Event: the London Marathon

Women who believe in biological sex are still being cast out of public life. I sang to thousands of runners yesterday at the London Marathon with my choir, which specialises in performing at running events. It’s the third year we’ve performed at the London Marathon, and I was excited to do it again. There’s nothing more joyful than supporting ordinary people to do extraordinary things – like running 26.2 miles to raise money for charity. I should know. I’ve run four London Marathons myself, raising thousands of pounds for charities including the Miscarriage Association, the Ectopic Pregnancy Trust and Bliss, the premature-baby charity. Yesterday, however, that joy was tinged with sadness. Although we did perform in the end, at Mile 15 in Limehouse, we had been due to perform at Mile 3 in Woolwich as part of disability charity Scope’s ‘cheer team’. But Scope had written to me just days earlier to say it no longer wanted us to take part. The reason? I don’t believe human beings can change sex and have said so publicly. Apparently, I had communicated this fact – which is, after all, biological reality – in a way that made people feel ‘alienated’. While Scope reversed the decision the night before the marathon, by then, all but one of our regular singers – who had been excited to take part – had decided not to. They hadn’t done anything wrong. Even Scope’s CEO accepted that in a call on Thursday afternoon, after I had written to him asking for the decision to be reconsidered, acknowledging we had done nothing beyond singing and encouraging runners over the past two years. But he wouldn’t budge. Bizarrely, he insisted my presence in the choir was a ‘distraction’, without explaining what that meant. Was he expecting me to shout…