Tag Archives: trans

Bad Dreams …Greens and Gender

July 2020

ON BEING NICE – DREAM ON

Green Party Visual Identity

Molly Scott Cato is one of the Green Party’s popular politicians, an economist, and until recently an admired Euro MP for the South-West. She is likely to be elected to the party’s executive in forthcoming elections where – many of her supporters have been hoping – she will confront the bitter conflict over gender politics and encourage a kinder, gentler temper.

Then on 29 June she tweeted an accusation: why was labour leader Kier Starmer being ‘so timid in defence of trans rights? Transwomen are women; transmen are men…’ Whoa, how did she know that Starmer was being timid? Maybe he didn’t want to be snared on admittedly ‘difficult’ terrain.

Like her, he urges people to be nicer. Unlike the Green Party, the Labour leader suggests that law reform to enhance trans rights ‘takes us into difficult questions,’ that should be considered ‘in a mature, calm way.’ By contrast the Green Party leaders say there is no difficulty, no debate.

Scott Cato’s assertion attracted over 100 responses in no time, unusually polite, and mostly challenging her recital of  extreme trans dogma that ‘transwomen are women; transmen are men’ and ‘no debate.’

Her tweet synchronised with an emission on the same day from the green direct action movement, Extinction Rebellion that typified what passes for political manifestos these days, it put up a pledge:

‘We do not believe that the existence of trans people…is a topic that is up for debate…transwomen are women, transmen are men…this is not up for debate.’ A torrent of protests followed and unhappy moderators found themselves having to defend a pledge the provenance of which was seemingly a mystery even to them.

Of course, trans people exist. And trans rights aren’t at risk from debate – people do not die from debate. But women’s rights and resources are at grave risk not only from the effects of ‘austerity’, funding regimes, but also from and extreme trans activism seeking to silence women and assail feminist organisations.

There is a fundamental problem – already evident in politics, in the institutions, from banks to publishers, in the voluntary sector, in sport, and in schools and universities – if a man is a woman because he says he is, then the category woman is emptied of meaning. How can we address the fact that women everywhere in the world are put upon, discriminated against, oppressed, under-paid, unpaid, raped and disrespected because they are women?

And how can we make the connections – vital for Green politics – between thoroughly gendered pillage, exploitation, pollution and patriarchy that is manifest from the Congo to the Amazon?

No sooner was the Extinction Rebellion pledge up than unhappy posts asked who decided this, what does it mean, what about women?  ‘If it helps I’m not enjoying it very much either,’ lamented a besieged moderator.

Scott Cato addressed the flood following her tweet by saying that yes, she too, wanted to end the toxicity that is stifling the Green Party. But telling members to play nicely is no match for bullying.  The authoritarian and narcissistic mantra ‘there is no debate’ is biblical not political, it is, in fact, the antithesis of politics.

The academic Sarah Ahmed goes so far as to defend ‘no debate’ and no-platforming of feminists in this way, ‘we do not agree that freedom of speech is freedom to speak unaccountably.’ But no-platforming, blocking and not-debating precisely prevents speaking accountably, it proscribes speaking, hearing and active participation in the  very production of politics.

 

IS THERE OR ISN”T THERE…?

Scott Cato and Extinction Rebellion were doing what they were simultaneously denying: they were participating in a debate it whilst prohibiting it.

Scott Cato clearly wants to heal a party suffering from septic shock, but her benign injunction is too late: playing nicely assumes that the players want to play, that they share an interest in the game, that they recognise politics as a context for necessary, peaceful, creative conflict – all of which is extinguished by ‘there is no debate’.

To understand this impasse, we need to go beyond the etiquette and structures of the Green Party to its sexual politics: it is liberal rather than radical and feminist, all about choice – choosing to sell sex, choosing to change sex. No doubt liberal goodwill to all men also motivated the party’s endorsement, without research, consultation or debate, of extreme trans dogma. Of course, people wanted to be nice and to support trans rights.

But liberalism became host to tyranny and misogyny. When damned feminists and gays, and people whose job it is to think, debated sex (bodies) and gender (cultures), and power; about prostitution, sex trafficking child sexual abuse, they met a wall of denial and harassment; when they queried cultishness and the injunction ‘there is no debate’, they were maligned as terfs (trans-exclusionary radical feminists), disciplined and even sued.

Outside the pale of the Green Party, feminists and their supporters have been harangued –  J.K. Rowling’s careful and candid exploration of the issues is the latest in  a long and honourable line  – picketed, gigs cancelled, venues barred, some organisations’ funds have been threatened, funds lost; jobs have been threatened, jobs lost.

Amidst all this, the Green Party leadership either stayed shtum, or, like co-leader Sian Berry, were intransigent defenders of the dogma.

CHILD TORTURE  – THE CHALLENOR CASE

It was when a case of child rape and torture by Green Party member David Challenor became public in 2018 that the implications of this sulphurous state of affairs hit the party. He was the father of trans woman Aimee Challenor, a Green equalities spokesperson – notorious for abusive social media denunciations of ‘terfs’, and for improvising a social-media mass ‘terf’ blocking mechanism,  her boast was that 50,000 people had been blocked. Hardly an exemplar of online democracy.

Teenage Challenor had returned to Coventry (the Challenor siblings had been in care) in 2014, joined the Green Party, and embarked on ‘gender transition’. Aimee Challenor became a Green Party candidate and equalities spokesperson with ambitions to become party leader.

However, unknown to the party at the time, her rise and rise was shadowed by her father’s offence: David Challenor was arrested in 2015 for the kidnap, rape, and electrocution of a ten-year-old girl, whilst dressing up himself as a girl, at the Challenors’ home, which was also Coventry Green Party’s registered address. Apparently, he was also a fetishist who enjoyed dressing as a little girl in nappies and frocks.

Aimee had been interviewed by the police in 2015, and therefore knew about the case, but nevertheless appointed him to be her election agent in Coventry in May 2016.

After a radical High Court ruling in October 2016, which referred to Mermaids, a ‘charity’ that facilitates sex change in children, David and Aimee Challenor mobilised an open letter supporting Mermaids. Green party leaders Sian Berry and Amelia Womack were among the signatories.

In 2017, Aimee Challenor returned to the family home. In 2018 David Challenor stood trial, was convicted and jailed for 22 years. The party’s response was to condemn him, of course, and to extend support to….no, not the tortured child, but to Aimee Challenor, who had failed to warn the party of this looming disgrace, and who claimed to have not known the ‘full details’ of his offences.

This was a clear breach of party rules: candidates and officers are required to inform the party of anything that might bring the party into disrepute; it also ignored the child safeguarding implications.

During this time Aimee Challenor’s partner, based in Aberdeen, was Nathaniel Knight.They later moved to the US, married and Challenor took Knight’s name.

Subsequently, the party and Challenor were criticised by the Verita independent report, commissioned by the party and the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse report on abuse linked to Westminster, published in February 2020. Both were stern critics of the party’s low level of safeguarding awareness.

It was the Challenor case and Aimee Challenor’s performance as equalities spokesperson and the anti-feminist discourse promoted in the Green Party from 2014-15, including the public humiliation of a philosopher who was only doing his job: thinking, and finally the lack of awareness of child abuse, that provoked many party members to challenge the trans agenda – myself included.  I wrote a critique, urging the party to ask itself whether it had been induced into a  – witch-hunting and cultishness, to which the Challenors had vigorously contributed – that not only shielded them from scrutiny but created a kind of political coma about the misogyny and McCarthyism in the party.

This was only one flank of a larger reification of offended sensibilities and censorship spreading across organisations in the US and the UK. One of the protagonists,  Richard Firth – ironically Leeds Green Party’s equality, diversity and inclusion officer – participated in a little scam designed to get the feminist campaign Women’s Place UK banned from Leeds Civic Hall: WPUK had organised a celebration the 2018 centenary of (some) women getting the vote. The group was accused of transphobia – for insisting on women’s right to safe spaces – and the reservation was revoked at the last minute.

CROWDED COMPLAINTS

It was Richard Firth who lodged a formal complaint against me in 2018. A similar complaint was lodged against former deputy leader Shahrar Ali for tweeting a reference to my Byline piece. Firth’s complaint was focused on a couple of blogs and tweets which, he alleged, attacked trans people and party policy. Readers can see for themselves.

The complaint loitered in the crowded complaints system for almost a year. In September 2019 I was informed that the committee took no position on my views, only on the way they were expressed, ‘Given the respondent’s acclaimed mastery of language, she should have been more careful about causing distress, not just offence.’ I was urged to treat other Green Party members ‘with more courtesy in the future.’

There was no reference to whom – if anyone – I had caused distress. For the record, disagreement does not equate to distress. The complaint rested on the idea that I should have pursued concerns through the party’s clogged channels and, presumably waited and waited for a non-result.

So, I would not be suspended, but I would take a proverbial slap for not being nice to the clique that, in my opinion, brought the party into disrepute.  And I would be prohibited from standing for public office for a year. Irony upon irony, Richard Firth himself was suspended for a year and banned from holding off ice for two years in 2020.

Complaints saturated the party’s disciplinary process. One of the most egregious was against Sheffield activist Andy Healey, a promoter of the feminist site, Gender Critical Greens.

Clearly, there is a debate and there isn’t: it is mangled in the party’s disciplinary – rather than democratic – processes. Attempts to address the decline of democracy in the party, the toxic culture, and the implications of the trans modus operandi *at the party’s spring 2019 party conference – despite a clear majority in support of debate – were thwarted: no time was allocated for a conversation that most of the people at the conference wanted to have.

Therein lies madness and tyranny. So, we come back to the Extinction Rebellion and Molly Scott-Cato.

Without consulting supporters – difficult to do in intensely-devolved movements – a coterie in Extinction Rebellion introduced a polarising trans commandment for which it has no mandate. Scott-Cato’s sincerely-held wish for everyone to be nice and bring an end to nastiness is an impossible dream if she holds to the prohibition: there is no debate.

Be Nice is no answer. The party is polarised and it must take a risk: acknowledge the divisions, admit that though they may never be resolved they can be addressed; create the opportunity for collective contemplation of the evidence, the science and the politics, the theory and practice of sex and gender. That is, to do politics properly.

Post script  After this piece was posted, the very experienced Green activist, Dee Searle, wrote a searing critique of Green inner-party democracy on London Left Green Blog: http://londongreenleft.blogspot.com/2020/07/can-green-party-be-saved-from-its.html

  • Theo Simon proposed a late motion to the 2019 party conference to address a perceived crisis:

“Review and renew the democratic culture of the Green Party”. It was initially ruled out, but an overwhelming conference vote decided it should be ruled back in for debate. It was not given time, however. It proposed a safe, decisive and contained way to re-evaluate recent events – particularly in response to ‘gender critical positions’, and re-establish democratic principles: ”Conference acknowledges concerns that a culture has arisen in the party which may have lowered standards of civil debate, marginalised members complaints, and silenced members voices around particular policies. In particular we note allegations of the following: Pressures brought to bear from outside the party to have members suspended; Prejudicial suspensions, without prior warning, including of a parliamentary candidate; Court action being pursued against a member by party officers; Complaints of misogynistic bullying and of complaints going unanswered; Language-policing of members in discussion forums accompanied by legal threats; Blocking of members electronic communications and other access to party bodies; Disciplining of local parties over their wording of resolutions. We affirm that a culture of respectful, inclusive and transparent enquiry and debate is essential if we want to develop effective Green policy, retain membership, and build a democratic party worthy of office. We also affirm that all party officers and internal procedures must be seen to serve and protect these ends. We recognise that, in parallel to the independent Verita enquiry, work must now be done to re-establish trust in our democratic culture, policy-making and governance, both within the party and beyond. Conference therefore instructs GPRC, as guardians of party well-being, as follows: 1) To commission an expeditious internal enquiry into how this divisive culture has arisen and been perpetuated and what measures should now be taken to restore political health and amicable debate. 2) To invite submissions to this enquiry, relating to the period September 2016 to September 2018, from members and former members, with guarantees of confidentiality if required. This Internal Enquiry Into The Party’s Democratic Culture to be established within no more than one month of this motion, and to be concluded no later than the week before Spring Conference 2019, with findings and recommendations to be made available to members at that time. 3) To restore confidence in the ‘no fault’ suspension mechanism by confirming the procedure that GPRC is using to reach decisions on requests for immediate suspension. 4) To ensure that plans are drawn up by 14th December, and communicated to all members, for a Disciplinary Review process whereby members or former members can submit requests that suspensions, expulsions, complaint adjudications or other disciplinary sanctions from this period be reconsidered, such that any remedial action which is necessary may be taken.”

 

Personal note: It is with the greatest regret that I am leaving the Green Party.

J.K. Rowling Writes about Her Reasons for Speaking out on Sex and Gender Issues

Peter Tatchell, women and children – why are we so disheartened and worried?

Here is a letter I’ve sent to Peter Tatchell following his bitter tirade against feminists.

I should explain: We had been in email conversation for a while, after I’d asked him, as a human rights activist, to sign (with about 200 of us) a letter to The Observer protesting against the harassment and censorship of women participating in the government’s consultation on the Gender Recognition Act. No, he didn’t want to sign it unless it specified trans rights. It was not about trans rights, It was about women’s rights to speak and organise. No, he didn’t want to sign it. 

I admit, many friends and colleagues wondered, why bother? This is why: he is an emblematic figure in gay and human rights politics. That made it worth it.  

He ended that dialogue when I challenged him about support  for feminist campaigner Julie Bindel after the Truth to Power Cafe at the Roundhouse in October – an event to which he had been invited to participate – disinvited her. He discontinued our conversation. But he continued his public convos on Twitter, and  the more he says the worse it gets.

I sent him this letter following his embarrasingly poor responses to challenges to his 1997  interview with a 14-year-old boy, ‘Lee’, and what he calls the  child’s ‘affair’ and involvement in ‘the rent scene’ – what most of us would call abuse – and  to his argument about consent and what he calls “sex education.” 

Just let’s think abut another conversation Tatchell  could have had with ‘Lee’: a boy exploited through prostitution; he could have said, ‘I’m sorry I encouraged you  inappropriately, to talk about sex; I’m not qualified to do this, and I did it to service my own agenda; I should have put you in contact with someone who could have protected you;  I’m sorry I didn’t. I won’t talk to a young person like this, ever again.’

He could have said, ‘i understand your difficulties, but this does not decribe being gay, it tells me that no one has taken care of you, you need a rest. Trust me, you need to be protected. Then, who knows… you might decide you are gay, wonderful; you might descide you are straight, and that’s wonderul, too. But you did not learn about being gay, or not being gay, by being abused.’

Peter did not do that, as far as we know, and that is very worrying. 

Of course, Twitter doesn’t hack it, so here is an edited version of my letter  – introducing the tweets and links  –  to Peter Tatchell.

Peter replied on 12 November – it is published below.

Of course, the hardest word is sorry, but it would be a relief – for him and the rest of us – if he could say it, and then be quiet for a while: 

11 November 2018

Oh Peter, what have you done!

I’m afraid you will rue the day when you re-wrote, misquoted and misrepresented your own words after you were confronted with your opinions on adult-child sex and your  tirade against feminists.

You will of course deny sexism and support for paedophilia. But feminists of many hues, ethnicities, ages and orientations will have read your tweets with horror and sorrow.

Here is your tweet against ‘white feminists’

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It is you who are so wrong.

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Among my most vivid political memories is a massive public meeting in Croydon in defence of Kiranjit Ahluwalia, whose case had been taken up  in 1989 by Southall Black Sisters, who were supported by Justice for Women. She had been brutalised by her husband and then imprisoned for killing him. We heard her taped voice from prison. It was searing. The meeting was attended by black and white feminists. I know because I was one of the speakers.

Justice for Women, founded by Harriet Wistrich (Liberty lawyer of the year) and Julie Bindel – both white lesbians – has always campaigned with and for black women. Clearly, you appear to be unaware that Southall Black Sisters and Justice for Women – among the most robust and innovative organisations to emerge from the Women’s Liberation Movement – have worked together for decades.

Or more recently, perhaps, do you know that black and white women have worked together to drag the criminal justice, and social services systems to support girls enduring abuse and exploitation by both black and white men. Rhetorical question – I don’t think you do.

You complain that white feminists weren’t on your demos or at your meetings –  that’s hardly surprising and it is of no significance. The point is you weren’t with them. 

I don’t want to enter a defence of ‘white women’ in response to your slurs. Racism – like sexism – is ubiquitous. But I suggest that you need to check your history and your motives.

Your misanthropy is compounded by vanity, the litany of complaint, sometimes aired minute by minute in your tweets, that your words get edited and therefore do not express what you wanted to say.

But then you edited yourself.  Your trail of tweets accusing feminists of  ‘too busy demonising trans people as a threat to women. So wrong!’  had gone too far. So, you cut out the nasty smear in subsequent tweets on the same theme using the same photograph.

However, be assured – we saw it, we read it and we remember it. That sentiment was in your head. I believe that it expresses what you feel and think. Show us if we are wrong, but it appears that condemning feminism in your defence of trans rights has become de rigeur.

By the way, the feminists who are your targets have not and do not oppose trans rights. We are not anti-trans. We are feminists trying to clarify the muddle and rubbish about sex/gender, and we are merely trying to defend the Equality Act’s provisions/protections and sex-segregated spaces/resources, e.g. women’s prisons, women’s refuges and abuse services, women’s short-lists, women’s representation.

I asked you if you would stand up for Julie Bindel after she was ‘dis-invited’ by the organiser of the Truth to Power Café at the Roundhouse. You didn’t defend her and you didn’t reply to me: I fact you accused me of making false allegations and then decided to end the conversation.

Abuse and exploitation

Women and men will read with similar horror and sorrow your rather deceptive re-writing of your own words on paedophilia (not a term I use – it softens the intentions and impact of abusers).

You are now caught in an inescapable convergence, your reputation is in grave danger. It may already have been lost.

In the renewed flurry of concern about your defence of child-adult sex over many years, you have edited what you wrote in the 1990s. There is something unseemly in your brittle rebuke to feminists reminding you – in the hope that you might show that you have learned something – of your tolerance of adults’ sexual relationships with children.

You invoke in your defence, your letter to The Guardian in the 1990s rebuking Ros Coward for her critique of the pro-paedophile book Dares to Speak. What you now claim is that what you then wrote was: ‘it is “impossible to condone paedophilia”.’

 

But that is a con.

What you actually wrote on 26 June 1997 was, ‘it may be impossible to condone paedophilia’.

On 1 July 1997 what you claimed you had written was that ‘paedophilia “is impossible to condone”.’

Why change it ‘may be’ to it ‘is’?

This is sneaky semantics: you change the words and relocate the direct quotation marks, and what this achieves is to declare certainty where you had expressed ambivalence.

For a forensic chronicle of the episode check out yourself – and your critics – in the indispensable Spotlight on Abuse: https://spotlightonabuse.wordpress.com/2014/03/25/peter-tatchell-and-dares-to-speak/

It is chastening read.

Then, in the letter to The Guardian, you go on to defend sexual relationships between children and adults by arguing that the children liked it, found joy, and said they weren’t harmed. So, which is it – possible, or impossible to condone sex between adults and children?

The interview with ‘Lee”

Now, to your purported ‘interview in 1997 with the boy called ‘Lee’, which is still up on your website. You have not reflected upon it or repudiated it. It is a culpable accommodation of abuse. Here is a child, involved in sex at eight years old, in care and, by his own account, involved in prolific sexual activity, including anal penetration, and being exploited by adult men through prostitution – you call it the ‘rent scene’.

There is no word in that interview that conveys the shudder many of us have felt reading it. Nothing to indicate that you were worried that this boy was in danger, or that you sought to get him professional assistance and protection. We are left with the inevitable inference that you regarded his way of life as a ‘life-style choice’ – the term used by the authorities in Rotherham and other cities in the last decade to judge girls who were being snared, abused and exploited by gangs of men.

What is the difference between those girls and ‘Lee’? What is the difference between your thinking then and now?  There has been a mighty body of research and literature since the 1970s exposing how children’s perceptions of adults’ sexual interest in them is framed by adults’ agenda. You don’t acknowledge it.

Part of our shared history (gay men and gay women, aka lesbians, women and men generally of a certain age) is the moment when child abuse and exploitation was put back on the political agenda in the 1980s.

Why is this important now?  Because gays have always been vilified and traduced as paedophiles.

Some men in churches and children’s homes mobilised a gay alibi to cover child sexual abuse. Historically, that alibi completely compromised male homosexuality, and even now it is a smear to which some gay men’s ideologies lend currency. That’s why many of us are so worried by what you have written.

I’m not suggesting, in any way at all, that you have a sexual interest in children. But there is a but: You do not seem to appreciate why you are discredited by this advocacy. The alibi has been explicitly condemned by independent experts and by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse – go along to IICSA some time, Peter, listen and learn from the narratives of horrible childhoods in the 1980s and 1990s.

Following your letter to the Guardian in the 1990s, there was a raft of responses that anyone else might have taken very seriously: the child abuse lawyer Richard Scorer, a key figure in the current Independent Inquiry, Valerie Howarth, director of Childline; Marjorie Orr, whose monitoring of the terrain, Accuracy About Abuse, was a key resource throughout the 1990s.

You seem to have ignored them. That’s why people who prioritise children’s safety and wellbeing are not reassured by your blether about ‘I campaign against child abuse’.  Give us the evidence.

When you have been reproached by feminists – and Julie Bindel has been challenging you for years –  you re-iterate a narcissistic bleat that your letters/comments/positions have been edited and that you have been misrepresented.

The vital thing in all of this is power: that’s the word that is missing from your children-and-sex commentaries.

And if you want to know why feminists (and indeed many men) keep reminding you of your position it is because they know something about child sexual abuse – as an abuse of power – and you seem not to. You proclaim your own sex education work (about which many of us have some concerns) whilst you ignore the campaign to reform sex and relationship education by a consortium of more than 50 women’s organisations, co-ordinated by End Violence Against Women.

Just so that you know, this is not to accuse you of paedophilia, it is, however, to say that won’t let go of a discredited libertarian tolerance that places you in proximity to advocates of paedophilia.

Of course, the hardest word is sorry, but it would be a relief – for you and the rest of us – if you could say it, and then be quiet for a while.

 

——————————————————————————————————————————

12 November 2018

Peter Tatchell sent this response: 

 

Dear Bea,
I apologise if some of my writings have been insufficiently clear that I oppose adult-child sex. Clearly I should have been more explicit. I am sorry.
This statement produced many years ago answers many of your legitimate concerns. It answers in detail all the specific anxieties that you and others have raised. I would respectfully ask you to read it and get back to me:
Here’s an example of my advocacy against abuse and proposals to prevent it:
 
This is a copy of my speech at the Sex and The Law conference in 2010. Please note that the first of my four criteria for any review of the age of consent laws is protecting young people against sex abuse: 
 
This speech was commended by several of the child and youth welfare delegates in attendance. None accused me of condoning child sex abuse. 
 
I have worked with and supported child sex abuse victims groups, including members of SNAP, the Catholic survivors network. I also included them in my documentary, The Trouble With The Pope (Channel 4, 2010). 
 
They would not have worked with me if they thought I supported sex abuse by adults against children. 
 
If you read my collected writings and speeches on this issue, you will see that they repeatedly include proposals to stop child sex abuse and make it clear that I oppose and condemn it. 
 
 
You will see that I am constantly talking about young people of similar ages. 
 
You wrote that I “defend sexual relationships between children and adults by arguing that the children liked it, found joy, and said they weren’t harmed.” Not true. I said adults I knew in their 50s and 60s (including a prominent feminist, film-maker and actor) said they had sex when they were children aged 9-13 with adults (aged 18-21). They said they found it enjoyable and that it caused them no harm. If that is their considered view, as mature adults looking back on their childhood experiences, I don’t think anyone has a right to dispute it – even if, like me, we disapprove of it. Acknowledging something is not the same as endorsing it. I don’t. 
I have engaged with my critics, including Julie Bindel, a few days ago and previously many years back. I was under the impression that after our dialogue some years ago, Julie accepted that it was not my intention or desire to endorse adults having sex with children.
I have, incidentally, defended Julie many times and opposed her being dropped from the recent Truth to Power event at the Roundhouse. I urged her reinstatement. I did not take her place. I was in the line-up from the early planning days.
All over my website, I have made it clear that I oppose it child sex abuse and want action to prevent it and prosecute offenders.
My interview with Lee challenged him and his reasoning / justification. I personally advised him that he should delay having sex until he was older and referred him to Childline.
 
I support the campaign to reform sex and relationship education by a consortium of more than 50 women’s organisations, coordinated by End Violence Against Women. I don’t know on what basis you think that I don’t.
 
Less than a tenth of 1% of my human rights work has been on these issues. It is not like these are major campaign issues or that I am regularly promoting these ideas. 
 
I have attended Southall Black Sisters events and supported their campaigns – and the campaigns for Asia Bibi and women in Iran. The women there have told me they are disheartened and saddened that only a small number of white feminists have supported their struggles. That is why I wrote that tweet. I was reflecting THEIRconcerns. 
 
I am told that 25 November conference on secularism, led by non-white feminists and much of it focusing on gender rights, has received little support from the wider feminist (and left) movement. Again, these brave inspiring women feel let down by white progressives. That is their view.
 
You wrote: “You complain that white feminists weren’t on your demos or at your meetings.” Not true. I have never complained about non-attendance at “my” demos or meetings. I said I was concerned that they were not at events organised by non-white women and that is what non-white women told me. 
 
I never said: feminists were too busy demonising trans people as a threat to women.” I said SOME feminists. I have been receiving their abusive, generalising messages for months which have insinuated that trans women are misogynists, would-be rapists etc The extreme, sometimes obscene and blanket language used by SOME feminists against trans people would cause public outrage if used against black or Muslim people. Even so, I have never accused all feminists, or all trans-critical feminists, of acting in that way. It is only a minority.
 
It is true that my Guardian letter said paedophilia “may be impossible to condone” but I used “may” in the sense that I concurred with the view that it is impossible to condone. To give a different example of the use of the word may in concurrence with a viewpoint: The Earth may be round but in everyday life it appears to be flat. The “may” in that sentence concurs with the view that the Earth is round. It does not dispute or contradict the Earth’s roundness. That is the sense in which I said paedophilia “may be impossible to condone”. My use of the word may was not intended as a qualification or an ambivalence but as a concurrence with that view that sex with children is impossible to condone. To avoid doubt, I should have used “is” impossible to condone. That is what I meant. My apologies for that inadvertent error, which has created confusion and doubt. 
 
My stance on the GRA is more nuanced than you and others seem to realise. I was simply opposing the way SOME feminists insinuate that trans women are a threat to non-trans women. Some may be a threat but the vast majority are not. Those with a history of violence or sexual assaults against women must be dealt with differently from other trans women, in order to protect women etc. But there should be no generalised  restrictions on all trans women. 
 
If you think that it would be helpful, I am happy to discuss these issues in a public forum or debate. 
 
My conscience is clear: I have never condoned or supported adults having sex with children.
 
I have supported feminism for 50+ years and will continue to do so. 
 
I hope this reassures you. 
Much appreciation. 
Best wishes, Peter 
My reply to Peter

 

Thank you. And yes, of course, would welcome any discussion or debate.

Beatrix