Critics of the transgender lobby will one day feel “ashamed” for emphasizing male-or-female biology over a person’s self-reported “gender,” said Labour Shadow Minister Lisa Nandy.
Labour Shadow Minister Lisa Nandy (above right) is trading blows with Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, making her view that critics of the transgender lobby will one day feel “ashamed” because they had the temerity to speak of a biological basis for gender.
The UK Labour Party is one that women can trust, by campaigning hard on Transgender issues it is standing up for “some of the most marginalised, discriminated against women and girls on the planet”, and ultimately those who oppose its stance will feel shame in the future, left-wing politician Lisa Nandy said on Thursday. The remarks at a Parliament event by the shadow cabinet member come as part of a longstanding debate on transgender issues in British politics, in which one major contributor has been Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, to whom Nandy was replying.
While Nandy’s reply was couched in superficially conciliatory language, it was nevertheless one that apparently anticipated victory for her arguments. She told the Lobby that one day there would be shame over the fact people once linked biology to gender, saying: “When we look at the way we reduce the debate to things like bodily parts, I think when we look back in history we will be utterly ashamed of ourselves.”
As reported by The Times Rowling had called out Nandy in particular as “one of the biggest reasons many women on the left no longer trust Labour” given the politician’s particularly hardline view on gender, and that she was reported to have been one of a number of Labour MPs who endorsed a letter against campaign group Women’s Place UK. The group seeks to exclude biological men from some spaces, including rape crisis centres and toilets, beliefs which have earned it epithets like “trans-exclusionist hate group”, and demands that people involved with it should be excluded from the Labour Party.
Nandy has a track record of extreme positions on Trans issues. As previously reported these have included remarks on gender changes for children and biological men in women’s prisons. Rowling was long a role model for the left, who held up her having relied on state handouts while writing the first Harry Potter book as an incontrovertible defence of the UK benefits system. She fell out of favour as transgender issues became more important in the Labour movement and she expressed concern over the dangers this posed to children, as well as hard fought-for women’s rights.