James Kirkup James Kirkup

The trans debate could cost this Cambridge porter his job

Clare College, Cambridge (photo: iStock)

This is a story about a man called Kevin Price, who was until last week a councillor and who is, for now at least, employed as a porter at a Cambridge college.

The story illustrates two points. First, political conflict over trans rights and women’s rights is far from over, especially in the Labour Party. Second, people who say the wrong thing in this debate can put their livelihood at risk.

Mr Price last week resigned from Cambridge City Council. He had sat as a Labour councillor since 2010 and was once the council’s deputy leader.

He resigned rather than follow the Labour Group whip and vote for a motion that declared, among other things that:

‘Trans women are women. Trans men are men. Non-binary individuals are non-binary.’

There’s something both distasteful and revealing about students threatening the livelihood of a man employed to serve them because he refuses to share their opinions

Those are, of course, the holy words of trans orthodoxy, a catechism that cannot be questioned despite the countless questions it raises. (Here’s a starter for ten: if trans women are women, what does the word ‘women’ mean?)

Mr Price quit because, he said, he could not accept the unquestioning, uncritical adoption of those words. He noted that for some people, those words have highly troubling implications.

Resigning, he said:

‘The inclusion of the first three sentences of this motion will send a chill down the spines of the many women who believe there is a conflict of rights and who want to be able to discuss those in a calm and evidenced-based way….[It is] foolish to pretend that there are not widely differing views in the current debate or that many people, especially women, are concerned about the impact on women’s sex-based rights from changes both in legislation and within society and who fear, not only that those rights are under threat, but that they are unable to raise legitimate questions and concerns without a hostile response.

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