How can we prevent the trans issue from being a gift to the right wing?

Just stop with the insults. You can call MNers many things...over invested in gender, scared of gender, putting gender before other things.

But this is not an Alt Right board. I can tell you right now that if Starmer had maintained any connection to material reality, fought for women's sex based rights while fighting for third spaces and the right for people to be gender non conforming, the vast majority of women here, and men like me, would march in his direction.

The Alt Right criticism is gender conforming bollocks.

Exactly - always the same message. Its never anybody else's fault, it's always women's fault, and it is always women who should sacrifice themselves for some notional better future - which women wont be beneficiaries of because they will still be pulling the double if not triple shift of going to work, coming home to domestic chores and probably have caring responsibilities for elderly relatives.

I wasn't going to join in as really we have a thread like this every other day, but what if remarkable is those who presumably think their virtue is in being left come what may, always adopt this patronising tone and though they are talking to idiots.

And what is strange is that if you ever watch those news paper review tv shows, they nearly always have a patronising "well spoken" female who things drawling out ever so superior comments about how every one else is a nut job is really deeply political and intelligent.

In fact, it begins to feel that the left has no policies.

That it is just enough to say the Tories are the nasty party, and you are nasty if you vote for them.

These threads far from making FWR look unthinkingly right wing, it makes the left look like badly programmed automatons. Do you hand in your home work to the head left honcho and go look what a good girl I've been.

As yet, not to say it isn't signifigant but excluding the issue of women's sex based rights, can anyone list a policy that Starmer's Labour Party has that is different from the Tories.

All they seem to be selling is we haven't been in power for umpteen years, and so we must be better than the Tories.

Look forward to some well researched informative posts that show how Labour would be a good thing for the UK.

Actually, the point of it is to depress the labour vote... That's pretty much all the Right can hope for if it wants to win, it's been so incompetent, it doesn't have a positive message. It just relies on suppressing the left's vote.

It's contorted because you're trying to justify voting for a party demonstrably corrupt and incompetent, for the sake of one issue.
This thread is interesting in that the OP appears genuine, but most answers stay on brand - rabidly tory.
they're not even willing to consider the question...
This board is not going to engage in your dilemma OP... It really is an alt-right petri-dish...

women appear to be contorting themselves into pretzels in order to justify voting for the tories

What is ‘contorted’ about seeing that the Tories are the only major political party that’s not wedded to transgenderism? And deciding therefore to vote Tory? It’s depressingly straightforward.

You do talk such nonsense.

I consider myself a floating voter and centre-left. I voted Tory in the last election. Starmer and Sunak are level pegging for me and the GC thing is one of my biggest issues. If Starmer could be normal and say that women’s rights are safe, trans rights are very important but don’t trump those of women, then I can vote for him. But at the moment, the conservatives are more my vibe on this aspect of women’s rights. Labour are more my vibe on other things but I don’t want a wealth tax AND be told I have to suck up the demolition of our rights. Higher taxes yes; womb-havers: no.

It’s not really a gift to anyone so much as a giant steaming turd that Starmer is pretending he hasn’t left on the carpet.

I don't find it interesting, I find it very sad. For you and your friends discussion, I have been a left wing, Labour voting, socially progressive, gay rights supporting, straight white woman all my life.

Last year, I read about Lia Thomas and how talented female swimmers were losing titles and records to a male-bodied person. My feminism is founded on supporting women to an equal and fair share in life. I am not really interested in supporting men who think they are women to ride roughshod over other women or open the door to male predators.

I don't want to be right wing and will probably still vote Labour. Ask your friends what I should do.

I could say to you trans liberation is also alt right, the unholy symbiosis of Pritzker Institute and the like, $$$$$$$ medico-legal-industrial complex incl Dentons lobbyist obfuscation in the relentless pursuit of transhumanism.

Get trans liberation as a concept forced upon the populace and set in legal concrete, and the corporations will do the rest.

Read some Mary Harrington some time.

Me and my friends discuss this all the time!

I always voted labour, always. My candidate basically told me he didn't wantt my vote if I didn't believe TWAW.
I despise the tories but are grateful for their stance on this, whether a ploy or not.

But I won't vote for them.

I won't vote for Labour either.

Really the old left is the new tory, lower to middle working class, reality based with some ambition.

What even IS the Left any more?

But it's not that "right wing". From polling it's the centre ground to be GC.

And people do risk "looking bad" even when it's perfectly mainstream to have these beliefs.

Yawns. Every time someone tells me I am just looking for an excuse to vote for the tories I think of all the times I've held my nose and voted Labour because the alternative was unthinkable. Well sorry but I'm done with fantasists. The stories have screwed up so badly that Labour are likely to end up in coalition with the lib dems and/or the snp. I might have to vote tory to reduce the risk of that happening.

I dont need an excuse to vote tory - I need a reason to believe Labour will do better. Starmer wont stand up to his activists and they live in a fantasy world. But before I consider voting for the stories I am going to need to see some positive action to change, starting with issuing firm guidance to schools. Talk just does not cut it.

Anyone who thinks there is going to be a massive difference between what a Labour government will do and what a tory government will do is deluded. The country is broke.

“The facts of life are conservative.” - Margaret Thatcher.

Women are female. Trans-identified males are men. Those are the facts of life, and if stating those facts is deemed to be a conservative position, so be it.

Agree that the more typically left wing parties need to make a drastic change. However I will still be voting Labour.

I'm saying this as someone who will vote tactically for a Labour government and finds the current right wing a frightening bunch of corrupt renegades. The most important thing imo is not to pretend to ourselves. So:

I don't think it is necessarily that much of a vote loser, not to the left. Labour are looking at the age polling on this. Tiny numbers planning to vote Conservative under about 35, and big numbers of the same age group who say yes to rather vague statements about 'supporting trans people'. Big big numbers of very young people at Trans Pride.

The right wing like it because it's bog easy to campaign on - they don't have to do anything except say 'this is bad and all down to mad lefties, but of course it's up to individual sports bodies/service providers to fix it' and it shores up some of their voters who might otherwise stay at home or even switch.

I think Keir Starmer would rather not have to touch this one. That's what gives me hope - he's not likely to have his picture taken with an unstable 20 year old male youth and declare them a tip top Women's Officer like Corbyn did. He is a good lawyer and cautious. He will hope to take the heat out of the situation somehow. Thats why I would much rather have a Labour government. But it's true that he may be pushed into actions that I oppose. That's democracy.

It is not for us, the electorate, to prevent the trans issue from being a gift to the right wing. It is for the left wing parties to get their collective heads out of their collective arses and start talking some damned sense again.

If it is a gift - it is the left wing parties who are making that gift to the right wing. If they want to suicide, if they're too deep down the rabbit hole, there's nowt we voters can really do about it.

I'm pretty sure that the Tory Party is screwed at this point when it comes to winning the next election. They also aren't that "right wing". Law and order under the Tory Party is probably no different to the Lib Dems. They may talk tough sometimes but they aren't going to do anything.

In the US, I don't know how you would turn the Democrats around. They could take a more cautious and balanced approach but they just don't want to.

@RealityFan Didn't tag you, but my post just above was in response.

What is happening in Spain?

No. It's actually for me very interesting to observe on this board in particular. The threads which would make for excellent study are those in which women appear to be contorting themselves into pretzels in order to justify voting for the tories, among others has been the comparison of similar US-based groups. It'd be too simplistic to describe GC feminism as a gateway to the far right, alt-right types - especially among a certain demographic of British women, but the parallels are striking. My friends and I discuss this all the time!

Kier Starmer should be looking at what's happening in Spain tonight and rethinking his policy, but he won't.

Politically homeless no-one will care about my vote as a divorced woman who had to give up work to care for her disabled child

I'm clueless about the next election utterly clueless