{"id":288124,"date":"2025-04-23T04:46:06","date_gmt":"2025-04-23T04:46:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/23\/chris-mason-gender-debate-has-changed-but-its-not-over-yet\/"},"modified":"2025-04-23T04:46:07","modified_gmt":"2025-04-23T04:46:07","slug":"chris-mason-gender-debate-has-changed-but-its-not-over-yet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/23\/chris-mason-gender-debate-has-changed-but-its-not-over-yet\/","title":{"rendered":"Chris Mason: Gender debate has changed but it’s not over yet"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Chris<\/div>


\n<\/p>\n

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In nearly 25 years in daily journalism, I have never known another issue quite like it.<\/p>\n

The arguments over sex and gender, trans and women’s rights have a passion, an anger and often a toxicity on both sides greater in their intensity than those over the Iraq war two decades ago, or Brexit in more recent years.<\/p>\n

The abuse and vitriol that fly into my inbox every time I report on it are really quite something.<\/p>\n

Last week’s decision by the Supreme Court was a landmark moment in this debate, providing the prism through which arguments will now be conducted.<\/p>\n

But it won’t mark an end to those arguments, as a debate in the Commons on Tuesday evening proved.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The Conservative benches were packed and the Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, took the unusual decision to answer for her party herself, something she would normally do in response to a statement from the prime minister rather than any other minister.<\/p>\n

It was clear why she wanted to do so, displaying a greater confidence and sense of self-assurance than at any point since she became Conservative leader last autumn.<\/p>\n

Some of her own MPs have grumbled privately that she has lacked oomph and cut-through in her opening months in the job.<\/p>\n

She wasn’t lacking oomph this time, arguing the Supreme Court had vindicated what she had long argued, and pretty much saying “I told you so” to the Labour Party.<\/p>\n

And yes, Labour in recent years, from Sir Keir Starmer down<\/a>, have been in something of a bind on this issue, frequently tangled in anguish when confronted by questions such as “Can a woman have a penis?”<\/p>\n

Many senior Labour figures regarded such questions as reductive and trivialising and wanted to be openly thoughtful about the rights of trans people.<\/p>\n

They maintain, as do the Conservatives, that they still are, but it is also true that the Labour leadership’s position is the opposite of what it was.<\/p>\n

The Supreme Court’s decision prompts lots of questions<\/a> about the practicalities of what it concluded \u2013 for organisations large and small, public and private, trans people and others.<\/p>\n

It is far from the end of those debates, but they will look and feel different, in politics and in wider society, after that landmark moment just before Easter.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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In nearly 25 years in daily journalism, I have never known another issue quite like it. The arguments over sex and gender, trans and women’s rights have a passion, an anger and often a toxicity on both sides greater in their intensity than those over the Iraq war two decades ago, or Brexit in more […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":288125,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/1024\/branded_news\/385a\/live\/da002b10-1fd3-11f0-9060-674316cb3a1f.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[603],"tags":[1417,2790,2610,26870,9301],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288124"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=288124"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288124\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":288126,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288124\/revisions\/288126"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/288125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=288124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=288124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=288124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}