To think the gender and sex Ed wars are created by tories

I disagree. While things like education, housing and healthcare are massively important, the gender issue is really important for women. It might not matter to you if a bloke in a dress rides a bike in a woman's cycling race, but I bet it will matter if you ask for a female doctor and then realise that the doctor is a transwoman. Or if you are in a swimming pool and someone starts wandering around naked in the female changing room with male bits on show. Or if you are raped and in the vanishingly unlikely scenario that the culprit is charged, that you then have to call them "she" in court and in the even less likely scenario that they are convicted they end up in a woman's prison.

And even if you don't care about any of that because of #bekind, maybe you'll care if your child is abused because a sex offender was able to change their gender and evade safeguarding checks.

I've never voted Tory in a general election and they made a right mess of everything else, but they are absolutely right to try to sort out this mess.

it is possible to feel strongly about more than one issue. I want to vote for a party that will support education and the NHS. But the Labour Party seem to be so hidebound by ideology. But there are more parties than Cons and Labour, both of which look like dinosaurs. I will be voting for one of those others and looking forward to one day having a modernised voting system.

This.

Last time I looked the Tories weren't in power in Canada or the US where these issues are rife.

It was always inevitable no matter what party was in power.

The tories brought in the gender recognition act
No, they didn't. HTH

I wouldn't disagree with you. Modern politics is a divide and conquer tactic

@HermioneWeasley the BBC, Stephen Nolan investigation into Stonewall was very effective.

We are not in Canada. This is the UK, where the Tories have been in power for the last 13 years. In that time they have bent over backwards for the trans lobby.

Of course our young people are confused. An entire cohort of children have come through secondary school with Tory TWAW believers directing education.

They're pissing on our heads and telling us it's raining. Most people have copped on, but some are lapping it up, opening their mouths to swallow down the same Tory bullshit. At least the Conservatives know what a woman is was a slogan dreamt up by Tory spin doctors and spread by their shills. It was never true and it's still not true. If it was, they'd have done something by now. Instead they can't even get guidance for schools sorted.

Wasn’t it Labour who introduced the gender recognition act?

Yes it was in 2004. The debates are recorded in Hansard and there is nothing that is happening now that was not flagged at the time and hand waved away. David "you can grow a cervix" Lammy played a major role in getting it passed into law. It's a law which was, at the time, described as a legal fiction but in our dystopian present you are transphobic if you don't think that males become indistinguishable from females if they say they "feel like a woman".

It was WOMEN who dragged this into the sunlight at great personal risk - women like Dr Nic Williams, Sharron Davies, Maya Forstarter and of course JKRowling. The fact the left wing press and the supposedly neutral BBC have failed to report on it is not the fault of women standing up for our rights, and safeguarding children.

if we lose the rhint to state facts, if we lose the definition of “women” as adult human females we lose our rights. That’s a massive issue for me and I won’t be told that’s it’s not as important as ones that matter personally to other people.

Absolutely to this post but particularly

This thread reads like a soft poll for the Labour Party, with a bunch of members allowing their party loyalty to override their own common sense.

Wasn’t it Labour who introduced the gender recognition act?

Agree 100%. What I find disappointing is the lack of thinking employed by Labour on this. It’s not bigoted or in any way transphobic to say that men will claim to be a transwomen to access women’s changing rooms. It’s not bigoted or transphobic to say this. Genuinely trans people don’t worry me. It’s those that will claim to be trans to access places they shouldn’t be for sexual kicks, they worry me. Labour just don’t seem to see this at all.

It’s all the conservatives fault? There I was thinking it was the fault of men’s obsession with their dicks. But ok, it’s all conservatives fault, so explain Canada?

The tories brought in the gender recognition act to allow the old kind of homosexual transexual (as opposed to straight transgender male who likes the idea of themselves as a woman) to marry their male partners. A more progressive move would have been to legalise gay marriage. When gay marriage was brought in, there was really no need to hang on to the GRA.

I'd be willing to believe that Tories and maybe even hostile states have a hand in screwing up Labour with all this, yes. Apparently city bankers joined Labour in order to vote in Jeremy Corbyn because they knew he would be divisive for Labour. This could be more of the same kind of interference.

However, Labour don't have to run with any of this. They don't have to bow to powerful lobby groups just because they've coated themselves in glitter.

There is nothing inherently left wing or socialist about gender ideology. It is ultra capitalist and created to line the pockets of American Big Pharma. It is utterly individualistic; anyone remember Thatcher's famous phrase " there's no such thing as society, only the individual"? Unlike any other rights movement before it, modern day trans activism (not all trans people etc) uses marginalised groups as shields and appropriates the language of feminism, disability rights and the struggle for racial equality. It has even infiltrated the environmental movement.

Ordinary people are being turned off any movement that appears to accept trans rights ideology. And that's most other activism (as well as left wing parties) because they've all been influenced by people with power. And this does obviously benefit the Tories. This process of alienating ordinary people is currently being sped up by the unwillingness on the left to see and reject paedophilic elements that have latched themselves onto trans rights activism.

One more thing... We live in a homophobic, misogynist society. It's not a fucking culture war if you're a mother wanting her non conforming child to grow up without being sterilised. It's not a fucking culture war if the experience of male violence leaves you with PTSD and the need for female HCPs and single sex spaces.

So what have the Tories actually done, they are in government? The transgender guidance for schools was promised by Easter, still not published now, for example.

All talk and no action.

100% this. Especially Women have had to crowd fund legal cases to protect your rights whilst you were smugly chatting about Tory instigated culture wars with people whose lives have not been touched by this. What's that Usual Suspects quote? Something like 'the best trick the devil pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist'. Substitute 'gender ideology' for 'the devil' and substitute 'media frenzy culture war' for 'he didn't exist' and you've got the OP

You're missing the point. All rapists are rapists - and they shouldn't be put in a women's prison just because they say they feel feminine.

YABU. If you think that then you’re not paying attention.

Yes, of course they’re capitalising on our anger - but the anger is real and righteous. The Tories have overseen all this gender crap (notwithstanding Labour bringing in the dreadful GRA), but they’re at least realising they’ve screwed up. Left up to Labour we’d have self-ID, no PSHE review, puberty blockers still being handed out and it being a crime to call a man a man.

I dread Labour getting in to power.

@pickledandpuzzled perfectly put!

Ignorant and haven't made up your mind but you seem so sure that it's a distraction whipped up by the Tory party and right wing media. The first people to push back against this were left wing women, this was long before the concept of cat gender was even a thing. We are appalled at the way other political parties have treated women who have tried to voice concerns.

You should visit the feminist board to find out more about the things that have happened and the campaigning going on now. Women have had to crowd fund legal cases to protect your rights whilst you were smugly chatting about Tory instigated culture wars with people whose lives have not been touched by this.

Here are some links which may help:

https://www.womenarehuman.com/

https://reduxx.info/

Both of these sites give a global perspective on gender ideology and the insidious nature of it.

In the UK: Sex Matters, Fair Play For Women, Keep Prisons Single Sex, For Women Scotland and many others are doing great work.

This should not be a partisan issue but unfortunately the Tories are the only ones who aren't embarrassed to say what a woman is and, unlike the other parties, they have not bullied their members who have dared to raise concerns. There has been a big difference between how Miriam Cates has been treated by the Tories and how Rosie Duffield have been treated by the Labour Party. Miriam Cates wasn't afraid to attend her own party conference because of death threats made against her, Rosie Duffield was and got no support from the Labour Party.

I don't think it's entirely the fault of the Tories as we seem to have the same problem going on across the world. I think it's more about ESG ratings, ( Environmental, social, and corporate governance), mainly the social, which is DEI (diversity equality and inclusion) which is pushed by huge investment companies such as Blackrock, Vanguard and Statestreet and their ESG index (not dissimilar to stonewall) and who have far too much power, more than governments it often seems. Really ESG should be ethical, but it's become corrupt in many ways in order to meet those ratings. And it's that influence that changes the world around us.
i do think the Tories should do more about it. But I don't think it's entirely their fault that it has occurred. It would be happening whichever government was in place. But I don't think any western governments are doing enough to stop it. They're just sitting back and watching the world around us disintegrate. Sometimes actively encouraging that to meet their own targets.

It's a very real, very dangerous issue affecting lots of children, and those driving it are doubling down rather than pausing for thought.

I just can't bring myself to vote for a party that doesn't understand this problem.

The NHS, schools, asylum seekers - complicated and definitely in a dire state. The way forward doesn't seem clear for either party.

Meanwhile one party is agitating to resource a philosophy that endangers the most vulnerable- women (particularly those) in prison, children (especially those with autism or gay), and yet again disadvantages those who are already marginalised.

I can't vote for them- waste of energy and resources, and minds so open their brains have fallen out.

Honestly it's like voting for someone who's decided we mustn't use the words up or down anymore, as there's no gravity in space. It's just randomly logically ridiculous and suggests they are dim.

Agree and disagree.

Are more extreme and less reasonable politicians/media voices using wedge issues to push their agenda, without paying attention to the nuances? Yes.

However exactly the mirror of this is happening on the left. Posts like this - suggesting that anyone who doesn’t think inappropriate material should be taught in schools, or who want single sex services, changing rooms etc are right wing nutters - don’t help.

Open discussion of genuine concerns is the best antidote to wedge issues like the ones mentioned in the OP.

No, it's not an issue manufactured by a single political party in a single country. That's blatantly obvious given the horrific effects of gender identity ideology in countries worldwide, including those with left leaning governments.

If you don't want the Tories to make political capital out of the shitshow that is "trans rights" then you know what to do. Step up and protect children from horrific medical experimentation. Apply the same safeguarding standards to everyone with no exemptions for GII believers. Champion the preservation of sex based rights, services, language etc. for women.

Leftist political parties in lots of counties have made it easy for the right to win elections and stay in power by being weak on all of the above. I'll take Kemi Badenoch over David "it's possible to grow a cervix" Lammy all day long.

This thread reads like a soft poll for the Labour Party, with a bunch of members allowing their party loyalty to override their own common sense. Keep doing that Keir and pals and you'll keep handing the Tories gifts of voters.