Last week, after having endured a long and relentless smear campaign waged against her, the Women’s Officer for Bexhill and Battle constituency Labour party resigned from her post. A proud Labour party member for over thirty two years, Anne Ruzylo’s resignation was soon followed, in an angry display of loyalty, by the entire rest of the executive committee. Lily Madigan, a transgender teenager objecting to Ms Ruzylo’s stated views regarding sex and gender, had complained and demanded that officials suspend her from the party. The complaint was dismissed, but the accompanying harassment and bullying had proven too much. In an ironic twist, Madigan was shortly after then elected Women’s Officer for Rochester and Strood.

Madigans election should signal alarming news for anybody who believes in the value and principle of a meritocracy. While it is essential to acknowledge that current societal structures do not allow us to fully live this principle, and that sometimes it is necessary through positive action to strive for fairer representation of the diverse nature of our communities when it comes to positions of power, I have always believed that a more sustainable outcome can be better achieved through a bottom up approach: that if we want to effectively enable people to fulfil their potential, and society to reap the rewards, we must focus on creating more equality of opportunity from the beginning. In other words, if we make the playing field more level, not only will it steer us naturally towards more equality and diversity in terms of outcomes, but it will also ensure the brightest and best really can rise to the top, meaning everyone benefits. A feminist my life long, I would like to see more women in positions of power, of course. But — and this is crucial — only if they are objectively the best person for the job. For if it is awful to be overlooked (and it is), it is always far worse to be patronised.

If we are to make ours a more level playing field then, we need first to understand that money buys opportunity. As does being born white, and as does — again this is crucial — being born male. Women are not, and have never been, inherently less intelligent or capable than men, but being female has always limited opportunities in ways both overt and subtle, and which begin right from birth. Society does not encourage our ambition or assertiveness, for example; we are not socialised to be bold and take risks in the same way as our male counterparts. We receive messages throughout our lives that our main value lies in our appearance and ability to attract men. As we become older, fear of sexual violence, instilled in us from childhood, can limit our exploration of the world around us. And finally, the trappings of domestic work and child rearing can often affect employment opportunities, preventing our engagement in public life and pushing us back into the private sphere. These disadvantages, rooted in our biology, can affect all women, no matter their background or social class.

So we can see the barriers to political participation for women across the board are many, and that if we wish to create a meritocracy in which all of the most talented and capable women can rise to fill up their half of the political arena, we must start to think about how we might dismantle them.

The Labour party constitution states that any Women’s Officer must be a woman, and with good reason. The Women’s Officer is the key representative of female members on the executive of the constitutional Labour party, and works to ensure that women are fully involved in the work of the party, as well as taking a lead role in ensuring all campaigning work reaches out to, and engages with, women voters.

Madigan has already stated, somewhat pre-emptively, that it is “misguided” to suggest she cannot fulfil the duties of the role, simply because she was born male. But Madigan has lived in this world, both seen and socialised as male, up until very recently. At nineteen, she is barely even an adult. With respect, I ask what can this person possibly understand about the average woman’s barriers to political participation? How might they be qualified in terms of skills and life experience? How might they relate to the women in their constituency trying to run a home, care for a family, work, make ends meet, but who still want to make a difference politically? I am of course not suggesting that women’s officers need always to meet all of these criteria, but simply saying they should at least have some working knowledge of what ordinary women’s lives look like, if they are to understand how best to offer them support. Issues such as period poverty, equal pay, sexism in the workplace, and difficulties in returning to employment after childbirth, should not be completely foreign to them.

I humbly suggest to the Labour party that being transgender is neither qualification nor merit, and that whereas it may have been a factor relevant to becoming LGBTQ Officer (a position understood to have also been open to Madigan) the position of Women’s Officer is completely inappropriate for someone of her experience. She is simply not qualified for the job. Given that there is no common agreement, understanding, or legal definition as to the word ‘woman’ meaning anything other than an adult of the female sex, the appointment is also against the rules. One can’t help but wonder what the average female voter of Rochester and Strood might make of it, and whether a reluctance to approach someone so obviously physiologically male in regards to a personal issue, might prove yet another barrier to their becoming involved in politics at all?

Madigan claims to want to give women a voice, yet all conduct so far suggests a desire to silence any who question her orthodoxy. A strong undercurrent of misogyny is also evidenced in Madigan’s online history. If the Labour party becomes purged of all feminists who believe gender to be a social construct and biological sex a reality, and puts in their place only those who would crush them, it is making a mockery of progressive politics and all it ever claimed to believe in. As Ruzylo herself has said:

“Debate is not hate. If we can’t talk about gender laws and get shut down on that, what’s next? We’re going back to the days of McCarthyism. It is disgraceful.”