Shit. Now I agree with Trump!

An American friend is up in arms about this, phobes and bigots have been asked to defriend her.

The irony is - over the last 15 years her wealth has seriously diminished and if her daughter has any chance of a decent college education it'll be on the back of a sport's scholarship.

Ida, said transbillionaire‘s sister was even part of the Obama administration. That is how close those ties were, no doubt ties bought by a lot of money.

I was so surprised when the Obama administration made all those announcements reagrdaing trans children and education because there didn’t seem to be a nationwide movement clamoring for them, it seemed a very odd thing to champion. There were so many other issues that would effect a lot more people positively. Sure enough it turned out it was due to intense lobbying by at least one influential trans billionaire who was at the heart of decisions made by the administration.

The mention of the cost of buying hormones reminded me of something that does not seem to have been mentioned much in the UK context, namely the cost to the state. Things like: expanding women’s prisons, the cost to the NHS of lifelong hormones and surgery, all those gender neutral loos (DDs University is budgeting £3.4 million).

Plus a potentially negative impact on overseas tourism, overseas students etc. On top of lower participation in, so lower revenues, for sport, leisure centres and gyms, Girl Guides etc.

Proposed legislation presumably should be costed. Pity costs weren’t given as part of the consultation.

One more thing: the "advisory letters" Obama sent to all educational institutions in the US didn't just say, "New rule: where Title IX says sex it really means gender & gender-expression/ID."

The letters also said that any school or school-governing body that failed to promptly implement Title IX according to Obama's new interpretation would automatically lose all federal funding, AND leave itself open to being sued for big bucks by the federal government as well. Basically it was a threat to use the powers of the federal government to judicially harass & bankrupt schools & local school boards & districts. In this case, what Obama did & how he did it were both IMO dead wrong.

Vegilante, I read the swimming decision as something that they had arrived at after complaints/pressure and that it was something that was still under review. It’s not something I can see female swimmers viewing with any enthusiasm, as girls won’t have a chance.

Perhaps they are hoping that, with time, there is greater clarity about what can be pushed back against.

The problem is that it is a sport in which the USA is dominant. .

QuiteContraryMary made some of these points, but since I wrote this I might as well post it, in case anyone is interested.

Today's NYT report is centered on a big lie. The 1972 federal law in question, Title IX, deals specifically with discrimination & accommodation based on sex in education (& education-related activities like school sports) in public & private educational institutions that get federal funding. Contrary to what the NYT says, Title IX does NOT mention gender or gender identity!

Similarly, the US Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination based on "race, color, religion, sex, or national origin." There's no mention of gender or gender ID, though various courts have decided in recent years that in many cases the prohibition of discrimination based on sex also includes sexual orientation.

Just as the GRA in the UK had to be passed by Parliament, & changes to it would also have to voted on by Parliament, in the US a federal law dealing with gender & gender ID would have to be passed by the US Congress. But Congress has not passed - or even proposed - any federal laws pertaining specifically to gender or gender ID, so there is no US equivalent of the UK's GRA. And there probably won't be because the US constitution leaves as much law-making & rule-making as possible to state & local governments.

Obama tried to circumvent Congressional, state & local authority by sending threatening "advisory letters" to US educational institutions that by fiat proclaimed that where Title IX mentioned sex, it really meant gender & gender expression/ID. This huge overreach was probably unconstitutional; IMO it was an egregious abuse of power. An analogous action would be for the UK PM to simply announce she's putting the proposed changes to the GRA into effect tomorrow, decreeing that "trans women are women, get over it" & excluding input from the public & Parliament entirely.

Obama's overreach enraged not just the right-wing, but also many feminists. Now the Trump admin is simply rescinding Obama's executive orders/letters & re-asserting that federal discrimination laws as originally & currently written specifically speak of sex, not gender & gender ID. But most people are not well-informed enough to know the difference, leaving the field open for TR propagandists to shriek "we're being defined out of existence!"

Unfortunately, there has been no national debate about gender ID & transgenderism in the USA, which is one of the reasons I (& I suspect others from the USA) have become such avid followers of what's going on in the UK around the GRA - & such big fans of all you UK women fighting self-ID. (Kudos & thanks.) Given the political climate in the USA today & the rapid inroads transgender ideology, lobbyists & organizations have made amongst the Democrats, the left, universities, & the MSM, there will probably will not be any reasonable, reasoned national debate about it here for a very long time - if ever.

I don't dispute that there is a wing of the Democratic Party that is is invested in "don't rock the boat." I just don't think that it's the locus of the current enthusiasm & energy, which seem much more on the side of, for example, Elizabeth Warren, who conceptualized the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and introduced the 21st Century Glass-Steagall bill. There are real policy differences between almost all Democrats and almost all Republicans, and I believe the glib elision of those differences has been one big reason for our deplorable voter turnout numbers over the past few decades.

Anyway this is probably straying a bit outside the remit of Mumsnet FWR. To bring it back to Mumsnet, I would just like to say that I really truly appreciate the forum Mumsnet offers to air differences, argue positions, and explore intellectually. In a climate of such oppressive thought-policing, I am especially grateful for the opportunity just to agree to disagree, about anything!

Grinitch no offense but the party grandes do everything in their power to prevent single payer healthcare or Glass steagall or any anti war candidates.heck, the dems have made it a sport to attack trump from the right in matters of war. I wonder whether now that trump cancels that one anti arms race Deal from the 80‘s what their criticism will be. That Trump doesn‘t bomb Moscow straight away, which proves collusion with putin?
The dems are just as useless as the GOP when it comes to matters of war and they don‘t give a shit about whether that means incinerating Europe.

In many ways it's like a return to the olden days of the great philanthropists like Carnegie - at least he gave us libraries as his legacy not cross sex hormones and the use of the term pregnant people.

It's always about the money, and depressingly it was ever thus.

Needmoresleep:

Title IX says, in its entirety: "No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance."

Because it only pertains to programs & activities that are 1) education-related & 2) receive federal funding, lots of sports organizations & activities in the USA - from the NFL to the US Tennis Association - are not subject to Title IX.

USA Swimming, which recently adopted new rules allowing transgender people to compete according to gender ID, falls outside the purview of Title IX because 1) it is a not an educational institution - it defines itself as a club, or the governing body for a collection of clubs; & 2) it doesn't receive federal funding.

Any scholastic sports programs in which an organization like USA Swimming is involved would fall under Title IX, but only if the school receives federal funds. Private schools that get no federal funding are exempt.

I was reading a post on this topic at a very popular American leftist site where I've been a participant since the George W. Bush years. The OP took the "Trump trying to erase existence of trans people" line, and all comments were along the lines of "this is just hatred & bigotry." I am not brave enough yet to be the first to stick my head above the parapet but I feel, with great dread, that moment looming in the future.

Right now I am most focused on getting out the vote for the crucial midterm elections, on which the future of American democracy seems to depend. I wish that were hyperbole.

As an aside, I find it very unfair to accuse Democrats of trying to throw the election. The Democratic party is more energized than I have seen it in my adult life, fielding hundreds of well-qualified, sane candidates from a variety of backgrounds (and nearly 50% women!) all over the country. Democratic candidates are out-raising Republicans by a huge margin, made up largely of small-dollar individual donations. Many of our candidates have rejected all corporate and PAC money. All kinds of GOTV efforts are under way to fight back against the GOP's rampant voter suppression efforts. Really I think the party has changed quite a bit from the Clinton (Bill not Hillary) days, and especially the new generation of activists and candidates are mostly genuine, earnest and pushing hard for real change.

terryleather that is the whole problem with neoliberalism. Every service is privatized and depends on private donations, as do politics. In parallel neoliberalism creates huge inequality.
The result is that a bunch of billionaires can penetrate every aspect of our society by buying influence everywhere, thus shaping society to their taste.

Specifically, they do MTF and FTM hormones, and accept health insurance for that. So when Planned Parenthood lobby for insurance plans to include 'trans healthcare' they create a market which funnels tens of millions of dollars into their coffers.

Oh there's no doubt that Planned Parenthood as a big business concern (regardless of its status, large charities operate as money-collecting enterprises) wants its slice of the billions of dollars in trans-related services that is being created.

Planned Parenthood also receive funding from the Pritzker family...

• Trump rightly repealed this nonsensical dictat and is replacing it with one that complies with the intent of the members of Congress in 1972.

So has it all ready gone through then?

As I understand it, the Obama administration put out some sort of memo in 2010 saying that 'gender expression' is protected under Title IX. This was a bit vague, so they put out something more specifically 'transwomen are women' in 2014.

Trump has walked this back and in February said 'this doesn't cover transgender bathrooms' www.buzzfeednews.com/article/dominicholden/edu-dept-trans-student-bathrooms but now I think they are trying to say that this specifically ONLY covers biology in ALL circumstances.

This doesn't states making their own legislation allowing transgender bathrooms, and for example Massachusetts passed a law, which is the subject of a ballot initiative to repeal it (but the TRA side is funded 20-1 over the anti-TRA side, so the TRAs will win very easily). The same thing happened in Alaska, where a ballot initiative was showered with millions of dollars from very wealthy pro-transgender lobby groups.

So in general regardless of what Trump does, the transgender lobby is so fabulously wealthy that it gets what it wants anyway.

Obviously it doesn't help when the likes of Planned Parenthood (which receives $530 million federal funding) contribute large sums to transgender causes including state ballot questions designed to allow transwomen access to female spaces.

wrong side of histrionic nails it.

You know, when you are unable to learn from 2016 (which they are), which I like to call the mother of election debacles, I don‘t think there is any capacity to learn from any other election debacle.
But yeah, we will see...

Maybe it'll be good in the long run. Perhaps it takes a midterm meltdown to realise that if you go woke you go electorally broke.

Anyway, we'll see I suppose.

What's more, in 2016, NYC passed an appalling new law making it a civil offense, punishable by a fine of up to $250,000, for landlords or businesses to intentionally or repeatedly misgender trans tenants or customers.

So rich men with access to good lawyers can bully the ‘little people’.

(Which is not meant to be anti diversity, but simply noting that one section of the population are weaponised, as we have seen here with various ‘hate’ complaints.)

Thanks Freespeecher. Makes sense.

Countess

I reckon he's using it to dictate the battleground - easy to portray the Dems as out of touch with the common (wo)man when they're focusing on bathrooms when he's focusing on jobs etc etc.

Freespeecher the Democrats will happily and willingly take the chance. They need something to rally around, and you bet they won‘t take Trump on on his belligerent foreign policy or his ways to further enrich the rich - cause that would cost the Dems their donors. So the trans issue it will be. For Pelosi and Shumer losing the midterms but keeping the donors is way more lucrative than winning the midterms by championing policies that lose them the donors.
Forward into the abyss!

deepwatersolo
This is why so many people are now finding themselves on the wrong side of histrionics.