MOMA Bill back in the Commons today, Monday 1st March 5.15pm

I wonder how Penny Mordaunt and Crispin Blunt think #nodebate is going for them?

Thanks everyone for the rundown.
Thanks Lang for those word stats.

Penny Mourdant and Crispin Blunt for example.....

Re Penny Mordaunts reference to the word women causing legal problems it is only due to the changes that were brought in with the GRC. Of course there will be problems .we have told her so. It can only get worse .

Crispin Blunt is just...gah!

Women’s rights must be protected, and reasonable provision must be made to protect women from threats that are real and evident. In reality, trans women pose no threat to women

How do you expect women's rights to be protected Crispin, when what you want, self ID, allows the Karen White's, Katie Dolatowski's and Barbie Kardashian's of the world access to us and our daughters in vulnerable states? You can't specifically protect women when anyone can be a woman.

Back when he threw his massive strop because a 'behind closed doors' deal wasn't stuck to and self id was scrapped, he implied that anyone thinking men would self id as women to gain access to women simply hadn't thought this through properly and lacked empathy.

www.politicshome.com/thehouse/article/after-his-furious-public-spat-crispin-blunt-liz-truss-trans-rights

He also said of other countries that have introduced self id: "Has there been any threat from those people who so self identify? Has anything actually happened?”

Other countries? Look on your own fucking doorstep, here in the UK, Blunt. We haven't even got self id and we've had problems. (And when I say look, I mean properly look and not just skim read and conveniently miss the things you don't want to see.)

How many women or children being victims of this will it take before people stop pretending they can't see any problems? How many before they stop being dismissed as 'isolated incidents?'

640,370 live births in England and Wales in 2019

Not including over 2500 stillbirths or countless miscarriages (can't find accurate stats) - also out of a woman's body, every time

Wow, LangClegsInSpace, that's dismal from some of them.

640,370 live births in England and Wales in 2019

And all of them out of a female body.

Some rough stats on how often each speaker mentioned certain words:

Penny Mordaunt (Con)
Women/woman - 6 (excluding 'trans women are women', 'all women' and 'the word "woman"' when declaring it legally problematic)
Mother or mum - only ever used in quotes
Trans - 5
LGBT - 2

Cat Smith (Lab)
Women/woman - 6
Mother or mum - 0
Trans - 0
LGBT - 0

Crispen Blunt (con)
Women/woman - 8 (excluding 'trans women' and HoL quotes he disagrees with)
Mother or mum - 0
Trans - 16
LGBT - 6

Kirsten Oswald (SNP)
Women/woman - 5
Mother or mum - 1
Trans - 0
LGBT - 0

Christine Jardine (LibDem)
Women/woman - 1
Mother or mum - 1
Trans - 2
LGBT - 3

Kim Johnson (Lab)
Women/woman - 10
Mother or mum - 2
Trans - 0
LGBT - 0

Jim Shannon (DUP)
Women/woman - 0 (but one mention of a 'lovely lady')
Mother or mum - 3
Trans - 0
LGBT - 0

Angela Rayner says that suicide rates, especially from Transgender backgrounds, are really a scourge on society.

I imagine she's conflating the TRA stats on suicide attempts in young people (which aren't particularly robust data) with actual suicide rates. This is false. There is no evidence that children and young people commit suicide more when they identify as trans.

Also, if she just goes twaw and affirmation, how can people get the counselling and treatment that could make a difference to their view of themselves and help them to accept themselves and find some peace of mind.

Angela Rayner says that suicide rates, especially from Transgender backgrounds, are really a scourge on society.

Are there factual rates on suicides amongst different groups? How would they differentiate the causes, since even GIDS don't even look for different issues present in the children they enable to medically trans? What is a transgender background, your granny being transgender?

If as she says, males can identify as women and actually become women, then women cannot have the safe women only spaces she maintains that she so compassionately cares about.

It's despicable gaslighting of vulnerable women to tell them they can have female only spaces when she includes males as women, she and all others who push this line should be ashamed of themselves.

Wondering if I can bring myself to read the transcript or whether Mordaunt, Jardine and Blunt will give me a rage-stroke.

Lisa Nandy was running with the hare and hunting with the hounds on that one. If as she says, males can identify as women and actually become women, then women cannot have the safe women only spaces she maintains that she so compassionately cares about.

No respect for her. Just throwing out words and playing to where the most claps will come from.

She also talked about trans males in the context of being pregnant which is equally nonsensical because what she meant but couldn't bring herself to say was female people who are trans.

thanks Old Crone
Cat Smith has had a baby whilst an MP
she has previously stated TWAW, she seems to be suggesting here that 'parental leave' should be available to all parents which kind of ducks the issue. I suppose male parents wouldn't need leave before birth.

This is where you end up when you decide to believe in an incoherent ideology.

Penny Mordaunt:

...let me say in supporting them from this Dispatch Box that trans men are men and trans women are women, and great care has been taken in the drafting and accepting of these amendments to ensure that that message has got across.

Then a few seconds later:

I want the rights of all women to be taken care of and all men to be safeguarded, too.

There was a definite pause after the first part of this sentence, where she must have just realised that 'all women' according to her ideological position includes some male people, but (even more importantly) excludes some female people who might need the maternity provisions. So she has to start talking about 'all men' in the context of maternity.

I thought Kim Johnson was pretty good. She talked about 'gender equality' but it was clear from the context that she meant sex. She talked unequivocally about women and mothers and our most basic rights. She expressed no regret over the amendments, or the fact that the word 'mother' is sadly legal, she didn't say anything about trans or LGBT or anything like that. She just wholeheartedly welcomed the bill, with a wish it could have gone further to cover other types of parental leave, and that it could have also covered Scotland, Wales and NI. Not sure about that last bit as this would surely be a devolved matter.

It's hard to make sense of what the other Labour woman Cat Smith said. It came across as a bit vague and fence-sitty but she did also mostly talk about women, didn't mention trans or quibble with the amendments.

Considering who could have turned up to speak from Labour, and considering the tone taken just a year ago, I was pleasantly surprised.

Transcript.

hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2021-03-01/debates/AC381A72-B091-41E4-9388-96CB284F83A5/MinisterialAndOtherMaternityAllowancesBill

is the transcript available yet?

Its going to be an endless problem because this circle never can be squared. It is not possible to maintain sex based rights for women and agree that transwomen can have 100% freedom of choice and access to women's spaces. Hence the ridiculousness of the government promising women they will maintain their single sex spaces and rights while at the same time telling the lobbies that single sex spaces are mixed sex for anyone who wishes.

It's an either or game when painted into this corner. And increasingly it's being realised that this means for some women complete exclusion and unacceptable imbalance of rights and fairness, unfair and disproportional impact on one sex to the benefit of the other, and its increasing division and problems not solving them. The issues with just forcing women to give up and step aside are apparent to the point now that a debate like the HoL can take place and it's well known this can't be the answer. Women's rights movements and thinking has also been forced into a very timely resurgence.

The next answer has to look at additional spaces, and/or where boundaries are placed. That one may go somewhere more positive.

Penny is full on captured. The Tories mostly aren't.

Yes, you can see why then that they didn't want it to be 'woman'. Because Penny says TWAW therefore if a maternity bill says 'woman' she is effectively saying that TW can go on maternity leave (sorry if this is what everyone has been saying, I'm probably a bit slow).

So actually they are all sighing a big sigh of relief- they tried to sneak 'person' through and then held their breath, only to let out a sigh of relief when 'mother' was acceptable. I am quite happy with 'mother' as it stands but it's clear isn't it that 'woman' would have called a big stink that they don't want to face. When are the Conservative party going to sort this out.

The McConnell case seems to have confirmed the definition of 'mother', one that we all knew anyway. Perhaps we could have confirmation of the legal term of 'woman', which here on Mumsnet we also all know.

So at the 6th May election
it may have to be Monster Raving Loony party on the ballot

Mother will be used