This comes just a day after a landmark LGBTQ+ conference was cancelled
Boris Johnson has said that he does not believe people born as biological men should be able to compete in biological women’s sporting events.
Speaking during a visit to a hospital in Welwyn Garden City on Wednesday, the PM was addressing issues such as the government’s ban on conversion therapy (announced back in 2021), before commenting on transgender cyclist Emily Bridges, who was recently blocked from participating in her first elite women’s race.
According to the BBC, Johnson said: “I don’t think biological males should be competing in female sporting events. Maybe that’s a controversial thing to say, but it just seems to me to be sensible.”
He went on to add: “I also happen to think that women should have spaces – whether it’s in hospitals, prison or changing rooms – which are dedicated to women. That’s as far as my thinking has developed on this issue.”
He also went on to note that while he accepts this may put him in conflict with many people’s opinions, it does not mean he isn’t “immensely sympathetic to people who want to change gender”, assuring his support for people wanting to live out the lives they desire.
Johnson’s comments come after the cancellation of a landmark LGBTQ rights conference following protests and boycotts by more than 1000 organisations over the government’s decision to exclude transgender people from any conversion therapy ban. That decision led to the government’s first LGBT+ business champion, Iain Anderson resigning on Tuesday.
Bridges isn’t the only trans athlete to prompt fierce debate of late, with swimmer Lia Thomas causing after she both won and was intimately stripped of her NCAA 500-yard freestyle title last month.
Thomas and Bridges, like now-retired Olympic athlete Laurel Hubbard in 2021, have become figures of fierce debate, with podcaster and commentator going so far as to label the issues as an “assault of women’s sports“.
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