How will we ever get these disgraceful Tories out, if Starmer keeps spouting this nonsense?

It’s first past the post for voting. It means if a load abstain because ‘I won’t vote Tory’ then it is more likely Labour will win (or form a coalition with LD).

I’m voting Tory. I can’t stand up for women’s rights if nobody knows what women are. And frankly, so much of the anti-tori rhetoric is decades old, and has very little to do with the current government.

That’s the kind of thing someone would post to make feminists look a bit mad, frankly

Boris is weak and unreliable, the Tory party are self serving inepts mostly, but they are the party who base policy on pragmatic reality and not utopian ideology

Nailed it. ^^

I love the notion people cling to on these boards that it is some sort of aberration that the labour party are on the wrong side of this.

This is the pinnacle of, & final absurdity of the identity politics that the labour party stand for.

I don't understand how so many cling to all the other destructive unevidenced divisive identity politics but think this is somehow different.

It's different in scope but not in the logic: there are hierarchies of identity groups based on power, we must argue about who is the biggest victim and attack the oppressors.

Of course this gender ideology fits with the labour party.

Boris is weak and unreliable, the Tory party are self serving inepts mostly, but they are the party who base policy on pragmatic reality and not utopian ideology which is why they're more resistant to this.

Posts on here are hilarious with the confusion: but of course the uptopian ideology of identity politics is righteous, but in this case it seems to be going very wrong for us?? What to do??

Recognise that facts above idealism are necessary after all and not just meany Tories 🤯🤯🤣

I'm Scottish and can't see any way forward at this point, and feel that all I can do is spoil my ballot, essentially taking myself out of the democratic process.

I'm quite devastated about it really; I've been politically engaged since my early teens, but this issue has narrowed my options so dramatically that I've lost hope.

The only Conservative MP who does similar is Crispin Blunt and he has had quite a bit of press about it.

No he isn't. Last year Penny Mordaunt used her Front Bench position to rail against HoL amendments to the proposed GRA bill. There's a whole heap of Conservative MPs on SM saying TWAW. They just aren't reported by the RW press because it's an automatic vote loser.

The Conservative Party no more know what a woman is than Labour do.

But if we don't use our vote or spoil our paper then they have control again, they have stopped us using our hard fought for vote, losing another womans right.

I will also spoil my ballot paper forever if I have to, after being a lifelong Labour voter. As a pp says, Well Done Keir! Talk about not reading the room - he could have actually picked UP some votes lately with everyone's general discontent with the way things have been handled, but no! no more wishy-washy Keir, the reveal is...... a Keir who's firmly and fully TWAW. He must know this isn't right! He KNOWS it's a complete nonsense! What's going on there fgs? Makes me so cross.

I can't vote Tory either, but my best friend's MP is Jackie Doyle-Price, and I'd consider voting for her as he does, despite his own long history as a Labour supporter, as she is a brave and outspoken supporter of women on this issue.

Lots of Tory MPs have spoken out, many of them women. Kemi Badenoch spoke very well just the other week. They just get less attention in the press and on social media.

Do you ever wonder why that is? It suits the Times, Mail and other rightwing outlets to report extensively on Labour's views. Regardless of the MP's views, it's an automatic vote loser. From both women and trans folk.

They rarely comment on the TRAs in the Conservative party

But how to vote, when only the Tories are making any attempt to stand in the way of the trans activists’ misogynist and homophobic agenda determined to destroy all women’s rights and safe spaces and denying my right to say that I exist as a category different from a man in a frock?

Starmer is a Tory shill anyway who infiltrated the labour party to make it unelectable. first he targeted all the lefties and kicked them out, then the anti isreal jews, now women.

Yeah, because the lefties and the anti semitism made Labour electable.

But that doesn't mean a party that says "woman = adult human female" supports women.

At this stage all we are asking for is confirmation of what a woman is.

I think it's more pertinent to ask why Starmer refuses to answer that very simple question. Why is me being a woman so problematic for him that he has to go out of his way to avoid stating the obvious. Who is behind this, what is he afraid of.

I don't want to vote for someone who is afraid of his own voice.

“WallaceinAnderland

I don't understand how women can bring themselves to overlook all that, just because the Conservatives say "woman = adult human female

Doesn't that just demonstrate how massively important that one statement is to women. You would think, wouldn't you, that women would not sacrifice everything for that one measly statement.

Can't you see how this one statement is fundamental to everything else. Because without it we have no rights. None. They are all gone.

Why would we vote for anyone who can't acknowledge women, in their own class, separate from men, with their own needs and rights.“

Given Russia/Putin I now have an extremely militant feeling against non-speak.

Being able to define women is fundamental to women's rights. But that doesn't mean a party that says "woman = adult human female" supports women.

The Conservative party have nothing to lose and everything to gain by saying "woman = adult human female". They are less likely to alienate their core voter base by saying this, and they know this is a point of difference to the left,where the core voter base is a lot more "woke". And they know for a lot of women, it's a key issue. So they are likely to attract voters, not lose them.

Taking that position doesn't mean that in reality they are going to protect women's rights at all. They can define woman, and then they can exploit us.

It's shocking that there is no way at the moment to vote for a pro women party. Labour have not actually said they will support self ID. Until that happens, to me their actual policies would be better for most women than the Conservatives.

I'm not throwing women (and the more vulnerable in society generally) under the bus because of an ideological difference of opinion.

I might consider spoiling my ballot,but would depend what the centre left parties policies were at election time. I would not vote for a party that had a policy of self ID.

Extraordinary.

I had been trying to give him the benefit of the doubt over his “You can’t say that” [Only women have cervixes] in case he meant that it wasn’t respectful/tactful to say that - which I could understand to some extent even though I don’t agree.

This wading in making TWAW as his official stand point is the absolute end once and for all in my opinion.

Labour and LDs are likely to have some sort of pact at the next GE (possibly Greens too) so may still get in. The next GE (so I heard this week) is likely to be 2024 given events in Ukraine and the Tories wanting to put some clear water between Partygate and whoever the next leader might be (assuming partygate does for Boris when the investigation is finished).

So local elections this year and maybe next are the chance to get the message across and also ask pertinent questions relating to actual policy (my list includes not just “what is a woman”/“how are you defining lesbian and gay” but “will the new leisure centre have single sex changing rooms as well as sufficient third spaces for mixed sex groups and trans people”, “can a vulnerable person request a carer/ social worker of the same sex?”, “will rape crisis and DV organisations providing single sex refuges/services be able to continue to receive funding?” etc).

I'm hoping the SDP have a candidate where I am - sdp.org.uk/policies/transgender-and-biological-sex-based-rights/