Women’s voices being ‘silenced’, protesters warn
DOZENS of women gathered in Parliament Square yesterday to promote a campaign urging politicians to protect sex-based rights.
Women’s rights groups have joined forces to call on voters to grill political candidates over their views on the highly contentious issue of sex and gender identity.
The campaign, which was launched in last week’s Daily Mail, urges politicians to ‘Respect my sex if you want my X’ and has been dubbed the ‘most significant female movement since the Suffragettes’.
A crowd of about 150 marched from the statue of Emmeline Pankhurst in Victoria Tower Gardens to the statue of Millicent Fawcett in Parliament Square.
Heather Binning, of the Women’s Rights Network, one of three groups involved in the cross-party campaign, told the crowd they were going to ‘send a message to politicians of all parties’.
‘This movement is uniting women across the country in a way that has not been done for over 100 years,’ she said. ‘Then the rally cry was “votes for women”, today it should be “voices for women” – because our voices have been silenced.’ The campaign is being led by Maya Forstater, co-founder of the group Sex Matters and a tax expert whose employment tribunal battle led to a landmark ruling last year that ‘gender-critical’ beliefs are protected by equality law.
That ruling led Harry Potter author JK Rowling to become embroiled in a bitter online debate over transgender rights when she tweeted #IStandWithMaya.
Caroline Ffiske, of Women Uniting, the third group involved in yesterday’s march in Central London, told The Mail on Sunday they will be ‘challenging candidates from all political parties to make a statement on sex-based rights’.
She added: ‘We will be asking: “Do you know what a woman is? Will you defend women’s sexbased rights? Will you protect single-sex spaces? Will you prioritise sex over gender?”
‘Simple questions all politicians should be able to answer.’