Cis baron trans woman
Heads he wins tails she loses. More on that hereditary baron trans woman guy, this time from Sam Leith at the Spectator:
Matilda Simon has applied to contest the next by-election for hereditary peers, in the hope of taking her hereditary seat as Baron Simon of Wythenshawe.
Waltzing Baron Matilda.
Matilda began life as Matthew Simon – becoming on the death of her (then his) father the second Baron Simon of Wythenshawe. But she has since transitioned and become Matilda Simon. And the Lord Chancellor last week approved her claim to the peerage and therefore gave her permission to stand the next time a seat becomes vacant among the hereditaries in the Lords. (That hereditary peers now have to stand for election is the peculiar result of the half-grasped nettle of Lords Reform.)
It’s hilarious in a way. On the one hand – get with the times, people, a man is a woman if he says he is. On the other hand Please sir can I have my claim to the peerage approved? A hyper-progressive reactionary or a hyper-reactionary progressive? Only his sister knows for sure.
If Matilda Simon is a woman, she doesn’t qualify to inherit a male peerage. Indeed, if she’s a progressively minded person you might wonder why she’s so keen to take advantage not only of a hereditary membership of the upper house, but of the still more reactionary custom of male primogeniture. In so doing, be it noted, she leapfrogs her elder sibling Margaret – who as a natal woman is unable to inherit the title.
Firstborn Margaret can’t have the title because she’s a woman, but Matthew can even though he’s a woman, albeit the fake kind. Anyway, whatever you do, don’t misgender him.
The very principle of hereditary peerage – to enshrine power through an immutable accident of birth — is directly at odds with the identitarian notion that you can be who you damn well please, and it’s nobody’s business but yours.
The trick is to do them in sequence. Do one, then wait a few minutes, then do the opposite. It sounds odd but it works.
The fact that the relevant law specifically considered this very situation and permits it is a bit of a tell as well. I wonder exactly how many Peers have a secret hankering to transition, but didn’t want to loose their archaic privilege?
Could just be that Debrett’s would call this ‘having your cake and eating it too.’
Rob@1
I suspect that originally it was to prevent firstborn women like Margaret from declaring themselves transmen and thereby claiming the seats. That it also allows natal doods to retain their privilege is just a happy side-effect.