If forced by law to call a biological male a woman, female British politician says 'you might as well arrest me now,' threatens to leave the Labour Party
A British member of Parliament who has faced intense criticism over her refusal to disassociate biological sex from gender doubled down last week, reiterating that she will not refer to 60-year-old comedian Eddie Izzard as a woman — even if it means imprisonment.
What are the details?
On Friday, Rosie Duffield, a Labour member of Parliament for Canterbury, England, attended the annual LGB Alliance conference in London.
The LGB Alliance, which seeks to help the "Ls," the "Bs," and the "Gs," but is not so much interested in the "Ts," affirms that "biological sex is binary, female and male, and that (for the vast majority of people) sex is determined at conception, observed at birth (or in utero), and recorded."
The Independent reported that at the conference, Duffield was asked about the possibility that referring to a transsexual's biological sex might soon amount to a hate crime.
The Canterbury MP replied, "Is that a serious thing? Is that coming to Parliament any time soon? I hope not because you might as well arrest me now. I'm not calling Eddie Izzard a woman."
This response echoed a comment Duffield made in September, when she allegedly said, "I won't say a man is a woman. Eddie Izzard is not a woman."
Izzard, a man who dates women and previously identified as a "lesbian trapped in a man's body," is campaigning to secure a spot as a Labour MP. It was only two years ago that Izzard appropriated and began using "she/her" pronouns.
Duffield previously stated that she would leave the Labour Party along with a number of other women if Izzard was included on an all-woman short list to become the party's candidate for the Sheffield Central region in the next general election.
"I will not be a hypocrite and I won’t lie and I won’t say that a man is a woman. Eddie Izzard is not a woman," Duffield said late last month. "I’m absolutely not the only Labour woman MP who will leave the party if Eddie Izzard gets on to an all-women short list."
Labour leader Keir Starmer has not yet revealed whether or not Izzard would be included on the list.
The Daily Mail indicated that Starmer is aware of Duffield's position on the matter and suggested that while "for 99.9 per cent of women, it's a matter of biology ... there is a small percentage who struggle with their gender and I'm not going to simply put that on one side and ignore that."
The Labour Party's National Executive Committee ruled in 2018 that men claiming to be women are eligible for all-women short lists.
The general election is slated for December 2024.
LGB, hold the T
Duffield similarly made waves last year at the LGB Alliance conference.
Duffield appeared on a panel entitled "Cancel Culture and Free Speech" alongside Tory MP Jackie Doyle-Price and Scottish National Party MP Joanna Cherry.
The National reported that Duffield thanked Doyle-Price and Cherry for supporting her amid her ongoing troubles with the Labour Party, elements of which, in concert with online trolls, have denounced her as a "transphobe."
She said the Labour Party is "incredibly lonely" for a real feminist.
In the months and years leading up to last year's conference, a number of Duffield's staffers quit, slamming her recognition of the meaningful difference between biological women and pretenders. Pink News reported that one of the outgoing staffers suggested Duffield's comments about only women having cervixes was "offensive to the trans community," despite being a matter of fact.
Duffield said, "We’re OK to talk about everyone else’s rights, but we’re not supposed to talk about women, and we’re not supposed to talk about our bodies without quantifying it or justifying it, or adding on other groups that we also support to, sort of, you know, have our credentials allowed."
"I'm afraid my party is an absolute embarrassment at the moment," she said, referencing the leftist Labour Party's embrace of extreme views on gender and sex.
Unwavering support for real women
Duffield has long been clear about her rejection of social-constructivist arguments concerning sex and gender.
On Sept. 10, 2021, she tweeted, "I do not accept self-ID as a passport for male-bodied biological men to enter protected spaces for biological women."
She added, "That includes [domestic violence] refuges, women's prisons, single-sex wards and school toilets."
Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling spoke to Duffield's mistreatment by other Labour Party members as well as trolls online, writing that she and others like her "have been subject to campaigns of intimidation which range from being hounded on social media, the targeting of their employers, all the way up to doxing and direct threats of violence, including rape."
Rowling added that Duffield and other such biology-affirming women "have been put into a state of fear and distress for no other reason than that they refuse to uncritically accept that the socio-political concept of gender identity should replace that of sex."
The Daily Mail reported that Duffield was investigated by Labour Party officials in 2021 for allegedly liking a tweet that said transsexuals were "mostly heterosexuals cosplaying as the opposite sex and as gay."
Alex Beverley, then-chairman of LGBT+ Labour, said, "We feel we have exhausted all other options and now must publicly call for the whip to be removed from Rosie Duffield and for her to be suspended from the Parliamentary Labour Party."
Despite the best efforts of activists, Duffield remains, at least until now, a member of Parliament.
