A British member of Parliament has made waves by affirming that gender is binary and that the sex of a person is determined at birth.
Rosie Duffield, a British Labour Party member of Parliament for Canterbury, England, affirmed her position last Friday when fielding questions at an LGB Alliance conference in London.
According to their website, the LGB Alliance “is a charity that supports lesbian, gay and bisexual people by building community, providing high quality information, being a source of inspiration for people who feel marginalised and seeking to influence Government and decision makers to prioritise the needs and rights of same-sex attracted people.”
The Independent reported that Duffield was asked about the possibility that referring to a transsexual’s biological sex might soon amount to a hate crime.
Duffield replied: “Is that a serious thing? Is that coming to Parliament any time soon? I hope not because you might as well arrest me now. I’m not calling Eddie Izzard a woman.”
Duffield’s response was a follow-up to a comment the MP made in September, when she reportedly said, “I won’t say a man is a woman. Eddie Izzard is not a woman.”
Blaze Media reported that Izzard is “a man who dates women and previously identified as a “lesbian trapped in a man’s body.” The platform also noted that Izzard is attempting to secure a spot as a Labour MP.
Duffield has stated that she — and other members of the Labour Party — would leave their government positions if the party included Izzard on “an all-woman shortlist to become the Party’s candidate for the Sheffield Central region in the next general election.”
“I will not be a hypocrite and I won’t lie,” Duffield said late last month. “I won’t say that a man is a woman. Eddie Izzard is not a woman. I’m absolutely not the only Labour woman MP who will leave the party if Eddie Izzard gets on to an all-women shortlist.”
In 2018, the Labour Party’s National Executive Committee ruled that men claiming to be women “are eligible for Labour’s all-women shortlists.”
The general election will take place in December 2024.
The National reported that Duffield has been denounced as a “transphobe.”
Pink News noted that several of Duffield’s staffers have quit because of the MP’s “gender is binary” position. Pink News also noted that Duffield’s comment that “only women have cervixes” was “offensive to the trans community.”
Duffield has pushed back, saying:
“We’re OK to talk about everyone else’s rights, but we’re not supposed to talk about women, and we’re not supposed to talk about our bodies without quantifying it or justifying it, or adding on other groups that we also support to, sort of, you know, have our credentials allowed.”
The MP added: “I’m afraid my party is an absolute embarrassment at the moment.”
Duffield has been embroiled in controversy for several years. On Sept. 10, 2021, she tweeted: “I do not accept self-ID as a passport for male-bodied biological men to enter protected spaces for biological women.”
Duffield has found an ally in renowned author J.K. Rowling, who has defended Duffield and “those who have been subject to campaigns of intimidation which range from being hounded on social media, the targeting of their employers, all the way up to doxing and direct threats of violence, including rape.”
Rowling added that Duffield and others who want to protect women by tying gender to biology “have been put into a state of fear and distress for no other reason than that they refuse to uncritically accept that the socio-political concept of gender identity should replace that of sex.”
Scroll down to leave a comment and share your thoughts.