The “toxic” row around transgender rights harks back to old tropes that “gay men were paedophiles and predators” and the issue must be “humanised” again, a government minister has warned.
Mike Freer, MP for Finchley and Golders Green, said he wants to take the heat out of discussions around transgender healthcare and rights.
He criticised the debate around “body parts”, which is often used an argument to define transgender women, and he called on MPs to step up and be at the front of the issue.
“It gets me down that the debate is so toxic, and sometimes it feels like I am banging my head against the wall,” he told i. “I’ve said for a long time […] that it felt that we’d gone back to those days when all gay men were paedophiles or gay men were predators,” Mr Freer, who was appointed to the role in 2021, added.
“Some of it is fear of the unknown – they don’t know any trans people and don’t know the community. They don’t understand it because it’s just not within their world. And that’s a big job we’ve got to do working with the trans community.”
Politicians are regularly asked for their view on what constitutes a “woman” and whether gender is defined biologically, but Mr Freer argued this was not a helpful way of discussing the issue.
“One of the things I’ve been trying to avoid is this horrible debate on body parts,” he said. “I’m not going down that line because that dehumanises people.”
Mr Freer was one of several MPs to speak publicly about being gay during the 2013 debate on equal marriage, just three years after he was elected.
Equal marriage was subsequently legalised and he believes the personal stories shared by politicians marked a crucial turning point in the argument.
Now, he says MPs should not be afraid to speak openly about their own personal connections with transgender people, and other LGBT+ experiences.
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“We have many members of parliament who have got trans siblings, they’ve got trans children, they have got people in their family or wider network that are trans,” he said.
“In the equal marriage debate, originally a lot of the gay MPs thought we didn’t want to be at the forefront [of the conversation], let’s leave it to the allies.
“But actually if we don’t step up, who else will? That changed the tone of the debate because it allowed colleagues to see the like the human face of the issue.
“It’s much harder to attack and you help people understand, because they say ‘well, they’re just like you, they’re just like me’.
“And as I keep saying that equal marriage debate taught me that humanising the issue takes a lot of the heat out. So I’m trying to it’s a very personal decision to try and say to people, look, we need people to step forward.”
The Government awaits guidance from the independent Equality and Human Rights Commission on rules for single sex spaces.
But Mr Freer said it is important to publish clarification of the guidance to ensure there is protection for those who need it, and give people the confidence to push back if they feel they are being unfairly treated.
The transgender community has been seeking assurances due to the current law indicating they transgender people could be excluded from single-sex spaces only where it is a “proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim”.
