The Times today

That Twitter linked letter from MP Owatemi is shockingly awful.

Labour will never have my vote while basic safeguarding and women hold such low priority.

That's outrageous, jlpartnerrs . An absolute scandal.

Sorry to hear about your DD. My DS is in a similar boat with a hidden disability (Dyspraxia) Whilst not wanting to make a fuss as he sees it, he was outraged that someone on his course could self-ID as dyslexic and dyspraxic (He's probably dyslexic too, but the LA decided not to pay for the expensive diagnostic tests even though recommended by the OT who assessed him for dyspraxia. )

Anyway I think his outrage is that he took 5 attempts to pass GCSE English and he endured a lot of bullying by staff and pupils at his school before being diagnosed. He knows how high the bar is and how difficult life is with his disability. In his eyes this kid wouldn't have a snowballs chance of being dx because he's not ND

Not sure what the UCU's strategy is here but Twitter threads about Doc. Stock are referencing the unions support for transracialism. It even 'featured' in comments about Taiwo Owatemi's letter about her

To the point that there's a suggestion that Owatemi is full-on pro-transracialism - she's obviously aware of UCU's stance, with their well-publicised support for transracialism.

Gonna be tough to dig herself out of this one, but I suspect that other black MP's and candidates, particularly those on the Labour side (the LibDems don't really have any interest in having black candidates for Parliament) are going to be asked repeatedly if they are pro-transracial.

What's transphobic about the article?

Start it disgusted. Of Manchester.

Shouldn't the Times just have a rolling "today's transphobic article is.." thread?

The self ID as disabled is already happening to some extent among students. My DD who had an EHCP and has in the past had PIP and DLA - a 50-page document and you need to add lots of supplementary information to make a case (she doesn’t want to continue the process as it’s so stressful especially the face to face interview) has found that resources, time and support she needs to do her course are being tracked towards increasing numbers of students with self-declared diagnoses. Meanwhile she physically can’t do certain things without assistance and is generally fed up at not being able to order a drink because bar staff assume she is drunk. The gatekeeping via assessment is not nice and obviously has become more stringent in the past decade but objectivity is necessary.

This is a natural next step to be honest. First the push towards anyone identifying as a woman and accessing protected spaces. Now we are moving on to anyone identifying as black or disabled. In the future anyone will be able to identify as pregnant, married or a different age. Grown adults will shout about feeling unsafe because they identify as a six year old but don’t have full access to school environments.

This seems part of a bigger move towards breaking down legally respected protected characteristics.

Well let's not stop there! Today I identify as a sausage.

@GreyhoundG1rl Asking someone whether they consider themselves to have a disability is standard practice for things like diversity monitoring. It’s also the right approach for union representation- the alternative is a situation where members encountering disability discrimination have to prove they’re disabled enough to be represented, with some being turned down.

It’s completely different from the tests for providing a benefit such as a blue badge.

How can you "identify" as black or disabled?

You can 'identify' - or not - as disabled if, and only if, you actually do have a disability.
Same with 'identifying' as black.

And in any rational world, it'd be the same for 'woman'. It may be important to your 'identity' that you're a woman, or you may wish it to be irrelevant in some contexts. A doctor not a 'lady doctor' - that sort of thing.

It's all been turned totally arse about face and made a complete nonsense of.

perfectly fine to ask members whether they consider themselves to be disabled rather than asking them whether they meet an objective standard such as the blue badge test
But why? Why allow someone to decide for themselves when there is an objective standard that they don't meet?

I generally find the UCU appalling but have some sympathy with them over some of this.

For example, my understanding of them accepting people's self ID as black is not about welcoming Rachel Donezals, but rather about the impossibility of saying objectively who is black. Am I black if I have one black grandparent? How about two? Three? and so on. This sort of approach is rather reminiscent of those Nazi guides for working out who counts as a Jew. Given that UCU's main interest in the race of their members is to eg track discrimination, it seems quite reasonable to allow people to decide the matter for themselves rather than dictate to them, and worry about a load of white people piling in if and when that happens.

Likewise disability- perfectly fine to ask members whether they consider themselves to be disabled rather than asking them whether they meet an objective standard such as the blue badge test.

How can you "identify" as black or disabled? (I won't go there with the ID'ing as a woman )
Are they really trying to say they're dispensing with reality as we all know it and people can say black is white and the sky is green and grass is blue if they want to; and the rest of us must validate their nonsense?
They can sod off with this mindfucking bollocks.

Well… it seems to be about a group of people who predominantly are born white males. They now claim to be the most oppressed group in society. Women have been accepting this for a while. Now black men see it and they are less happy.

Please tell me someone is picking this up on Twitter? I though identifying out of your race was a huge NO NO.

It sort of is and it sort of isn't. If you're a Good Person, then no-one can question you. If you're a Bad Person then you can be denounced for it.

Whether you're a Good Person or Bad Person is hard to determine, and this is an unstable equilibrium, as the act of "falsely" claiming an ethnic identity is Bad, but obviously a Good person wouldn't do that, so the question of whether a person can be flipped from Good to Bad by being called out, or whether such an accuser would be Bad is a complex social dynamics question.

You can certainly get away with it for some time. But when you lose it, you lose it hard. And sometimes that's hilarious, as in the case of some poet(?) in Canada who was falsely claiming to be Native Canadian, and eventually got called on it, by a load of people continuing to very studiously ignore that he was also a man claiming to be a woman.

During Maya Forstater's first hearing, someone from CPD's HR (American) did talk about how they were totally self-ID.

This discussion is happening thedimhoardingrightosaur.

A black comedian, David Chapelle made a Netflix comedy which dropped last week. He is all about the rights of black people and made some comments.

Now a white transwoman is trying to cancel him. Funnily enough, this white transwoman used to run the show “dear white people”. Some black people on Twitter don’t seem very happy with a white showrunner for a show about black people. Or the fact that a person who was born a white male is trying to cancel a black man…..

However, I think the white BLM/TRA etc are a bit caught in the middle and don’t really know what to say.

Please tell me someone is picking this up on Twitter? I though identifying out of your race was a huge NO NO. Cultural appropriation is a massive deal on social media. There is no way that even the wokeist beard is going to go along with that.