June 3, 2024 - 10:30am

At the eleventh hour the Tories finally seem to realise that sex matters. They’re out in force today, promising to change the Equality Act to make it clear that “sex” refers to biology, not some airy-fairy notion of gender. The Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, says it will be a manifesto pledge, arguing that “the safety of women and girls is too important to allow the current confusion around definitions of sex and gender to persist”.

There is political calculation to what the Conservatives are doing, and they are vulnerable to the question of why they didn’t act earlier, but better late than never. They know that this is one of the few issues where they are in step with public opinion, which isn’t keen on biological men barging their way into women’s sports, hospital wards, toilets and prisons. Women’s spaces urgently need protection from an ideology that prioritises men who “identify” as women over actual women — and from politicians who mulishly insist it’s “bigoted” to say so.

In an election campaign where the Conservatives are trailing badly, it may well be the most effective challenge they can make to a resurgent Labour Party. After years of being verbally and physically abused by trans activists, women are desperate for evidence that politicians understand that this is not some “culture wars” spat. We have been badly let down by parties of the centre-Left, whose leading figures have prostrated themselves before the great god of gender.

There appears to be no limit to the nonsense that Labour, the SNP, the Lib Dems, Plaid Cymru and the Greens are prepared to swallow from trans activists. Now opposition parties have to decide how to respond to the gauntlet thrown down by the Tories. Do they abandon all the idiotic things they’ve said and done, including witch-hunts against members accused of “transphobia”? Or do they double down and confirm that the rights of half the population come a long way below the demands of gender warriors?

It’s a Galileo moment. If biological sex matters, how can it possibly be true that trans-women are women? If there is a clear difference between men and women, as the Equality Act intended until gender warriors began to twist its meaning, how could it be right to pretend otherwise? Yet that’s what opposition politicians have told us to do, dismissing arguments based in biology as “transphobic”. They like nothing more than posing with trans flags and lanyards, parading their credentials as “trans allies”.

Politicians hate having to admit they were wrong, and never more so than in an election campaign. But party leaders who have mused about how many women have a penis are being challenged by politicians who are not afraid to call out the impact of their luxury beliefs. In an article for The Times, the women and equalities minister, Kemi Badenoch, describes receiving a letter last month from a woman who, at the age of 16, was raped in a women’s toilet by a man dressed as a woman. Badenoch says bluntly that predators are “exploiting loopholes in the law by calling themselves trans with no evidence beyond their self-identification”.

Clarifying the Equality Act would protect women and girls from the biggest onslaught on women’s rights and privacy in my lifetime. It’s a test for Labour above all the other Opposition parties because Sir Keir Starmer is likely to be our next prime minister. If Labour fails the challenge, it will become a lost cause for many left-leaning women. Your move, Sir Keir.


Joan Smith is a novelist and columnist. She was previously Chair of the Mayor of London’s Violence Against Women and Girls Board, and is on the advisory group for Sex Matters. Her book Unfortunately, She Was A Nymphomaniac: A New History of Rome’s Imperial Women was published in November 2024.

polblonde