Sex-swap Savile member still part of the club
Mayfair establishment will have woman on books for first time after person who joined as man transitions
SINCE its founding in 1868 the Savile Club in Mayfair has only accepted men, but that near 150-year tradition will soon be broken after one of the club’s members announced they were transitioning their sex.
With the club indicating it will continue to keep the member among its ranks, it raises questions for other male or female-only institutions at a time when transgender status is becoming a more common phenomenon.
The governing committee at the Savile has ruled that the member, who is understood to be in his 30s and married with two young children, can continue to be a member once their transitioning process has completed, despite the club’s male-only membership policy.
It decided that because the individual in question had joined the club as a man he would remain a member regardless of the outcome of the process.
The decision is understood to have been met with widespread approval within the club. Jerry Hayes, the former MP and long-standing member of the Savile, said: “He’s not joining as a woman, he joined as a man.
“It would be unfair for a terrific, friendly guy to expel him from the club just because he’s become a woman. That was never considered.”
Mr Hayes, a practising barrister, added: “The rule is no woman can apply to join the Savile Club. This is not at all setting a precedent for who can become a member because this individual applied to join as a man.
“It’s been looked at by the committee. There’s been no issue about this. Other members have been perfectly fine about this. I’ve heard no dissent.”
The Savile was founded by a group of some of the most distinguished writers and artists of the time and included among its early members Henry James, Rudyard Kipling, HG Wells and Evelyn Waugh. Current members include Lord Lloyd-Webber, John le Carré and Edward Fox.
Nobody from the club’s committee was prepared to talk to The Sunday Telegraph about the issue. Julian Makone-Lee, the Savile’s secretary, said: “It is a matter of personal privacy which as a club we would naturally respect.”
Earlier this year a women-only Cambridge University college changed its policy to admit any students who “identify” as female.
Previously, Murray Edwards college required all applicants to be “legally defined as female”, but in October the college’s council approved an update to its entry criteria, stating that it will accept any student “who at the point of application identifies as a woman”.
The college, whose alumni include Sue Perkins, Claudia Winkleman and Tilda Swinton, states on its website that “with so much gender inequality still in the world there is a role for a college able to focus on outstanding young women, their learning and skills for life”. The change was made after a motion on transgender was passed by the college council, a group of academics and teaching fellows.
In a statement published after the vote, the council stated that it has “sympathy with the idea that gender is not binary” and that “narrow ow gender identities” are damaging to “wider society”.
Dr Joanna Williams, of the e University of Kent, criticised the decision, ion, stating: “If some women want to have e a womenonly space, if they choose to be there, they should have every right t to do that.
“To then learn that you’-re u-’re sharing your dormitory, your bathroom room with someone who is biologically y male is an infringement on your right to o choose the educational environment you u chose.”
In 2008 David Cameron, n, the then prime minister, resigned from om White’s, the oldest gentleman’s club in London, because it did not admit women as members.
Any decision on whether to change the rules at Savile’s to admit women as new members rests with the club’s committee, which could put it to the vote of the membership. In the past couple of years moves to admit women as members of the club have been rejected by as much as an 80- 80-20 20 majority.
Women are allowed to attend the club as guests of members or if they are running or taking part in events being staged at the Brook Street site.
‘It would be unfair for a terrific, friendly guy to expel him from the club just because he’s become a woman. That was never considered’
The all-male Savile Club has decided that one of its members can remain a member despite transitioning from male to female, on the grounds that he was a man at the time of joining. This is conservatism in a nutshell: adapting to change without changing the constitutional order. Although how the dress code will be maintained remains to be seen.
Clubs can innovate. Some have voted for women to join, others have allowed members to remove ties, even jackets. The most powerful tradition in clubland is not one of dress or gender but manners, and this is what has helped even the smallest, most exotic ones to survive, regardless of fashion. In 2008, David Cameron quit White’s in protest at its lack of female members. In 2017, Mr Cameron is gone from Westminster, but White’s is still there.