Transgender matters
In August 2020,Duffield was criticised by several organisations,including Pride Canterbury and the equalities officers of the Canterbury Constituency Labour Party,for writing in a tweet that "only women have a cervix", [29] [30] [31] [32] with LGBT+ Labour calling on Labour leader Keir Starmer to "take action". [33] Duffield locked her Twitter account after a fake tweet attributed to her was circulated. [34] Labour MPs Jess Phillips, [35] Rachel Reeves and Wes Streeting supported Duffield,as did the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby,who tweeted that "she does not seek to demean others". [33]
On 14 August 2020,a lesbian woman,reported to be her only LGBT staff member,quit Duffield's team,saying that her stance was transphobic and had brought an influx of transphobic and homophobic mail to the MP's office in support of the remarks. [36] Duffield reasserted her commitment to reforming the Gender Recognition Act 2004 and to being a supporter of trans rights following the staff member's resignation. [37] In October 2020,a second member of Duffield's staff resigned citing the "overtly transphobic views" of the MP. Duffield was criticised by the GMB trade union for attempting to dox her former staff member by "attempting to reveal her identity on social media". [38]
On 27 July 2021,it was reported that the Labour Party would undertake an investigation into Duffield following complaints by LGBT+ Labour,after she liked a tweet by Kurtis Tripp,a gay American rapper,describing trans people as "mostly heterosexuals cosplaying as the opposite sex". [39]
In September 2021,in an interview on BBC Radio 4,Duffield said that:"There are men,activists,out there who are married to women who call themselves the Q word [queer],and they appropriate gay culture in a way that is deeply offensive to quite a lot in the gay movement,the gay rights movement." Her comments were cited in an article on biphobia in Pink News which said:"Comments like these invalidate the identity of bi/pan/queer men in different-gender relationships." [40] Talking to comedian and anti-transgender activist [41] [42] Graham Linehan in the same month,Duffield described non-binary gender as "choosing not to be male or female". She said that assigned female at birth non-binary people should be asked "Why are you rejecting mostly being female,being a woman?" [43]
Also in September 2021,Duffield said she would miss the Labour Party conference in Brighton on security advice. According to The Sunday Times ,she received online threats from transgender campaigners. Duffield discussed the abuse directed against her with House of Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle,Labour's Chief Whip Sir Alan Campbell and her local police. [44] Duffield told The Sunday Times that she mainly took the decision to miss the Party Conference "not because I really thought I was going to be attacked,but because I did not want to be the centre of attention." [45] Duffield later made an unexpected appearance to speak at a non-official fringe event at the party's conference hosted by the Labour Women's Declaration group. [46]
In October 2021,Duffield attended the first annual conference of the LGB Alliance –a group that has been described by the Labour Campaign for Trans Rights as "transphobic", [47] where she spoke on a panel about free speech alongside fellow MP Joanna Cherry. [48] In October 2022, The Daily Telegraph reported that,with fellow "gender critical" parliamentarians Joanna Cherry and Anne Jenkin,Baroness Jenkin of Kennington,she was setting up a cross-party "biology policy unit","to help ensure policies across the public sector that are based on gender identity theory are documented and scrutinised". [49]
Duffield said in a series of tweets in January 2022 that she was "considering her future in the Labour party very carefully" because of the "obsessive harassment" received by party members and a lack of support from the party leadership against the "constant stream of fictional and factional bile that is written about me". [50]
In 2020 several Labour groups called for the whip to be withdrawn from Duffield,stating her views are transphobic. [51] In October 2022,Labour Students,Young Labour and LGBT+ Labour urged the party to withdraw the whip from Duffield. Labour Students said that "Duffield's behaviour has gone beyond the pale and we echo LGBT+ Labour's calls that she should lose the whip" and that she has "consistently gone out of her way to damage the trans community,including appearing at the conference of an anti-trans lobbying group." [52] [53] In the same month Kent Labour Students issued a statement calling for her to lose the Labour whip and to be replaced as the Labour candidate at the next election. [54]
On 20 January 2023,Duffield wrote a column in which she stated that being a member of the Labour Party is like being in an "abusive relationship" and that she feels the party has a "woman problem" after she was criticised for voicing her opposition to the First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon's Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill. [55] [56]
In November 2023 it was reported by Kent Online that Duffield was being investigated by the Labour Party for alleged anti-Semitism for liking a tweet by Graham Linehan which itself was a response to a tweet by comedian Eddie Izzard. [57] The Times reported that Duffield had denied allegations of anti-semitism,stating that the tweet had been "sarcastically mocking" of Izzard's reference to trans people being targeted during the Holocaust. [58] Duffield issued a statement in January 2024,confirming that the complaint had been dismissed by the Labour Party's National Executive Committee. [59] [60]
