The Times: Labour plans to simplify ‘dehumanising’ gender change process

No one wears most uniforms because they express their authentic self, do they? Or dresses up as a construction worker, or lawyer?

It's because it's what the job demands.

The only way the cross sex thing works really is if you want to say, there is no acceptable differentiation between male and female dress (which sounds great theoretically but is in reality quite impracticable.) Or if you can make some kind of disability-accommodation type argument. Which is why there is still pressure to treat it as medical.

I think that happens a lot. But to me, it means one of two things:

The argument isn't applicable to whatever the other thing is because they are differernt issues. So there is a need to carefully pick apart those differences.

The argument is applicable - in which case, maybe it was never a very good argument and needs to be scrapped. Either you need to find some other better argument against the thing you don't like, or you need to reconsider whether your opinion on it is really as legitimate as you thought.

Both of those ultimately lead to a better understanding of what is true, and stronger and more consistent arguments. So really not a bad thing at all. I am always a little flummoxed that people would prefer to keep bad arguments alive. If they aren't sure that there is a better argument at all, well, what are they doing, really? It's just ideology at that point.

When I was a young man applying for jobs, the idea that anyone would have a chance in hell if they rocked up in a dress and wig and called themselves Suzie was absolutely ridiculous. Hell, you'd almost certainly be discounted for having 'long hair' (defined as 'over the collar'). And the thinking there was, you're here to do the job. Not to be disruptive to fellow-workers, or to promote a cause. It seems things have shifted a bit in recent years.

I don’t fall under the mirage that Labour will put women’s rights on same level as the wishes of the the alphabet soup pushers.

Women rights are under threat everywhere, either the super progressive western left demanding surrogacy and prostitution as well as our spaces and language; the right western parties taking away body autonomy and demanding feminine wives and the ultra orthodox religions of the East submitting women to horrendous compliance rules.

it’s a hell of a landscape for younger women. An uprising is due soon. Even if we cannot see how it will happen. Thats my 🤲

Nobody really wants anyone else to bring their whole self to work. They want them to bring a curated version that could be a tiny bit edgy as long as it isn’t offensive. With offensive here meaning not directly contradicting the company's ‘brand’. So Virgin Atlantic’s whole self might be a nice looking young bloke in sparkly eyeshadow, less likely to be an unkempt overweight woman approaching retirement.

The racist comparison is good (and not just because I’ve used it). Do you want a racist to bring their whole self to work? No of course you don’t.

How about we all go back to rediscovering the difference between public and private spheres.

Surely though, when you understand that gender identity is a matter of philosophical belief, it becomes just like managing other philosophical beliefs. The comparators are religions, so bringing your whole self to work as a person of a specific religion has limitations on expectations.

@Helleofabore I remember skim reading that article and feeling sick.

I think you might be right, that both liberal and radical feminists have knee-capped themselves in the arguments they feel able to make because they don't want them to be available to be repurposed for conservative arguments that, for example, no, you can't take your whole self to work.
Kellie Jay Keen doesn't worry about any of that and I often feel uncomfortable watching her arguments - "Couldn't this be re-applied by racists?" "Couldn't this be repurposed by people who want to enforce strict sex roles?"
(I'm not saying my discomfort is evidence that Keen is doing something wrong, it's evidence that probably some arguments become unthinkable to me).

That paper from Sally Hines is deplorable.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2667321523000811

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4837105-yet-more-insanity-from-academia

Framing having the healthiest possible child from the start as being only something ‘normative’ people aspire to, while telling others who deliberately choose to take paths that will harm that child’s health and well being that they should be somehow celebrated for ‘living their true self’ says a great deal about this ideologically driven group. I was horrified when this paper came out.

I think the latest out of TRA land is the idea that doing everything you can to ensure that your baby is healthy is cis normative and ableist so healthcare providers shouldn’t be suggesting that women who take testosterone should avoid doing so during pregnancy and whilst breastfeeding.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-12314559/amp/Pregnant-trans-men-able-testosterone-despite-defect-risk-babies-living-right-gender-important-having-normal-kid-claim-woke-researchers.html

Dear God. Queer sex??

The poor child. A victim of its mother’s idiocy, vanity and selfishness.

That is fucking grim reading. If either of those parents had a reasonable brain cell between them they would have understood that the mother’s ovaries were still in place. Just because that mother’s clitoris was extended to resemble a mini penis did not make the mother a male.

I cannot imagine the feeling of knowing your decisions to take testosterone severely impaired your child. I cannot imagine the child’s reaction to understanding this either. Another life harmed by extreme ideological thinking.

This is where messing with language and prioritising identities over reality gets us.
Why is this woman astonished that she got pregnant? Because she thinks she is a man. And she knows that only women can get pregnant.

Doesn't it just? To get so fucked up, that you'd seriously damage the health of your child? It seems easy to say, this woman is awful and self-centred, but what brings people to this? You come back to that word: 'cult'.

This is where messing with language and prioritising identities over reality gets us.
Why is this woman astonished that she got pregnant? Because she thinks she is a man. And she knows that only women can get pregnant.

Icake
I think the woman thought she and her husband were having "queer" sex, which is often conflated with homosexual sex.
So also a reason why, in her mind, she couldn't possibly get pregnant - as any fule kno, you need a man and a woman to make a baby.

However much they flip and flap, on some level they all know that sex is real and that it is binary.

It's not the only way that pregnant women can damage their child in utero, but it's the only way I can think of when the mother will be cheered on by so called progressives.

How could she and her husband think that piv sex was gay sex! 😳

The poor baby. Fucked over in uterus and no doubt more shit to come, given her mother is both stupid enough not to realise she could get pregnant, and so self-centred that she’d continue with testosterone treatment even after being told she shouldn’t.

I truly believe that child should be removed from her ‘care’ and placed with someone that might actually give a shit about their responsibilities toward it.

In both phalloplasty and metoidioplasty, patients are increasingly asking that their vaginas be left open and accessible, known as a “vagina-sparing” procedures. One metoidioplasty patient had her vagina “spared,” and subsequently, she became pregnant from having heterosexual intercourse with her male husband. She expressed in a , “we did not think it was possible and were very shocked,” because in her mind, she was a gay man having sex with another man. Her baby was exposed prenatally to her cosmetic testosterone use, which she resumed against medical advice shortly after her infant had to be born prematurely. Her daughter has had developmental issues, including apparent motor and speech delays, as well as plagiocephaly (misshapen head), which required a prescription helmet.

No words! I have no words!

Jesus, what a horror show it is. 😠

I..I've just read this, I fell down an Internet rabbithole following links from an Eliza Mondegreen article in Unherd. It's written, mostly dispassionately, by Exulansic (late of YouTube), about gender affirming care and, dear God, it's grim

https://americanmind.org/salvo/genital-mutilation-for-the-masses/

Perhaps someone from the Labour Party will happen across this thread and read it. Perhaps it'll make them think again.

It's published by the Claremont Institute, an organisation promoting American conservatives. They're probably evil. I think that the likes of the Guardian wouldn't print anything like this, would rather advocate for more and younger makes them evil.

Yeah, regrettably we've had so many fucking moments where I've thought "Surely this time they'll see how this is utterly ocean-going batshit crazy?" and it never happens.

You get a few people each time waking up and going "WTF!" but never enough people.

I think it's that marriage-made-in-hell of most people just not being interested in anything beyond their immediate nose (and who can blame them?), the mainstream media working really hard to bury any story that doesn't show the Righteous in a perfect soft-focus twinkly light, and the multi-level insidious capture by the Righteous of so many of the institutions and organisations that people trust to get stuff done.

Yeh but people think Labour are creating ‘safe spaces’

So that idea will die

Idk if people will vote all this stuff out ever, eventually possibly

Well we already had the Isla Bryson moment. Before that we had the Karen White moment. Before that we had all the other moments and here we are.

People will realise. There will probably be a GP led Isla Bryson moment

They can’t pretend forever

‘So [Labour] politicians are going to carry on saying that they are going to make the gender recognition process easier, and maintain 'safe spaces', and pretend its a win for gender and a win women and girls’

This. 🤬

I think politicians will avoid stating that they give adult men female birth certificates. And I dont think the media understand it or think its as important as other political areas, so arent challenging them on it. So politicians are going to carry on saying that they are going to make the gender recognition process easier, and maintain 'safe spaces', and pretend its a win for gender and a win women and girls.

At least we know that the removal of single sex spaces and the introductio of 'safe spaces' was always intended, and not just politicians mixing up terms.