Kemi Badenoch has announced that sex is biological – yes, and rain is wet, and the election is soon. So what? Are we seriously expected to celebrate this statement of obvious fact? A woman is an adult human female. She is not a piece of paper, she’s not an idea in a man’s head and she does not have a penis.
Everybody with half a brain, male or female, can see the Tories’ move for exactly what it is: opportunistic grandstanding. Many of them will also know that all the fine talk from Kemi about biological sex and common sense is worthless without full repeal of the 2004 Gender Recognition Act (GRA), and the removal of gender reassignment as a protected characteristic.
Biological sex is not a belief
The managerial class have decided that there are different categories of sex, and I don’t mean the fun kind of sex, I mean legal vs biological. They pretend that ‘legal sex’ is an actual category and though the Conservatives are keen on signalling that the current law is madness, they are not really serious about changing it. That would take real effort and sustained determination, not just the odd dog whistle.
If a man changes his ‘legal sex’ it means nothing in biological reality. It just means he has a fancy certificate – a government issued identification – to say he is legally a woman. It can, though, offer a predatory man access to vulnerable women in the very places designed to keep them safe from men.
In essence, the Conservatives now insist that they care about women’s rights and that femaleness is a biological thing. But unless they repeal the GRA they are also stating that it isn’t necessarily a biological thing.
Protected characteristics in the Equality Act prevent people from being discriminated against. Schedule 3 of the Equality Act allows providers to set up and maintain single-sex services. But it’s unclear at the moment whether sex in the Equality Act means just biological sex or biological sex unless modified by a gender recognition certificate, and this confusion makes ordinary life hard. Can a woman-only reading group at the local library exclude men whose ‘legal sex’ is allegedly female? As things stand, Dave/Davina might sue you for discrimination, and they sue full of righteous indignation. People like Dave/Davina, who can’t leave the house without slipping into an antique rose twin set and fishnets, can’t imagine that women even have legitimate aims beyond baking, wearing stockings and onlyfans.
What is the point of either the protected characteristic of gender reassignment in the Equality Act or the Gender Recognition Act? I’ve scratched my head all weekend and haven’t come up with a single thing the GRA can do for anyone that doesn’t have a negative impact on actual women. The idea of ‘legal sex’ as distinguished from biological sex is nothing more than a lie built upon the foundation of the Gender Recognition Act which is reaffirmed by the protected characteristic of gender reassignment.
You should be very careful indeed before deciding that any compromise is possible. Biological sex is not a belief. We now know that we cannot give men who think they’re women access to the things women have fought for and cherished without destroying them. Women need to be bold and firm. It’s beyond reprehensible for any politician to try to push to get women to accommodate men with fetishes. A fetish is not a belief system worthy of respect.
Kellie-Jay Keen joins Natasha Feroze on SpectatorTV:
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