You can’t change your sex, says IVF pioneer

HUMANS can undergo ‘ mutilating operations’ to change their gender – but it is impossible to change their sex, Lord Winston has said.

The IVF pioneer sparked a ‘woke’ backlash when he argued sex was ‘genetically determined’ while sympathising with those who are concerned about gender-neutral toilets and trans women competing alongside other women in sporting events.

‘We can change our gender,’ the Labour peer told Piers Morgan on his TalkTV show Uncensored.

‘We can do it by mutilating ourselves. We can remove bits of our body and change our shape and so on, but you can’t change your sex because that is embedded in your genes in every cell of your body.

‘That becomes a problem because of course occasionally you end up with somebody who is born a male but then wants to become a female so you can have that mutilating operation but then the question is, should they be allowed to compete in sport because they still have some male characteristics that will give them an edge over other women?

‘That is where the problem really lies. And social behaviour in different situations, using toilets, using bathrooms which understandably worry women.’

Lord Winston’s comments come amid the ongoing debate over the definition of a woman. The Church of England refused to offer one and Labour’s Sir Keir Starmer has said it was wrong to claim that only women could have a cervix.

Lord Winston, pictured, described a woman as a ‘female’ defined by her genes. ‘I am a clump of about eight trillion cells at least – each of which of those cells has got my maleness in it,’ he said. ‘I’m defined genetically – every single cell has those male genes.

‘We cannot escape the fact that we are genetically determined in that way.’

India Willoughby, Britain’s first transgender newsreader, condemned the ‘ horrendous’ comments and accused the professor of fuelling ‘ignorance, contempt and hostility for individuals who are born a particular way, through no fault of their own, who just want a normal life’.

A Twitter user wrote: ‘I’m not gonna lie, Robert Winston coming out as a terf [trans-exclusionary radical feminist] is upsetting to me.’ Another wrote: ‘Really rancid stuff, a straight-up expression of disgust repeated throughout the interview.’