Martin Houlden (Bournemouth East) - Response to Questions - 4th July 2024 Election

Women of Dorset have contacted all those standing in the eight constituencies that cover Dorset, including Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole.

Below is the response from Martin Houlden (Reform UK) - Bournemouth East.

Dear Women of Dorset

I saw your email pop in last night, and assumed it was probably another automated campaign email asking me to sign up. Then I started to read it… and I started to smile.

I continued reading it, and it made me even happier. How wonderful it is to finally receive email from a sensible, non-woke group of people who are looking for an MP with some common sense values. Thank you, it really did lift my spirits and make me realise that all hope is not lost! (Apologies for over-dramatisation!)

I was going to go through and reply to your points one-by-one, but there’s really no point. I wholeheartedly agree with everything you put there, and I’m happy to publicly say I stand by you and the aims of your campaign. However it’s probably worth me making a couple of notes.

To answer your specific question, a woman is an adult human who doesn’t have a Y chromosome. It’s really that simple (I’m not sure why Labour and Tories find that so difficult?). But let me continue…

Men and women are equal, but we are different - and those differences are what make us who we are. That said it’s worth noting that there are a very small number of people who are born with both sets of reproductive organs. This was known and documented as far back as the Victorian era, and occurs in roughly one out of every 10,000 births. So we must be aware that a tiny percentage of the population are genuinely ‘intersex’. As an MP I would support these people as I would any other constituent.

But we have to push back against the ‘Woke’ agenda that is taking away the hard-earned rights women fought and campaigned for. You deserved to be protected and feel safe at all times, and I would vote in such a way to uphold those values.

Let me be clear. A man does not inherit all the wonderful feminine traits a woman naturally has, just because he decides to wear a dress and a pair of heels. People who think this are deranged and I do not believe it helps them, or society as a whole, to continue indulging them in this fantasy.

And whilst I fully support anyone's right to dress however they so choose, men need to realise that putting on lipstick and changing your name to Samantha, does not mean you get to use the women’s bathrooms, nor invade their safe spaces or refuges. 

Thank you for getting in touch, and I do hope you this simple, non-nonsense reply is easier to read than the replies from the Labour, Tory and LibDem candidates will be!

Very best wishes

Martin