Mrs Benn

Philisophers suggest that science often invokes ceteris paribus clauses; all other things being equal, light travels in straight lines, but not near massive objects – one of the remarkable predictions of the general theory of relativity. However, ceteris paribus clauses have somewhat more incendiary impact in everyday life. Four years ago, Canterbury and Whitstable MP Rosie Duffield liked a tweet by Piers Morgan criticising a CNN article about “individuals with a cervix”. This led to a storm of criticism, and the response that “I’m a ‘transphobe’ for knowing that only women have a cervix… ?!”.

Duffield has been the subject of opposition from within the Labour Party, from the trade union movement and from transgender activists; and she has become beloved of transphobes everywhere, from the LGB alliance – whose position is that acceptance of trans identities is intrinsically homophobic because trans people should really be gay – to J K Rowling and those who see the acceptance of trans people as an assault on women’s rights.

Of course people who have cervixes are women, the argument goes. Transwomen don’t have cervixes; even the best sex reassignment surgery doesn’t recreate the entrance to the womb. Except, of course, that the inclusive language here is not used because of concerns about transwomen, but because of concerns about transmen. Similar arguments have been advanced about breastfeeding: desperate to score a win of some sort before the election, the Health Secretary announced in late April a ban on references to chestfeeding in the National Health Service (NHS), because breastfeeding is a thing that women do.

The culture warriors claimed that the NHS, as part of its surrender to trans ideology, was banning references to breastfeeding. Thus, I Googled “breastfeeding” just before the implementation of the Government’s measure, and found an NHS page was the number 1 hit. There was not a mention of “chestfeeding” anywhere (the page was last reviewed in December 2022, a year and a half before the Government’s announcement). Truth has so often been the first casualty of battles in the culture war. Some NHS trusts had offered the advice to maternity units that some “services-users” would be more comfortable with the word “chestfeeding”. It was not a full-scale attempt by a national treasure to eliminate the concept of breastfeeding, just a recognition that inclusive language may be appropriate for some people.

In the Culture War, arguments have been built around trans people as men dressed as women; predatory male sex offenders invading female spaces and threatening women. But the argument about cervixes is different. Because the people with cervixes who wish to use their mammary glands to feed their babies could be trans men. Ceteris paribus, “service users” in maternity clinics identify as women and have breasts. But increasing numbers are transmen – people with beards who have had their breasts surgically removed but retain a uterus and functioning mammary glands.

Interviewed about Duffield’s remarks, Sir Keir Starmer said “Well, it is something that shouldn’t be said. It is not right.” The rationale is straightforward: if we insist on referring to transmen as women, it is offensive. “Breastfeeding” is a word that is important to many women, and it should not be banned. But is it really wrong to talk about chestfeeding with somebody who has undergone surgical treatment to remove their breasts? And is it really necessary to call a transman a woman because he has a cervix?

The debate, anger and scorn heaped upon Starmer do not help one little bit to navigate through the complexities of this debate. Starmer’s response to Duffield is not, as Sajid Javid said, a “total denial of scientific fact”, but rather a recognition that for somebody who has undergone sex reassignment surgery and obtained a gender recognition certificate, deliberate misgendering is offensive. Their GRC means that their changed gender is recognised in law.

There is another curious twist to this. For the sake of argument, let us concur with the radical feminists that transmen are women because they have cervixes. If so, then the radical feminists are at war with a group of women whose choices – to refer to themselves as “people with cervixes” who “chestfeed” they reject. This rejection of the choices of women by women is an attack on a beleagured minority group of women and is surely an anti-feminist act, a reductio ad absurdum. The attack on transmen surely only gains traction as a feminist act if their masculinity is also recognised. Thus for a feminist, the attack on transmen’s self identification as people who chestfeed is also a recognition that some people with cervixes are not women.

What is really lacking here is humanity: the capacity to recognise that transition to become a transman (or transwoman) almost invariably lies at the end of a long, painful road. Inclusive language is driven by empathy, and by the desire not to add pain, but to minimise it.