The real issue facing trans people isn’t pronouns

It’s a strange reflection of our times that with so much else at stake, the leaders of both main parties have been asked, at their party conferences, whether they think that only women have cervixes. Both men prevaricated. Sir Keir Starmer declared this is ‘something that shouldn’t be said’. Boris Johnson avoided the question altogether.

It is a straightforward biological fact that only women have cervixes, but simply stating it was more than the Prime Minister and the leader of the opposition were prepared to do. Rosie Duffield, a Labour MP, faced such a ferocious backlash after making this statement that she felt she could not safely go to the Labour party conference.

Johnson’s diplomatic non-answer — that everyone needs to be treated with respect in the debate over the rights of transgender people — sounded reasonable. It echoed the response of Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, when he said Duffield should indeed be welcome at Labour conference, and that people should be able to ‘debate, discuss, have disagreement in a respectful way’.