Last month, in apparent defiance of the Supreme Court, the Council of the London Mathematical Society published a new Statement of Commitment to Trans Inclusion which states: ‘The LMS provides gender-neutral toilets and supports the use of facilities that align with a person’s affirmed identity.’
Many organisations have been slow to update their policies to reflect the Supreme Court’s April judgement that, for the purposes of the Equality Act, sex means biological sex. However, the LMS have gone one further. They have chosen to write their first ever trans policy after the judgement and this policy appears to openly flout the Court’s ruling. Because the meaning of their statement isn’t clear, I went to the LMS building to take a look: they do have single-sex female toilets, but I didn’t use them because they don’t align with my affirmed identity.
It takes a lot of balls to take on the Supreme Court, but balls are one thing the LMS has in abundance. Only 15 per cent of UK mathematics professors are female. Nevertheless, despite their dearth of expertise, and without any consultation, the LMS council has decided they know better than parliament, the Supreme Court and the EHRC how to balance women’s rights and the needs of trans people.
The LMS policy also sets new and draconian rules on speaking about trans people. It catalogues various ‘inappropriate behaviours’ which might lead to ‘suspension from membership and funding’. ‘Consistently using incorrect … pronouns to refer to a trans person’ is one such inappropriate behaviour. There are no qualifications whatsoever on this new rule: as written, it applies to anything said by any LMS member in any context.
We all have our own views on when we will and when we won’t use preferred pronouns. If a transwoman says they prefer female pronouns, many will be willing to oblige. But if a non-binary person tells me their preferred pronouns are ‘xie/xer’, I would feel this was something of an imposition and would politely decline to use them. However, if a non-binary person tells me I must use xie/xer pronouns or face disciplinary action, then there is a strong chance I would tell xer xie can stick xer pronouns up xer arse.
I don’t think my views are very unusual. Yet both of my previous sentences might see me excommunicated from the London Mathematical Society. The first for my wilful use of the pronoun ‘their’; the second because it is a joke. Needless to say, ‘making jokes about trans people or their trans identity’ is another of the LMS’s prohibited behaviours. And what kind of monster would want to? There is nothing remotely funny about any of the 72 different genders.
Am I taking the LMS policy too literally? I wrote to them with my concerns. The LMS General Secretary helpfully suggested ‘if one does not wish to use “xie” in a sentence, one can easily replace “xie” with the name of the individual. The sentence can only become clearer with this change. I do not see how this restricts freedom of expression.’
The most egregious part of the LMS policy is to state that ‘denial’ of a person’s ‘affirmed identity’ is another ‘inappropriate behaviour’, again with possible punishments including (but not limited to) suspension. Richard Dawkins recently made the biologically accurate statement ‘trans women are men’. Were Dawkins a member of the LMS I would feel obliged to report him for wrongthink.
Mathematicians might even be barred from reading aloud the text of the Supreme Court ruling. After all, as the University and Colleges Union women’s committee have pointed out, ‘the judgment explicitly refers to a trans woman as “a man who identifies as a woman”. This is not a neutral judgment in any way: it is deeply transphobic from the outset.’
Would anyone impose such absurdist language policing in practice? The answer is emphatically yes. In 2023, the research ethics committee at my university obstructed an ethics application because I stated its purpose was ‘to find the views of athletes and volunteers on the question of when males should be allowed to compete in the female category in athletics’. The ethics committee found my use of the word males in this sentence was ‘misgendering’ and my application was thrown back.
Our universities have discredited themselves
The result is Kafkaesque. If female members of the LMS who complain about males using the female facilities, it is they who will be subject to disciplinary action. Moreover, they have been robbed of the words needed to complain about this.
This is no idle fantasy of mine. After the nurse Sandie Peggie complained about transwoman Dr Beth Upton using the female changing rooms, it was Peggie who was suspended (though later cleared of misconduct). The Darlington Nurses who objected to their male colleague Rose using their changing rooms and allegedly asking them when they were going to get undressed were told by HR they should ‘broaden their mindset’ and ‘be educated’. Maria MacLachlan was assaulted by a male-bodied person, yet was reprimanded in court by the judge for failing to use her attacker’s preferred she/her pronouns.
Over the last decade, our universities have discredited themselves by implementing policies that violate the rights and dignity of women and trample on the academic freedom of all their staff. But our learned societies also deserve their share of the blame. Societies like the LMS could, and should, have campaigned for universities to promote free debate and to respect the rights and dignity of their female members. Sadly, it seems, despite their lip-service to equality, male-dominated Stem societies continue to care little for the rights of women.
Yesterday, I instructed lawyers to write a pre-action letter to the LMS requesting that they withdraw this statement. I hope that they will do so, and I hope it will encourage all our universities and learned societies to stop playing for time and to start obeying the law.
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