Yvette cooper - bio sex & gender v separate

Unlike Starmer. That pillar of virtue and clarity. Give it a rest mate.

I dont know how political aware you are, but there have been lots of criticisms of MPs spouses interests over the years.

And Badenoch is happy to lie, which makes holding a position easy. If the facts aren't a good answer to a question, change them so they fit! Job done

Miriam Cates is an evangelical Christian and actively supports initiatives to embed Christianity into government policy. So that should be open to comment yes, as she is the MP.

If she were atheist and her husband was evangelical it would be unreasonable to assume her links were influencing policy.

Lots have used Miriam Cates faith against her, is that anti Christian bigotry?

For the record, i doubt her son is having much influence on Yvette Cooper - i think shes justifying a bonkers postion and is having difficulty expressing something thats she doesn't understand. Compare what she says with kemi badenoch who does understand the legalisation. Whats concerning is that cooper doesnt feel the need to get on top of this issue.

Labour are going to come up against lots of problems if they are going to shout transphobia and stop the discussion everytime someone criticises their policies and motivation for pushing this on everyone. It hasnt been successful for the conservatives over the last decade, it isnt going to work for labour moving forward.

I think politicians decisions in private life are often relevant - if for example a Labour MP sends their children to a fee-paying private school rather than the local school I would not be sanguine regarding their voting on this issue should there be legislation mooted to remove private schools’ charitable or tax exempt status. Same with private healthcare or MPs holding Directorships on company boards.

These issues used to be relevant mostly to Tory MPs but in recent decades Labour MPs have also made these choices too and I believe they’re very likely to have an effect on voting behaviour - what people consider as normal behaviour is what they do in their own life, so trans-identity or activism of relatives is likely to have an effect on an MP’s views on the issues under public discussion - they don’t live in a vacuum.

With regards to Yvette Cooper’s interview on WH: to my mind she came across as rambling and unwilling to give a straight answer. I hate politicians (from any party) that waffle; I want a straight answer so that I know where they stand on an issue. Especially in an election year.

I wouldn't trust Yvette Cooper as far as I could throw the Houses of Parliament.

Yes, I'll judge Cooper by what she says and does in her official capacity as a public servant. The more I read that WH transcript, the more she sounds like someone who's been thrown a curveball question at a job interview - starts off on relatively safe ground, parroting the party line about sex and gender and then, when pressed, loses the plot. I don't think that's acceptable from someone who, I assume, expects to be given a senior role in the next government.

I can't help comparing it to the confident manner in which Lisa Nandy said (admittedly a few years ago) that she would support a rapist being sent to a women's prison.

@Beowulfa

"There is something about gender-woo that muddles the brains of otherwise shrewd individuals and renders them incapable of logical thought processing and foreseeing consequences."

+++

It's basically because of fear of the cancel culture.

This is the crux of it to me. I've never voted Labour, but always had Cooper down as a sensible, competent, no-bullshit politician who would be an efficient PM. There is something about gender-woo that muddles the brains of otherwise shrewd individuals and renders them incapable of logical thought processing and foreseeing consequences. It's like some sort of St Vitus' Dance of the mind.

I'm just interested in why Cooper sounded so incoherent and rambling when answering this. And why Starmer goes from instructing that it mustn't be said that "only women have a cervix" or that 99% of women don't haver a penis.
What is happening to make them sound like flat earthers / conspiracy theorists about this issue?

The thread was meant to be about what Yvette Cooper said on WH, not conspiracy theories about why Labour might be biased

Oh ffs.
This is where it starts to sound like proper transphobia to me.

Its really up to politicians to prove to us that they can be impartial and understand the issues.

Just imagine saying that about a white MP with mixed race grand children. Or a Muslim MP (well the Tories might). Or a Jewish MP. Or an MP with an immigrant spouse. Or a gay MP or an MP with a child in a civil partnership. You wouldn't ask a male MP to "prove he can be impartial and understand the issues" around rape law because he has a penis.

There is no reason to treat MPs with transgender people in their family differently to any other MPs. It's being used as a smear.

Its not as if we are going through peoples bin to find information into their private life. MPs are publicising that they are have trans relatives and are TRA.

Its really up to politicians to prove to us that they can be impartial and understand the issues.

Politicians saying that sex and gender are different, but failing to mention that gender identity can change a persons recorded sex isnt honest. They are not telling the whole truth, and its important to understand why that it.

I won’t trust or vote for Labour politicians until they say quite clearly that :

people can’t change sex, that transwomen are and always will be men, and should not be in female spaces

that using the pronouns she and her is a social courtesy , not a legal obligation or definition

and that that social concession should be disregarded in the event of any criminal act so that victims of crime do not have the justice they seek demoted in order to serve someone’s illusion.

An MPs family life is none of my business. However what is my business is the Shadow Home Secretary claiming not to know how the Home Office records crime statistics. That is not a credible answer from Cooper.

I think its a factor.

Lots of the issues arise because of bad decisions by politican in the past. Add to that colleagues who see any questioning of the ideology as a personal attack, and we have a situation thats not addressed.

Its only when it makes the news that politicians are forced to speak about it. Thats firefighting, not safeguarding or maintaining womens rights.

I have mentioned one whose trans-identified adult child has been plastered all over the media.

I am not willing to speculate about any other children of MPs, but I think when you have been publicising something to that extent, there's no reason why we shouldn't discuss it on here.

Are we supposed to ignore some stories in the newspapers just because they're about adult children of MPs?

I'm not doing this "to back up [a] view Labour must be biased", but I think it is worth investigating why they might be biased. Why are apparently educated and intelligent people so in thrall to a batshit ideology? What do you think their reasons are?

It wasn't you shera it was a different poster who said he was trans.
Rather than admit that was wrong, other posters are now dragging up other labour politicians who might have trans children to back up their view Labour must be biased.

It is not OK to use people's children like that.

I generally agree that politicians children should absolutely be off limits. I only mentioned it in my earlier post because a number of MPs have mentioned having trans children in the (sometimes wider) family in various interviews. It has clearly influenced how some of them think.

In this case though that 'child' is an adult who has chosen to insert himself into the conversation.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10870697/Trans-activist-heckled-Nadhim-Zahawi-Warwick-University-campus-son-Yvette-Cooper.html

That's really quite some conspiracy theory you are hatching there. As well as being morally repugnant. Leave politicians families out of it.

Stephen Kinnock is Shadow Minister for Immigration. His wife is the former Prime Minister of Denmark. He is the son of former Labour leader Neil Kinnock.
How hard must it be for anyone in Labour to speak out against this?

There may be other MPs with trans identifying children, some of whom are still children. In fact, given the popularity of trans identification amongst children it would be surprising if there weren't some MPs with trans identifying children.

I agree that a politician's family should be off limits. So why do others think intelligent, normally incisive politicians like Cooper come out with meaningless waffle and repeatedly dodge questions like this? What stops them from applying their intelligence to this issue and coming up with a clear response?
Ed Davy openly shares his delusions that some women have a penis. This makes it easy for voters to decide just how gullible he must be in the face of other conspiracy theories/ flat earthism.

This I disagree with.

This is why TRAs will fight this tooth and nail. We can already see from high profile cases that there is a problem. When all the lower profile cases are visible too it won’t be possible to hand wave the harms of current policies away.