Conservatives for Women
We need to know that the argument in favour of science, and against ideology, has been won, inside the party.
Written by Caroline Ffiske, one of the Directors of Conservatives for Women, 17 February 2025.
On Friday, the House of Commons hosted a debate to mark “LGBT+ History Month”. Why and when the House of Commons decided to embrace the dubious “+” is anyone’s guess.
The debate is worth
reading as Labour lays out its current thinking on everything from the proposed conversion therapy ban to the teaching of gender identity in schools.
However, it was the comments of the Shadow Minister for Women and Equalities, Mims Davies, which caught the attention of Conservatives.
Under the last Conservative Government, when Kemi Badenoch was the Minister with this brief, she and her team worked night and day to reverse the encroachment of ‘gender ideology’ across our public sector and institutions.
There is no science behind the idea of ‘inner gender identity’.The idea that it should be prioritised over sex in law, public policy, and day-to day life, has done immense damage - eroding free speech, women’s rights, child safeguarding, and the fundamental basis of our society in science and reason. Kemi Badenoch understands this. She has sought to reposition the Conservative Party, openly admitting it made ‘mistakes’ in the past, including in this area, and has emphasised that the Party is ‘under new leadership’.
In Friday's debate, it seemed that Mims Davies was not aligned with respect to her understanding of gender ideology and its impact. She proudly reminded people of how the previous Conservative government had used taxpayers' funds to promote gender ideology, including to school children.
Davies said “I am very proud of the work we did to ensure that anti-bullying schemes were rolled out for students in 2012, to support LGBT+ students.” We have been unable to find these 2012 schemes, but the follow-up anti-bullying schemes developed by the Conservatives were an important part of foisting gender ideology into schools and closing down dissent from parents and teachers.
In 2016 the Government allocated £3 million of taxpayers' funds to tackle
Homophobic, Transphobic, and Biphobic Bullying in schools.
Funds went to ten bodies, including the LGBT Consortium, the Proud Trust, and Stonewall, all of whom by this time were invested in the promotion of gender ideology. Stonewall tells school children that, not just a vulnerable few, but that “everyone" has a gender identity.
In 2021, the Government Equality Office announced a further
round of funding with, recipients this time including Equaliteach. The resulting resource remains publicly available and is valuable evidence for what gender ideologues believe is suitable for our schools and our children. It is worth looking at in
full.
Using taxpayers’ funds, Equaliteach promoted gender ideology to school children:
Equaliteach told schools they should compell speech - and affirm vulnerable children in new gender identities - setting a vulnerable few on a pathway to permanent damage:
Equaliteach told teachers that boys can use the girls toilets:
Equaliteach went so far as to warn schools not to work with groups who were then forming to fight gender ideology and protect children:
The Equaliteach material was so bad that the then new Minister for Women and Equalities, Liz Truss, publicly distanced herself from it. Liz Truss’s intervention, and her time as Minister, marked a turning point in the Conservative’s approach to gender ideology, a slow but serious reversion to science and sanity; one that continued under Badenoch and led to significant public policy advances, summarised here. (Key moments were Liz Truss saying no to 'gender self-ID' in the UK; three years later Badenoch and colleagues used Section 35 of the Scotland Act 1998 to halt the gender recognition bill in Scotland. Lines in the sand were finally drawn.)
In Friday's speech, Mims Davies also referred to “the first ever LGBT+ survey of the population … undertaken under the Conservatives” in 2017. This was another low point- signed off by Penny Mordaunt.
A Government document took seriously, terms emanating from teenagers and transgressors on the internet: ‘asexual and pansexual’, ‘non-binary and genderqueer’.
The document blithely played back an unfolding social tragedy, a drift into pseudoscience and body dysmorphia amongst teenage girls, and used anti-scientific language such as ‘assigned female at birth’, and elsewhere, 'cisgender'.
It casually reported that some children are transitioning at school.
Following through from the survey, the Government Equality Office published an LGBT Action Plan from which further gender ideology and pseudoscience became embedded in public policy.
But as above, Liz Truss, then Kemi Badenoch, began to turn the tide.
But now we need to know, with certainty, that the Conservative Party is completely committed to rejecting gender ideology and all its manifold harms, including serious medical harm for vulnerable children, and the undermining of dignity, privacy, and safety of women.
Our public policy and law must be based in science and reason - and the elementary truth that we are a sexed species and that sex matters in public policy and public life.
Mims Davies’ intervention on Friday sowed considerable doubt.
