Rosie Duffield right to say only women have a cervix, says Keir Starmer
The Labour leader was making his first comments on gender issues since the publication of the Cass review. The party has been gradually shifting its stance
Max Kendix
Tuesday April 30 2024, 11.00pm BST, The Times
Rosie Duffield was right to say only women have a cervix, Sir Keir Starmer has said, three years after he criticised the Labour MP for the description.
Starmer said that he got on “very well” with Duffield, who last year compared being in the Labour Party to an abusive relationship after being “shouted down” in the Commons over her views on trans issues. In December Duffield said that Starmer had not spoken to her since 2021.
In his first comments on gender since the publication of the Cass review, Starmer said that “biologically”, Duffield was “of course right” to say that only women had a cervix.
“She’s a much respected member of the parliamentary Labour Party and I want to have a discussion with her and anybody else about how we go forward in a positive way,” Starmer told ITV’s Good Morning Britain. He added: “There’s a distinction between sex and gender. The Labour Party has championed women’s rights for a very long time.”
In September 2021, Starmer said that Duffield’s comments were “something that shouldn’t be said” and “not right”. Asked whether he would apologise to Duffield, the Labour leader said: “I don’t want this to go back into this toxic place where everybody is divided”.
JK Rowling, the author and activist, accused Starmer of having a “brass neck”. She wrote on Twitter/X: “Politicians who chose to pander to activists issuing violent threats against their own female MPs enabled and emboldened the toxic culture that Keir Starmer now claims to deplore. When you’re part of the cause, you’ve got some brass neck putting yourself forward as a cure.”
Starmer’s comments mark a gradual U-turn on trans issues by the party. Last year Starmer said that 99.9 per cent of women “of course haven’t got a penis”, but that the “very small number” that did needed legal support.
Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, said this month that he regretted supporting the message from Stonewall, a charity where he used to work, that “trans men are men, trans women are women … get over it”.
Streeting said that he had reflected that there were “lots of complexities” to the issue after the publication of a review into NHS gender identity services by Dr Hilary Cass.
Duffield, who won the Canterbury constituency from the Tories in 2017, accused male leaders of taking applause, praise and credit for simply listening to an expert, adding that many women had been “blanked, sidelined, dismissed by male leaders when speaking up and exposing this for years”.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rosi ... -psklzrsvn
