Plaid row over ‘abhorrent’ trans remarks
AFORMER PLAID Cymru council candidate is facing a party disciplinary hearing after she offended transgender activists by stating on social media that people with penises are not women.
Anne Greagsby is originally from Northern Ireland, but now lives in Penarth.
Last year she stood unsuccessfully as a Plaid candidate for Vale of Glamorgan council and Penarth Town Council.
Ms Greagsby has stated on social media: “No woman has a penis”, “No female has a penis” and “Trans women are men”.
She protested at a Vale of Glamorgan council meeting against the authority’s Transgender Inclusion Schools Toolkit, which was introduced in April this year. According to the toolkit, schools will be encouraged to consider gender as a “spectrum which is wider than just male and female” and to avoid gender-specific activities where possible. It says that transgender pupils should also be able to select a PE group and wear uniforms which match their gender identity.
Writing on a blog called Transgender Trend in April, Ms Greagsby stated: “I think Anne Greagsby parents and school teachers and governors should be consulted before they go ahead teaching this unscientific dangerous nonsense.
“I am a woman and refuse to be renamed cis anything. This trans cult mania is being pushed on us by the porn industry and pharmaceutical industries and those who provide surgery. Our children must be allowed to live in the healthy bodies they were born with.”
“Cisgender” is a term used to denote the opposite of transgender, meaning “identifying as having a gender that corresponds to the sex one has been assigned at birth”.
Letters of complaint sent to Plaid Cymru have been leaked to us.
One, from Emyr Gruffydd, a member of the Plaid Cymru youth group Plaid Ifanc, states: “I noticed over the weekend that Anne Greagsby has responded to a tweet by Plaid Ifanc after we shared an article about transgender women. The wording was tasteless and insulting to transgender people in general (‘No woman has a PENIS’). Following this, looking closer at Anne Greagsby’s comments on Twitter, I came across examples of Anne insulting trans women further – I enclose an incredibly insulting tweet sent directly to a trans woman who spoke at a feminist event organised by Plaid Ifanc in June 2016. The tweet ... is an awful example of transphobia.”
Mr Gruffydd states that such conduct is “completely abhorrent to the core values of Plaid Cymru”.
He adds: “I am ashamed that a trans person has been insulted in such a manner by someone who is very outspoken about being a member of Plaid Cymru – this has the potential to be very damaging to Plaid Cymru amongst transgender people.”
A further complaint against Ms Greagsby has been made by Plaid’s chief of staff Mabli Jones, who states: “Anne Greagsby tweets with Plaid Cymru’s logo on her profile picture, which brings the party into disrepute in my opinion.”
Neither Ms Greagsby nor Plaid Cymru would comment.