A chorus of protest – and some support – has greeted an article by the broadcaster Jenni Murray, presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, that questioned the claims of transgender women to be considered “real women”.

Murray, writing in the Sunday Times magazine, said that she was “not transphobic or anti-trans” and called for respect and protection from bullying and violence equally for “transsexuals, transvestites, gays, lesbians and those of us who hold to the sex and sexual preference assumed at birth”.



However, the piece appeared under the less nuanced heading: “Jenni Murray: Be trans, be proud – but don’t call yourself a ‘real woman’. Can someone who has lived as a man, with all the privilege that entails, really lay claim to womanhood? It takes more than a sex change and makeup”.

Murray wrote: “I know that in writing this article I am entering into the most controversial and, at times, vicious, vulgar and threatening debate of our day. I’m diving headfirst into deep and dangerous waters.”

The response was swift. In a blog post, Rachel Cohen, campaigns director of Stonewall, condemned her views as hurtful and said Murray had no right to question anyone else’s identity.

“Whether you are trans or not, your identity is yours alone. I do not question your identity, Jenni, and in return I wouldn’t expect you to question mine – or anyone else’s. What right would you have to do so? My experiences of being a woman are undoubtedly different to yours. However, their differences do not make them in any way less valid.

“Trans women have every right to have their identity and experiences respected, too. They are women – just like you and me – and their sense of their gender is as engrained in their identity as yours or mine.

“Being trans is not about ‘sex changes’ and clothes – it’s about an innate sense of self. To imply anything other than this is reductive and hurtful to many trans people who are only trying to live life as their authentic selves.”

But on Twitter Debbie Hayton was among many who supported Murray, writing: “I’m transwoman and I get this.”

Thank you @whjm for a thoughtful piece. Socialisation cannot be ignored. I'm transwoman and I get this. https://t.co/H0Fj8fNpKc — Debbie Hayton (@DebbieHayton) March 5, 2017

In the piece Murray wrote of her anger over some trans women who had spoken on the issue, including the late Rev Carol Stone: “Her primary concerns, she told me, were finding the most suitable dress in which to meet her parishioners in her new persona and deciding if she should wear makeup or not.”

“I wondered when Carol would experience what so many newly ordained women had heard from fellow priests as they passed through the vestry. ‘Pulpit pussy’, they told me, was the favoured insult, and they found it demeaning, disgusting and it hurt.

“It was news to Carol that life as a woman, especially a middle-aged woman, stepping into male territory in which she was unwelcome would be extremely tough. I prayed Carol would not find it so hard. Experience told me otherwise. It wasn’t going to be all about frocks and makeup. It was about sexual politics and feminism – ideas of which she seemed woefully unaware.”

Murray wrote of how “fury that a male-to-female transsexual could be so ignorant of the politics that have preoccupied women for centuries” hit her again when speaking to another trans woman, India Willoughby, who had appeared on the ITV programme Loose Women.



“India held firmly to her belief that she was a ‘real woman’, ignoring the fact that she had spent all of her life before her transition enjoying the privileged position in our society generally accorded to a man. In a discussion about the Dorchester hotel’s demands that its female staff should always wear makeup, have a manicure and wear stockings over shaved legs, she was perfectly happy to go along with such requirements. There wasn’t a hint of understanding that she was simply playing into the stereotype – a man’s idea of what a woman should be.”

“She described hairy legs on a woman as ‘dirty’. But hairy legs are not considered dirty in a man. Did she not know that the question of whether a woman should shave her legs or her armpits had been a topic of debate among women for an awfully long time? And that to describe a woman who chose not to shave as dirty was insulting and again suggested an ignorance of sexual politics?”

Murray quoted Jenny Roberts, 72, who transitioned more than 20 years ago, on whether trans women should be considered “real”.

“I’m not a real woman,” is the first thing she said to me in a recent conversation.



“I understand that a lot of trans women want to believe they are women, but we’re not.”