Times: “Isla Bryson is Sturgeon’s Poll Tax moment”

You can hardly blame the general public for thinking the trans community has a problem with sexual predators if the campaigners for self ID have no workable solution to deal with the problem of gatecrasher's but instead keep telling us 'it never happens' when it's obvious to all it does happen and often. It makes the predators look like a feature not a bug.

Absolutely. The self ID lot have done this to themselves.

Almost lost in the debate are transgender and transsexual people, who will no doubt be pained by headlines associating identity changes with rape and violence against women.

TW are five times more likely to have been convicted of a sexual assault than non-trans-identified males. One in 585. Those are just the ones who've been convicted.

This has been a men's sexual rights movement from the beginning.

I feel compassion for the children and young people who have been caught up in this. But adult males pretending to be women do not inspire my compassion or empathy, not even the "nice" ones.

Transwomen should be directing their hate to the perverts who have caused the issues rather than the people who want a solution which doesn’t involve jeopardising women’s safety.
The idiots are realising too late that Feminists were the allies they really needed rather than blue haired clueless handmaidens who would just agree to anything

From The Times' article:

'The latest YouGov poll, of 1,088 voters in Scotland from January 23 to January 26, found that Sturgeon’s approval rating had slipped into negative territory, from +7 to -4, since October. In the space of a month, support for the SNP in the next Scottish parliament election had fallen from 50 per cent to 44 per cent in the constituency vote, and from 40 per cent to 36 per cent in the regional vote and from 43 per cent to 42 per cent for Westminster. The poll also showed a reversal on the independence question over past month, with support for secession down from 53 per cent to 47 per cent among those expressing a view — the lowest since last spring.'

Joan McAlpine in the Sunday post:

'A former SNP MSP has warned Nicola Sturgeon must accept “personal responsibility for her personal passion” after driving through laws making it easier to change gender.

In bruising criticism, Joan McAlpine said the first minister has risked the safety of women and the independence cause by making the legislation a flagship issue for her government'

www.sundaypost.com/fp/former-msp-warns-fm-must-own-gender-id-fallout/

A lot of people are hurt by the discussion. Including disabled women who are called bigots for wanting same sex intimate care. Including teenage girls who are being gaslit into accepting naked men in women's public bathrooms and changing rooms. Including women whose first language isn't English or who haven't had a great education and who don't realise that a "person with a cervix" is them, so they miss cervical screening. Or women in prison who are likely traumatised by male violence in their lives who are not even considered in risk assessments of transwomen prisoners.

Those "pained" by the headlines can take up their problems with one of the many many organisations that have pushed self-ID:

Stonewall
Mermaids
LGBT Foundation
Gendered Intelligence
GIRES
Global Butterflies
Pink News
The MPs (we all know which ones)
The staff networks policing thought via Stonewall

The list goes on and on. Take it up with them. It's not us. Not my responsibility to ease their pain from what? Reading some headlines? Sorry but it isn't. Like everyone else here, I'm concerned about women and children. Let's not forget all the (mostly) women who've lost their livelihoods because of these organisations and this ideology. They owe us an apology. Along with trans people who are now "pained".

“Almost lost in the debate are transgender and transsexual people, who will no doubt be pained by headlines associating identity changes with rape and violence against women.”

Yes. But they are going to have to face, like everyone else, that some men who are transgender and transsexual are also rapists and commit crimes of violence against women.

The two cannot be nicely separated into groups. And women cannot pretend away this bit of reality because it's upsetting.

It's the NAMALT and 'don't talk about rape and violence against women cos hurty feelz for nice men who don't like hearing about it and having to take some responsibility' thing. Tough. This is going to have to be faced up to.

“Almost lost in the debate are transgender and transsexual people, who will no doubt be pained by headlines associating identity changes with rape and violence against women.”
Yes, this aspect makes me sick. Further marginalisation and misery. The extremists and misogynists have a lot to answer for and so many of them are no more trans than the rapist whose incarceration in the female estate kicked off this latest hoo ha.
But please also can we avoid the use of ‘people’ here. The issue which afflicts us is concern about biological males and their antics. If that opens me to criticism then call me a misandrist, but I have no concerns about transmen! The TRAs must not be able to conflate the realistic caution which women, and in particular mothers have in respect of stranger males who insist on access to places where women or children are alone or in a state of undress with transphobia.

Almost lost in the debate are transgender and transsexual people, who will no doubt be pained by headlines associating identity changes with rape and violence against women.

I think this is an important point because we are so often accused of conflating transpeople and sexual predators; we did not do this. The safeguards of the original GRA gave sexual predators far less room for manoeuvre. The TRA's said those safeguards were gatekeeping, well it looks like gatekeeping is important if you don't want bad faith actors to give your group a bad name.

You can hardly blame the general public for thinking the trans community has a problem with sexual predators if the campaigners for self ID have no workable solution to deal with the problem of gatecrasher's but instead keep telling us 'it never happens' when it's obvious to all it does happen and often. It makes the predators look like a feature not a bug.

Now we are in a situation where people (me included) would like to see the GRA repealed because it's not sufficient to protect women from predators and it is being used to erode the protections afforded women in the EA2010.

I have kept reading about the voters putting the trans debate at the bottom of their list of issues. However, that was before they saw the reality of what single sex and self id really means. I imagine the political parties, all of them, will be having a big re-think because it's all a bit of a shambles. Lots of 'under the radar' stuff which I assume they think still might be ok, might now be a bit of a problem ...... you twazzox we are not idiots

Keep wondering what Starmer is making of it all.

This has been explained to Starmer in extremely simple language for many years. He is clearly not getting it or he would have dealt with the significant issues this is going to bring to bare on his party long before now. Starmer will be another politician whose head ends up on the chopping block for the gender identity cause and I suspect joe Biden will too. The genie is slowly coming out of the bottle.

I’m glad they’ve included this. It spells out just how cold blooded some of the thinking is.

The policy was developed in partnership with campaign groups such as the Scottish Trans Alliance. In 2018, James Morton, then a manager at the STA, recalled that: “We strategised that by working intensively with the Scottish Prison Service to support them to include trans women as women on a self-declaration basis within very challenging circumstances, we would be able to ensure that all other public services should be able to do likewise.” The “learning from our prison work has made it much easier to assist other Scottish public services, such as NHS wards and schools”.

Sunday Times comment:

"...important though feelings are, they are not more important than rights. Women have the right to safety, and biological males do not have the right to enter women-only spaces. It really is no more complicated than that."

SNP trans fiasco highlights the dangers of groupthink

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/8312c010-a4c4-11ed-9d5c-69bd3c5b98b3?shareToken=98695ac2111619f906a0997cf79ae109

Starmers name came up on a thread i was posting on the other day. Another poster was saying that they thought him to be intelligent as he had been DPP after all. I spent a while writing another post querying that and that also referenced a few other points/posters, only to see the post disappear into the ether, never to be seen again. I couldn't be bothered typing it all out again :-/ though at least it saved anyone having to read it, lol :D
However, what i wanted to say about starmer at the time, ran along the lines of...
Even though he had managed to become DPP, if he were truly intelligent, then in that capacity, surely he would have learned that there are many and varied ways of abusing children and that any abuse can and generally does lead to a lifetime of mental suffering and often, physical pain too.
Although blame for not prosecuting rape gangs may not have fallen at his feet, he must have realised over the last few months when the finger was being pointed at him, that the general public takes child abuse very seriously. Yet here he is, standing by without a word, while young kids are being given puberty blockers, having breasts bound, being pointed toward genital mutilation surgeries, etc., all of which, to the ordinary man on the street is child abuse and starmer says nowt! starmer does nowt! starmer is a nowt! A big fat, pathetic nowt! Not worthy of a single vote and certainly not worthy of mine!
We see him stand mute over the abuse that Rosie puts up with, that shouldn't be happening, without any support at all from starmer, despite him having been DPP and who should therefore be well aware of the damage abuse of that nature can cause. Still, cuprinol man just stands there! What a useless article he is and indeed, as i've said before, the biggest tool his dad ever made!

Yes ignoring the quiet majority and misreading the room entirely. Labour I hope you start listening now.

It’s almost like members of Parliament would be more successful and popular if they actually listened to the electorate and followed the wishes of the majority, instead of trying to force their own personal views upon the rest of us.

Snort.

I would desperately love Labour to step up here but they're not going to.

The sunlight is spotlighting duplicity and dishonesty.

Sex is so fundamental and something voters understand, indeed take for granted. The fact that some politicians claim not to, for whatever reason, erodes the trust people have in them.

When the emperor is exposed for having no clothes, it seems so obvious.

Before Covid and gender ideology I supported the SNP. However there is no way I'd ever vote for them now. Labour or the Greens would never get my vote either.

It genuinely baffles me that they thought that gender ideology could possibly work in legislation. I'm pleased the UK government have stepped in with some common sense.

I think NS hoped this intervention would rile the people of Scotland into demanding independence however speaking for myself and all of my friends/colleagues - we are delighted.

I hope this gender ideology nonsense is put to bed now. The fact that India Willoughby could sit on QT and declare that he is "a biological woman" with a straight face shows you how far this nonsense has been allowed to go.

DFirst thought was -we told you so.

Second thought was -What will Labour do now?!
We eagerly await some sanity from them.

Good article. And yes, she's finished. It's going to be less like 'westminster always interferes' to sane voters than 'thank fuck the cavalry's arrived'.

Although still wittering on about 'well he's not really trans....' (so the policy's all right)

He's as trans as anyone else is. There is no proving any difference between a sincere rapist or an insincere rapist, the issue is not the sincerity of their inner life but the unalterable fact that they are all biologically men. And have no place in women's spaces. And that those running women's prisons are supposed to have the wellbeing and best interests of the women in mind and not sacrifice them on the altar of TQ+ ideology to men with special needs.

Grabs popcorn to watch him sweat. Utterly magical. He’s snookered!