The feminist MP who pulled out of attending the Labour Party conference over security issues has accused her colleagues of “chucking [her] on the railway tracks” because she wants to use the word “woman”.
Labour MP for Canterbury Rosie Duffield had declined to attend the official party event over security concerns following threats from the far-left, progressive faction of Labour. However, her alleged controversial remarks that only women can have cervixes have taken prominence during the events, exposing a party imploding with senior figures unable to answer clearly if it is “transphobic” to state facts about women’s bodies.
Many MPs in the party have distanced themselves from Ms Duffield’s comments, including leader Sir Keir Starmer who said that stating only women have cervixes “shouldn’t be said” because “it is not right”, with Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves claiming she did not even know how to start answering such questions of basic biology. Deputy party leader Angela Rayner likewise would neither confirm nor deny the existence of women’s unique anatomy, while Emily Thornberry said Duffield’s remarks were “factually inaccurate”. Shadow Justice Secretary David Lammy appeared to call Duffield a “dinosaur”.
Addressing the remarks from her colleagues, Duffield, 50, told an unofficial event held by Labour Women’s Declaration in comments reported by The Times: “It’s ridiculous and nothing about me is a dinosaur. I’m angry at colleagues chucking me on the railway tracks. I’m even more determined. I’m not a transphobe, I never have been and I never will be. I simply want to use the word women.”
The Canterbury MP’s attendance was not announced in advance due to security concerns; but despite the precaution, 25 trans-radical activists still managed to gather outside the venue to protest. The event was also closely monitored by security guards.
After the surprise appearance at the Brighton event, Duffield went on to reassert her position that single-sex spaces, notably for women like changing rooms, toilets, and shelters, should be protected — but nevertheless said she backed making it “easier” for people to change sex.
“What women like me want is just a pledge that the single-sex exemptions will be kept in the 2010 Equality Act,” the Europhile MP told Sky News, continuing: “We are absolutely okay with the path to self ID being made easier and trans rights being made easier, but we have to have single-sex spaces protected and that is all we want really.”
The feminist MP also claimed that there were other Labour MPs who agreed with her, but “they are not necessarily ready to speak out”.
Indeed, one Labour activist from Wales was heckled and booed in the main conference hall on Tuesday after publicly defending Ms Duffield.
The left-wing party appears to be continuing its lurch farther to the left — even following the removal of former leader and socialist Jeremy Corbyn — after its membership voted by a large majority to condemn the new Australian, American, and British defence and security union AUKUS, claiming it would “undermine world peace”.
Duffield, a former teaching assistant, had made headlines earlier in the year when she declared that there was still a large number of Labour MPs “desperate to rejoin” the EU and that fellow lawmakers who campaigned for a second Brexit referendum “haven’t gone away”.
Suggesting that efforts to undo Britain’s declaration of independence could begin during a post-Starmer Labour, Duffield had said in January: “We will try and shift the leadership, as and when it needs to, to shift towards rejoining.”
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