Harriet Harman says women are women, or men who are 'certified' women.

So a woman is a woman, or a man with a bit of paper stating that they are legally and fictionally a woman.

Which makes them very obviously not a woman.

I don't agree with the GRA and I do want it rolled back. It was a bad piece of law, badly made, by politicians bad at their jobs, with appalling consequences for the sex class men can get a piece of paper entitling them to walk all over. And yes, this is the same person who fell for the Paedophile Information Exchange and still apparently hasn't learned more cautious judgement.

Ahhh I was swinging towards maybe giving Labour another chance.

But if this is their definition of ‘woman’ then all their backtracking has meant jack shite.

Guess it’s back to attempting to actively keeping them out of power then.

This is I think the "thought" process going on (I say thought, but with such lack of intelligence here, it's just random neurons firing).

Women have achieved full human rights, from equal pay to maternity leave, divorce rights, abortion, contraception, marital rape etc etc.
In no area of law is a woman inferior to a man.

And the "progressive" left (well it's more like a crab scuttling sideways than forward direction) believe in bringing up all minorities, disabled, gay, PoC...and of course, now trans/NB.

And in their ethos, there can be no more judging (fat slags, benefit street, feral youth etc etc), no more moralising or shaming of behaviour, appearance, ID.

And trans has gained pre eminence in the last decade as human rights law has matured, as we're told to never make judgements on individuals acting within the law, to be prejudicial.

And with women having already settled rights, it's only fair for them to budge up a little on the Park Bench Of Rights, asking should be enough, we don't expect any resistance. Just asking women to offer up their space to a beleaguered group who are prone to depression and suicide, who are failing in society so often, it's a little favour for such positive benefit to an isolated group. Women are doing well, and because you're so supportive and collegiate, you can accept some pain and discomfort (we do get why Isla Bryson and Emily Bridges could feel untoward to start), until the system works it way out, and we can then all fit happily on the intersectional spectrum of IDs.

Because it means more to have trans, especially transwomen accepted, held up, celebrated, to stop those suicides and depressions and lost potential, than women to feel somewhat discomforted in the short term. We've always asked people to make sacrifices, for social justice. All that is asked is that as all good women in history, you share and make do. Always done it. And can again.

Details like violence in women's prisons, and disadvantage in women's sport, privacy issues in women's toilets and changing rooms, anxiety in refuges, uncomfortableness in lesbian clubs and women's associations, can all be worked out with practical steps, an effort to accommodate, and women's natural proclivity to find fuss free solutions.
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This is where the Be Kind And Don't Judge end of progressivism sees the trans debate, HH a prime example.

Yea I was coming in to say that too. Wouldn’t believe her if she told me it was Sunday. Disgrace of a non-male/birthing /AFAB person.

Which means any male who ‘identifies’ as otherwise as we can’t check anyway

OK, so if this becomes the official Labour Party policy it's a 'no' from me at the next GE.

How does one know if a man has a lady certificate Harriet since my understanding is you also made it illegal to ask to see it? Not that men with lady certs are women either, but it might help keep down the numbers of those with an unsavoury interest in being in women’s spaces.

It's just a clever way of trying to have your cake and eat it at the same time. Don't fall for it.

At c25s in the clip above I think HH actually says:
"A man is either someone who is born a man or someone who is certified under the gender recognition act as having transitioned from (sic) a man."

I mean I actually agree with her here - a man is a man regardless of the existence of a GRC but I don't think this is what she meant to say.

Interesting slip to make!

But I would say a woman is someone who is born a woman or someone who under the GRA 2004 is certified as having transitioned from a man to a woman'.

And no one is allowed to ask or disclose whether someone has a GRA or not. So in effect, any man behaving as if he has a GRA must be assumed to have one and therefore, accepted as "a woman".

Harriet, stop trying to find a "reasonable" middle ground. There is no middle ground.

Either "woman" is a coherent and meaningful legal, political and social term for female people under which they can organise and speak to the needs and reality of being female, or "woman" is a mental/emotional state found in either sex. It cannot be both.

Adding "just a few" men into the first definition undermines it entirely, rendering it utterly useless, in fact worse than useless, actually regressive, to female people for any practical legal, social or political purpose.

These two things - the physical fact of femaleness and the mental fact of whatever people who use "woman" to label their identity are feeling - are not the same thing. They are totally different things and they should have totally different words, rights and political, social and legal voices.

If what trans people feel is truly a real and genuine innate identity and not just a deliberate or naïve projection of their own sexist beliefs, it needs a different name. It should never have been labelled "womanhood" or "manhood" in the first place because it is nothing, nothing, to do with what that word previously meant.

That, Harriet, is how we truly move forward. Stop trying to the square a circle of making two mutually contradictory meanings true at the same time and start in a new direction where we look at the two things separately and see what each needs in its own right.

How on earth can they still be clinging to this?!

It defies belief.

They've seen rapists in women's prisons, they've seen women's sport being decimated, they know about the Cass report and the collapse of the Tavistock gender clinic, and they understand, like everyone else, how predatory men will, and are, exploiting the fuck out of it.

How on earth do they think they are going to square the fact that some men can be called women, without the slightest bit of gatekeeping, with the opinion that it won't be detrimental to women.

they can't.

And as No Debate disappears over the horizon, the questioning is going to ramp up.

I know! You'd have thought she'd have learnt, but it seems not.

Did she offer an explanation as to what the good reason was?

My understanding is that in 2003/4 that 'good reason' was avoiding marriage equality across the board for same sex couples so the GRA was created so some same sex couples could marry if there was a certificate to say one of them had 'changed' sex.

That no longer applies so what good reason/s still stand in 2023 in light of the snowball of damage the GRA has caused for women and girls?

An invisible certificate that means nothing but gains men everything they want.

A certificate which no one can see or ask about

A certificate which if they have their way you can pretty much print off at home for a fiver?

Nope.

Anyone who thinks that a scrap of paper means anything in this context should not be allowed to make more complicated decisions than what drink they will have with a biscuit.

They shouldn't be handing out some sort of participation certificate in womanhood.
Men don't qualify & actual women don't need them.

I imagine it's finally dawning on some of them that No Debate is soo last year.

She also said that she was aware that not everyone agrees with her and she supports the right of others to hold and express a different view.

That is surely a roll back of the position most Labour MPs held only a few months ago?

If it weren’t for this issue and their stance on allowing green belt housing then I would be voting for them in a heartbeat.

This is Labour desperately trying to claw back some of their female votes, and not appear quite so batshit as they have previously, in my opinion.

And they're still behind the curve.

They still don't understand that despite it being a piece of (highly sexist) piss to get a gender recognition certificate, people are fully aware that they're going to make it even easier!

What is the bloody, fucking point of them claiming that men can be women if they acquire a piece of paper that relies one hundred percent on sexism, and anyway, you're not allowed to see it!

The entire concept of a biological women and a legal woman who is really a man, is just as terminally stupid as claiming some women have a penis.