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British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak reiterated his stance on gender identity in a speech on Wednesday. He declared that it was “common sense” that “a man is a man and a woman is a woman” – a remark that drew criticism from transgender rights activists and loud applause from attendees at the Conservative party conference.
After promising to legislate that “sexual and sadistic” murderers would spend their lives in prison, Sunak listed other positions he said “shouldn’t be controversial,” including “Parents should know what happens to their children.” is taught about relationships in school.”
“Patients should know when people are talking about men or women in hospitals,” Sunak continued during his closing speech at his party’s annual meeting, held in Manchester this year. “And we shouldn’t allow ourselves to be bullied into believing that people can be any gender they want. You can’t. A man is a man and a woman is a woman – that’s just common sense.”
In April, Sunak made headlines for agreeing with a Conservative interviewer’s statement that all women – not 99 percent – “don’t have a penis.”
He adopted a less strident tone At the time, she explained that “we should always have compassion, understanding and tolerance for those who reflect on their gender,” but that “the issue of biological sex is fundamental” to women’s rights and spaces.
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In June, PinkNews, a British news outlet that reports on the LGBTQ+ community, accused Sunak of mocking trans women when it published what it said was a secretly recorded video of the prime minister speaking during a meeting with Conservative MPs.
In the video, a man believed to be Sunak can be heard making jokes about the Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey was “very busy” trying to “convince everyone that women definitely had penises.”
“You all know I’m a big fan of everyone learning math at 18, but it turns out we need to focus on biology,” the man in the video said.
A spokesman for the prime minister defended the comments, saying they were “a joke aimed at a political opponent rather than a specific group.”
While gender identity is a hotly debated topic among politicians in Britain, an Ipsos poll published in June found that most Brits believe transgender people face discrimination. A 2022 survey of around 5,000 Brits conducted by the think tank More In Common also found that 46 percent of respondents agreed that “a trans man is a man and a trans woman is a woman.” Less than a third said they disagreed.
After Sunak’s speech on Wednesday, India Willoughby, a prominent transgender news anchor, accused the prime minister of “putting people in danger and threatening their lives.” a video posted on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.
“We now have a British government and prime minister who have said they do not recognize trans people,” Willoughby said. “If you don’t recognize the existence of a group of people, then that group obviously has no rights.”
According to the Metropolitan Police Service in Greater London, more than 2,800 potential transgender hate crimes were reported between September 2001 and February 2022. The number of reported incidents increased significantly from the mid-2010s, jumping from 75 incidents in 2013 to 428 in 2021.