Why I joined the trans debate

It was easy to miss because even at the best of times the House of Lords doesn’t grab public attention. But this week, something remarkable happened in parliament.

In narrow legislative terms, peers have forced the government to accept amendments to the Ministerial and Other Maternity Allowances Bill. The Bill will make it possible for a minister who is pregnant — such as Suella Braverman, the Attorney General — to take leave from work without resigning ministerial office.

That should be uncontroversial, but the language of the Bill left something to be desired. The Bill passed the Commons earlier this month using phrases such as ‘the person is pregnant’ and ‘the person has given birth to a child’.

Such language set alarm bells ringing for several people familiar with the debate about sex and gender. They saw the phrasing of the Bill as the latest example of officialdom — perhaps unwittingly — erasing the category of women as biologically female.