I listened yesterday to a radio debate between an AllianceLGB spokesperson and a journalist applauding some Labour Leadership candidates for signing a pledge calling on the Party to expel “transphobic” members.
A trans caller made an interesting contribution, saying that women are women, an immutable biological fact, and trans women are trans women, not women. It reminded me of interviews with Sharon Davies early last year, in the context of discussions on transgender athletes, where she said allowing transgender athletes to enter female competitions “has the potential to ruin women’s sport”. She argued that transgender athletes who were born male have a physical advantage over cisgendered women, presumably concerned at the possibility Martina Navratilova had raised, where ”…someone cynically changes gender, perhaps temporarily, to gain a competitive advantage”. There were also echoes there of worries about male-bodied people entering women’s spaces. I suppose that might be a problem, in rare cases, but there is also a danger of assuming the worst of all trans people, and that is clearly absolutely wrong.
I heard Sharon explain she was referring to the XX and XY sex chromosomes, that determine things like relative bone density and ability to recover from injury. The science escapes me now, but I think I may also have heard that XX/XY does not invariably set a hard and fast division between sexes.
This all goes to show there are immense difficulties in classifying by gender (however identified) or by sex. I hope that our Leadership candidates have considered all this; and I hope someone can explain it to me dispassionately. It is surely an issue (range of issues?) that deserves cool discussion, without presupposition of the motives of participants in that discussion?