Rosemary Auchmuty is a UK-based historian, author, sex segregationist, and anti-transgender activist.
Background
According to the 1994 book The Chalet School Revisited, Rosemary Auchmuty was born in Egypt in 1950 to an American birth parent and Irish seminal parent, and grew up in Australia. Auchmuty was educated at Newcastle Girls’ High School, then attended Australian National University, earning a bachelor’s degree in 1971 and a doctorate in 1975. Auchmuty moved to London in 1978. Auchmuty then studied law, earning a bachelor’s degree from University of Westminster University of Westminster in 1985 and a master’s degree in 1989.
Auchmuty taught history and gender studies at the University of Westminster from 1989 to 2007, then toook an appointment at University of Redding in 2007.
Auchmuty teaches property law and writes on sexuality, marriage/civil partnership, feminist legal history, and feminist approaches to law. Auchmuty co-founded the Lesbian History Group in 1984 and has written two books on girls’ school stories. Auchmuty edited Great Debates in Gender and Law (Palgrave, 2018) and co-edited Women’s Legal Landmarks (Hart, 2018).
Anti-trans activism
In the 1996 book Lesbians Talk Transgender, Auchmuty stated:
Transsexuals … don’t have a woman’s past. They weren’t brought up as women and because so much of the women’s movement was premised on personal experience and sharing that experience and theorizing out of that, feminists argued for [the] exclusion of transsexuals. The other reason is the practical experience of actually being in groups with transsexuals … It’s very difficult for people to lose the habits of their gender upbringing. Male-to-female transsexuals in women’s groups dominate, in my experience. In this society women have little enough space and time for their voices to be heard (Auchmuty quoted in Nataf, 1996: 37-38).
In 2018, Rosa Freedman and Rosemary Auchmuty laid out their view in The Guardian: “Although trans advocates conflate sex and gender or use them interchangeably, we insist that only by maintaining them as separate categories will we be able to reconcile the concerns of both those who identify as transgender and those who are women as defined and protected by the Equality Act.”
Also in 2018, Auchmuty outlined three objections to self-identification for transgender people:
We oppose self-identification for three reasons. First, it misunderstands the purpose of the law, which is to ensure that the same human rights and protection from discrimination are implemented for trans people as for everyone else. Second, it elevates gender identity above other protected categories, especially women and religious groups. Third, we contend that, given men’s history of oppressing women, self-identification could make it too easy for opportunist men to declare themselves to be women in order to access women’s spaces and rights, and could actually put women in danger.
Auchmuty and Rosa Freedman contributed a chapter titled “Sex and Gender in Law” in the 2023 anti-trans book Sex and Gender: A Contemporary Reader.
References
Sullivan, Alice; Todd, Selina [Eds.] (2023). Sex and Gender: A Contemporary Reader. Taylor & Francis, ISBN 9781032261195
Auchmuty, Rosemary (February 14, 2022). Lesbian History, Trans History, by Professor Rosemary Auchmuty. Reading History https://unireadinghistory.com/2022/02/14/lesbian-history-trans-history-by-professor-rosemary-auchmuty/
Alex Sharpe and Rosemary Auchmuty (October 5, 2018 ). What would changes to the Gender Recognition Act mean? Two legal views. The Conversation https://theconversation.com/what-would-changes-to-the-gender-recognition-act-mean-two-legal-views-103204
Julian Norman, Alex Sharpe, Rosa Freedman, Rosemary Auchmuty, Stephen Whittle, Maureen O’Hara and Peter Dunne (October 19, 2018). ‘Shifting sands’: six legal views on the transgender debate. The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/oct/19/gender-recognition-act-reforms-six-legal-views-transgender-debate
Rosa Freedman and Rosemary Auchmuty (Aug 17, 2018). Women’s Rights and the Proposed Changes to the Gender Recognition Act. Oxford Human Rights Hub https://ohrh.law.ox.ac.uk/womens-rights-and-the-proposed-changes-to-the-gender-recognition-act/
Rosa Freedman and Rosemary Auchmuty (September 14, 2018). Never mind reforming the Gender Recognition Act, there’s no need for Gender Recognition Certificates at all. Feminist Current https://www.feministcurrent.com/2018/09/14/never-mind-reforming-gender-recognition-act-theres-no-need-gender-recognition-certificates/
Nataf, Zachary I (1996). Lesbians Talk Transgender. Scarlet Press, ISBN 978-1857270082
Media
Guild of One-Name Studies (Jul 31, 2022). Researching Women and the Law – Prof Rosemary Auchmuty (University of Reading). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFtnueUksU8
Resources
University of Reading Law (reading.ac.uk/law)
- Rosemary Auchmuty
- reading.ac.uk/law/our-staff/rosemary-auchmuty
LinkedIn (linkedin.com)