MP: ‘Sex is immutable’

A Conservative MP has defended the reality of biological sex and warned of the dangerous implications of radical gender ideology.

In a Westminster Hall debate on a petition demanding for it to be much easier to change legal sex, Miriam Cates stressed that “every single one of the 37 trillion cells in an adult human has the same genetic code, including the same sex chromosomes”.

The former science teacher has previously argued that the denial of biological sex poses a serious risk to women’s rights and women’s safety.

‘Immutable’

Cates noted that the petition sought to “allow those who have been born male to become legally female or vice versa, with no requirement to undergo changes to their hormones or anatomy, or to be under medical guidance”. She added that the petitioners were not asking for “a minor amendment to an existing law” but “a fundamental change”.

The MP underlined that allowing “somebody easily to change their sex in law would be to accept as a society that this material reality is not important or that it can be changed in a straightforward way”.

human beings, like all other mammals, cannot change sex

She stressed: “Let us be clear: human beings, like all other mammals, cannot change sex. At the moment of conception, when sperm cell fuses with egg cell, apart from rare abnormalities, there are two possible outcomes.”

“Sex is immutable”, she added, “however much an individual may want to change their sex through surgery, hormone treatment or by changing their lifestyle”.

Impact on children

The MP for Penistone and Stocksbridge emphasised that being able to ‘change sex’ by self-declaration would have a “hugely damaging” impact on children, with “vulnerable young people—often girls”, being wrongly told that “the answer to their problems is to change sex”.

“This is manifesting in a concerning rise in girls who are not only identifying as trans or non-binary, but who are going on to make serious and permanent changes to their bodies that will result in lifelong medical, sexual and psychological problems.”

The MP concluded that, if the Government acted on the petition in the way proposed, “it would send a signal to children that society accepts that it is true that one can change sex, and I do not think we should be misleading our children in that way”.