If the Law Commission had proposed, a few years ago, to expand the workings of hate crime legislation to cover the impact of threats and violence against women, it seems likely that most women would have welcomed it. So it must seem surprising that when the Law Commission does announce a consultation covering this very matter (now live - and ending on December 24) a group of women would question the merits of such a move. The reason is, of course: 'gender politics'. Increasingly in legislation and in the workings of the public sector, sex and gender are being conflated and confused. Many women regard this as profoundly harmful to women. 

We share these concerns. Our group, Conservatives for Women, was formed precisely because of our concerns about 'gender politics'. We know that sex is binary and immutable. We respect people's gender expression but we know that is does not change their biological sex. We know that 'sex matters' for women's safety, dignity, and privacy. We know that it matters for our sport. It matters for our single sex spaces. It matters for service delivery, particularly services associated with our health and our safety. We also believe that the idea of 'gender identity' is harming vulnerable children and young adults who come to believe that a sense of inner gender identity can trump their biological sex. The High Court agrees with us.

We also believe that gender ideology is causing wider harm, challenging the basis of our society in science, reason, free speech and open debate. This is because, in recent years, our ability to discuss these very matters has been seriously challenged. As 'gender identity' has increasingly been said to equate to, or even to trump, biological sex, and women have raised voices in concern, we have been told that this is hateful. Hate crime legislation and College of Policing (CoP) guidance deem 'transgender' status to be one of 'five protected characteristics'. Legislation and CoP guidance create a category of incidents called 'hate incidents' and set a very low bar for what these are. Covering the protected characteristics: race, religion, sexual orientation, transgender status, disability; a hate incident is ‘any non-crime incident which is perceived, by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by a hostility or prejudice against a person’ who has, or is perceived to have, one of the characteristics. Further, no matter how insignificant a 'hate incident' might appear to be, College of Policing guidance requires the police to record such incidents. So what this means is that ANYONE can accuse anyone else of a 'hate incident' and the person targeted will receive a police record. Worse, the police do not tell the victim of the allegation that a record is held. Even worse, the victim of the allegation has no ability to clear their name, should they become aware of the charge. This is because no 'crime' has been committed. They have been smeared without recourse. This cuts to the heart of the British justice system and the rule of law. It is an ancient principle that we are innocent until proven guilty. 

Bring these two strands together - gender ideology and the concept of 'hate incident' - and, as night follows day, women who challenge the conflation of sex and gender are being accused of hate. Women who state biological reality are being accused of hate. Women who fear a world where men can 'self-identify' into women's sports, safe spaces, service delivery, are being accused of hate. Our ability to speak about matters which are of fundamental importance to how we live is being challenged.

Into this situation steps the Law Commission Consultation on Hate Crime. You can read a good summary of its very wide remit here. 

What concerns us is its proposed conflation of sex and gender as a new additional protected characteristic. For all the reasons outlined above. If these two are the same, treated in our law as the same, how can women re-assert their difference? How can we speak about the reality and immutability of biological sex? The legitimacy of single sex services and spaces? Our concerns over vulnerable children prioritising new found gender identities over their biological sex? For doing this, we do not deserve to be accused of hate; we do not deserve police records, we will not tolerate being told not to speak.

We urge those who share these concerns to respond to the Law Commission consultation. 

While the Commission does not specifically consult about the actual concept of hate incidents, which gives us such concern, we found sections where we could outline our views. We pointed out what we have said above. The low bar set for the identification of a 'hate incident' allows people to report others to the police simply because they feel like doing so. For women who must be able to publicly discuss their sex based rights this has a chilling effect. It is wrong. Conservatives for Women told the Commission that these are our views. 

Action

The issue around sex and gender arises at questions 11 and 14 of the consultation. If you wish you can skip through to these without answering the rest - and the whole process need only take fifteen minutes.

• Question 11 says '"We provisionally propose that gender or sex should be a protected characteristic for the purposes of hate crime law." Do consultees agree?' [Note that in this question, gender or sex are treated as a single 'characteristic'.]
• Question 14 says: 'We provisionally propose a protected category of “sex or gender” rather than choosing between either “gender” or “sex” if hate crime protection were to adopt a general approach.' Do consultees agree?

The way these two questions are posed creates a muddle. Should a respondent use the first question to say whether they want sex, gender, neither, or both protected - and the second to say which? We cannot solve this muddle and it will make rather a tangle in the responses. We just decided to tell the Commission what we think along the lines set out below. We urge you to do the same, in your own words, from the heart.

The Commission may spot and reject 'copy and paste' answers.  If you wish, you could answer both questions with your same response, inspired by the following points:

• We object to sex and gender being a combined protected characteristic. Sex is binary and immutable. Gender refers to self-expression or self-identity - we would argue it is infinite. You cannot conflate the binary and the infinite. It makes no sense to do so. If these are the same characteristic, how can we discuss their difference, how can we discuss how and why the difference matters? Our freedom to explore gender expression cannot and must not be used to create an inference in law that a person is the biological sex which they are not. Nor can there be an inference in law that gender and sex are the same thing, interchangeable, when they are not.

• Women's single sex spaces must be protected for reasons of safety, dignity, privacy. Women's single sex sports must be protected for reasons of fairness and safety. Women's rights to receive services from other women must be protected, in health services, from the police, in emergencies, and in matters involving any degree of intimacy. Women must retain the right to discuss these matters and not be accused of hate. Men and women must retain the right to ask of another human being; are you male or female; and not be accused of hate. Men and women must retain the right to speak freely of matters to do with sex and gender and not be accused of hate. These rights are fundamental. To encroach upon them not only threatens the safety, dignity, privacy of women but also threatens the basis of our society in reason, science, free speech, and our the continued exploration of the truth and what it means to be human. Because of the low bar set for the nature of a 'hate incident', and in order that we are able to continue to speak about these matters, our preference is that neither sex nor gender becomes protected characteristics. There is too much at stake. 

• Further, we consider that the Law Commission should consult again with the intention to remove the category of hate incident and focus its efforts on addressing real crime, particularly those impacting women.