A remarkable reflection, this story, of just how toxic the Trans rights debate (if it can truly be called a debate) has become in the United Kingdom, and how toxic it is slowly becoming here in Ireland. Rosie Duffield is the Labour MP for Canterbury, in Kent. Until now, she’s mostly been famous for winning that seat for Labour (it had been a very safe Conservative seat, until 2017), and for a brave speech she gave in the house of commons, detailing her experiences in an abusive relationship:
That’s not why she is in the news today, though. No, the abuse she is receiving these days is about something else:
The Speaker of the House of Commons has made an unprecedented intervention over the security of politicians after a female MP was forced to pull out of the Labour Party conference later this week after receiving online threats from militant transgender activists.
“LGBT+ Labour now seem to hate my guts and I feared they’d have a massive go at me at conference,” Duffield said. “The people who threaten me I don’t think are actually likely to harm me. They just say it often and very loudly.”
Duffield believes some of those who attack her for her views are “straight white men”. She said: “There are some women who get involved and want to be seen to be very woke … but mostly it is men, and the same men that have trolled me ever since I got elected.
“So it looks like, feels like and smells like misogyny, and this is just the latest cause they have latched on to … The fact that I am blonde — they call me a bimbo. The fact that I don’t like antisemitism. There is always something, but it is always the same people who attack me.”
It is worth stating here, simply, and plainly, what Ms Duffield believes: She is a feminist. She believes in equal rights for women. She believes that women are people who are born with female genes, and female bodies. She believes (presumably as a survivor of domestic abuse) that women are at risk from men, who are physically stronger, and that therefore women require female only spaces at times when they are vulnerable – like using a bathroom, or a changing room. She believes that only women, and not men, can have children. In short, she believes that womanhood is not a choice, but something you are born into.
For Trans rights activists, none of this is acceptable. They, by contrast, believe that anybody can choose to be a woman, and obtain all the rights of womanhood. They believe that it is transphobic to believe in spaces which only biological women can enter. They believe, increasingly, that those who disagree with them on these issues are bigoted and oppressive. This anger increasingly manifests itself as rage and hate towards politicians (or anybody, really) who disagrees.
Duffield has particular reason, having survived an abusive relationship, to know how vulnerable women can be, at the hands of men. She therefore believes that it is not appropriate, for example, to house biological men in women’s prisons, or to allow biological men access to women’s private facilities, even if those men are seeking legal recognition as women.
This is not a minority position. It is, as far as the evidence suggests, the majority position of the public. It is not, however, the majority position amongst left wing activists, or the media, or the British Labour Party. It is also, notably, a minority position amongst Irish parties and politicians.
It will probably come as a surprise to many Irish people to learn that believing that men and women are biologically distinct and separate sexes is now widely regarded as a bigoted and hateful position. But it is. Duffield is just the latest in a line of (almost all female) public figures to receive sustained abuse for stating something that is (and has always been) the majority view.
It is notable, too, that she has not received much support from her Party, or her Party leader. All she is doing, after all, is expressing her opinions, which are not exactly outside the mainstream. The problem for her is that just like in the rest of the western world, most of her colleagues in politics are much too scared of Trans Rights Activists to stand up for her.
It’s a sad state of affairs.