Mick Hartley

Keir Starmer, memorably, struggled to find  a response to the question posed by LBC's Nick Ferrari – "Can a woman have a penis?"

"Nick, I’m not… I don’t think we can conduct this debate with… you know… I just… I don’t think, erm, discussing this issue in this issue helps anyone in the long run. What I want to see is a reform of the law as it is, but I am also an advocate of safe spaces for women. I want to have a discussion that is… Anyone who genuinely wants to find a way through this, I want to discuss that with. I do find that too many people in my view retreat or hold a position that is intolerant of others. I don’t like intolerance, I like open discussion."

His position, as I understand it, is that he's an advocate of safe spaces for women, but "women" here can include people with penises – otherwise known as men. So he's twisting language, and is in fact not an advocate of safe spaces for women.

But, as James Kirkup points out, the glee with which interviewers have realised that Labour politicians can be made to look like idiots on this issue should be tempered with the understanding that this can apply to the Tories too:

That’s the first reason politicians need to talk about penises: some women have concerns that relate to penises, and those concerns should be heard and taken seriously. The second, related reason is possibly even more uncomfortable and goes to the very heart of so much recent debate about sex and gender. Here is a statement of legal fact: some women have penises.

This has been the case since (at least) 2004 and the passage of the Gender Recognition Act. That law allows a person who meets certain criteria to change their legal gender and be treated, to all intents and purposes, as being of the opposite sex. So a person who was born male and is later issued with a Gender Recognition Certificate is legally female.

Crucially, the qualifying criteria do not include ‘sex reassignment surgery’ to the genitals. It is legally possible in the UK for a person with a penis to be recognised as female. When the GRA was passed, parliament implicitly assumed that it was legislating for a small number (perhaps hundreds) of people who were then largely known as transsexuals.

Some people now consider that term offensive or at least outdated, because they regard gender identity (which has little or no basis in anatomy) to supersede physical sex. Hence the widespread linguistic shift from ‘transsexual’ to ‘transgender’.

That shift is seismically important, and its importance is ultimately about penises. It means that people with penises can identify themselves as women, and thus obtain the rights and status society grants women – including access to those single-sex spaces that were hitherto penis-free….

The mismatch between legal reality and public perception helps explain why this issue remains live and heated: politicians collectively created a situation where some women do indeed have penises, but very few of those politicians are prepared to explain this fact to the public. (An honourable exception here is Liz Truss, who didn’t skip a beat when Ferrari tested her on this last year, replying memorably: ‘Women do have vaginas, Nick.’)

But this criticism applies to Conservatives as well as Labour, incidentally: any Tory who thinks this is a useful culture war attack on Starmer should think twice. Unless you’re prepared to turn the clock back and repeal the Gender Recognition Act, your position is also that some women have penises (Broadcasters that enjoy ambushing Labour people with gotcha questions should take note that they can fairly deploy the same approach to Conservatives too. ‘Minister, isn’t it a simple statement of legal fact that some women have penises?’)

My guess is that until we have politicians who are prepared to put aside their squeamishness about genitalia and instead have an open, factual conversation with the public about law and policy, the sex-gender issue will remain a minefield for them.