Who’s been educating the Education Secretary? If ‘what is a woman?’ was an exam question, Mr S is certain Gillian Keegan would’ve flunked the test — given her abysmal performance on the BBC’s Today programme this morning…
The Education Secretary was on the airwaves today after she wrote for the Sun on the government’s plans to reform sex education in schools. Speaking to interviewer Emma Barnett, Keegan’s first slip-up came when the discussion turned to the issue of educating children about gender identity, one of the areas on which her education changes will focus. The Education Secretary confessed that she didn’t actually know how widespread the problem is — ‘It’s not something that we’ve gone and done a particular survey of,’ she admitted — to Barnett’s horror. ‘That’s staggering,’ replied the programme host to an undaunted Keegan.
But if listeners thought that was the most excruciating part of the interview, they were in for a shock. The Education Secretary was then quizzed about on what she believes a woman is, after some well-publicised U-turns on the matter. In December 2020, Keegan responded to a question from an LGBT+ group with a statement claiming ‘trans women are women’ and that trans people should have equal access to ‘safe spaces’. Last month, Keegan revealed the extent of her volte face in a Telegraph interview where she agreed she’d stop using the phrase that ‘trans women are women’, adding that since 2020 she has ‘learnt a huge amount more about this complex and challenging subject’.
Er, learned what, exactly? Keegan’s case unravelled rather dramatically on the airwaves this morning in a rather mortifying exchange:
GK: I’ve always known that trans women aren’t women.
EB: But you wrote that trans women are women. I’ve got it in front of me when you wrote it.
GK: I’ll go into the details because I did think about it. Somebody who has changed their gender, who has changed from a man to a woman, has gone through the full reassignment, is who I had in my head at that time. So we were not all aware of the various campaigns and all the various groups. And of course, somebody that was a man, that has transitioned, that has fully transitioned is known as a woman.
EB: So you do still think that? So you do still think that a man that has transitioned — a trans woman — is a woman? You’ve just said that.
GK: There’s a huge difference between self-identification, people who want to identify but still have a male body, biologically are male, and then there are a very, very small number of people — but I think we have to be really sensitive about these people and not lose them in this debate — who do have and have had gender reassignment and reassignment surgery and they have gone to a great deal of a lot of pain…
EB: Are they women?
GK: Well, this is what we should say. I personally believe if you’ve gone to that level… If you’ve got the gender recognition, you’ve got the reassignment, then you are legally and medically allowed to say you’re a woman.
Crikey. And this is the person in charge of the country’s education policy? Mr S isn’t sure anyone will be telling Keegan she’s done an ‘f***ing good job’ this time…
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