Ministers threaten legal action over Scotland's trans laws

It makes me think there are some people who’ve arrived at their GC views via logic and rational thinking (it took me five years of research to eventually overcome my worry that what I believed was transphobic), while others get there instantly just because their heart and their gut says it’s wrong. The second group seem to feed off emotion and anger more than they do measured arguments, but they don the ‘logic argument’ cloak and blend into the first.

But, in my mind, it’s the presence of the ‘emotion-driven’ group among the others that the non-aware public can sense. And this creates doubt, uncertainty and even makes them not bother to try and listen to GC arguments.

Why would they listen to TRAs and not GC arguments? If you want an emotion driven group, those who shout TWAW are all about emotion. There is no science or logic to TWAW, so why would anyone listen to those people and dismiss people who say otherwise? This makes no sense to me.

As one of the people who got there instantly, I find your sweeping generalisation that people like me "feed off emotion and anger more than they do measured arguments" quite offensive. Having got there instantly I spent considerable time trying to find out what I was missing and why I seemed to be so out of step with most of the left. Then I found mumsnet.

The reason I got there instantly was because it was obvious that people can't change sex, and the more I saw of the behaviour of various males who identified as transwomen (Caitlyn Jenner and Jane Fae, for example), the more I thought "you are nothing like a woman".

if I was in my pre-research days on the self-ID issue, I’d possibly be filing away your GC arguments under ‘take with a massive pinch of salt’. This would be consistent with the way I also take TRA arguments with a massive pinch of salt, because they too discount the inconvenient reality of science.

If you took both sides with a massive pinch of salt, what would you end up believing? Would you be going down the "don't know" route, or would you just start to think for yourself?

You don't think the trans debate is fundamentally about belief and perception for some people?

The facts about the impacts and consequences of Brexit are also fixed and predictable. These don't change according to individual opinion and beliefs.

Not quite what I said:

"it took me five years of research to eventually overcome my worry that what I believed was transphobic"

Then again, if it took five years of research to work out that human beings come in two sexes. That sex is immutable and DSDs don't change that fact, there are other conclusions that could be reached.

Sex is a biological reality. No matter what some might like to think it does not change according to individual belief and opinion. Unlike the decision about voting for or against Brexit. Which was all about an individual's perception and beliefs.

Covid measures are a really bad example. A global pandemic, people dying, is akin to a national security situation. The only experts in that situation were the scientists. You’re suggesting that politicians should undermine the scientists at a time when the uncertainty was over whether hundreds of thousands would die globally or millions. And whether health systems might fall over.

But Covid is a good example to illustrate a different thought that keeps popping into my mind wrt the GC crowd. Especially since both issues reference ‘science’.

I feel that my GC views are consistent with my politics on Brexit, Indy-ref, vaccinations and approach to Covid (randomly choosing recent events). It intrigues me to find someone as passionate as I am about GC also being a Brexiteer. This undermines the claim of ‘logic’ and ‘reason’ for me. Because - in my mind - how can someone claim to have their GC views based in logic, if they also voted for Brexit?

It makes me think there are some people who’ve arrived at their GC views via logic and rational thinking (it took me five years of research to eventually overcome my worry that what I believed was transphobic), while others get there instantly just because their heart and their gut says it’s wrong. The second group seem to feed off emotion and anger more than they do measured arguments, but they don the ‘logic argument’ cloak and blend into the first.

But, in my mind, it’s the presence of the ‘emotion-driven’ group among the others that the non-aware public can sense. And this creates doubt, uncertainty and even makes them not bother to try and listen to GC arguments.

Like GC , Covid was massively about science. Logically, reasonably, it was about dealing with escalating deaths against a backdrop of uncertain science. Measures changed from being based on assumptions and predictions derived from previous pandemics and diseases they initially assumed were similar, to being based on evidence as research evolved. There was/is a struggle for scientific knowledge to catch up with the mutating virus. This is massively inconvenient to those who approached the pandemic via heart and gut (and yes, those could find alternative science - in the same way TRAs and anti-vaxxers do), but there was generally a global scientific consensus with nations also responding to local specifics.

So you telling me the science should have been challenged, by non-scientists - politicians - in that context, makes my spider-senses twitch. Knowing this … if I was in my pre-research days on the self-ID issue, I’d possibly be filing away your GC arguments under ‘take with a massive pinch of salt’. This would be consistent with the way I also take TRA arguments with a massive pinch of salt, because they too discount the inconvenient reality of science.

What terrifies me, is the possibility the public might NOT vote them out, despite their horrendous behaviour and appalling policies. That the Tories might dangle 'illegal immigrants' in front of them, and everything else is forgotten.

The only thing that might stop the Tories is the public at the next general election, and that's terrifying.

Why is the idea of the public voting the Tories out at the next election terrifying? This is how democracy works isn't it? The Tories were only voted into power 3 years ago so it's hardly a dictatorship. What else would you propose people do to "stop the Tories"?

If Labour manage to get their lousy act together and come up with something half worth voting for they should be able to do pretty well at the next election. If they hadn't been so out of touch with the working class people who vote for them they probably would have won the last election. The Tories really couldn't have made it much easier for them to succeed this time.

They could do what they are supposed to as the opposition.

The point being made was that because they themselves are authoritarian, they don't really make much attempt to hold the government to account in the way they are meant to, in the House or in the public discourse.

Covid measures are a good example, they did not do a great job at questioning the scientific basis or the legal basis of restrictions, because they themselves would have gone even further.

LP is not doing the opposition job of trying to mitigate the authoritarian tendencies of the governing party.

Seriously, what on earth could the Labour Party, or any party, do or say that would stop the right-wing policy decisions of a party motivated by political survival and self-interest, that's also backed by an eighty seat majority and held hostage to a bunch of extreme lunatics in the ERG? The only thing that might stop the Tories is the public at the next general election, and that's terrifying.

The crappy current state of the nation is entirely and exclusively down to the Tory party. And it is unforgivable. I can't stand the way this utter shit-show of a party has its horrendous behaviour minimised. Why when the Tories are in power, and directly responsible for everything, is any mention of any other party even relevant?

I don't know if Labour is authoritarian or not, or if the leadership might be tiptoeing around polarising issues because they're trying to hold the party together to avoid rifts and tensions ahead of the next critical election, and also avoid falling into traps set by the Tories. I don't know, because they're not actually in power, and the gulf between being in power, and trying to get into power, is massive. Remember that dude named Corbyn - the inflexible one that never tried to accommodate different views and cantered gleefully towards every Tory trap. How did that work for Labour?

Thanks for saying that. I was just pondering how I might have got my point over more clearly but you've managed to interpret it just fine :D

What? She didn't say that. She said Labour was also authoritarian., And so in terms of the whole system which means the interplay between governing party and the opposition, the LP is not doing the opposition job of trying to mitigate the authoritarian tendencies of the governing party.

Fair Play for Women published this twitter thread about GRCs from other countries being recognised here. Apparently, the SNP are using this as leverage as some of the countries have introduced self ID since being added to the list. Originally, they had the same or similar checks as is currently the case in Scotland. Having loosened their checks they should have been removed from the list. However, bureaucratic oversight (I'll charitably assume a cockup and not nefarious) meant this didn't happen. Link to the first tweet:

twitter.com/fairplaywomen/status/1601519438054162432?s=20&t=8IiSMHRDFgg3OPK6-DIFZQ

That's not what I said.

There was another thread with this article at the end but that doesn't matter.

One thing that struck me - which I will add here - is that in the Scottish consultation said:

"The Committee will not, as part of its scrutiny, address or explore issues which are outwith the scope of the Bill as outlined above. Submissions which contain offensive language, do not comply with GDPR requirements or are not relevant to the Committee’s scrutiny will not be published."

Does anyone remember this? I do because I commented on it specifically. I think it means that they closed their minds and that as no definition of "offensive" was given, that lack of definition PLUS the bizarre insertion of GDPR, might well mean that anyone who tried to give public, documented examples of male prison rapists in female prisons, would've had their answer struck out.

Thus the Scottish government couldn't have considered the impacts in full, when you think of all the things that strange stipulation could apply to.

I'll also say that to my mind, this Bill threatens public safety and minors. If the Scottish government doesn't care then the UK government must. And they must act to protect public safety and to protect children.

It's a rather extreme position to take isn't it? Yet I was accused if hyperbole 🤔

Surely the problem is the England can't refuse to acknowledge Scottish GRCs because no one is allowed to ask to see them?

What we'll have is literally any Tom, Dick or Harry with a new BIRTH CERTIFICATE saying that they are female. How can anyone refute that, regardless of the evidence of their own eyes? What an absolute shitshow.

"The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command." George Orwell, 1984

So "the growing tendency towards authoritarianism" is ... Labour's fault.

That's ridiculous.

I'd say that anyone who thinks that the growing tendency towards authoritarianism is just a Tory trait is also part of the problem. One of the problems about the authoritarian tendencies of the Tories is that Labour are such a weak opposition and that is because they are a bit half hearted about defending freedom themselves. Labour's position during lockdown is a good example of this. Labour would have gone much further than the Tories so put up zero opposition to the removal of people's freedom. Another example is the online safety bill where the Tories have ditched the problematic "lawful but harmful" clause but Labour are promising to put it back in if they win the next election. Labour are rubbish in relation to freedom of speech and refuse to see that there is any issue in the UK of people being bullied, sacked, cancelled for having the wrong sorts of opinions. They are also silent on the effective indoctrination of children in schools in relation to race and "gender". Also I guarantee that any legislation that the Tories introduce in relation to striking or demonstrating will not be undone once Labour are in power. They love it when the Tories legislate stuff like this.

Oh, yes, it is Coyoacan! I was making a joke on another thread.

See below. Please don't try and insult my intelligence by saying none of this is extreme in a UK context. And the fact they aren't Trump, Bolsenaro or Orban should not be reassuring when you live in the UK. This kind of defence of the Tory party is actually a big part of the problem.

Slight change of subject, but @ArabellaScott is AraberylScott you?

... I replied too fast. I mean, yes, I hope she loses her villain.

And yes, I think she's got a great window of opportunity to force through stuff when people up here are so revolted by current Tory behaviour.

God, I hope so.

Well, obviously, Liz Truss and Kwazi Kwarteng's brief spate in government was as right-wing economically as you can get. American-style libertarianism.

The whole hostile environment and the way they treat migrants is just vile. The language they actually use in Parliament is directly fascistic (“invaders” THAT’s the hyperbole people shoukd object to!) What next? Cockroaches? The whole nasty lie about illegal migrants when it is bloody impossible to be a ‘legal’ migrant from some countries.

The massive intolerance to the democratic right to protest, and vilifying of protestors.

Following Trussenomics, talking about bringing in laws to control unions and strike action even more - when it's already massively controlled - feels like another tone-deaf right-wing authoritarian response to a problem that directly evolves from Tory policies: Brexit, Truss, austerity.

Prior to that it was the authoritarian behaviour that horrified me: proroguing Parliament, behaving as if international law is a trivial consequence, the lies around NI agreement, ignoring their own laws wrt party gate, the rampant fraud around PPE contracts being written off, talk of withdrawing from international human rights agreements ...

Honestly, I could go on and on and on.

I live in Scotland, never liked the SNP, voted against Scottish Independence and occasionally voted Tory. But, my god, the tory government from Cameron to Sunak has been a total gift to the SNP, and people like me are BITTERLY let down by all of it.

When the only media talking about GC issues are the right-wing media, we’re in trouble up here. Anyone pro-Indy almost automatically disregards anything written by those papers anyway, because of those papers’ stance stance on independence. And the rest of us? It’s easy for the SNP and the Greens to discredit any GC article in a paper like that as yet more distasteful right-wing media prejudice, because those same papers also trumpet support for this bunch of tossers.

Most people don’t read the detail behind GC issues, and most don’t understand the nuance, so the Westminster corruption plus media really does have significant influence on views up here and it makes me despair. It feels like, before you can even start discussing GC issues, we have to first convince who we’re talking to that this is an issue that exists irrespective of politics. It's like a wall that needs to be chipped away first.

I feel like I have to navigate two social risks among my Scottish peers on the GC topic: first, that the person I talk to might file me away in their mind as someone who is probably also racist, xenophobic and intolerant of the poor —— as well as transphobic. I can cope with being (falsely) labelled as transphobic, but I really don’t want people I generally like and respect thinking I have all the other unpleasant qualities.