1) Your inability to answer a simple request to provide evidence proving transwomen are female, central to substantiating that Jenni Murray is wrong is clearly noted. For a medical doctor, disrespect for scientific evidence and a rush to accuse women of 'hate' is unprofessional
2) & very alarming. In dismissing other logical possibilities, that in fact hatred or any animus whatsoever towards trans people is simply not required to disagree with the claim that transwomen are actual women, you display a reckless & I think sexist disregard for women
3) Certainly hatred could be a reason to oppose this claim but prejudice is not in any way necessary, merely an appreciation of biological sex as a fundamental category & that women as a sex also suffer oppression & have rights to self-definition and self-determination
4) If you were as enthusiastic in trying to understand the oppression of females as you are in using your public profile to accuse women of hate then you'd realise that overwhelmingly, women, gay men & transsexuals opposed to these claims are motivated by opposition to misogyny
5) homophobia and denial of biological reality, not by hatred of trans people or in my case (excuse me whilst I laugh) of self-hate.
Your reply to my question asking what was the basis for your accusation against Jenni Murray
Your reply to my question asking what was the basis for your accusation against Jenni Murray
6) references the BBC report that accompanied your original tweet along with the smug riposte "I'd have thought that was obvious". Well, frankly Doctor Christian, no, it was far from obvious precisely because that report is such thin gruel upon which to base such serious charges
7) especially for a doctor. One expects a more considered appreciation of logical reasoning & of the importance of evidence, not to mention, biology from a medic. I thought I'd give you the opportunity to provide more substance to such a potentially career ending allegation
8) Instead, you merely hold this sad & paltry little report, amounting to Jenni Murray insisting upon upholding biological realities. Well, I call your bluff. Show us the hard evidence that transwomen are female.
You can't, because no such evidence exists
You can't, because no such evidence exists
9) Identification with social constructions of the feminine doesn't make you a woman. People born male who later identify as women cannot actually be female. We cannot change sex but we can and must end discrimination and be equally valid citizens and
10) we can and should have high quality, adequately resourced services, be treated with humanity and kindness as we wish to be treated, right up to the point where doing so infringes upon the rights of actual women. In other words
11) trans people can be treated how we wish for the vast majority of life, but where prisons, domestic violence shelters & rape crisis units are concerned there must be respect for the needs of vulnerable women to single sex space
12) and we must open up many more safe, gender neutral toilets and changing rooms in addition to female provision, that allow trans and other gender non-conforming people to respect many women's desire for single sex space as well as preserve our own dignity and safety.
13) What is far more obvious to me than your BBC report being in any way evidence of hate is that you, instead of taking a position to encourage a responsible adult debate at the heart of politics (rather than predominantly in the insensitive jungle of social media) and
14) one that seeks to unite people on a just basis, you seem to prefer instead to jump on a trendy but authoritarian political bandwagon, sold misleadingly as the next frontier in human rights. Sexism will never be the new frontier of progress
15) and putting imagined kindness to trans people above basic justice for women, even above our ability to describe and affirm material reality itself is not progressive in any way, shape or form.
16) Your initial motivation of kindness (I presume) to people like myself is laudible & certainly needed but this conception of rights is not only fundamentally flawed, but if forced onto women against their will, without proper open debate by methods of demonising and attempting
17) to silence them, by denying fundamental biological and socialised realities it could easily open the door to a vicious right wing backlash against trans people as is beginning to happen in the US under the disgusting Trump administration
18) I repeat, where is the evidence that transwomen are actually female? that a penis on a transwoman is a female organ? that a transwoman with a penis can be a lesbian? that biological sex is an irrelevance or is subordinate to social constructions of gender?
19) If you cannot answer these questions then I strongly suggest you apologise publicly to Jenni Murray and by implication, to all of us who value women's rights as highly as trans rights to equality, safety from violence and discrimination as well as to dignified treatment.
20) Kindness to trans people is vital & wonderful but it cannot come before justice or our grip on reality. Pandering to authoritarian dogmas is creating a viciously toxic and authoritarian atmosphere which is thoroughly sexist, even misogynist and homophobic.
21) That's not the next evolution in human rights, it's regression and it's deeply unkind, unjust and oppressive to women, especially lesbians, to gay men and also to transsexuals. Please stop facilitating the demonisation of women. Sexism is not the right side of history.
