Labour MP says women don't have penises

Siobhan did sound remarkably human for an MP

"yet somehow still on her high horse"

A common theme in the Labour responses

Not sure how they think taking the moral high ground and talking down to people will help

They did not show much compass ion to Rosie Duffield when she was being hounded

So long as she didn't have an utterly appalling voting record on other issues I care about, I'd vote for Siobhan with a joyful heart. She's said nothing there that is a dealbreaker for me. She sounds like she has compassion for people who wish they were the other sex, and she has compassion for women. That's absolutely fine with me.

It's like she's too stupid to believe that in order to tackle the causes of violence, you might first need to understand it.

[quote ChopinBoard]They've asked Emily Thornberry MP, too. I genuinely don't understand answer

Let's do a thread with all of these in the same place

What is this vile woman doing in a position of power?

We could come up with just as heart rendering stories about women shot and killed because of their biology (not identity) - many, many times more stories. But she says she doesn't care about sex-based oppression and violence.

Awful, hideous scum.

All this nonsense has solidified my thinking that we need a complete abolition of the idea of GRC. We should never have pandered to anyone's idea that you need a certificate re: your identity. Offering this helped obfuscate that sex is set at birth and that there are no gender-segregated facilities. She is not helpful in saying that people are provoking arguments so not entirely getting it.

It's always going to be no contest putting a razor-sharp Hartley-Brewer against one of Labour's woolly sheep.

But enjoyable spectacle aside, the absurdity of where we are is being lost in the tangles of argument about an absurdity. I mean how can we seriously even be asking whether a WOMAN can have a penis? And arguing about it. Having interviews with politicians about it. Writing articles in newspapers about it.

Does anyone remember and long for those innocent days, not many years ago, when Germaine Greer felt obliged to point out that a woman is not a man minus p? How did we get from that to thinking it is even sane to ask whether a woman can have a p?

But one interesting thing was the point at which her obfuscation came into play. Because, in the case of the poor person she describes, she didn’t know whether there had been reassignment surgery, she was saying she didn’t know whether that particular woman had a penis, and it didn’t matter. She seemed to be arguing - simultaneously - that there is a point in the physical reassignment process when a male ‘becomes’ female, and at the same time she was arguing that it’s more compassionate to draw a veil over when/whether that happens for reasons of ‘humanity’.

But she also seemed to be arguing that an inner feeling is enough to make a person a male or a female.

So it’s hard to tell what she really thinks, except that, in her mind, we’re all really rude for asking anything about it.

Yep. Contemptuous, evasive, and yet somehow still on her high horse.

The mask came off a bit, didn’t it? Unpleasant, dismissive, eats her dinner while talking to polite journalists asking her polite questions.

Thornberry was rude, and awful. Obviously it’s appalling that someone was murdered for being gender non-conforming. It doesn’t mean I can’t legitimately ask for a female doctor (which would be the outcome of Thornberry’s dreadful logic).

That's so fucking RUDE!!

[quote ChopinBoard]They've asked Emily Thornberry MP, too. I genuinely don't understand answer

Let's do a thread with all of these in the same place

Wow. That was extraordinarily rude. Was she eating for part of that interview? And what the point of bringing in the murder of an Iraqi Kurd, if not to place a sub-text of "GCs want to shoot TW in the head"?

She didn't answer the question either. And finished by being very rude - again - to the interviewer.

All the Tories need to do is let Labour answer like this on QT or one of those TV debates, and say "no".

They've asked Emily Thornberry MP, too. I genuinely don't understand answer

Let's do a thread with all of these in the same place

" Any journalist worth their salt must think all their Christmases have come at once now that they have this question in their arsenal "

Especially as Kier and Angela are trying to look down on the whole debate as crass.

I predict it will get more crass untill a journo asks Kier if he believes in ladycock

I agree it is a bit mixed but what I love is that she is gloriously off message and she does ponder things, probably way too much for her party managers liking

There are also robots which can be weaponised to distort such polls.

I watched this earlier. She started well, if hesitantly, and then floundered. Overall, a better performance than most Labour MPs: 6/10

Well done and thank you to Julia HB who is doing great work, here. Any journalist worth their salt must think all their Christmases have come at once now that they have this question in their arsenal!

[quote MalagaNights]Wrong link

twitter.com/talkRADIO/status/1508728282396692483?t=lz3UaO4Tu7D1DXldLJ-WRg&s=19[/quote]
Wow, the voting on this ....

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4382551-Live-not-by-lies-Solzhenitsyn-no-tambourines-involved?

I'd also like to add this (which I don't think I did in the above):

Vaclav Havel, 1978 has some prescient observations about mantras and the unthinking adoption of an ideology and the true cost of the absolution that it confers.

In an era when metaphysical and existential certainties are in a state of crisis, when people are being uprooted and alienated and are losing their sense of what this world means, this ideology inevitably has a certain hypnotic charm. To wandering humankind it offers an immediately available home: all one has to do is accept it, and suddenly everything becomes clear once more, life takes on new meaning, and all mysteries, unanswered questions, anxiety, and loneliness vanish. Of course, one pays dearly for this low-rent home: the price is abdication of one’ s own reason, conscience, and responsibility, for an essential aspect of this ideology is the consignment of reason and conscience to a higher authority.

hac.bard.edu/amor-mundi/the-power-of-the-powerless-vaclav-havel-2011-12-23

Oh dear, she clearly doesn't believe TWAW at all but is stuck with Be Kind and the threat of all the shit that will rain down on her if she actually lets it slip

Transcript.

Julia Hartley-Brewer and Siobhan McDonagh

JHB: your party leader and an awful lot of your fellow MPs seem to struggle with knowing what the difference is between a man and a woman. I’m pretty sure you do know the difference.
Whether or not men have cervixes or whether or as we discovered yesterday some questioning on the radio station of Keir Starmer, whether or not he thinks women can have a penis and still be women. Do you struggle between telling the difference between a man and a woman?

SMcD: I think a woman is a female born adult. I do think there are people who are born in one gender and feel they are in the other and my heart goes out to them and they’re on a journey perhaps to make a change but I just think this debate is so hot and full of hatred that we can’t have a sensible discussion about it

JHB: where s the hatred coming from?

SMcD: it comes from people who strongly feel that there is no such thing as sex and only gender and on the other side from people who want to provoke an argument in order to get away from the issues that are really troubling people

JHB: - you think all the women like JKR, like Sharon Davis, people like myself that are just saying ‘can we establish that everyone understands the difference between man and women and why those differences are recognised in law and safe spaces etc. etc’. that’s not provoking and argument, that’s not coming from hatred that’s coming from a concern that well - women being something other than a figment of men’s imagination on a Wednesday afternoon. but also women’s safety, does it not.

I don’t think it’s a laughing matter; I think the idea that a woman is anyone who says they’re a woman when they feel like a woman – I find that quite … scary, do you not?

SMcD I do think, Julia, you must know, you’ve been involved in this game long enough that there are lots of people who are provoking an argument because they want to create a divide.

JHB I only see that on the other side

SMcD: {?} really really difficult issues and can I see I think JKR is a national hero she stays in this country she pays her taxes to this country and she gives her money to good causes and it’s really distressing to think she is treated as anything less than a national hero

JHB and she’s never ever said anything remotely transphobic at all. So you can answer the question which your party leader KS couldn’t answer yes - can a woman have a penis?

SmcD eh … I think …

JHB it’s a really easy question Siobhan

SMcD no, no, it’s because I don’t want to answer in a way that provokes just a furore. I think -

JHB Siobhan. It’s a really easy question. Can a woman have a penis?

SMcD No, I don’t think so. But I do think a man with a penis can want to become a woman.

JHB doesn’t make him a woman though

SMcD not at that point

JHB at what point does it then?

SMcD That’s the question I’m grappling with

JHB You can be supportive of trans people and say if someone wants to live their life as a woman they can be a transwoman doesn’t necessarily mean they take on all of the rights that a woman has because of reasons of biological sex which make a difference for example women’s sport or women’s refuges or safe spaces or changing rooms
that’s not hatred that’s not stirring things up that’s just a recognition of biological reality. something with KS your party leader who wants to be PM struggles with does that not as a woman worry you?

SMcD: yeah, yeah but Julia

JHB it does worry you?

SMcD: I don’t know about you but I’ve seen people who were originally were men who transitioned to being women at some point

JHB: are they transitioned to being women or are they living as transwomen?

SMcD: Ah. I’m not sure I understand the difference.

JHB: because if you still have a penis and you’re born a man, you’re a man, aren’t you?

SMcD: Yeah, but you might be … oh, see .. We’re going down a rabbit hole now

JHB: No, we’re not we’re trying to establish what people who want to be elected to run this country actually y think about some fundamental things which none of my listeners would struggle to grapple with at all

SMcD: I hope I’ve answered you Julia I do believe

JHB: You said that a woman doesn’t have a penis apart from a man who says he wants to be a woman at some point does become a woman

SMcD: no no I think there are some people who do want to transition – I think it’s a tiny number

JHB: yes of course there are

SMcD: - a tiny number. and as you sad basically I just want people to live their lives as they feel comfortable with. I do believe there is a place for safe spaces for women. And I think three women a week are murdered at the hands of men and you just can’t get round that.

Labour as a party are making their stance clear. Individual members can pay feeble lip-service to the contrary as much as they wish; it makes little overall difference and as long as the bigger picture of the party in general claims not to know what an adult human female is, and has a leader making ridiculous assertions about who is and isn't a woman, not one candidate will ever be getting my vote.

Like the PP above, I'm sick of women's very pressing and serious issues (HUGE numbers of VAWG and murders of women simply for being female), rugswept whilst this navel-gazing bollocks (all-but literally in some cases) takes precedent as one of the most urgent issues of our times. Those statistics - and the fact that the 'Counting Dead Women' originator is receiving death threads simply for doing as her hashtag states - show very clearly who is amongst the most oppressed, abused groups in our society.

It is NOT MtoF trans people, and right now I'd rather stick pins in my eyes than vote for any party pandering to this BS.