Labour dithers on trans rights

Submitted by AWL on 26 July, 2022 - 8:47 Author: Mohan Sen
Rayner and Starmer on LGBT march

In the midst of the Tory leadership candidates baiting each other to move even further rightwards on trans rights, shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves gave an interview to the Times in which she appeared to move away from support for transgendered people’s rights too.

There is a lot else to criticise in the interview, which may be worth returning to, but most of it basically affirms that Reeves is not at all left-wing – which we knew. In contrast she has previously made relatively good comments defending trans rights, at least recently as September 2021.

As often with these kinds of interviews and with the Labour right, it’s all pretty vague, and it’s not totally clear what is her statement and what interpretation. The interviewer writes:

One issue she has clearly done some reflecting on is the angst-ridden subject of transgenderism [sic]. When asked about women and cervixes last year by the radio host Nick Ferrari, Reeves stumbled, one of many Labour politicians struggling to find a suitable answer. She has one now, though – rejecting the mantra that trans women are women for a punchy, more JK Rowlingy position. [Yes, the whole thing is written in this cringe-inducing style.]

“Biology is important,” she says. “A woman is somebody with a biology that is different from a man’s biology. We’re seeing in sport sensible decisions being made about who cannot compete in certain cases.” She says she would “have a problem” with someone with male genitals identifying as a woman and using a female changing space, and isn’t entirely sold on the use of gender pronouns. “You don’t have to say to someone, ‘Shall I call you he or she?’ — it’s pretty obvious. But there are also difficult cases of somebody who is born as one sex and defines as another. I wouldn’t want to deny their right to define themselves in the way they want to be defined.”

She’s clearly not afraid of speaking plainly.

Reeves seems to be suggesting, or trying to sound like she’s suggesting, that:

1. Trans women are not women.
2. Trans women who have not had genital surgery should be excluded from female changing spaces (and toilets and other spaces), as they generally are not currently.
3. People’s choice of gendered pronoun should not be respected. (By the way, referring to finding out and respecting people’s choice of pronoun as “the use of gender pronouns” is utterly illiterate. We all use gender pronouns many times a day. And no, it isn’t always obvious.)

It also suggests, though less clearly, that the Labour leadership or part of it wants to retreat from any version of legal gender self-identification – and perhaps from any meaningful support or defence of trans rights at all. This suspicion is reinforced by Starmer’s radio-silence in response to the Tories’ increasing vicious anti-trans culture war.

I’d guess that, rather than Reeves having any some kind of change of opinion, the inner circle of the Labour leadership has decided to signal in this way because they think it will make them look good to small and not so small-c conservative voters and help Labour win a general election. It’s the same reason Starmer has pandered to the Hindu right and all kinds of other reactionary forces.

It seems unlikely a Starmer-Reeves government would directly attack trans rights – though it can’t be ruled out. It seems all too likely it would refuse to strengthen them, and even more likely that this pandering will give encouragement and strength to the out-and-out transphobes. Labour members and affiliated trade unionists should call the leadership to account, fight to win a clear pro-trans rights position at party conference, and fight for it to be implemented.

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