“We shouldn’t get bullied into believing that people can be any sex they want to be — they can’t,” U.K. prime minister Rishi Sunak said during his Conservative Party conference speech. “A man is a man and a woman is a woman. That’s just common sense.”
Clapping enthusiastically in the first row was Kemi Badenoch, who serves both as the equalities minister and trade secretary. As I wrote in my recent magazine piece, “TERF Island,” Badenoch has played a key role in seeking to clarify the definition of sex for the purposes of the U.K.’s national anti-discrimination legislation, the 2010 Equality Act.
The Equality Act includes various protected characteristics, including two that appear to conflict: sex and gender reassignment. The Conservative Party leadership takes the view that sex is anatomical whereas gender is an identity and that in certain contexts — for instance, in women’s spaces and sports — it is not unlawful discrimination to exclude males who identify as females. (Indeed, in these contexts, not excluding males would be unlawful discrimination against females.)
That’s all very well, but the government needs to follow the advice of Lady Kishwer Falkner and amend the law to explicitly include this interpretation. As it currently stands, the U.K. Equality Act and the competing characteristics of sex and gender reassignment are confusing.
For an example of this confusion, consider the following Sky News interview with Mark Harper, the government’s transport secretary: