Election 2022: Feminist vote push could happen here

British feminist groups demanding that politicians across all parties describe what is a woman have become such a success that women’s groups in Australia are investigating a similar campaign.

British feminist activists Caroline Ffiske, Maya Forstater and Heather Binning in Victoria Tower Gardens, London. Picture: James Manning / PA Wire

A British coalition of pro-feminist groups demanding that politicians across all parties describe what is a woman has become such a success that women’s groups in Australia are investigating a similar campaign for this election.

“Respect My Sex If You Want My X” has hit the headlines ahead of British local council elections on May 5, directly at odds with the pro-trans lobby who have tried to “cancel” or silence some of the most prominent feminists, including the author JK Rowling.

“It is what it says on the can, with the X representing women’s votes on the ballot papers,’’ explained Heather Binning, a leader of the Women’s Rights Network.

Ms Binning’s group combined with a policy and law group, Sex Matters, and the cross-party political group, Women Uniting, to coin the Respect My Sex campaign. She said some Australian women had made contact wanting to adopt a similar slogan for the Australian election.

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Liberal candidate for Warringah, Katherine Deves, who has lobbied to protect women’s sport from trans women who have ­significant biological advantages, has also received support from the Respect My Sex campaigners.

“Katherine is not being transphobic, she is being bullied,’’ Ms Binning said. “In 2000, women’s weightlifting was in the Olympics for the first time and and in Tokyo last year a man competed. Same in cycling, women were only in the Olympic cycling in 1984 and now there are men competing (in the women’s category). I don’t think Australian sports lovers will think it’s right: it’s not very sporting for women to be up against a biological man and have absolutely no chance of beating them, and that is going to continue.

“Defending biology and defending the truth (about sex) is more important than catering to bullies, so let’s get a grip.’’

She added: “Women have been silenced, women have been talked down, women have been threatened with losing their jobs and castigated and punished for saying very simple things.’’

The Respect My Sex campaign calls for British laws to confirm that transgender women are excluded from women’s spaces such as female sports competitions, female toilets, female prisons, and some hospital wards.

“The respect my sex slogan is if you want my vote I need to know you respect my sex and that my sex is recognised, it is important and I am not discriminated (against) on the basis of my sex,” Ms Binning said.

“Politicians are asked what is a woman and they struggle with it. They struggle with the idea only men have penises so we thought let’s confront them and ask these questions and see if they can give me a straight answer.”

Internal political polling is showing a growing anger in the British female population about the cancellation of protected women’s spaces, and Ms Binning believes traditional female Labour voters are particularly incensed.

She said their concern is not about trans women who have had gender reassignment, but the biological men who decide they just want to “identify’’ as a woman.

The Respect my Sex campaign was also prompted by a trend to rewrite the language of women – such as calling “people with cervixes” to attend a pap smear, or having “pregnant persons” in a maternity hospital. This month a major British fashion store, Monsoon, announced its changing rooms were now to be open to all after an 18-year-old non-binary biological male complained about an uncomfortable experience of being kicked out of the women’s change room.

It remains to be seen if any consumer pushback has an impact on the company’s bottom line.

Ms Binning said politicians had looked at the pro-trans lobby on social media and thought they could tell women to “be kind’’ and allow biological men to encroach on women’s spaces as some sort of vote winner. But she said sex discrimination laws exist because women are more vulnerable.

The increasing public outrage about having biological men in spaces previously considered vital for women’s safety has seen a shift in the political sphere.

Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey has quietly dropped pronouns from his Twitter account, and Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said: “I don’t think biological males should be competing in women’s sporting events … and women should have spaces in hospitals, prisons or change rooms dedicated to women.”

But Labour leader Keir Starmer has bumbled around questions whether a woman can have a penis, saying that “a woman is a female adult, and in addition to that trans women are women”.

JK Rowling, who has been the target of aggressive attacks from pro-trans activists, said Labour “can no longer be counted on to defend women’s rights”.