Sex and gender have become an issue in the general election, making Susanna Rustin’s measured and insightful book, Sexed: A History of British Feminism, even more timely. Kemi Badenoch, the women and equalities minister, has promised that Conservatives will strengthen existing rights to single-sex spaces, for instance in prisons and refuges, so they can only be accessed by biological women. She defends the philosophical belief that “biological sex is real, important, immutable and not to be conflated with gender identity”, a view already legally protected in the UK.
Labour has committed vaguely to “modernise, simplify and reform” the 2004 Gender Recognition Act after the ditching of an initial promise to allow a man or a woman to self-identify their gender, removing the requirement for medical evidence and irrespective of the genitalia they possess (and avoid questions such as “Can a woman have a penis?”).
