Rishi Sunak has said he believes that 100 per cent of women do not have penises. The prime minister has put himself at odds with Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer by declaring that 100 per cent of women do not have male genitals.
By contrast, Sir Keir earlier this month suggested that as many as one in every thousand women has a penis.
Asked whether it is true that 100 per cent of women do not have a penis, in an interview with Tory-supporting website Conservative Home, Mr Sunak said: “Yes, of course.”
He added: “We should always have compassion and understanding and tolerance for those who are thinking about changing their gender. Of course we should.
“But when it comes to these issues of protecting women’s rights, women’s spaces, I think the issue of biological sex is fundamentally important when we think about those questions.
“As a general operating principle for me, biological sex is vitally, fundamentally important in these questions. We can’t forget that.”
When Sir Keir was asked by The Sunday Times whether women can have male genitals, he said: “For 99.9 per cent of women, it is completely biological ... and of course, they haven’t got a penis.”
Mr Sunak is hoping to exploit Labour’s division over transgender rights in the run-up to a general election, which is expected next year. He is pressing ahead with a pledge made during last year’s Conservative Party leadership election to reform the legal definition of sex.
A review by the Equality and Human Rights Commission concluded that amending the Equality Act 2010 to refer specifically to “biological sex” merits further consideration. The government had asked the watchdog to consider the pros and cons of such a change.
If enacted, this would mean, for example, that organisers of sporting events could exclude trans women without having to show that doing so was necessary because of fairness or safety.
The outspoken deputy chair of the Conservative Party, Lee Anderson, has suggested that the party should fight the next general election on “a mix of culture wars and [the] trans debate”.
Labour has been split over trans rights, with some backbench opposition to Sir Keir’s suggestion that some women have penises. Canterbury MP Rosie Duffield said the assertion had left many “livid”, with women “frightened and furious” about the potential erosion of their rights.
Ms Duffield previously said it was “dystopian” that the leader of her party was reluctant to say whether women could have penises.
Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner said on Thursday that considering gender recognition reforms was not at odds with women’s rights. She argued that protecting women-only spaces does not need to come at the expense of supporting transgender people.
Speaking to broadcasters during a visit to a food store in Derby on Thursday, Ms Rayner said: “I understand people’s concerns on both sides of the argument, but I think we were the party of equality. We brought in the equality legislation. We are the best party for LGBT rights – we’ve got a history of doing that.”
