Penny’s trans ally ‘compared feminist writer to the Nazis’
A KEY backer of Penny Mordaunt’s bid to become Prime Minister is a militant transgender rights activist who once appeared to compare a feminist author to the Nazis.
Ms Mordaunt, who has been accused of backtracking over her views on trans rights, posed for a photograph with activist Sue Pascoe at a £50,000 garden party in Westminster last week.
A Mail on Sunday investigation can reveal that Ms Pascoe has launched strident online attacks against those who have raised concerns about the impact of transgender activism on women.
Last month she accused Helen Joyce, an author and director of campaign group Sex Matters, of advocating a ‘final solution’ for trans people – an apparent reference to the Holocaust.
In an online discussion with another feminist campaigner, Ms
‘Imagine seeing Nazism used as a cheap gotcha’
Joyce, 53, said it was important to reduce the number of people changing their genders while women’s groups lobby ministers over the increasingly complex issue.
‘In the meantime while we’re tring to get through to the decisionmakers we have to try to limit the harm,’ she said. ‘And that means reducing or keeping down the number of people who transition.’
In response, Ms Pascoe wrote in a tweet to Boris Johnson and Oliver Dowden, the then Tory Party Chairman, that the Conservatives should have ‘nothing further to do with her or her “final solution”’.
Ms Joyce last night branded Ms Pascoe’s comments ‘absolutely disgraceful’ and said she should be disciplined by the Tory Party.
‘How that person is in a political party is beyond me and how a serious candidate [Ms Mordaunt] is willing to be anywhere near a person who speaks like that, is absolutely beyond me,’ she said.
‘Imagine being Jewish, and seeing the “final solution” and Nazism or the Holocaust to be used as a cheap gotcha. It’s disgraceful.’
Ms Pascoe denied comparing the author’s views to Nazism or Hitler’s Final Solution.
‘I didn’t mention anything about Nazis,’ she said. ‘It’s her [Joyce’s] final solution… You just read out what she wanted to do to stop people transitioning. I meant “her final solution”. She described stopping the transition of trans people.’
Ms Pascoe is one of the highest profile trans activists in the Tory Party. She was born Graham Pascoe and lived as a man for 50 years before undergoing gender reassignment surgery in India.
A successful businessman, Mr Pascoe lived on a 40-acre farm in North Yorkshire with his wife and two children and was a former Master of a local Hunt. She was diagnosed with gender dysphoria in August 2014 and had gender correction surgery the following year.
A former Tory European Parliamentary candidate, Ms Pascoe is a staunch supporter of Ms Mordaunt whom she has met at least three times to discuss trans-rights issues.
Witnesses said the pair chatted for around five minutes at a party on Wednesday in College Garden, in the grounds of Westminster Abbey, which had been thrown by a charity run by Ms Mordaunt’s multi-millionaire PR guru Chris Lewis.
Ms Pascoe has also previously joined the blizzard of online attacks by trans activists against bestselling author J. K. Rowling. In response to an essay that the author wrote two years ago defending women’s rights, Ms Pascoe urged Ms Rowling to ‘desist in your behaviour’, adding: ‘You are causing great harm, anxiety and stress upon one of the most vulnerable groups of children in the country.’
A year earlier, Ms Pascoe likened curbs on trans women using female changing rooms and toilets to ‘apartheid South Africa’.
Meanwhile, it emerged last night that Britain’s first trans MP – Tory Jamie Wallis – is on the verge of announcing his public support for Ms Mordaunt.
‘Penny is a good friend and has been very supportive of me in my journey,’ he told the MoS.