Labour has totally lost the plot wit Identity Politics?

[bambambini]

Labour Youth are advertising posts and have positions ring marked for “self identifying women only” to encourage more women into politics. Just seems a really strange way of describing women and actually means that all the posts could go males instead of females (can’t really use women any more). Can’t wrap my mind round how identity politics has become so prolific and taking priority or biology. The future doesn’t seem to have much place for females. Labout Woman’s officer Lily Madigan on it.?I’d like to see what Labour women think of this.

[ferntwist]

YANBU. This is insulting to women. How on earth does this help more of us get into politics?

[FastandLoose]

Yep. Plot lost.

[LyraPotter]

It's just worded that way so that transwomen aren't excluded. There's no need for frantic pearl-clutching.

[titchy]

How old do you have to be? Surely no 'youth' is going to identify as an adult (woman = adult). Maybe they should self identify as a girl then Stephoknee could apply...?

[titchy]

Well no Lyra if you look at that Twitter a lot of feminists don't 'identify' as women - they ARE women. Lily kindly clarifies that this will exclude them.

[LemonSqueezy0]

//www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/3096513-to-let-you-know-how-men-use-the-Equality-Act-to-undermine-womens-spaces

Op - this is an interesting thread on this

[ferntwist]

Lyra it’s supposed to encourage more women into political as less than 1 in 3 of our MPs are female. Transwomen were born and raised as men and so should be excluded from a scheme to help women.

[LyraPotter]

@titchy I don't understand the point you're trying to make?

[saltandvinegarcrisps1]

YANBU. It does my (real) tits in.

[ferntwist]

Ask yourself, if 50% of MPs were men and 50% were transwomen, would you feel women had made big gains in representation? No. Neither would I. Wake up. We’re being pushed out of our own programmes. This is a backlash against feminism.

[LyraPotter]

@ferntwist transwomen are women. Not all women have the same experiences - you might find you have a lot more in common with a transwoman from a similar socio-economic background as you than you do with a Ciswoman who grew up in a very different environment to you.

[polaricecaps]

I would have to state I 'self-define as a woman' on application, rather than be filling it in because I am a woman? Bollocks to that.

[BrownLiverSpot]

As long as they get other things right.

[ferntwist]

Lyra, the point is that you can’t idebtify into biological sex. You’re either a woman or a man (for 99%+).

[ferntwist]

Lyra, do some more reading the feminism boards here and your eyes will open. Transwomen are women is a meaningless mantra that doesn’t stand up to factual analysis. A transwoman is a man. Cosmetic surgery doesn’t change your sex. Taking hormone tablets doesn’t change your sex. Wearing a dress doesn’t change your sex. 80-95% of men who identify as transwomen keep their penis anyway. Women don’t have penises.

[LyraPotter]

@ferntwist that view is no longer accredited by doctors, psychologists or biologists. Nobody with any scientific credibility now considers biological sex and gender to be the same thing.

[ferntwist]

There are already more than two penises for every vagina in the Commons anyway. We don’t need a scheme to encourage more penises there.

[scaryteacher]

Transwomen are not women. Drop the cis crap as well. I would have far more in common with a woman than a trans person who identifies as female.

[EsmesRedPetticoat]

Trans women are trans women. They are very unlikely to have:
Menstruated
Given birth (twice)
Been refused the morning after pill because “it’s not an emergency”
Sat and worried over a pregnancy test and wondered how the fuck they would cope if it was positive
Had crippling period pains
So no lyra my experience is really not likely to match theirs at all

[IcedCocoa]

Oh, that is nonsense, Lyra, I am sure my many experiences of being female (periods, miscarriages, pregnancies, rape and sexual abuse, doing most of the household work, dealing with drunk men, controlling men, supercilious men, being a single parent, being paid less) have WAY more in common with another women who gets why women hate being told they are cis-gendered than any transwomen of my own social class.

I cannot speak for all women, but I would suggest there are many specific experiences which women have in common, which are nothing to do with race or class but everything to do with sex.

[ferntwist]

Lyra gender is a social construct, different in different societies and through the ages but generally to the detriment of women.
Sex is biological and cannot change. Women are oppressed due to their sex - reproductive capacity (gender pay gap is because of marernity) and our smaller relative size. So-called transwomen do not share in this.

[IcedCocoa]

And that is the whole point, sex and gender are NOT the same thing.

You cannot change sex.

Gender norms, styles, fashions change ALL the time, across different places, because they are socially constructed.

[joystir59]

Transwoman are men. They were born with male biology. They were and always will be men

[IcedCocoa]

X-post, Fern sorry