“You’re not an ejaculator are you?” asked a woman who was probably about the age of the police officer’s mum. Another chimed-in: “You’re not a prostate-haver. I would imagine you refer to yourself as a man.” Stifling a smirk, the blushing constable stared hard at his notepad and asked what the demonstration was about. It was political; in defence of women’s right to be recognised as human.
On Friday, a crowd gathered to protest outside the medical journal the Lancet following a headline which referred to women as ‘bodies with vaginas’, the clumsy choice of language was an attempt to be trans-inclusive.
One of the organisers Katy Worley, who was sporting a purple dinosaur suit, said: “We are not ‘bodies with vaginas’ ‘menstruators’ or ‘cervix-havers’. Woman is not a dirty word.”
The group of over a hundred protesters moved from the offices of the Lancet to the Labour Party headquarters. During the Labour conference party leader Sir Keir Starmer offended many by rebuking Rosie Duffield MP for saying “only women have cervices”. Starmer’s folly was compounded by David Lammy MP who labelled feminists campaigning for sex-based rights as “dinosaurs”, describing them as seeking to “hoard rights.”
Worley told me: “I tore up my membership card over this, as did many others going to this protest. The dinosaurs at the top of the Labour party need to get a grip and realise this isn’t a fringe issue.” Worley was carrying model dinosaur eggs which she hoarded in pantomime fashion; written on the papier-mâché shells were phrases including ‘women-only prisons’, ‘crime statistics’ and ‘women’s sport’.
Another organiser Kellie-Jay Keen added: “Women across the country have had enough, we have been raising this issue for years and will not stop until the misogyny stops. Women are a biological and material fact – no amount of bullying or silencing will alter that.”
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