For Ruth Serwotka, the lowest point came on 13 February 2020. She was making coffee when Lisa Nandy, then a candidate for the Labour leadership, was asked on the radio about Woman’s Place UK, the grassroots campaigning organisation that Serwotka had helped found three years earlier. “She refused to say that we are not a hate group. I left the Labour party then. Up to that point I’d been determined to stay but I wasn’t prepared to be savaged and maligned any longer.”
Woman’s Place UK advocates for women’s sex-based rights, including single-sex services, and is partly responsible for turning support for these rights into a social movement. Campaigners like Serwotka believe that since the oppression of women has historically been based on sex, women’s rights must be understood as sex-based too – and I agree with them. This view places feminists like us, also known as gender-critical, in conflict with trans rights activists and their allies, who believe that gender identity and not sex determines whether they are a man or a woman.
From a legal perspective it is correct to say that the protected characteristic of gender reassignment covers people who are planning to transition as well as those who have undergone surgery or other treatment. This means that the group of transgender people protected from discrimination in existing UK law is not limited to those who have changed their legal sex. But the gender activist movement (which is not limited to trans people) wants to go further, with a law reform widely known as “self-ID” already introduced in some countries, which makes it possible for a person to change their legal sex without a diagnosis of gender dysphoria (as the sense of unease caused by a sense of mismatch between biological sex and gender identity is known).
The recommendation by a parliamentary committee in 2016 that the UK government should reform the Gender Recognition Act (GRA) to this end is the background to the setting up of Woman’s Place UK. But it is important to recognise that the issue is wider than one law. Sex-based rights activists also started organising in response to the changing reality on the ground, including for providers of women’s services, that was created by a cultural shift towards more people identifying as trans, incorporating non-binary and genderqueer people as well as those seeking to transition medically.
In practical terms, what Woman’s Place UK and other groups sought was greater clarity around the provisions in the Equality Act known as single-sex exceptions. These set out when it is legitimate and proportionate to exclude people with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment (trans people) from single-sex settings such as sports and refuges. The Equality and Human Rights Commission issued new guidance to that effect on Monday, two years after the UK government announced that it would not reform the GRA. Sex-based rights activists, in other words, have got some of what they wanted (the situation is different in Scotland, where Nicola Sturgeon plans to introduce a self-ID law).
But the bitterness regarding Labour’s treatment of them remains. Shortly before the radio interview that led Serwotka to quit Labour, Nandy, Angela Rayner and Dawn Butler all expressed support for a campaign that labelled Woman’s Place UK “transphobic”, and called for its supporters to be expelled from the party. Since neither Rayner nor Nandy has resiled from this view, it remains questionable whether the Labour frontbench regards sex-based rights activism as a legitimate activity or a hateful one.
Political difficulties regarding these complex issues are not confined to Labour. The government too is struggling to reconcile the claims of trans activism with those of sex-based rights advocates. So are the sporting authorities. Rows over recent days regarding the participation of the transgender cyclist Emily Bridges in women’s events, and ministers’ decision not to go ahead with a proposed ban on conversion practices of trans people due to concerns around the rising number of young people with gender dysphoria, show the range of policy implications.
But Labour’s discomfort has been particularly acute over recent weeks, as politician after politician has been asked to define the word “woman”, and answer questions such as “Can a woman have a penis?” In a legal sense the answer is yes, since the Gender Recognition Act made it possible for someone to change the sex on their birth certificate without undergoing surgery. But senior figures have expressed concern that they are made to look ridiculous in voters’ eyes with long-winded answers, and their discomfort is easily exploited both by opponents and journalists seeking headlines. Over the weekend a campaign called Respect My Sex was launched, which aims to make this an issue in the local elections.
What effect this will have is unclear. Lisa Townsend, a Conservative police and crime commissioner, said recently that any politician who claims not to have been asked about this issue by voters “is lying”. Many on the left remain dismissive, insisting that there are other more important concerns, not least skyrocketing heating bills and cuts to benefits. But passions run high on questions pertaining to identity – and can easily be stoked higher. Rosalind Shorrocks, an academic who studies gender and electoral politics, says trans and sex-based rights are not currently prominent among voters’ priorities. “But in an election, if the parties were to take different positions, and make them part of their campaigns, there is the potential for it to become important.”
Polling data, like everything else in this debate, is contested. Broadly speaking, the public shows a strong and heartening level of support for the principle that people should be able to identify and live as they choose. But in 2020 a majority opposed making it easier for people to change their legal sex, and the inclusion of transgender women in female sports.
If and when Labour returns to government, some of the policy issues may have been resolved. Women’s Aid last week issued a statement in support of single-sex spaces, while stressing the need for services for trans people. The new Equality and Human Rights Commission guidance clarifies the position for providers of single-sex services, including the need to consider the needs of transgender people and to balance these with the needs of others. The outcome of several court cases brought by gender-critical feminists who believe they have suffered harassment or discrimination will provide important precedents for employers and others.
Many people, including me, believe there is scope for compromise. Somewhat ironically, given the present level of acrimony, Labour policy currently rests on a compromise that was struck before the 2019 general election. Then, support for the single-sex exceptions in the Equality Act was added to the party’s existing policy of reforming the Gender Recognition Act.
But Labour’s treatment of women’s groups has, in my view, created a serious problem. For all the frequent complaints that the issue is “toxic”, and Keir Starmer’s calls for “respectful” discussion, the fact is that there is no equivalent on the gender-critical side to the Labour Campaign for Trans Rights’ call for women to be expelled from the party or the repeated attacks on the gender-critical Labour MP Rosie Duffield. There are no shadow cabinet members deriding LGBTQ+ campaigners as “dinosaurs”, as David Lammy said of sex-based rights campaigners. And there are no prominent LGBTQ+ service-providers barred from joining Labour, as the feminist domestic violence campaigner Karen Ingala Smith was in 2020.
Serwotka may have left Labour, but a group called Labour Women’s Declaration advocates for sex-based rights within the party, and is also engaged in cross-party efforts. Currently, between 20 and 40 Labour MPs are known to be sympathetic. I hope they can persuade Labour to shift its position with regard to the sex-based rights of women. Not only because I agree with them. But because I don’t think it would be at all surprising if voters were to turn against politicians who speak in riddles about the differences between male and female bodies – and deride advocacy on behalf of biologically female people as a relic from prehistory.
Susanna Rustin is a Guardian journalist
