Transgender rights activist supporting Penny Mordaunt ‘compared feminist writer to Nazis’

One of the main backers of Penny Mordaunt’s candidacy for prime minister is a transgender rights activist who once seemed to compare a feminist author to the Nazis.

Ms Mordaunt, who has been accused of backtracking on her views on trans rights, posed for a photo with activist Sue Pascoe at a £50,000 garden party in Westminster last week.

A Mail on Sunday investigation may reveal that Ms Pascoe has launched vehement online attacks on those who have raised concerns about the impact of transgender activism on women.

Last month she accused Helen Joyce, author and director of campaign group Sex Matters, of advocating a ‘final solution’ for trans people – an apparent reference to the Holocaust.

In an online chat with fellow feminist campaigner Ms Joyce, 53, said it was important to reduce the number of people who change their sex while women’s groups lobby ministers on an issue increasingly complex.

“In the meantime, while we try to communicate with decision-makers, we must try to limit the damage,” she said. “And that means reducing or limiting the number of people who transition.”

In response, Ms Pascoe wrote in a tweet to Boris Johnson and Oliver Dowden, then chairman of the Tory Party, that the Tories should have “nothing more to do with her or her ‘final solution'”.

Last night Ms Joyce called Ms Pascoe’s comments ‘absolutely shameful’ and said she should be disciplined by the Conservative Party.

‘How this person is in a political party is beyond me and how serious a candidate [Ms Mordaunt] is willing to be anywhere near a person who talks like that is absolutely beyond me,’ she said.

“Imagine being a Jew and seeing the ‘Final Solution’ and Nazism or the Holocaust being used as a cheap trap. It is shameful.

Ms Pascoe denied comparing the author’s views to Nazism or Hitler’s Final Solution.

“I didn’t say anything about the Nazis,” she said. ‘It’s her [Joyce’s] final solution… You just read what she wanted to do to stop people from transitioning. I meant “his final solution”. She described stopping the transition of trans people.

Ms Pascoe is one of the Conservative Party’s most prominent trans activists. She was born Graham Pascoe and lived as a man for 50 years before undergoing gender reassignment surgery in India.

A successful businessman, Mr Pascoe lived on a 40-acre farm in North Yorkshire with his wife and two children and was a former master of a local hunt. She was diagnosed with gender dysphoria in August 2014 and underwent gender correction surgery the following year.

A former Conservative candidate for the European Parliament, Ms Pascoe is a strong supporter of Ms Mordaunt whom she has met at least three times to discuss trans rights issues.

Witnesses said the couple chatted for around five minutes at a party on Wednesday in College Garden, on the grounds of Westminster Abbey, which was hosted by a charity run by the public relations guru Mrs. Mordaunt’s multimillionaire, Chris Lewis.

Ms Pascoe has also previously joined the blizzard of online attacks by trans activists against bestselling author JK Rowling. In response to an essay the author wrote two years ago advocating for women’s rights, Ms Pascoe urged Ms Rowling to ‘renounce your behaviour’, adding: ‘You are causing great harm, anxiety and of stress to one of the most vulnerable groups of children. in the country.’

A year earlier, Ms Pascoe compared restrictions on transgender women using women’s changing rooms and toilets to “apartheid South Africa”.

Meanwhile, it emerged last night that Britain’s first trans MP – Tory Jamie Wallis – is set to announce his public support for Ms Mordaunt.

“Penny is a good friend and has been very supportive on my journey,” he told MoS.