Labour leader Keir Starmer says some women have a penis.
U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has distanced himself from the position of Labour leader Sir. Keir Starmer on biological sex.
Speaking with Conservative Home, the PM made his stance on trans rights clear while seeking to distinguish himself from Labour leader Keir Starmer by stating that “100 per cent” of women do not have a penis.
At the beginning of April, Starmer was accused of “throwing trans people under the bus” during an interview with The Sunday Times, where he said: “For 99.9 per cent of women, it is completely biological … and of course they haven’t got a penis.”
The prime minister has put himself at odds with Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer by declaring that 100 per cent of women do not have male genitals.
By contrast, Sir Keir earlier this month suggested that as many as one in every thousand women has a penis.
He continued: “We should always have compassion and understanding and tolerance for those who are thinking about their gender … but when it comes to these issues of protecting women’s rights, women’s spaces, I think the issue of biological sex is fundamentally important when we think about those questions.
“As a general operating principle for me, biological sex is vitally, fundamentally important to these questions — we can’t forget that — and that’s why we need to make sure, particularly when it comes to women’s health, women’s sports or indeed women’s spaces, that we are protecting those rights and those spaces.”
Rishi Sunak’s words come just a week after the Equality Human Rights Commission (EHRC), the UK’s human rights watchdog, issued advice to the government on redefining the category of ‘sex’ under the Equality Act. The government had asked the watchdog to consider the pros and cons of such a change.
If enacted, this would mean, for example, that organisers of sporting events could exclude trans women without having to show that doing so was necessary because of fairness or safety.
The outspoken deputy chair of the Conservative Party, Lee Anderson, has suggested that the party should fight the next general election on “a mix of culture wars and [the] trans debate”.
Labour has been split over trans rights, with some backbench opposition to Sir Keir’s suggestion that some women have penises. Canterbury MP Rosie Duffield said the assertion had left many “livid”, with women “frightened and furious” about the potential erosion of their rights.
Ms Duffield previously said it was “dystopian” that the leader of her party was reluctant to say whether women could have penises.