Women and trangender women - let’s respect the differences.
This is a crucial time for WEP. ‘Women’ is right there in the title of our party, so the meaning of the word goes to the heart of who we are. The gender Recognition Act reforms could change the meaning of the word ‘women’ to include trangender women -people who have male anatomies but who identify as women.
The party is divided on this; from my understanding pretty much down the middle. So we want to be bringing the party together while at the same time addressing the issues of equalities.
We need to accept the existence and beliefs of transgender people, even if we don’t believe these things ourselves.
And while acknowledging the struggles transgender people go through, it is important to understand that the oppression of women and transgender women are different. We relate to the patriarchy in different ways. We have different biology and different socialisation. We all need to respect those differences — women and transgender women alike.
For feminists it is analagous to religion. Intolerance does not move the debate on. We need to accept the right of Catholics to refuse abortions. But in accepting Catholic women and their right to anti-abortion beliefs we don’t have to give up our own rights to autonomy over our own bodies. Women’s bodies belong to women and nobody else.
Likewise transgenderism. Transgender people have the same right to exist, the same right to a belief system, and the same right to protections as anyone else. This is simply about human rights.
What we don’t have accept is that we need to give up our rights to our own identity as women.
If we give up the old fashioned definition of ‘woman’, which is first and foremost based on biology, and allow that biologically males can be women, then we are not only giving up our identiy as women, we are giving up all the rights to the sex-based protections that women have under the Equality Act 2010.
The Equality Act has been shown up as being weak and women are losing these protections. I believe our concerns should be all about strengthening the Equality Act so that women have rights to women only spaces and services, and that these should be maintained under law.
If we can delicately pull apart the boundaries between women’s and transgender people’s rights, and recreate them with respect and consideration, we will be able to create alliances rather than discord with the transgender community and work in alliance to fight the discriminations that we do share.