is our aim protecting our sex based rights or is the issue our political leanings?

More to me too it's the principle of it. Once you have a party who has decided that instead of actual equality, equal care for all, impartiality, they believe in creating a hierarchy of people where the currently fashionable groups get more and others get subordinated and have their rights removed in favour of others? That it's fine to have a party that believes in religious intolerance and enforced one true faith with punishment for those failing to enact it convincingly enough? That they believe that public institutions should righteously deny service to those not of the faith? That 'inclusion' should only apply to the currently popular groups and not mean 'equality of all'?

That way total madness lies.

Think about it. A few years ago Labour for example were allllll about the ethnic minorities and religious tolerance and helping women come out of their homes into public life in the name of better community cohesion and reducing disadvantage. Now those are the women whose swims and groups and access to public spaces are being hurled aside because there's a new and more fashionable group to virtue signal with in town. It's ridiculous to have faith that this won't equally freely apply to the currently fashionable groups when a new publicity grabbing virtue signalling group turns up. The TQ+ fashion will pass, the new fad will turn up, and unless we live in a country where no one's rights get removed or affected and no one group matters more than others, they are going to find themselves treated in the same way they are treating women and children and homosexuals.

Any party operating on these awful principles are going nowhere good for anyone, they are fundamentally unfit to do the job.

@ImherewithBoudica
No sorry you don’t need a classification label of mother or father or woman or man to be able to protect or help people in need. The benefits system when applying for UC doesn’t give a shit what sex or gender you are or think you are, it is what it is and the support you get is entirely independent of this.

That’s why I disagree with this hyperbole, that the trans issue affects all womens rights. It really doesn’t. It doesn’t affect abortion rights, yes? Because who gives a shit if the person needing an abortion writes down woman or man…don’t care…and you don’t need to demand you can only write down woman to get an abortion for abortion rights to exist. And I disagree completely that this opens a door for the sperm donor to have rights over whether the human carrying the fetus has a say in abortion.

It’s hyperbole it’s trying to make one issue into the mother of all issues.

The thing is. I really really want to be able to vote for Labour. I have voted Labour all my life and my beliefs have always aligned with them, but I just can't.
I feel massively betrayed by them, the speed at which they are prepared to shove women under the bus to pander to a small minority of men, who stamped their feet and demanded special treatment and got it.. has opened my eyes.
For decades women have supported Labour and got crumbs in return with promises of looking at our issues once they had dealt with the 'more important' issues, the men's issues.
I am old enough to remember being denied a lot of rights women have taken for granted, I,ll be damned if I allow a party to undermine those rights and take us backwards.

Self ID is not 'one right'. Sex based rights are fundamental to many rights; I listed some. Gay rights. Safeguarding. Anything sex based. There's a thread by KPSS about DBS checks and how they have been undermined by it.

Self ID has been a disaster for women and for data collection everywhere its been introduced and yet Labour are determined to impose it on us. Why is that?

This entire gender mess isn't some rising triumph of the right, although the right is definitely starting to notice and try use it. It's a massive failure on the the left.
I'm left wing, always have been, but that doesn't mean I'm going to be quiet when I see an enormous issue arise on my own 'side'. Calling that out doesn't suddenly make me or anyone else right wing.

It matters to me that single mothers get sufficient benefits to keep children out of poverty. It matters to me that young women keep the abortion rights I had.

That matters deeply to me too. How do we turn to a party to stand up for that when they won't acknowledge that those people are mothers, that they are female, when they're too busy placating that 1% of people? We cannot protect people when we're not even allowed to name them or identify them or notice them without screams of protest and accusations of hate. You cannot protect any vulnerable group if you are not allowed to admit they exist or provide anything for them. It's not rational to believe that a party who believes in this insane ideology will do anything to recognise or protect these groups; they won't. They are too afraid to even call them 'mothers' at the moment. The people whose rights are being buried are these most vulnerable groups of females, and these parties are busy swearing to pretend that there's no such thing as sex.

Abortion rights have been waved over women's heads for decades: don't argue too much or try to stand up for your rights or wouldn't it be a shame if you lost your right to abortion? It didn't work for the women of America, they were all very good girls about this, it didn't save them. And again: you cannot protect the rights of people you're not allowed to name, or identify as the one single group of people who need abortions. If you're a party busy fogging up that abortion is an issue that can affect anyone of either sex and yes absolutely men have abortions and its very important to talk about men and abortions then oh look.... now we're into the ground where men have abortion rights and there's the open door to women not being able to make choices about their body without the consent of the father involved to abort.

I understand your frustration, but this attitude is so very dangerous to women on every front, it is not a case we can let go of a few loos and oh well some vulnerable women might suffer and disappear from public life, but they're the price we're paying for women's rights. It's all women's rights. All of it.

That’s one right though, that’s not multiple womens rights.

Labour isn’t the party going after “wholesale destruction of womens rights”

Yes they are. By supporting self ID, and by endlessly repeating the mantra that anyone who opposes it is right wing.

It's the same old trap "if you agree with this person you must agree with everything they stand for".

The Suffragettes had a common cause but they all had different political beliefs.

The fact that people would rather go on about someone being left or right wing rather than debating the actual issue is telling.

If you read my previous post you would see that's exactly what I aim to do.

Yep. The list is very long. Labour isn’t the party going after “wholesale destruction of womens rights”, but Tories are definitely the party doing “wholesale destruction of human rights and the environment and the economy and the NHS and our international diplomatic relations and our universities/education systems and our food production and….etc”

But even if we ignored all that and focussed on who is best overall for just women and children….still not the Tories imho.

On the womens issues list, Tories cut the funding for domestic violence shelters…so more women trapped with abusive men= more women being killed by partners than would have been….
www.theguardian.com/society/2018/mar/23/council-funding-womens-refuges-cut-since-2010-england-wales-scotland

The interesting thing is that I think very, very few feminists who would describe themselves as GC are teaming up with the far right. There have been a handful of instances where someone has spoken to someone else on a podcast or on the same panel, but this idea that GC feminism is aligning with the far right doesn't really have much of a basis in reality, certainly not for the vast majority of women.
The UK doesn't really have the same kind of far right base that the US has
In fact, in the UK I feel that trans activists themselves are the ones behaving like you'd expect the far right to behave.
Here, when a feminist org like Womans Place held their meeting on reproductive rights in Bristol recently on the eve of Roe vs Wade being appealed, it wasn't far right protesting outside, it was trans activists.
And that goes for pretty much every other large scale feminist meeting in the last five years.
It's been trans activists who've been protesting women's rights meetings, same sex rights organisations, reproductive rights meetings etc.
So I find this whole 'GC aligns with far right' to be quite ridiculous. It has no basis in any kind of reality. In fact, its quite the opposite

But is it as serious as child poverty and abortion rights?

Yes of course it is. Self ID is a human rights disaster that undermines equality law, erases womens rights, undermines safeguarding, and enables homophobia.
There is no neat and tidy hierarchy of single issues.

We aren’t in a two party system. Just because you can’t vote for Labour, that doesn’t mean you are forced to vote for Conservative or DUP. You can also spoil your ballot. You have other choices.

But is it as serious as child poverty and abortion rights? Is the trans issue important enough to encourage voting for a party that has and is actively harming millions of women and children?

I don’t think so. It matters to me that single mothers get sufficient benefits to keep children out of poverty. It matters to me that young women keep the abortion rights I had. It matters to me more than what 1% of the population want to identify as and spaces they want to access.

You can add removing benefit support for care leavers and under 23 year olds, and the disastrous PIP system to that list.
www.thecanary.co/uk/analysis/2022/03/23/dwp-deaths-evidence-has-now-been-passed-to-the-un/

Then Labour need to get their act together and stop giving women no other option but to give their vote to anyone who recognises sex based rights.

Yet “vote Tory because they know what a woman is” isn’t reductive or insulting at all? 😂

Me too! I feel like the Tory wink wink we know what a woman is love, vote for us and you’ll get your own woman only pot to piss in is bait we’d be fools to accept.

But behind the scenes, they’re dismantling other very critical sex based rights like abortion….and by voting for a woman only pot to piss in, you’re also voting to roll back and restrict abortion rights.

And that’s only one issue. They also have been pushing children into poverty with their benefits cuts for single parents (disproportionately affecting young mothers) uk.news.yahoo.com/tory-welfare-cuts-penalising-young-143801759.html

This is in addition to the two child cap they introduced
DWP two-child benefit cap hits 1.3m kids as 1,830 mums have to declare they were raped
www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/dwp-two-child-benefit-cap-27482212

You do know voting Tory may get you a sacrosanct womens loo, but it may also get you erosion of abortion rights

This is so reductive that it's an outright fucking insult

I'm afraid any party that believes in the wholesale destruction of women's rights, homosexual rights and child safeguarding, does not foresee any problems with this, will not listen to any voters voices on this, and is all for the authoritarian, anti democratic approaches that enforcing this will necessarily involve, will not be a party I ever think should be allowed anywhere near power. In fact the idea of them getting into power is fucking terrifying.

Framing this as just about 'so you'll get to be allowed to have access to a public toilet but....' is ridiculous minimizing, it is a far more complex, widespread and very serious issue than that to anyone who takes more than a few minutes to look and think.

Abortion is just one reason why my political leanings still matter to me.
Self ID has worked out so badly for women in places where its been adopted, I can never support it, but I'll never vote Tory either. They introduced the idea in the first place!

Interesting point about the Tories using this as a vote winner - you are right, I've never voted Tory yet, but if no other party steps up and says what a woman is then I think I probably will.

But is this your priority? You do know voting Tory may get you a sacrosanct womens loo, but it may also get you erosion of abortion rights. Which is some thing I don’t think any woman past childbearing age should have a right to sacrifice.

“Nadine Dorries’ call for the time limit for abortions to be reduced by four weeks has provoked outrage among health care professionals. The culture secretary argued the legal cut-off point for pregnancy terminations in the UK - which is 24 weeks - should be reduced by a month.” 8 July 2022
www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/nadine-dorries-abortion-time-limit-b2118180.html

See starting p31 an amendment in the House of Commons, right now….
publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/58-02/0183/amend/health_rm_rep_1118.pdf

”Reduction in upper gestation limit for abortion to 22 weeks’ gestation”
Ban on “Termination of pregnancy on the grounds of the sex of the foetus”

Sponsored by….
Fiona Bruce- Conservative
Carla Lockhart- DUP
Miriam Cates- Conservative
Chris Green- Conservative
Scott Benton- Conservative
Sir Edward Leigh- Conservative
Sir Desmond Swayne- Conservative
Jim Shannon- DUP
Sir John Hayes- Conservative
Ian Paisley- DUP

Spot on. They just dont feel like a strong credible party. its like watching student politics