A candidate in the battle to replace Jeremy Corbyn as the leader of the Labour Party, Lisa Nandy, has said biological men should be allowed into all-female prisons, regardless of the crimes they have committed.
Lisa Nandy, the Member of Parliament for Wigan and one of the three remaining candidates in the Labour leadership race, said that men who identify as women, like convicted child rapist Christopher Worton, who now identifies as Zoe Lynes, should be able to be transferred into female prisons.
“I believe fundamentally in people’s right to self-ID. I believe the gender recognition act strikes the wrong balance in relation to that,” said Nandy, per The Times, adding: “Crimes that are recorded should be recorded as that person wishes having gone through that process.”
“Trans women are women and trans men are men and should be accommodated in the prison of their choosing,” she concluded.
Her statements sparked condemnation from feminist organisations in the UK, including the Women’s Place UK which wrote: “The prison service recognises acute dilemmas over housing trans prisoners. Lisa Nandy sweeps them away as prison governors call for major policy debate and resources. We are shocked at her answer.”
Nandy’s statements came after her fellow leadership candidate, Rebecca Long-Bailey, called for the Equality Act of 2010 to be amended to allow trans people into single-sex areas. The law currently does not give transgender people special rights to expect access to all-female or all-male spaces, such as changing rooms, bathrooms, and hospital wards.
Long-Bailey dismissed the fears from feminist groups that such a change to the law would endanger rights of women, saying: “There doesn’t need to be differentiation between women’s rights and trans rights.”
Karen Ingala Smith, the chief executive of Nia, a charity that deals with violence against women, rejected the far-left candidate’s claims, saying: “I’ve lost count of the number of victim-survivors of men’s violence who’ve told me how important a women-only service was to them.”
Ms Long-Bailey, seen as the ‘continuity Corbyn’ candidate in the leadership contest, signed a pledge last week that called for the “expulsion” of people and groups who have expressed “bigotted” or “transphobic views” from the Labour Party, including feminist organisations like Woman’s Place UK.
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