UK Left Collapses into Infighting over Whether Women Have Cervixes

Labour party leader Keir Starmer applauds Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves
JUSTIN TALLIS/AFP via Getty Images
Victoria Friedman

The UK’s Labour Party has collapsed over the issue of whether women have cervixes, sparked by one feminist MP who has not attended the party conference because of her position that women exist.

The party row began after Rosie Duffield’s opposition to erasing biological women — including clashing last year online over claims she was a “transphobe” for saying that only women have cervixes — and for opposing women’s only spaces such as changing rooms, toilets, and refuges from being accessed by biological males who claim to be women.

As a result of threats from trans radicals, Ms Duffield declined to attend this week’s Labour Party conference in the UK’s LGBT capital Brighton, admitting last week that a far-left-progressive wing of her own party, LGBT+ Labour, “now seem to hate my guts”.

Asked about Ms Duffield’s tweet last year, party leader Sir Keir Starmer denied that it was correct to say only women have cervixes, claiming: “It is something that shouldn’t be said. It is not right.”

Conservative Health Secretary Sajid Javid called the Opposition leader’s remarks a “total denial of scientific fact”, adding: “And he wants to run the NHS.”

On Monday, Labour’s Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves struggled to answer whether it was transphobic to say that only women can have cervixes. Responding to the question from LBC’s Nick Ferrari, Reeves initially evaded the question, before responding, rather flustered, when pressed again: “Is it transphobic? Look, I just, I don’t even know how to start answering these questions. I don’t find them helpful.”

Reeves dodged another direct question on asserting whether it was transphobic to say biological women have cervixes, before appearing to break from the position set by Starmer, saying, after being asked a fourth time: “I wouldn’t say that [it was transphobic].”

Asked to explain why she thinks that is the case, Reeves let it slip that, indeed, cervixes belong to women, when she asked Mr Ferrari: “Why are we having to discuss parts of women’s anatomy on the radio?… I don’t feel comfortable talking about women’s anatomy and different parts of women’s bodies with you, Nick, or frankly with anyone else.”

Responding, Mr Ferrari pointed out that gender critical opinions have taken so much attention at the conference in the past few days because Ms Duffield has said she felt unsafe about attending.

Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland Ian Murray likewise complained that he was being asked for a “medical science thesis” when the simple subject matter of women and cervixes came up during BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour.

While Labour MP Emily Thornberry — who famously was forced to resign from the shadow cabinet in 2014 after mocking the home of a patriotic, working-class man — claimed on Monday that it was “factually inaccurate” to say only women have cervixes.

“There are men who have cervixes. There are men who are trans and they’re men. It’s just factually wrong,” Thornberry said.

Asked on Sky News how British women are expected to trust a Labour government to protect them when it cannot guarantee the safety of its female MPs, deputy leader Angela Rayner avoided addressing the abuse from trans radicals, instead, blaming Ms Duffield’s absence on “misogynistic abuse”.

Rayner brought her own controversies to Labour conference this week, when she called Prime Minister Boris Johnson “scum”, later claiming the use of the language was simply a reflection of her Northern, working-class roots — a claim large majorities of Northern and working-class people reject.

Labour’s Shadow Equalities Secretary Annelise Dodds said on the weekend that Labour was committed to reforming Gender Recognition Act, making it easier to legally change sex.

Since July, Ms Duffield has reportedly been under investigation by Labour Party officials for apparently liking a tweet saying that transgenders were “mostly heterosexuals cosplaying as the opposite sex and gay”.

COMMENTS

Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.