Are you voting in the next general election purely on the transgender issue?

I'm going to stick my head up and prepare to have it shot off (given this is a feminist board) but I'm not a fan of women only shortlists. Why just this PC? Surely we should also have shortlists for other underrepresented groups if we have this e.g. making sure that we have enough disabled people, enough black people, enough trans-identified people in every political party (that's not a genuine suggestion BTW). I would far rather imbalance in representation is addressed in different ways before it comes to selecting a shortlist of candidates. Why aren't enough women coming in to politics? How can this be changed so that they see it as an attractive career pathway?
A shortlist should be based on capability, not virtue signalling.

It's completely different from sports categories. They are segregated by sex (or should be) for a different reason, most often differences in strength/speed etc related to being either male or female. Where the reason is more societal than physical difference, e.g. chess, it comes down to whether there is enough appetite to create and sustain a separate league/division. Any categorisation is exclusive/exclusionary by its nature - appetite for doing so will come down to whether enough people see it as for reasons that are good (I can't imagine much support for a whites only chess league for example. Thankfully!!). I personally don't see enough justification for job shortlists as I think it does more harm than good overall. Shoot me now... 😬

People saying they will spoil their ballot really? You may feel politically homeless but if so getting the Tory's out has to be a start?

Interesting discussion on the doorstep with Lib Dem council candidate yesterday evening. I asked her how she’d define a woman and that this was my deal breaker on voting this time and that I kept asking them and they wouldn’t answer. She stood for a little while clearly conflicted and eventually said I think it would be the same as your definition.

Then chatted for a bit, she’d started to realise there was a problem during lockdown when she had more time to think and she mentioned the Cass report and JK Rowling. It wasn’t something that affected her at work, I explained how it had affected me in work. We ended up talking a while, I said a little about how I couldn’t trust the Lib Dem’s anymore, she knew nothing about the Challenors. She made a note of my name and address and said she’d come back and talk more after the local election. I definitely peaked her a bit more and made her realise this is a voter issue. I’m hoping she follows through on that as I feel like she’s nervously ventured onto the foothills and I plan to get her all the way there.

Just because they believed those things doesn't mean they were true.

There are a lot of things about the EU's workings which are very poorly understood. One of its central aims is levelling up, so that all citizens of the EU can have a high quality of life. That's why it specifically directs aid into the poorest regions, including some of the poorest parts of the UK, prior to Brexit.

Then there's the complaint about awarding public contracts to foreign companies. Grammarnut said that the government was forced to award a contract to a foreign company, which is a really inaccurate way of putting it. How public procurement works is that the public entity awarding a contract has to decide what they want and how they are going to evaluate tenders, and then once they've published their request for tenders and invited companies to bid, they have to stick to the rules they have established. The purpose of this is to ensure fair competition. Yes, if you're in the single market you have to open up these opportunities to companies from all over Europe. This is to ensure that the UK taxpayer is actually getting the best value for money. We might all like the little company down the road to win the big contract, but we don't really want to pay for it, either through higher prices or lower quality. It's also supposed to stop governments from just awarding valuable contracts to their mates, which as we saw during Covid, is a big risk.

It's not reasonable to expect Joe Public to understand how all this stuff works, which is why having a referendum on it is tricky. I think the original referendum should have required a leave vote from a majority of the eligible electorate, with non votes being counted as a vote to maintain the status quo. Unfortunately we ended up having to do something that has been pretty damaging for the UK, without a solid democratic mandate.

And yet that party full of women stood by and said and did absolutely nothing while men in their own party threatened to beat up women for saying that men are not women. The police took the threat so seriously that they advised Rosie Duffield not to attend a party conference as they were worried for her safety.

Let that sink in, this woman was not safe at her own party conference due to threats of physical violence from men. The party, including the leader Keir Starmer, did not even condemn this. Starmer hasn’t spoken to her since. Not reassuring that they will protect women’s rights is it?

@molotovcupcakes

The same Julie Bindel who praised Starmer for his bravery tackling FGM and violence against women.

On the issue of sexual and other forms of violence against women, Keir Starmer has a sterling record

thecritic.co.uk/issues/april-2020/my-fgm-hero/

Ask Julie Bindel.
ask Rosie Duffield.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/05/01/keir-starmer-rosie-duffield-trans-ideology/

Don't be childish. Intersectionalism is not a 'big' word. It is a particular framing device for analysing the collective/social level - in which there are victim groups and oppressor groups and so on.... This sort of feminism is as bad as any other intersectionalist analysis taken too far, in my view.

There is a lot of truth in what Grammarnut says, though. Those are the sorts of reasons that many on the Left were against the EU. People such as Jeremy Corbyn. They saw that it privileged just a small group and served, primarily, the interests of international capital.

I'm really not. But you keep trying with the big words 😆

You are still framing everything in terms of an intersectionalist analysis - predicated on group identities.

Labour used to operate women only short lists didn't it? The emphasis on the Left has always been on group identities and on choosing/appointing people based on their group identity.

I will be spoiling my ballot for the first time.

Apologies if there is already a link to this in the thread and it's a duplicate:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5048705-selfid-law-passed-in-german-parliament?page=1

Although Germany is a different country, with a different history, the discussion here seems directly relevant. There's a comment in it that says if we were currently under a Labour government, we'd be in a similar situation now re self-ID. I agree.
What remains to be seen is whether a Labour government would a) follow the pattern of Germany, Scotland, Canada etc, now that we have the Cass Report and other headway b) be able to fix any of the issues that desperately need addressing if they do.
In the discussion you get a real sense of the Dentons' strategy at play, in how Germany found itself in this situation.

Thanks for that @MuddlingMackem I hope this gets seen by the people suggesting the three female PMs are proving how pro women Tories are.

@MuddlingMackem

Misogyny in the Labour Party? What do you mean.

Of Labour MPs, 51% are women. More than half.

Tory MPs, 26% are women.

No. There are way too many other massive issues that come along with the Tories. In particular, I can't ignore their current war on the poor and disabled and want them out before they will truly make things very hard for disabled people in particular. The crap that has come out of Rishi's mouth lately have completely cemented my decision not to vote for them. There's no way I could live with myself. They cannot be given a mandate to bring in the changes he's suggesting, and I cannot sit and watch while a multi-millionaire demonises and finger points at the poor and disabled as if THEY are the problem. Although I don't trust labour to look after the rights of women and girls at all sadly. And I don't think Kier will make a great prime minister either. It's the best of a bad bunch.

I would like to vote as the gender critical feminist I am, but I can't. I'm disabled and I can't hack the cruelty of this Tory government.

Yes, the vote was UK wide but 55.8% of people in NI voted Remain against 44.2% Leave.
So it's more correct to say a majority of voters in that part of the UK voted to remain. Not some.

But I'm sure you know this.

thinking about this thread today:

I think in a way it's inaccurate to say anyone is voting ONLY on this issue. What's really happening is that when people weigh their choices, this is the thing that tips the balance.

The fact is that as much as they'd like tp claim some socialist high ground, there is not much space between the policies of the LP and the Tories, and the LP aren't going to do many of the things people might like. You could say the same of the Tories.

There are a relatively small number of things where there will be a substantive differernce, and so those will take on a lot more importance.

Then there are things like the quality of individual candidates, or trust in the party, or the local candidate, or similar somewhat difficult to lay out elements.

For those who blame the Tories for letting gender-woo take hold, as well as the Glinner substack, there is also this newspaper article on the Denton's strategy:
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-document-that-reveals-the-remarkable-tactics-of-trans-lobbyists/

It was deliberately under the radar on the coattails of LGB.

I don't blame the Tories for being sucked in initially, a great many GC women were also taken in by it. I judge people on their actions once they become aware of the reality, and Labour as a party fail miserably. I'm no Tory either, but they'll be getting my vote. Even if Starmer changes his tune I just can't trust him.

For those who have mentioned Thatcher, I didn't agree with most of her policies, but I respected her for having her principles and standing by them. Starmer by contrast appears to be totally unprincipled. And therefore un-votable for me. And the level of misogyny in the Labour party has been an eye-opener, so the party generally will not be getting my vote, even without Starmer at the helm.

Yes, Grammarnut, there are a fuck tonne of inaccuracies in that post. But this isn't a Brexit thread and I've already been told off for derailing it.

👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

Absolutely this.

If a politician is incapable of understanding basic scientific facts and will lie through their teeth about them then I don’t trust that they’ll be capable of grasping any other important matter. Add to that their willingness to shove the rights of women and girls under a bus and ditto - they demonstrate a misogynistic attitude and contempt for women that will carry over into every other political decision they make.

No, MissScarlet, there are not. That's how the EU works, it is about big business, not about small ones, or ordinary people. Why do you think there are demonstrations by the gillet jaunes, riots and anger in Greece because their pensions and their welfare and health service were hollowed out to pay the debts caused by being in the euro, and thus having the same exchange rate as the Deutschemarke (which is what the euro is afaik).