UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on trans debate, says women don’t have penises

UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has declared that women do not have penises amid an ongoing debate over transgender issues.

Mr. Sunak was speaking with the ConservativeHome website on Thursday when he was asked to weigh in on Labour leader Keir Starmer’s recent statement that “99.9% of women of course haven’t got a penis.”

Mr. Starmer had been facing questions over transgender self-identification when he made the comment to The Sunday Times earlier this month, insisting that there would be “no rolling back” of women’s rights if he were elected PM.

“Sir Keir said recently that ‘99% of women of course haven’t got a penis.’ What percentage would you put it at?” ConservativeHome editor Paul Goodman asked Mr. Sunak.

The PM laughed and said he had a “slightly different point of view to him on this”.

“I’ve been very clear that when it comes … on this topic, I think the first —” Mr Sunak began to respond.

“Do you think it’s 100%?”

Goodman interrupted.

“Yeah, of course,” Mr Sunak said.

“But I think the first thing to say is we should always have compassion and understanding and tolerance for those who are thinking about their gender.

“Of course we should, right? We’re a compassionate and understanding society and we’ll always remember that.”

Mr. Sunak continued that “when it comes to these issues of protecting women’s rights, women’s spaces, I think the issue of biological sex is fundamentally important when we think about those questions, I’ve said that repeatedly”.

Under Mr. Sunak’s government, Equalities Minister Kemi Badenoch is currently considering an amendment to the 2010 Equality Act that would specifically redefine “sex” as referring to biological sex — a move that would make it legal to ban transgender people from single-sex spaces such as hospital wards.

Ms. Badenoch has written to the Equality and Human Rights Commission seeking its advice on the proposed amendment.

“They’ve responded with some advice about the Equality Act and how it should think about biological sex, we’re in the process of looking at that,” Mr. Sunak said.

“But as a general kind of operating principle for me, biological sex is vitally, fundamentally important in these questions, we can’t forget that.

“And that’s why we need to make sure, particularly when it comes to women’s health, women’s sports or indeed spaces that we’re protecting those rights and those places.”

The issue of transgender “self-declaration” has made headlines in recent months after controversy over violent trans criminals being placed in women’s prisons in Scotland, including double rapist Isla Bryson.

Bryson, 31, who used to go by the name Adam Graham, committed two rapes while living as a man and only changed gender after being charged with the crimes.

The Scottish National Party was forced to institute a temporary ban on transgender inmates with a history of violence against women from being placed in female jails amid the public outcry.

But the uproar over Scotland’s gender policy was cited by some commentators as the key contributor to the downfall of First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, who resigned in February citing the toll on her health.

In a car crash interview announcing the policy U-turn prior to her resignation, Mr Sturgeon claimed she had nothing to apologise for.

When asked if she believed “all trans women are women”, Ms Sturgeon said, “Trans women are women but … there are circumstances in which a trans woman will be in the male prison estate because of the nature of the crime.”

Asked if women born women should be in a male prison, she said, “I don’t think there are circumstances there.”

Harry Potter author JK Rowling was among the vocal critics of Ms. Sturgeon.

Women’s rights campaigners like Rowling, dubbed Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists, or TERFs, are often targeted for criticism.

“Excluding women from women’s prisons because they’ve got penises, male pattern baldness and have committed a couple of rapes seems awfully TERFy to me,” she wrote on Twitter.

In his interview with The Sunday Times on the issue of women’s rights, Mr. Starmer conceded that “there is a fear that somehow there could be the rolling back of some of the things that have been won”.

“There are still many battles that need to go ahead for women and I don’t think we should roll anything back,” he said.

The Labour leader said “99.9% of women of course haven’t got a penis” but added there were a “very small number” of people who identify as a different gender to the one they were born with.

He called for an end to the “toxic divide” over trans issues.

“They need legal support and a framework,” he said.

“Most people don’t disagree with that, and that’s the framework within which we ought to look at these issues.

“But simply turning it into a toxic divide advances the cause of no one — the cause of women or those that don’t identify with the gender that they were born into.”

It came after he said in late March that “I think that if we reflect on what’s happened in Scotland, the lesson I take from that is that if you’re going to make reforms, you have to carry the public with you.”

“And I think that’s a very important message, and I think that’s why it’s clear that in Scotland there should be a reset of the situation,” he said.

Earlier this month, New Zealand’s new Prime Minister Chris Hipkins went viral after struggling to define the term “woman” at a press conference.

Journalist Sean Plunket asked the question in light of Mr Starmer’s comments and the recent visit by anti-trans activist Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull.

“To be honest, that question has come out of left field for me. The biology, sex, gender,” Mr Hipkins said, before taking a long pause.

“People define themselves, people define their own genders.”