David Challenor was convicted on Monday 20th August of the rape and torture of a 10-year-old girl, and was sentenced to 22 years in prison. He is the father of Aimee Challenor, a transwoman who was, until this was revealed running for deputy leadership of the Green Party, and who had appointed David Challenor as election agent for the General Election in 2017 and local election in May 2018.

FiLiA infers no connection between the father’s crime and Aimee Challenor’s self-identification as a woman, nor does it suggest Aimee Challenor is responsible for David Challenor's actions.

It holds Jonathan Bartley and Caroline Lucas, co-leaders of the Party, accountable for promoting Aimee Challenor to Equality Spokesperson, of embedding gender identity rather than sex discrimination in their equality policies, and thus of failing to name male violence. Aimee Challenor’s manifesto for LGBTIQA+ human rights is partisan with regard to rights, amplifying transgender and gay rights, ignoring lesbian rights i.e. biological women’s rights to same-sex attraction. The Party's LGBTIQA+ twitter account, until earlier this year, was promoting a list of 28,503 blocked twitter accounts in order to stifle women’s (and some men’s) criticism. Challenor assembled, maintained and tweeted the list of twitter accounts to block, and continuously used the offensive, demeaning and inaccurate term 'TERF'. 

Clearly the Green Party has two completely different approaches to what can be said in the name of ‘standing up to what matters’. Challenor has not been suspended for a clear misjudgement in appointing a man accused of child rape as election agent. In contrast the Party jumped with alacrity to suspend a gender critical woman party member for asserting the fact that a transwoman is biologically male and that he is misogynistic if he claims that the female reproductive system is irrelevant to being a woman.

The case of Aimee Challenor highlights more than a problem deep at the heart of the Green Party, but of ALL UK political parties. All Parties vehemently defend the transactivist claim that transwomen are women; unreservedly support the proposed reforms to the GRA (2004) in favour of sex self-identification; and, in the name of alleged progressivism, diversity and inclusion, impugn as reactionary those women who do not believe male bodied human beings are female or who warn of the dangers of law reform.

If the law is reformed David Challenor’s victim will have no recourse as a traumatized girl other than to share all intimate public spaces with male-bodied human beings, further violating her right to body boundaries. Nevertheless, women who point out such examples, and/or find it distressing to share personal space with men who are strangers, not only risk being tarred as transphobic, or accused of hate speech, but their claim to rights violation may soon be overridden by a law that ratifies as fact human beings with penises are female if their owners say so. The Green Party does not ‘stand up for democracy’, but on the contrary, in permitting a 20-year-old Equalities Spokesperson to propel a misogynistic agenda and to insult women with impunity if they dare question queer ideology, the Party has spectacularly failed to implement its own declared aims, namely dignity, equality, social justice and human rights for all. 

Dr. Heather Brunskell-Evans
FiLiA Spokeswoman

The Government is currently running a consultation on Reform of the Gender Recognition Act (2004) which can be found  HERE (deadline 11pm on the 19th October 2018)