Debbie Hayton

August is traditionally the silly season in politics but we seem to be stuck in silly decade of policy, and not in a funny way. Even ten years ago, few might have imagined that the minister for equalities would have needed to open up a debate on toilets. Yesterday, Kemi Badenoch announced that the government is publishing draft guidance that will protect the dignity, privacy and safety of all. In particular, she insisted that so-called gender-neutral toilets are no longer an option. In this country, a woman would not be committing a criminal offence if she chose to use the cubicle in the men’s to avoid a long queue The problem is less about toilets than language and assumptions. As Badenoch pointed out, gender-neutral does not mean unisex.

The Transgender Thought Police are impossible to please. The sooner Amanda Abbington realises, the better. The star of Sherlock and Mr Selfridge is the latest woman to end up in the dock for voicing an opinion they deem to be unacceptable. After the BBC announced that Abbington was the first celebrity contestant confirmed for Strictly Come Dancing 2023, the mob went wild. Her so-called crime? Back in March she tweeted: ‘I lost quite a few followers for saying that a semi-naked man in thigh high boots dancing in a highly sexualised way shouldn’t be performing in front of babies and it tells me everything I need to know about where society is heading. How do you not agree with me on this???

The Department for Education has delayed yet further its long-awaited transgender guidance for schools. Rishi Sunak had pledged that the document would be in our hands ‘for the summer term’, but that looks increasingly like another broken promise. I’m a teacher who also happens to be trans, so I have more than a passing interest. In schools across the country, my colleagues have been grappling with the thorny issue of what to do when a pupil announces that they are transgender. Truly progressive policies would move beyond the concept of the transgender child altogether The problems we face were highlighted by Policy Exchange earlier this year. The policies adopted by some schools are very worrying indeed.

Who can compete in women’s sports? This week’s decision by the European Court of Human Rights further complicates the debate. Judges in Strasbourg upheld Caster Semenya’s appeal against World Athletics regulations that requited athletes like Semenya to lower their testosterone levels to be allowed to compete with women. The court ruled that those regulations were ‘a source of discrimination’ for Semenya ‘by the manner in which they were exercised and by their effects’, and the regulations were ‘incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights’.

This morning’s news that the LGB Alliance has won its case to retain its charitable status is a victory and a relief for everyone who wants to live in a free and progressive society. That status was challenged by Mermaids and Jolyon Maugham’s so-called Good Law Project. Their argument seemed to be that it was not acceptable for gay and lesbian people to set up a charity to promote gay and lesbian rights. If LGB Alliance had lost, we might as well have returned to the 1950s when same-sex attraction was practically unspeakable. The incessant attempts to publicly shame LGB Alliance have been both astonishing and appalling This dreadful case might hopefully mark a turning point against so-called Queer campaigners.

Last night, Professor Kathleen Stock told the Oxford Union that we need to talk about 'reality'. She is absolutely right. Make no mistake, Stock is a reasonable voice in a political debate where many appear to be living in some sort of fantasy world. Her views are what many would consider to be mainstream. For example, that human beings are sexually dimorphic, and it is sometimes appropriate to provide separate services for each sex. But by voicing those ideas, Stock has been subjected to opprobrium. In 2021, she was hounded from her job at Sussex University. The scenes surrounding Stock’s talk last night were depressingly familiar. Young people – who seem to think that disagreement is hate – made lots of noise to disrupt the event.

Siân Longthorpe’s record breaking time of 18 minutes and 53 seconds in the Porthcawl Parkrun highlights all that is wrong with a policy that allows runners to self-declare their sex and then pick up records and awards.  Longthorpe finished the race over a minute ahead of Anneliese Loveluck, according to the Parkrun website. But it is Loveluck’s name that we should remember. She appears to have set the fastest time in that race for a biological female – someone who was born as a girl and who went through female puberty. Her experience in life has been rather different to mine and Longthorpe’s. Like me, Longthorpe is a ‘transwoman’. We are male – our bodies developed differently.

Is Britain a hostile environment for trans people? The United Nations’ independent expert on sexual orientation and gender identity has delivered his verdict – and it isn’t good. Victor Madrigal-Borloz, a lawyer from Costa Rica, said following a ten-day visit to the country: ‘I am deeply concerned about increased bias-motivated incidents of harassment, threats, and violence against LGBT people, including a rampant surge in hate crimes in the UK.’ But his statement was stronger on rhetoric than evidence. An unnamed ‘elected officer’ in Belfast told him that ‘I have never seen so much unadulterated hatred as currently directed toward the trans community’.

When will sporting governing bodies see the reality that we all know to be true – that male bodies have an advantage over female bodies? Granted, many organisations have seen the light and taken action, but others remain in some sort of cloud cuckoo land where transwomen – biological males – are allowed to compete against biological females.   The latest outrage has happened in the United States. Austin Killips, a 27-year-old transgender cyclist won first prize for women at the Tour of the Gila, the premier road race in New Mexico. Killips is now being tipped to challenge for a place at the Tour de France Femmes and at the Paris Olympics next summer.  This is wrong.

Daniel Radcliffe has told a group of young people that adults worried about children changing gender have a ‘slightly condescending but well-meaning attitude of like, well, people are young and like… that is a huge decision’. The children in this film are being cruelly misled Yes, Daniel, it is a huge decision, and it is one that we should not be putting in front of children. Never before have children been told that they can choose whether to grow up to be a woman or a man. They can’t, of course. Human beings are male or female, a truth determined not by fantasies of the mind but the facts of biology. Radcliffe’s comments appeared in a video he featured in produced by the Trevor Project.