Women are the losers in Labour’s trans equality fight

I was pleasantly surprised when I read Labour’s manifesto. Not only did the party promise to end ‘mixed-sex wards’ in hospitals but they also vowed to “ensure that the single-sex-based exemptions contained in the Equality Act 2010 are understood and fully enforced in service provision.”

Soon after the manifesto was published yesterday, a number of feminists tweeted relief and praise about the pledge. It marked a significant shift from Labour’s 2017 manifesto in which the party promised to: ‘…reform the Gender Recognition Act and the Equality Act 2010 to ensure they protect Trans people by changing the protected characteristic of ‘gender assignment’ to ‘gender identity’ and remove other outdated language such as ‘transsexual.’”

Many of us had been concerned about the erosion of women and girls’ sex-based rights at the hands of the trans Taliban, engineered by Stonewall and supported by Labour shadow women and equalities (sic) secretary Dawn Butler.

I was wondering how it had turned around from a proposal to completely eradicate our rights to a promise to uphold and even strengthen them.