During ‘Pride Month’ in 2021, Sir Keir Starmer recorded a video addressed to the LGBT+ community.
The Labour leader boasted: ‘We’re committed to updating the GRA [Gender Recognition Act] to introduce self-declaration for trans people.’
Fast forward two years and Anneliese Dodds, Shadow Secretary of State for Women and Equalities, has unequivocally backtracked on this controversial policy, which would have allowed any biological male to self-identify as a woman.
In a Guardian article on Monday outlining Labour’s new approach, Dodds — who has refused to submit to questioning from the media about this policy shift — wrote that ‘sex and gender are different’.
She stressed that formal medical diagnosis would still be needed for trans people to receive gender-affirming treatment on the NHS if Labour wins the next election.
James Esses is a writer, commentator and co-founder of Thoughtful Therapists
During ‘Pride Month’ in 2021, Sir Keir Starmer (pictured with Angela Rayner at Pride in London in July 2022) recorded a video addressed to the LGBT+ community
Calculating
The U-turn prompted Women and Equalities minister Kemi Badenoch to call upon Sir Keir to ‘apologise’ for his ‘hypocrisy’, demanding: ‘Will he tell us why he has changed his mind? Will he admit that he was wrong?’
At first glance, you could be fooled into thinking that Labour’s U-turn was a positive intervention — a triumph for feminists who have long pointed out the obvious dangers that self-ID poses to women-only spaces such as prisons and rape centres, and indeed to women’s sport.
But dig beneath the surface, and it’s clear that the Labour party will still push a regressive and divisive ideology should it ever win power.
Dodds’s own language made this clear. She still took time to lambast the ‘calculating cynicism’ of ‘desperate’ Tories who, she said, were trying to ‘descend into the gutter’ over transgender issues.
I find Dodds’s doublespeak deeply troubling as someone who has been a victim of gender ideology at its most toxic.
In 2021, then three years into my five-year Masters’ degree in Psychotherapy at the ‘Metanoia Institute’, accredited by Middlesex University, I received an email expelling me from my course.
The reason? I had lodged a public petition, which subsequently received 10,000 signatures, raising concerns about the medicalisation of children with gender dysphoria.
This petition attracted a vicious backlash on social media from the trans-rights lobby, and my career plans were extinguished overnight. I am currently fighting enormously expensive and time-consuming litigation on the basis of discrimination against my beliefs, protected under the Equality Act 2010.
So I am highly sceptical that Labour’s proposals to ‘reform’ trans rights will help anyone, like me, who has been cancelled by this vociferous lobby — including countless feminists who have lost their jobs and been cast out.
Let’s look briefly at the details of Labour’s proposals. Dodds plans to abolish the current system, under which a panel of independent doctors decides on whether or not to award a ‘Gender Recognition Certificate’ (GRC) to someone with gender dysphoria. Crucially, under these rules, the applicant does not know the identity of the doctors, which allows them to make their decision fairly and in private.
Under Labour, a single doctor chosen by the applicant, and a registrar instead of a panel, could award the certificate.
This gives all the power to the person who wants a GRC.
It also means an applicant could simply attend one of Britain’s many private gender clinics (often run by self-professed trans activists) and pay a few hundred pounds to receive a diagnosis, possibly even after a single telephone conversation.
Given the granting of a GRC is used to justify biological men entering female-only spaces, the stakes are incredibly high.
Currently, the legislation requires applicants to have lived in their ‘acquired gender’ for at least two years. This is to ensure applicants are genuine and have no ill-motive. Labour proposes to remove this requirement altogether and replace it with a ‘reflection period’ of unspecified length. Once again, vital safeguards are being diluted.
Labour has further pledged to scrap the requirement for ‘spousal consent’, on the grounds that this is ‘outdated’. Currently, a full GRC cannot be awarded to an individual without their spouse’s consent, unless and until any existing marriage is annulled or ends in divorce. (An ‘interim certificate’ can still be granted.)
This important provision upholds the dignity of the spouse. Without it, they might not even be aware of the application. A wife could wake up and find she was married to another ‘woman’ — without knowing about it.
There’s a final issue that deeply troubles me. There is no mention whatsoever of children’s welfare — save for Anneliese Dodds re-emphasising Labour’s support for ‘transition-related healthcare’.
Given growing evidence of irreversible physical and emotional harm caused to some children through medical ‘transitioning’ for gender dysphoria, this shows scant concern for youngsters’ wellbeing.
Fast forward two years and Anneliese Dodds (pictured), Shadow Secretary of State for Women and Equalities, has unequivocally backtracked on the controversial policy of introducing self-ID, which would have allowed any biological male to self-identify as a woman
Ploy
Yes, Labour’s U-turn is welcome. But, if the Labour Party has indeed now rowed back from ‘self-ID’, it is as clear as day that this is not in moral defence of biological reality and women’s rights. Instead, it is a nakedly political ploy.
Dodds and Starmer have no doubt studied the SNP’s attempts to force through ‘self-ID’ north of the border — a bizarre decision that helped to precipitate Nicola Sturgeon’s downfall. Self-ID was a disastrous policy in Scotland — clearly opposed by the majority of the Scottish people. The Labour Party knows it wouldn’t stand a chance in an election if it ran on a similar ticket.
But the unfortunate truth is, despite the new U-turn, the Labour Party has been captured by an ideology with minimal respect for women’s rights.
Last month, Starmer and Dodds met with senior figures from Stonewall (the controversial charity that is in my view hell-bent on pushing gender ideology, often to the detriment of women, children and gay people) to discuss ‘inclusion’.
In April, Starmer stated that ‘99.9 per cent of women . . . haven’t got a penis,’ implying that one in 1,000 women does. He has never rowed back on this extraordinary claim.
Hounded
At a 2022 LGBT awards ceremony, Starmer, in a keynote speech, pledged to introduce tougher ‘hate crime laws’ which could end up criminalising someone for ‘misgendering’ another person.
The evidence continues. Labour has refused to defend robustly its own MP, Rosie Duffield, after she spoke out against the dangers of gender ideology.
In April, Duffield said she felt ‘isolated, hounded and harassed’ after speaking out for women’s rights — and added that there had been an ‘absolute lack of support’ from her own colleagues, including many who privately agreed with her, during years of ‘toxic’ abuse.
Yet the party has continued to indulge MPs like the Corbynista Lloyd Russell-Moyle, who in January snarled at the Tory MP Miriam Cates in Parliament, calling her ‘transphobic’. (The same man who told parents who see their children according to biological reality that they are guilty of ‘abuse’ and ‘forcing a sex on their child’.)
All this from the party that has the audacity to accuse others of waging ‘culture wars’.
The truth is, over recent years, the Labour party has shifted almost beyond recognition. It has abandoned its founding principles and is now fixated on identity politics at the expense of voters who care about women’s safety, child safeguarding and freedom of speech.
Dodds’s shoddy new bid might be dressed up as reform. But the truth is — it’s a dangerous and sinister step.
- James Esses is a writer, commentator and co-founder of Thoughtful Therapists. A version of this article previously appeared on spectator.co.uk