why there are all sorts of issues that flow from that, but when everybody came out and said this gives clarity, I just don’t think it does give clarity at all. One of the most moving things I was at last year, Fiona and I did an event for a company, we were talking about mental health. And on the same day on the same platform, there was a guy who’s a trans man, so somebody who had been a woman, now a man, working in this place, who gave a presentation. And it was just really moving how everybody accepted it. Nobody saw it really as that big a deal.

There are eloquent trans men and women who are deeply moving advocates for their cause. Few of us would deny their legitimacy or their sincerity. I suspect the event Alastair describes had an elite, liberal-minded audience, so I wonder why he was so moved. Was he expecting somebody to jump to their feet and object? It is not “that big a deal” to have a trans man speaking at an event, and this kind of anecdotal evidence doesn’t constitute a persuasive argument about more complex issues in this debate.

AC: And I was thinking, on the basis of this judgment, if this is now, and this is the problem with this judgment is that it’s being taken as a woman, is only, you know, you cannot change your sex, is essentially what people are saying out of this. But there’s somebody who, this is the Equality Act 2010, there’s somebody who, according to the 2005 Gender Recognition Act, has been allowed to redefine as a man.

You cannot change your sex but I’d argue you can change your gender—see my comments above. The 2004 (not 2005) Gender Recognition Act has been clarified, not changed.

AC: Now, under this ruling, and I’m just putting it out there, because I don't know the answer, if that person is out in a public place, say like a swimming pool, and wants to go to the bathroom, are they going to the Gents or are they going to the Ladies? as I understand it, he now has to go to the Ladies. Is that what was intended?

RS: Yeah, I think what the judges would say is that people who run that establishment have the absolute right to say that only cisgender males can go to the male bathroom. They can make exceptions if they want, but the exception is then with the discretion of the institution. So what’s flipped is the question of who has the rights here and who can get an exception.

Yes to Rory’s response. It’s open to discretion, and there are fair ways round this. What’s flipped is that women’s rights have been defended. There are angry transphobes who will use this judgement to challenge people unfairly, but in all honesty I think very few women would challenge a trans woman using the women’s toilets so long as she wasn’t behaving in exhibitionist ways or making a political statement by being in that space as a very obvious male. On the other hand, there are some men and women who might feel deeply inhibited about using shared public toilets. Since we’re trading anecdotes here, let me tell you about a well-dressed, elderly man I saw hovering outside the gender-neutral toilets in a cinema venue recently, looking confused. He looked dismayed when I pointed out that he should use the same toilets as everybody else. Don’t such people also merit some consideration and kindness? Lack of segregated toilets limits the freedom of access for women who for religious or cultural reasons don’t want to share intimate spaces with men (e.g. Muslim women). It’s not that hard to provide gender neutral as well as male and female toilets. Many institutions already do. And given the long queues in women’s toilets in venues such as opera houses etc., some of us will use the men’s when desperate because the queues tend to be shorter! But why aren’t we talking about male violence and the lack of hygiene in men’s toilets? Why should men drive all vulnerable people out of their spaces into women’s spaces, so that they can remain uncouth and aggressive? If men are such a problem, let’s address that.

AC: I was very struck by Jameela Jamil, who’s a presenter actress, quite a big thing in the States now and and also an activist on all sorts of fronts, but she made the point, you know, are we now going to be sort of checking on what she called, you know, people’s tackle as they present themselves to places like bathrooms. So this is why I just think that this idea, and I saw Keir Starmer today saying I’m very happy this has brought clarity to this debate, I don’t think it’s brought clarity at all. And my big worry, my big worry, is that because of the way, and it's interesting what you say about America but let’s be honest, the British debate around trans is pretty vile, pretty noxious, pretty toxic. And you just had to see. So there’s the judge saying nobody should take this as a victory one side over the other. Cut to shots of lots of women popping champagne corks, pictures of JK Rowling smoking a celebrity cigar.

Shall we cut to shots of trans activists in UK cities at the weekend, protesting against the Supreme Court ruling?

From The Independent about those trans activist demos:

“Police are investigating after seven statues and property were vandalised before tens of thousands of trans rights protesters marched through central London on Saturday.”

AC: And I just worry that, and actually we had loads of abuse, you and I, down, when we last discussed this, and since this judgment, I don't know if you've seen but some of the women columnists who are really, really active on their sort of poking us on social media and what have you and one of them said, please don’t give me any of that stuff about this being a marginalized put upon community. It is, and that doesn’t change.

Did not one of those women columnists say anything at all worth respecting or repeating? Here is Sonia Sodha writing in The Guardian:

Middle-aged women are expected to fade into the background, to be apologetic for their existence, to quietly accept their lot. They’re not supposed to stick up for themselves, to enforce their boundaries, to say no. As a woman, these societal expectations have been drummed into me from day one. But still. The swell of anger and disgust that rose in response to the supreme court judgment last week that made clear women’s rights are not for dismantling – rights already won, that were supposed to be ours all along – has taken my breath away.

And here is that “marginalized put upon community” celebrating its new inclusive flags in Regent Street. Remind you of anything?

RS: Let me try to do the explainer that you were asking for and see if I can do it. My sense is that there are two completely different positions here. There’s the position of the trans community, which is that you are somebody who’s biologically born male but you identify as a woman, or you’re biologically born a woman, you identify as a man. Although that second category doesn't really feature in this debate oddly. Very little of this debate is about people who are born women who identify as men. It’s almost all the other direction is where the controversy is.

It’s not odd at all. Trans men (who are biologically female) are no more threatening than any other woman. They have no significant advantages in women’s sports, they are statistically not implicated in crimes of sexual violence, and they have had different social and cultural conditioning from males. The worrying surge in adolescent girls identifying as trans or non-binary raises huge questions about misogyny, body-shaming, social media, etc. which we should be addressing.

RS: Somebody in that situation, so a trans woman, somebody biologically male who identifies as a woman, would want to have all the rights and access and opportunities that would normally be granted to a woman because they identify as a woman. On the other side, on the JK Rowling, Kathleen Stock side, you have people saying that women’s rights were very very hard fought for, and that the rights, accesses, protections and opportunities for women should not be eroded by creating an ambiguous blur around the edges of who’s a woman and who isn’t, because it might allow men to be able to claim some of the access, opportunities, protection of women without being women.

Yes, this is a fair summary.

RS: And the one thing that those both positions have in common is they don’t like people like you and me either saying this isn’t the most important issue in the world, that really irritates people because it feels very existential to them.

Well, women are very used to men saying that whatever concerns us is less important than other issues!

RS: But secondly, they don’t like a liberal position, which is my position.

That’s a misleading generalisation.

RS: I mean, so to put my cards on the table. My position would be okay, this is a very difficult question of two competing claims of identity and rights, so let’s try to find practical compromises. So, you know, in the Rory Stewart world I would say, trans women should not be able to compete in women’s sports. Seems to me unfair. I would probably be in favour of gender neutral bathrooms in many contexts to get around this issue, right.

I agree with this, so do I get included among liberals?

RS: I would also be in favour of looking at a case-by-case basis on a trans woman wanting to go into the female estate in a prison, because you have to balance the fact that trans women are at a lot of threat. I mean, you just pointed this out, right, if you go into a male bathroom and you’re a trans woman and you’re wearing a skirt, you can be beaten up by a man in that bathroom or you could, in a prison, you could be very badly treated by fellow prisoners.

So why aren’t we all talking about the problem of misogyny and male violence? Women are not the cause of the problem and shouldn’t be expected to provide the solution. Toxic masculinity is the problem, and men are the ones who must address this by challenging aggressive behaviour and protecting vulnerable people who enter their spaces.

RS: You could also theoretically, although there actually aren't that many cases of it, but it has happened, you could pose a threat to women. So I would be trying to argue that you look at this on a case-by-case basis and you try to navigate your way through these very difficult claims of values.

See above. In terms of prisoners and sex crimes, there are many cases of trans women posing a threat to women. I don’t usually share links about sex crimes committed by trans women because I don’t want to fuel phobias and prejudices, but I think you need to take note of how often this happens. These stories tend to be covered by the tabloid press, not because they’re not true but because the liberal media in the UK usually shy away from all but the most notorious, such as Isla Bryson:

I have always told my children when they were small and now my grandchildren that if we get separated and they’re lost, they must find a woman and ask her to help them. I don’t trust strange men with lost children! But now, that advice no longer applies:

I don’t want to fill this post with such stories and images because that becomes sensationalist, but these are not rare cases. How many women and children must be sacrificed before we can have a public debate that acknowledges not all fears are phobias?

RS: But both sides hate that because if you are a trans woman, you might say "Listen I am a woman. These are my rights. These are my entitlements. I don't want to be given a case-by-case treatment.” I mean, we don't say, for example, if an African-American is denied entry to a country club they have to prove that they’re not violent in order to be allowed to come into the country club. They would say, “This is my, this is discrimination, right?”

Wow! I don’t know where to begin with this. It’s a question of power, Rory. African-Americans are historically and still today victims of white supremacy and racist violence, just as women are historically and still today victims of male domination and sexual violence. This is a really problematic example to use. If you want to use comparisons, then you should think about why Black Americans might want to exclude white racists from their clubs and activities (probably not country clubs), not the other way round!

RS: But as you’ve pointed out, all of this affects sport, access to puberty blockers. There’s this amazing slow news Tavistock podcast done by Tortoise Media, if people want to get into that, looking at the use of puberty blockers, single sex spaces, prisons, free speech, how do you talk about this in school, and my goodness it feels polarized. It doesn’t feel like, somebody like me trying to say, well, here’s the kind of liberal compromise on this, is going to get anything other than abuse and hate from both sides.

That contradicts Rory’s earlier differentiation between the debate in this country and the US. There is an informed debate in the UK and many of us do seek compromises when rights conflict.

AC: No, and that’s what I worry about the judgment, and I don’t think that was their intention, but I think that's the consequence, was the danger. That’s the consequence. And I also do feel, I mean, look we’re a political podcast, I still think this should have been resolved by Parliament. This is essentially what’s happened is that there’s been a sort of, not a conflict but if you like a contradiction, between two pieces of legislation and I think that could have been resolved if the politicians had wanted to have the debate, and I think it’s the fact that they don't want really to have the debate. I think that could have been resolved by, you know, a codicil, an explanatory note. You could have thrashed this out, instead of which you have the debate going on in the media, you have the debate going on through campaigners, you have the debate going on, if you like, through the loudest voices within that debate.

But Alastair is only listening to the loudest voices on one side. He’s said nothing about the violent aggression of some trans activists. Parliament didn’t resolve this. That’s why For Women Scotland had to take the Scottish Government to court to force a resolution.

AC: And then a kind of quite subtle 88-page judgment comes out with what is taken rightly, I’m not criticising this, this is that was the most important line was the thing about their definition of of what a woman is, and that has immediately turned into a reason to carry on the fight, a reason not just to say the court has made this judgment and therefore we now proceed on this basis. But more, if you look at some of the rhetoric around this, this is essentially saying there’s no such thing as a trans person. If you’re born a woman you’re a woman for the rest of your life. You’re born a man, you’re a man for the rest of your life.

This is fuelling the rhetoric. Why not just stick to being clear about what the judgement says and arguing about that? The judgement is saying that a trans woman does not become a woman and a trans man does not become a man by virtue of having a paper certificate in terms of the Gender Recognition Act 2004. It’s not saying that trans people don’t exist. It’s very clear that trans people have not lost any rights they previously had, and are fully protected from discrimination and harassment under law:

From the Supreme Court Judgement:

(20) Why this interpretation would not be disadvantageous to or remove protection from trans people with or without a GRC.

248. Finally, we have concluded that a biological sex interpretation would not have the effect of disadvantaging or removing important protection under the EA 2010 from trans people (whether with or without a GRC). Our reasons for this conclusion follow. We consider protection from both direct and indirect discrimination and harassment, and equal pay.

That’s what the judgement is saying, and surely it’s our responsibility if we want an intelligent dialogue to comment on the judgement, not on the ill-informed rhetoric swilling around it on both sides?

RS: So again, this is going to make a lot of people angry but I think that we’ve also got to acknowledge that we are cisgender males, So we’re people who are born biologically men who still identify as being men, and therefore we don't connect with this debate uh as as clearly as some other groups. It’s partly formed for me by a good friend of mine who was biologically a woman but doesn’t identify as a woman. And they find this issue both something that's very personal but also central to their work, because they run a clinic which works to provide puberty blockers for young people, young people who are often suicidal, who feel that they desperately need support in protecting their gender identity, who don’t want to transition into a gender that they feel doesn’t belong to them and feels that they’re doing work which matters deeply to them personally in their own identity, but also to some very vulnerable people. But at the same time that’s balanced with the fact that as the Tavistock report showed, there are many complexities around why people want to transition and how you back the evidence on the risk of suicide against the evidence, the damage that might be done for inappropriately blocking somebody’s development, and how parents play into this and how social media plays into this.

More anecdotal evidence based on one example. I have had many conversations with lesbian friends and with young women who are afraid to speak out about the pressures they’re under, because of peer pressure. They’re afraid of being labelled transphobic. Many lesbians embrace trans inclusivity, but many others express serious concerns about the intrusion of anatomically male trans women into lesbian spaces and relationships, sometimes with middle aged male lesbians preying on young lesbian women, with the claim that “some lesbians have penises”. So if we trade anecdotes we’ll go round in circles.

But more importantly, there is now growing research that questions the link between reduction in suicidality and gender transitioning. Parents have been bullied into accepting puberty blockers with the question, “Would you rather have a trans child or a dead child?” More and more public bodies are warning against careless use of the language of suicide as a justification for gender-affirming care.

AC: One of the things on the media I saw that really wound me up, I think it was on Channel 4, there was a debate between one of the women who’d been involved in the campaign who was celebrating the the Supreme Court judgment and a trans woman up in the Scottish Highlands who had been through the whole thing, and the woman on the, as it were JK Rowling side of the argument, just kept calling her/him/he, and I just felt there was a sort of sneering attached to it that I really found unpleasant.

All the examples Alastair cites are undermining the legitimate concerns of gender critical feminists and implying that all the prejudice is on one side.

RS: I think it’s a classic example of something which has become very, very complicated, which is for many people very niche. I mean, you often get bad policies when you’re dealing with something which I guess probably 85% of the British public doesn’t have much of a view on, doesn’t think about very much.

AC: Well, this is the other thing. During the last election if you looked at the polling on the issues that people felt were important to them, and it wasn’t asking about their voting intentions, just the issues that were important to them. Trans was very, very low down, very low down the the pecking order. I do think we have a media that’s made the most of it. We now have a president in the United States who wants to make the most of it, and who actually even in his acceptance speech did a big thing about, you know, there are only two sexes, You’re either a man or you’re a woman, and let’s get these sports people out and and all that stuff. So weaponizing, if you like.

If most people were unconcerned, then Trump would not have been able to move in to a space vacated by the Democrats by appropriating this issue. His cynical exploitation of people’s concerns about some of these issues is an indictment of so-called progressives for not recognising the extent to which ordinary people do have legitimate concerns. We all have skin in this.

AC: And the other thing, you’re right that of course we you know you and I are not women just the same as we’re not black, and we’re not poor, and we’re not African, and there’s lots of things we’re not, but it doesn’t mean that we can’t have empathy for other people or that we can't study things and try to develop an opinion.

The difference between the sexes is of a different order to these other differences. There are black women, poor women, African women. Sexual difference transcends all other differences in its universality. Gender is a cultural variable, but sex is a biological given.

AC: And I get, you know, I actually had a real falling out with somebody at an event not long ago because basically said that, you know, she said you’ve just been brainwashed, you’ve been brainwashed, and what do you mean I’ve been brainwashed, and then said, and you know, what do you know about it anyway, you're not a woman, and I said, and it’s true, my opinions on this have largely been formed by first of all understanding this is a debate that's being weaponized, so therefore don't rely too much on the media debate, try to dig into it a bit deeper, but then in terms of my opinions.

So why doesn’t Alastair dig a bit deeper? He’s weaponized this debate throughout this podcast, by being completely one-sided and prejudiced against the women who fought this case and their relief at the outcome.

AC: I would say I've been, they've been informed by Grace my daughter and her friends, almost all of whom I think just found this judgment really quite alarming and dangerous.

Do you know how often, when giving academic talks on sex and gender, I’ve been put right by a man appealing to his daughter as the ultimate authority on this issue?! I do look forward to hearing what Grace thinks about tariffs and the global trade war, the Australian election, China, etc. Just out of interest, I wonder how Alastair would feel about Grace being in communal showers with a middle-aged trans woman with a penis? That is the kind of situation about which the Supreme Court judgement has offered clarification by affirming women’s rights to single sex spaces.

AC: Fiona my partner, and also a very good friend of ours, Hela Thorning Schmidt who we had on on the podcast and her family, because they have somebody that we knew going on holiday when when she was a kid as Camilla is now a male, he, Milo, and it’s worked for them. And it’s worked for them I think in part because they've had support, understanding and a legal framework that kind of is a bit clearer.

As I’ve said before, this is all anecdotal evidence and I could match every one of these anecdotes with an opposing story. What is the point in that? As Alastair says, we need to dig into it deeper than that.

AC: So when I see Keir Starmer today saying I think this is great, this has all been cleared up, I’m sorry, I don't think it has been cleared up and I think ultimately Parliament is going to have to another look at this at some point.

Oh, the women won so let’s go back to Parliament and make sure the men win next time? Both parliaments were in a mess about this, and Keir Starmer has contradicted himself, as have several others. Just to be clear, I’m a Labour voter and I’d never vote Tory, though I’d have more respect for them if the likes of Rory hadn’t been sidelined.

AC: Now I know we’re both going to get, from various angles we’re going to get absolutely sort of lacerated, but I do feel strongly. We’re talking about—there we are talking about the Pope who liked sort of reaching out to marginalized people—and I think trans people have enough on their plate without also constantly being thrown into the middle of a political debate, the heat of which does not necessarily get us to the right place.

Oh well, I hope I haven’t lacerated them, but this really was far below what we’ve come to expect from The Rest is Politics. I’ve included links for nearly all my claims, so that if Rory and Alastair want to dig deeper and be more informed, they can do so. That might not change their minds, but it would strengthen their arguments.