• I WAS disappointed to read the letter from Dee Searle in which she urges employers to sever connections with Stonewall, (Stonewall’s diversity programme has raised concerns, March 3).

Ms Searle displays a disturbing lack of knowledge of the current process of gender reassignment, in which trans+ people face a lengthy and, some would argue, demeaning medical process prior to a certificate of gender re-assignment being issued, including consultations with a psychiatrist and lengthy waiting times for those using the chronically-underfunded NHS gender identity clinics.

Quite how Ms Searle would be opposed to self-identification, which would rapidly cut both the time and cost to the taxpayer of this process is difficult to ascertain.

It is both a medically and legally-verified fact that trans+ women are women and vice-versa for trans+ men and I find Ms Searle’s reference to individuals’ genitalia to be intrusive, discriminatory and rather odd.

As a long-standing proponent of equality and human rights, Stonewall is right to unreservedly support trans+ equality; indeed failing to do so would mean that it would lose its raison d’etre.

Your anonymous correspondent, also from NW5, asks CNJ readers to vote against Cllr Rishi Madlani at the forthcoming local government elections.

I am not a Labour supporter but if I lived within the Bloomsbury ward I would give Cllr Madlani my unqualified support and urge others to do the same.

KEELEY-JASMINE CAVENDISH,
SE21