I thank the petitioners who brought the petitions forward and the hon. Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi), who introduced them. I agree with the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard), who started off by saying that being non-binary or trans is valid. I will start off with that. I am going to offer a tiny bit of rebuttal in terms of the debate that has been had, but mostly I want to give voice to my trans constituents and the trans people who have contacted me about their concerns. I reject wholeheartedly any rhetoric that there has been in this room that has painted trans people as
potential predators. There are potential predators, but to lump all trans people together as potential predators is to completely demonise a protected group.
I want to pick up on the fact that a number of Members have used the phrase “ordinary people”, when they mean “non-trans people”. There are an awful lot of people in my constituency who would consider themselves to be entirely ordinary, and who also happen to be trans. They are also extraordinary in their own ways, I am sure, but “ordinary people” is an exclusionary phrase when it is used as it has been by some Members in this debate.
Before I move on to discuss what my constituents have said, I want to say that I will be incredibly annoyed if I get a whole load of abuse on social media after this debate suggesting that I do not know what I am talking about because I am a straight woman, because it is entirely up to me what my sexual orientation is. For people to continually call me “straight” on social media is immensely frustrating, and I wish that it would stop.
We have talked about biological sex a number of times, but not one person has been able to explain what it is. The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) gave a good stab at it, talking about XX and XY chromosomes. I have no idea what my chromosomes are. I assume that they are probably XY, but I do not know—I have not got a clue what they are. I have a fair idea of what my genitals look like and how they compare with how other people’s look, but if we are talking about biological sex there needs to be a definition that everybody in this room can agree with. Nobody has been able to provide such a definition.
We continue to fail trans people, and we continue to fail women. Legislators continue to fail both groups, who are considered and treated as somewhat lesser in society. That is the case. We are a room of cis people debating trans people once again, and hatred and bile causes further risk for trans people. What will the impact be on trans people?