Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said that a woman cannot be born with a penis “without being a man” during a trip to Rwanda, but warned that people must be “very, very sensitive” when discussing such issues.
Johnson, who leads Britain’s governing Conservative (Tory) Party, was speaking after FINA, the sporting body which regulates international swimming competitions, ruled that biological males who identify as women will have to compete in a special “open” category if they have been through puberty — a move widely interpreted as a response to 6’1″ biologically male swimmer Lia Thomas smashing collegiate records in the United States.
“Look it’s very, very important that as a society we should be as understanding of everybody else as possible. I’ve always stood for that,” Johnson told reporters, but added: “When you start to move from issues of sexuality to issues of gender you start to raise particular problems.”
“I think I’ve spoken of three concerns I’ve had in the past. They are to do with the age at which you [become] competent to transition, the question of safe spaces for women, and the difficulties you have in sporting competitions,” he added, also referring to issues around so-called trans kids and allowing biologically intact males into places like women’s toilets and hospital wards — the latter of which has seen some women raped.
“These are all very difficult problems and you have to be very, very sensitive,” he added.
While the Conservative Party and its leader occasionally express conservative views on “culture war” issues such as transgender athletes competing in women’s sports, far-left race ideology being taught in state schools, and the fate of public memorials and statues retroactively deemed problematic, it does not have a strong record of actually taking action on them.
Indeed, the restrictions on trans swimmers in women’s competitions came from FINA, not the government, and National Health Service (NHS) hospitals continue to allow biological males into women’s spaces, among other state and state-funded institutions.
Woke concepts such as Critical Race Theory (CRT) and white privilege also seem to have only increased their grip on British schools since the Tories first regained office in 2010, and the LGBT organisation Stonewall, which criticised reporters for even asking Johnson about women with penises in Rwanda, is effectively state-sponsored in some respects, with at least one NHS trust giving preference to public contractors associated with it.