Yesterday there was a bit of a kerfuffle about a particularly nasty trans-hating blog post. I’m not going to dignify it with additional traffic, but here are some choice examples:

They rapidly take on the prettiness of femininity – the shoes, the makeup, the clothes, and the hair – yet leave aside other traits commonly associated with the gender: empathy, compassion, nurturance, receptivity. Those aspects of the gentler sex are discarded because they don’t fit in with the behaviour of men

There is more embedded in gender than a change of outfit.

A frightened child in a rape crisis centre isn’t going to look at a transwoman and see trans-inclusive ideology. She’s going to see a man in a dress

They attempt to both devalue and claim for themselves all that is female

None of this is particularly new or unusual. What got social media excited is that the author claimed to be a member of the Women’s Equality Party. Inevitably people were asking whether this post represented official WEP policy. No, it doesn’t. The official party policy is on page 5 of the recent manifesto, which includes this:

WE also recognise that the binary words “woman” and “man” do not reflect the gender experience of everyone, and support the right of all to define their sex or gender or to reject gendered divisions as they choose.

And here is a tweet confirming that policy.

See 'Who WE are' on p5: https://t.co/X60sixYqUa That is the party's position

— Women's Equality Party (@WEP_UK) June 25, 2017

As WE have, to date, only had one party conference, WE haven’t had a chance to have a public debate on trans issues as yet. There is an awful lot of areas that WE need to over. But I am hoping that a trans motion will be put before conference sooner rather than later. In the meantime I’m grateful to the party management for continuing to stand behind people of all genders.

Equality is better for everyone