Left-wing magazine boss says gender reforms will lead to bearded men exposing their penises to women

There has been a shocking backlash following the government announcing its plans to streamline and de-medicalise the process for changing gender.

Helen Lewis, the deputy editor of the New Statesman, wrote in The Times today to criticise the idea that people should be able to define their own gender.

Days after Jeremy Corbyn called for an overhaul of the 2004 Gender Recognition Act at the PinkNews Summer Parliamentary reception, the government announced it would move to allow transgender people to change their legal gender.

The current law requires trans people to pass a number of bureaucratic hurdles, wait two years and to submit to medical tests in order to change their legal gender.

Corbyn backed trans campaigners in calling for a ‘self-declaration’ system which would eliminate many of the obstacles.

But Lewis objected, comparing gender to nationality and stating that “you might feel British and wish to spend the rest of your life in Britain, but there’s still a formal process to go through to become a citizen.

“Crucially, once you’ve completed that process, you’re as British as someone who was born here.

“It’s not a perfect model, but it’s the least worst one we have.”

Unless you marry a British citizen, it takes five years to achieve naturalisation.

Writer and campaigner Juno Roche rubbished Lewis’s comments, drawing attention instead to the dangers faced by trans women all over the world.

“Whilst some speculate wildly about what may happen if trans people are allowed far more freedom in relation to self-identification and how dangerous they perceive us to be – as they do that, people, real people, trans people are dying.

“Look at the numbers globally of trans women – mainly TWOC (trans women of colour) – contracting HIV, through structural and systemic discrimination and societal neglect.

“Claims about us as perpetrators of crimes against women are factually wrong, but are also made out of pure and simple spite.”

The Sunday Times also sparked a negative reaction with the way in which it reported the government’s proposals this weekend.