Excluding trans women who don’t ‘pass’ from women’s toilets is cruel

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They want to exclude those trans women who don’t pass as women, and will never know or care about those who do (iStock)

Maya Forstater and others want to exclude trans women from women’s toilets. Would they welcome trans men?

I suspect that the presence of bearded, gruff-voiced blokes might worry them. Or perhaps they think all trans people should use the men’s toilets?

I know from personal experience that a row of men at a urinal can find it very disconcerting when they see a woman in the mirror. And the real threat to a trans woman’s safety in those circumstances is surely greater than the imagined threat of a non-trans man abusing equality legislation to gain entrance to women’s spaces.

Of course, Ffiske, Forstater and Binning are not asking to see original birth certificates at the door to the loos. They want to exclude those trans women who don’t pass as women, and will never know or care about those who do. That is just cruel.

Rachael Padman

Newmarket, Suffolk

Tommy Robinson’s very short holiday

Whatever one thinks of Tommy Robinson, his entry into Mexico being refused followed by his deportation from Mexico when on a family holiday is ridiculous and an infringement on his civil liberties.

In a video he posted from his detainment area in Mexico, he conjectures that it was because of his views on Islam.

Can someone not have a view on religion without being persecuted for it? Is this the New Inquisition? One is reminded of Ian Paisley Sr’s views on the Pope, for example. Apparently, at a loyalist rally in 1969, he said that Catholics “breed like rabbits and multiply like vermin”.

I recall Noam Chomsky saying the Bible was “probably the most genocidal book in the literary canon”.

We have laws against religious hatred and incitement to violence. These laws should be followed and those breaking them should be charged and given their day in court. But it’s wrong to condemn someone for the person they are perceived to be or for comments it is assumed they will make.

Tommy Robinson was travelling to Mexico with his children for a holiday in Cancun. By persecuting these individuals, we are collectively constructing a society that will eventually take away everybody’s freedoms unless we make a stand at some point along the way.

Louis Shawcross

County Down, Northern Ireland

Cost-of-living crisis

If the Tories can’t – or won’t – help more than 2.5 million British citizens, taxpayers and voters to put enough food on the table and warmth in their homes for themselves and their kids, in the worst cost-of-living crisis in nearly a lifetime, then what is the point of them?

Ian Henderson

Norwich

Salt into wounds

Just when you thought that the “Nasty Party” couldn’t get any nastier, they prove us wrong.

The chancellor’s spring statement was merely rubbing salt into the wounds of those already suffering acute poverty and ensuring that many more would join them in the food bank queues.

The so-called help with energy costs is both totally inadequate and designed to plunge people further into debt given that part of it is effectively a loan to be repaid.

The only hope is that those Tory backbenchers with a conscience, such as David Davis, are correct in assuming that this government’s fiscal policies will come back to bite them at the next general election.

Unfortunately, this is a long time to wait for those millions suffering abject poverty and the lasting trauma that this is bound to cause. In addition, even if we get a government of a different hue, it will still take some time to reverse the legacy left by this cruel and unfeeling administration.

David Felton

Cheshire

Tolerance and understanding

Your regular contributor to the letters pages, Dr Munjed Farid Al Qutob, expresses sentiments with which I often agree. His opinion that we are already in a third world war is almost certainly correct.

The invasion of Ukraine by Putin has been on the cards for a long time. Russia is a very powerful nation, most of whose citizens seem to be thoroughly brainwashed, and with a long history of suppression and acceptance of dictatorship.

China, too, keeps the lid on its population’s opinions. Both these nations are bubbles waiting to burst. Elsewhere in the world, conflicts show no signs of resolution, right-wing ideologies are gaining footholds everywhere and the chaos of climate change is starting to make itself felt.

At this point in the evolution of planet earth, humanity needs tolerance, understanding and cooperation from all quarters if it is to survive. This appears to be the opposite of what is happening at present.

Steve Edmondson

Cambridge

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Lord of the Rings

The news from Ukraine shows Russian armed forces behaving like the orcs in Lord of the Rings, with their indiscriminate bombardment of cities and lawless killing and maiming of civilians. Yet Russians, unlike Tolkien’s orcs are not a brutish, aggressive and malevolent race – far from it.

This is what happens when evil takes root at the top. It spreads downwards – a common occurrence in autocratic regimes.

Roger Hinds

Surrey

Protecting the public

On Thursday’s Any Questions? on Radio 4, Robert Jenrick attempted to justify the Home Office’s ponderous approach to accepting Ukrainian refugees, by citing national security concerns.

He argued that the primary function of any government is to protect its citizens. Unfettered access could unwittingly allow the ingress of terrorists. Unfortunately, he did not explain how a cohort of mothers with young children and senior citizens fleeing a war zone posed a realistic threat.

However, the line about the government’s responsibility to protect its people might have been news to those who lost loved ones prematurely to Covid.

There was a dalliance with the philosophy of herd immunity at the beginning of the outbreak that contributed to seeding a nationwide infection prior to the first lockdown, and an ideological reluctance to enlist the assistance of local authorities, preferring to invest in expensive and less effective systems of tracking and tracing. We should also remember the failure to respond promptly to new variants and the hasty relaxation of restrictions.

So, in all, a significant percentage of the UK’s 165,000 coronavirus deaths were avoidable. But then again, sound bites may distract in the short term but real, effective governance actually requires equal measures of compassion, effectiveness and, perhaps most importantly, accountability.

Nigel Plevin

Somerset