A short comment on this article in The Observer, by Sonia Sodha

2 October 2022

I think this is an important article on identity, gender and sex. I’ve been listening to this debate from many sides and individuals, both in the UK and elsewhere, but this article is one of the first that expresses what are also my own views. This is a topic in which the rights of women and the rights of people who are transgender have been posed as being counter to each other by people who I believe are misogynists, whether they are themselves transgender or not. The Observer article rejects this and puts forward a compelling alternative – that women’s rights and transgender rights are not in conflict but can also not be conflated, which is being done to deny women’s rights, including even the right to be called a woman.

If Labour insists on taking a position on this topic that will outrage every feminist-thinking person in the country, the great majority of whom also support the rights of people who are transgender, as I do, they will discredit themselves and the Party and will lose not only a huge swathe of members, including me, but also our votes.

I have written to Keir Starmer and urged him to recant on this and to call for an open and respectful debate and a policy that respects everyone’s rights. That’s where I think Labour should stand on any issue of supposedly competing rights, supporting the fact that rights are universal, that new understandings of people’s rights are always being developed, and that there are enough rights to go around for everyone.   And I urged him to apologise to Labour Women’s Declaration, who were refused a stall at Conference last week on spurious grounds, publicly.