The following is my statement read out on my behalf at the Turn Up For Women event held at Parliament on the 3rd of May 2023.
Tamara
Discernment is vital to civilisation. Without discernment, rights cannot be protected, nor can true diversity be achieved.
As a person born with one hand, I have never looked down on the multitude of categories in para-sports – nor insisted that the rest of you call yourself two-armed persons. I am quite happy with myself and take on my challenges without requiring an obliteration of acknowledgement of the reality of my body and my history. It is my body, not my soul; it is my experience on this planet.
And our souls may well be greater than our human identities. They may be ageless in their wisdom and understanding.
A child’s soul may be as wise and knowledgeable as time itself. But when a child, our experience of a mind, a body and of emotions is that of a child.
Discernment of the differences between an adult and a child is vital for civilisation. Both child and adult experiences are particular and limited – they cannot live as though they are one another.
And our souls may indeed be both male and female in a fusion of qualities and energies.
But to experience physical life is to enter a limited and particular experience of reality.
When you experience physical life as a man, that is a particular and limited experience of life – however you choose to express your personality, your preferences, and your loves.
When you experience physical life as a woman, that is a particular and limited experience of reality. The reality of being female – whether our body is capable of bearing children, has reached menopause, or through a physical malady is unable to bear a child.
You cannot reduce us to menstruaters or chestfeeders – the experience of being a woman or a girl is too meaningful to dehumanise with such utilitarian and perfunctory language.
Womanhood and girlhood are too meaningful to be worn as a garment or as a colour preference. Too meaningful to market as a surgical procedure or drug prescription.
You say we are being cruel not kind. We say you do not understand true diversity.
Give trans people the right to enter their own sporting categories.
Give trans people the right to privacy and safety in their own public bathroom and changing facilities.
Give trans people the right to honestly say who they are safely in society.
But do not take these very same rights away from women and girls.
Women and girls who speak up to honour our mothers, grandmothers, and the uncountable line of women we are born from who suffered too long in their quest for the very rights you seek to take away from us now.
The right to privacy, to safety, to participation.
The right to speak.
The right to claim our identity as girls and as women.
Keep up to date with such events on the Speak Up For Women website.
Renwulf Author: Tamara Rendell
Tamara Rendell is the author of the mythological / historical fiction novels Realm of the Stag King and Realm of the Witch Queen and her poetry and stories collection Mystical Tides.
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