Politics in Britain in 2018 is a strange place. On the one hand, you have a Conservative government barely holding on to power due to a misjudged power grab by Theresa May, and on the other you have a Labour “opposition” that seem to be as divisive as they are galvanising due in no small part to the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn. And then there’s the whole Brexit affair. But let’s not talk about that…It’s safe to say that our representatives and the country as a whole is extremely divided, both socially and economically.

With this in mind, when cross party co-operation actually does happen it’s all the more important to look at why. One particular issue where this has occurred are proposed reforms to the Gender Recognition Act (GRA). Theresa May has stated that she believes “changes need to be made” to the GRA, and Jeremy Corbyn has thrown his Ushanka (just a joke!) into the ring as well, stating:

“Discrimination has gone on too long. The Gender Recognition Act does not allow trans people to self-identify their gender and forces them to undergo invasive medical tests. This is wrong.”

So, there see seems to be at least some cross-party consensus on the issue. The Conservatives want to be seen as socially progressive in 2018, and “The Left” have always worn the badge of “progressiveness” proudly, so it’s not difficult to see why Jeremy Corbyn has offered to lend Labour’s support to any reforms. Recently the Green Party, Plaid Cymru and the Lib Dems have also offered their support.

So where’s the problem? It appears to be a relatively straightforward debate — trans people are human beings, and who is anybody to deny their right to identify as the “gender” they chose without the rigmarole of having to go through a preliminary two year transition phase? In a society that operates on the premise of being broadly Utilitarian, what harm could it cause, especially when the supposed benefits would be immediate to an underrepresented demographic?

But all is not well. A deep dive to look at the problems is necessary, because there are issues bubbling under the surface, and the implications of carrying out the suggested reforms without closer examination could be politically, practically and socially disastrous.

First and foremost, there has been a collective pushback from women across the political spectrum, a large portion of which are (or were) Labour voters — and the party has started very publicly losing their support as a result. While there are a number of different demographics of women (politically speaking) that oppose the reforms, it is perhaps the radical feminist analysis that provides the “(wo)man on the street” outsider with more clarity.

A brief primer may be necessary here: One of the main tenets of radical feminism is that female biology is the root cause of their oppression, not “gender”. For example, female infanticide in China that spans thousands of years (and has resulted in a sex disparity of roughly 40-60 million) because women can’t carry on the family name, amongst other reasons; women and girls dying in “menstruation huts” in Nepal; female genital mutilation is still rife and used as a method to control women’s sexuality (amongst other aspects); lower caste women in the southern state of Kerala in India had to pay a “breast tax” until the Channar revolt in the 1800s. The list goes on. These women were and are oppressed because of their biology. Not because of an innate sense of what it means to be a woman. Also important to note, radical feminism espouses liberation from patriarchy — not just embracing the oppressive facets of male domination in the name of “equality”. Remember this, because we will come back to it later.

But what does this have to do with self-ID and the GRA? They seem worlds away from each other. But the link is very real, both in theory and practice. For women to be able to recognise their oppression under patriarchy, they need to recognise why they’re oppressed in the first place. Of course, language is a conduit for this understanding and how it can be explicated to the wider world. To recognise that men (that is to say biological males) commit atrocious acts of violence against women (that meaning natal females) is to understand the power dynamic and historical context of biological material reality. Consequently, male violence against women needs to be recognised as a distinctly male occurrence for it to be properly deconstructed. Men commit acts of violence against women precisely because they are women, not because they identify (or don’t identify) as such. To clarify with the converse; a biological female in rural Nepal cannot simply refuse to enter a menstruation hut because she identifies as a male (or “non-binary”). It is her sex that results in oppression, not her “gender identity”.

With specific reference to the GRA, the proposed reforms deny women the most basic and fundamental way to recognise and challenge their oppression — language. Now, linguistic puritanism can be limiting and problematic, especially when examining relatively new cultural phenomena. Consequently, it can be argued that descriptivism is necessary both as an intellectual tool of analysis and also as a form of pragmatism. Words change their meaning depending on usage and social context. But this is not to say that words have to change their meaning simply because somebody wants them to. To expand the scope of what it is to be a “woman” (i.e. a biologically adult female) to mean that but also literally anybody else is to deny those same women the ability and fundamental language to describe their oppression and organise to dismantle it accordingly.

This certainly isn’t to say that being a woman (or man) entails specific personality traits or that aspects of performative gender are innate — for instance, a man can still be a man by embracing qualities that would otherwise be considered “womanly”, or by eschewing gender conformity by wearing things like makeup or “gender specific” clothing. This, however, does not a woman make. To believe that this makes up the fundamental conception of “womanhood” is grossly regressive and misogynistic, it is nothing more than a reinforcing of gender stereotypes.

In the most fundamental way, to be a “woman” (read: female) is to fit a certain biological criteria. Namely, XX chromosome, type of gonads, sex hormones, internal reproductive anatomy and external genitalia. This doesn’t imply a superiority to males or transgender people — simply an acknowledgement of the reality of definitive criteria within sexual dimorphism. While there are sometimes variances in this (for instance, intersex people or people that suffer from MRKH syndrome), they are just that — anomalous variances of the binary — not proof that the binary is not a binary. For example, the birth of a child with no legs wouldn’t prove that humans aren’t bipedal. This does not make these people less human or worthy of respect, or somehow suggest that they should not have access to healthcare or a life free from violence, abuse and discrimination — but it does not disprove the existence of sexual dimorphism, and using them as a political “gotcha” is offensive, disingenuous and intellectually dishonest.

Consequently, with Labour now suggesting the very concept of being a woman is now open to anybody that wishes to identify as such, it only further reduces the status of natal females (used for clarity here) in society. Their very biological and linguistic identity is being erased in favour of a surface level “progressive-ism”. For example, 20 year old Lily Madigan was elected as a constituency Labour party women’s officer in 2017. Ignoring the fact that electing a then 19 year old (and I say that as somebody not much older myself) into any position of broader social representative authority seems a little too keen to grab the “youth vote”, there is another issue. While it is absolutely right that democracy should work to represent those who would otherwise be overlooked (the trans community being one such example), does it make sense to take that representation from an already underrepresented demographic (namely, women)? Lily hasn’t lived enough of life to represent most men, let alone represent women.

After all, the experience of the trans community is something specific to them, and that absolutely should be represented in parliament. But to suggest it is exactly the same as the experience and socialisation felt by women would be to deny reality. Simply put, if you are socialised as a male with dysphoria (or now without, as the “Trans-umbrella” continues to expand its criteria even more), your experience of course will be different to other demographics, both male and female that don’t have dysphoria or the experience of transitioning. There is no shame in this, but to argue that it is simply the same as a born female’s (or male) experience seems to require an intentional cognitive dissonance, and an almost willingness to shoot yourself in the foot representationally speaking just to play the game of identity politics.

History shows us that women have been repeatedly and consistently marginalised, often to advance a male agenda, but other times for no other reason than to just assert male supremacy. And what could be more marginalising than erasing wholesale the very concept of woman?

This assault on language extends into sexuality also — if somebody used the phrase “a lesbian with a female penis”, you’d think they were quoting a Bernard Manning joke. But now it has become the reality to which lesbians have to conform to unless they want to be labelled as bigots. This is nothing more than corrective rape dressed up as progressive “gender-bending”. It flies in the face of biology and language simply to further assert and uphold male ownership over women’s bodies and sexuality.

If you acknowledge patriarchy to be real in any capacity, which both feminists of all persuasions and the transgender community do, then it follows that you must acknowledge that men (as a class) are born with immediate privilege in society, especially in the West. While the oppressive intersectionality of patriarchy can’t be ignored (in the true “Crenshaw-ian” sense of the word, not in a neutered, third-wave catchall sense), and some women are indeed more privileged than others by virtue of things like race and economic background, men as a class still subjugate women. All men experience and benefit from this socialisation, trans or not, and to ignore that is to only further marginalise women’s battle against patriarchy. This is not to suggest the trans community don’t face battles specific to them, but the reality of broader socialisation needs to be acknowledged, otherwise how will it ever be deconstructed? How could it ever be deconstructed if its existence is ignored?