Andrea Jenkyns MP: Transgender women in female sports debate

Andrea Jenkyns MP writes: Across the nation, families will have been debating access to women’s sports and exactly what a woman is.

Well, this woman is proud to defend the realities of biology, to preserve womanhood and manhood from those who wish to erase their meanings, and to raise the legitimate concerns of constituents who worry about the impacts of this discourse on our children.

Let me be clear, it remains right that LGBT people should be able to live free from harassment and persecution because of their sexuality or identity.

The UK is a beacon of liberal democracy and our tolerance underscores this; everyone has a right to happiness.

This belief doesn’t mean that there aren’t serious conversations to be had about access to women’s sports and the erasure of the female identity.

These debates, fuelled in part, by a bitter cabal of liberal luvvies who wish to change not only their gender but the very makeup of our society, cause real concern for a great many people, particularly women and girls.

We live in an age where the realities of genetic biology are under fire and where pronoun pride has replaced common sense and reason.

Cancel culture and woke warriors aim to silence brave women who raise concerns about these changes, from activist Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull to Olympian Sharron Davies.

J K Rowling, once a friend of those on the left, has been vilified for defending biological truth.

Despite the wishes of many on the left, we shouldn’t seek to alter what it means to be a woman.

Terms like ‘chest-feeding’ and ‘birthing person’ erase womanhood from the definition of woman, which remains, as it has done throughout history, “…an adult human female”.

In conversations with constituents, I hear the very real worries of parents who fear that their children will be conditioned into making lasting changes without any understanding of the ramifications of these decisions.

More than this, parents fear that their children will be able to do this without parental consultation and that they’ll face prosecution or persecution should they speak out.

Where women’s sport is concerned the facts of biology remain overwhelmingly important, and I was pleased that this was the position set out by the prime minister.

The Labour Party is still lost in debating the definition of the word woman.

It’s grossly unfair that women who spend their lives working to be the best in their field are outcompeted by those with a biological advantage.

Lia Thomas went from being 554th in the US male rankings to being among the highest-ranked ‘female’ swimmers in the US.

Let us never forget that anatomy and biology give unfair advantages to biological males competing in women’s sports.

More than this it erodes meritocracy, telling women that no matter how hard they work they will never reach the top, that a biological man will always run faster or swim quicker – taking the top prize.

This cannot be the legacy that our generation leaves for the next.