Tory MP: ‘Trans ideology threatens to erode the very concept of women’

A Conservative MP has warned that the ‘trans debate’ should not be dismissed as an inconsequential spat in the ongoing cancel culture war.

Miriam Cates MP, writing in The Telegraph, argues that the denial of biological sex actually poses a serious risk to women’s rights and women’s safety.

In her column, Cates speaks out against the “intolerant agenda” of activists, not only as a parliamentarian and a woman, but also as a genetics graduate and former biology teacher.

Erasure

Cates said: “The central dispute in the ‘trans debate’ – whether or not trans women should be considered in law and by society to be the same as women who were born female – is not a minor controversy that politicians and governments would be wise to avoid.”

She continued: “If we erode the very concept of women – for example by saying that trans women are women, or by denying the importance of biological sex – we erase the rights of women.”

we erase the rights of women

Cates added: “Women’s sex-based rights are protected by law, and that includes the right to single-sex spaces where these are necessary to preserve our safety and dignity.”

The MP for Penistone and Stocksbridge also said that it was entirely wrong to label those who championed women’s safety over transgender rights as “bigots or transphobes”.

Biological fact

Reflecting on her training in genetics, Cates said she could not see “why it’s controversial to say that sex is determined at conception” and that “every single cell of your body contains those sex chromosomes for ever”.

Consequently, she argued, it is “not scientifically possible to change the sex we are assigned at conception”.

She also said: “As a former biology teacher I struggle to see how statements such as ‘only women have a cervix’ and ‘only women can give birth’ are anything other than scientific fact.”

Last year, the Royal Society of Biology told a participant in its #iamabiologist day to “take your transphobia out of our hashtag” after she tweeted that biological sex “is determined at conception” and is “immutable”.