The Times today

Encouraging signs of this utter nonsense “identity” ideology starting to disappear up its own…vortex.

Sorry, I’ve just seen the daily mail was from 2019. Must’ve missed that one…

Ooops, cross-posted, Lovely. But I’m sure English politicians don’t want to be outdone in wokeness by the Scots!

Self indentifying as black? Really?

I look forward to government agencies accepting self-ID for disability benefits. Because of course they will, won’t they? Mustn’t be bigoted.

That could even be helpful for the genuinely sick or disabled people who currently have to slog their way round a maze of obstacles to claim a few quid.

Funnily enough the obviously bigoted Scottish Government is not taking this approach to the new Scottish disabilities benefits.

Although that contrasts with the SNP's internal policies, where before the last election they decided that candidates could self-ID as black or disabled, and get boosted in internal elections for closed-list seat places in certain seats.

But that self-ID was top sekret, meaning it could not be revealed whether any candidate was invoking this clause.

Which in turn means that all those elections had to conceal vote counts. They just announce final rankings, not the number of votes, so you don't know if the person who came first actually got the most votes, or was claiming to be black, or claiming to be disabled. Not even the candidates know how many votes any candidate got, apparently.

Hopefully if the candidates for next time have any sense, every single candidate will claim to be disabled or black. (I think the rule was that self-ID disabled people get absolute priority for those seats).

It’s in the Mail as well. It’s exactly where most of us probably thought it would go, I’m sure. The ultimate conclusion.

Interesting to see it finally in print.

So I can identify as anything I want except a man. Gee, thanks.

The mention of disability in the last para on the 'long history' makes me wonder if this has arisen from an initially valid position. Which is that people who actually do have a particular protected characteristic should be able to determine to what extent that is their 'identity'. A person with a disability should be able to decide whether that's how they want to be defined. Are they the professor of cosmology or that bloke in a wheelchair? At work my identity is scientist not woman scientist. Etc.

Where they've gone disastrously wrong is to invert this logic to allow people who do not truly have a characteristic to appropriate it.

Hm, wonder what their policy on cultural appropriation is.

Funnily enough the obviously bigoted Scottish Government is not taking this approach to the new Scottish disabilities benefits. No self ID there - it is a long document which requires details of difficulties with everything from whether you need support in order to eat or how incontinent you are and how often you need to be cleaned or have someone wash your sheets because your incontinence nappies have leaked again. Along with providing back up evidence. Though obviously this isn't anything like as demeaning as having to.provide a gas bill in a female name thank goodness!

It's all about identifying into a category that is historically disadvantaged and taking up resources intended to reduce that disadvantage.

'Black, disabled, LGBTQ+ or women'. But not men, interestingly.