Julie Bindel & Sharron Davies can't believe women centre their politics around the trans issue

It's not really a 'single issue' though, is it? First there are the practical implications of adopting a TWAW stance. That would be the stuff about sports, safe spaces for women, puberty blockers etc. When balanced against the Conservative response to COVID or the cost of living crisis etc, some people will conclude that the latter affects more people in worse ways and vote for Labour.

But intrinsically tied to a TWAW stance is the denial of biological reality. A blindness to science. And this puts the Labour party on a level with anti-vaxxers or flat-earthers or denying that human activity has had any impact on the climate. Voting Labour would be voting in an anti-science government.

Then you look at the authoritarian stance of those in charge: "it should not be said" that only women have a cervix (Starmer). "TWAW" (Sadiq Khan). The bullying of Rosie Duffield. The belief that some women's groups are hate groups. The refusal to engage with those of an opposing view. You're in a position of voting in a party that doesn't believe in free speech or freedom of expression. (Actually, I think the Tories have been fairly weak on this too, but Labour seem to value free speech even less than the Conservatives.)

So for me it's not just about the immediate consequences of bringing in Self-ID or allowing male-bodied people into female sports. It is to do with everything else that goes along with subscribing to this ideology.

Are there far too many people reliant on food banks? Yes. Are there too many rapists walking free? Yes. But I consider the cost of solving those problems by voting in Labour or the Liberal (hah!) Democrats to be too high.

I hate the fact that this has gradually turned me into a single issue voter. To me it is foundational. The material reality of women as a sex class is the fundamental underpinning of how we treat women and how we address the societal and economic issues they face. It impinges on justice (how women are treated as witnesses/victims, how women are punished), preventing VAWG (SSS, shelters, counselling etc), women’s access to politics (all women shortlists), equal pay (how you assess equal pay when males who identify as women can’t be excluded), statistical analysis of how women are affected by all sorts of societal and economic factors (census and more broadly inability or unwillingness of many organisations to collect or disaggregate data on sex), health (accurate and comprehensible healthcare information).

If a political party says it will make policy on all those issues on the basis that sex does not exist, or is not material, or should not be a protected characteristic, or should be replaced by or conflated with gender, policy decisions on all those issues go off kilter and adversely affect women.

We know that because we have already seen it to some degree (and yes I know much of this was under a Conservative government). But the further it goes the harder it will be to get back, and we have yet to see how far it will go with active support from a leader who says he wants this to be a priority for his first 100 days.

And I don't hate JB and SD - and I disagree with them on this point (and probably other points too).

Yesterday I was hunting for food and fuel support for a single woman and her kid due to DWP fucking up her payment yes she was hungry mainly because she was making sure her kid wasn't I guess to you her hunger doesn't matter?

Why did you mention she was a woman? Not just say a person? Do you think being female makes her more vulnerable? Do you think more women are single parents than men so more likely to need this support? Do you consider women's reproductive role places them at more risk? That pregnancy could make a women in her situation more precarious? Or that an employer may not want to employ someone at risk of pregnancy? How can you talk about, let alone frame policies to address this when you can't even define women?

@Shehasadiamondinthesky

I have seen two trans people, none in the town I live in at all. From that, I could conclude one of two things: either, trans people are a minuscule minority and therefore so vulnerable that they should have all the laws and norms of society reworked around them, OR the group is so tiny that it is ludicrous for all the laws and norms of society to be reworked around them.

Guess which.

Not three years, that should read 10 years.

Where are all these trans people, I work in the NHS and in the past three years I've met three.

Mercurial yes in your case you would really need to think carefully about how you use or don't use your vote. Not all votes are equal.

But I see so many people on here saying they can't possibly vote Labour because of TWAW but Boris knows what a woman is. He has literally just been sacked for lying,

So the Tories have sacked their leader for lying but Labour not only allow theirs to lie with impunity (TWAW) but join in. And that is meant to show the Tories are worse?

TWAW is a lie, a harmful obsence lie that destroys women's rights, destroys our ability to point out harms to women, that put women at risk, make us second class citizens, activily causes us harm by ignoring differences in medicine and risks due to product design. It also shows politicians who are prepared to ignore evidence or think critically and refuse to stand up to a baying mob.

Unless you live in a seat with a smallish majority, who you vote for is largely irrelevant. My constituency will never change hands

I do wonder about mine as it's always been Labour but last time the majority was only around 900 votes and looking at results it's been on a downside spiral for last 5 elections.

‘You'll have to excuse this attitude in here I'm afraid, FWR is riddled with Daily Mail reading, tory voting people LARPing as feminists.’

Just like Twitter is full of Guardian reading, brie-eating, AGA-salivating misogynists LARPing as the working class.

I don't think anyone actually does that. It's always a balance, it's more that some people decide that is a particularly urgent one.

But JB, at least, tends somewhat to be a believer that the political left is represents the good people and the right the bad, selfish people.

That was when she was Paymaster General, wasn't it? Before she got demoted again?

Unless you live in a seat with a smallish majority, who you vote for is largely irrelevant. My constituency will never change hands. Possibly if the local MP was on the front pages for weeks like Paterson or Parish but it would revert at the next GE.
So all I can do is vote or not vote according to what I judge to be important to me. Nobody cares why I vote the way I do.
Living in a safe seat gives you the luxury of single issue decisions without guilt.

I'll be sure to remember this finger wagging when I hear the date of my relative's operation to remove healthy body parts 🙄

And when I hear about the 6th family I know plunged into pain and chaos by this 'side show'.

For some of us this IS THE issue of our time, of our family, of our friends. And some of us are fucking furious, and devastated, and heartbroken about it.

Yesterday I was hunting for food and fuel support for a single woman and her kid due to DWP fucking up her payment yes she was hungry mainly because she was making sure her kid wasn't I guess to you her hunger doesn't matter? All I can say is thank dog her community and neighbours don't feel like you!

No one has said here that it’s not OK. Disagreeing with someone is not the same as trying to stop them speaking.

Sharon and Julie are sadly falling into the trap of believing it's all about the Trans, it really isn't - it's all about women.

I do think there's some of this going on.

Though honestly there are a range of issue that are important to me - and frankly women - health care rights etc are right up there how can they not be really.

So it does impact on how I view the PM or potential PM though it's by no means the only thing.

I agree with them. There are lots of issues that matter to me, women being one of them but not the only one.

I will vote according to which party has policies that support the majority or the main issues that concern me.

the Tory position on this comes from the same place as Section 28. They're not appalled to find themselves being called bigots for being worried about trans issues, like most women on here are.

It’s Stonewall that’s taking the Section 28 position now, opposing the right to same-sex (not gender) relationships and calling the LGB Alliance a “hate group”!

The word “bigot” is so routinely used for anyone defending women’s rights that it is meaningless.

‘Julie Bindel can think or say what she likes about politics which are important to her. I think she's doing a brilliant and mentally crushing job. And I suspect we will vote differently.’

👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

I'd never vote Conservative because of their economic policies. I also disagree with their basic stance on how humans operate. I don't think they're all evil, I'm sure some have good intentions.

I can't support Labour whilst they are actively misogynist. My membership is cancelled, I'm not canvassing again.

I would vote Labour if either my local candidate or Starmer actively stood up for Rosie Duffield and called out the vile misogyny she's subjected to. Even if they don't personally agree with her.

I'm still waiting for this.

But the issue with believing this gender religion is that it seems to require one to utterly dehumanise women who don't believe. I don't think that stance is good for vulnerable people. I don't trust people who do this with all the other things I care deeply about (environment, poverty, early childhood, disability, racism).

So I don't necessarily need Labour to 100% agree with me. But they need to demonstrate courage and integrity and actually listen to the women that genderists outcast. And I'm still waiting for that.

This.

I hate the Tories, but I hate the erasure of women as a sex-class more. Once it’s enshrined in law, as Labour and most other parties intend, it will be almost impossible to reverse. And the longer those trans laws, eg gender self-ID, stand, the more they will become accepted and entrenched.

Excellent Datun

By making this "single issue" a talking point for politicians ( I disagree it's one issue actually, there is a lot tied up in it) the party I would like to vote for, has to recognise the reason why I can't. So, it's a "single issue" they can change in their own policy, meanwhile I am capable of supporting a variety of other organizations who support women in various ways ( food banks, refuges etc). Labour needs to bloody well recognize the material reality of women's lives. I do not have to vote for them until they do.