Wes Streeting addresses puberty blockers decision -excellent response

How do we fight?

Parliamentary

Any bills will be tabled and debated in Commons with the possibility of amendments. We have a core of about 10 or more potential Labour rebels if the bills are bad enough. That is not enough to stop the bill, but is enough to cause a media storm if they rebel. The Tories will go all out because what do they have to lose. It is not the vote which they will lose, but the weaknesses they will expose.

You mention lib Dems/Greens etc. They are not certain to support the bills. Fact is they won't because the Bills will have some stuff to keep women happy. So they will be trying to amend them to make them more crazy. TRA Labour MPs will be tempted to support them. More delays and debate. More sunlight where Lib Dem MPs will have to argue for removing safeguards etc. They may back the bills in the end, but the process will be messy.

Then there are the four Gaza Independent MPs. They are only 4 votes, but I think they will not be keen on these bills as they might lead to Mosques being in trouble over conversion therapy, or saying women exist and they need to be dressed in religious garb etc. So that will lead to infighting with TRA leftists/progressives which could get messy real fast. Again more debate. Do Labour want to lose Muslims over gender stuff?

Then the bills go through the Lords multiple times also with possibility of amendment. Any weaknesses will be mercilessly exposed in the Lords. The Lords might very well vote them down. Which means more Commons votes.

It will not be a straightforward process. It will be heavily contested.

Media
Most newspapers will watch gender bills like a hawk. Multiple stories will be run.
Even if the BBC skimps on coverage the social media buzz will be huge will get a lot of interest. Above all if JKR tweets it is a news story. That will go on for months.

Protest
We have a LOT of women, even men, ready to act and protest in person and online. You think JKR's army is big now well I think it could get way way bigger if we can argue the existence of women is at stake. Lots of demos outside Parliament.

So you might say all this doesn't stop the bills being passed with that majority and Lib/Green support. Nope, it doesn't but everything we do raises the stakes and effort needed and the attention it consumes and the drama. That is important. That might mean the bills are weakened or amended due to popular pressure.

We follow the Women won't Weesht playbook. They had way less resources, less media attention than a Westminster debate would have. The bill also did not have to face the Lords. The bill was passed, but the SNP was critically wounded to do it.

Sturgeon went all in to get the most TRA friendly bill possible to pass. Remember SHE LOST. It all was wrecked in the end.

How much effort will Starmer put in? 80%, 60% 30%? The thing is how important is this to him and the cabinet? I don't think he cares that much.

Then we get to the next fightback

Legal
We have amazing lawyers. They can analyse the bills and point out errors. Say Labour pass something which makes no legal sense. We challenge that in the courts and keep on going. We have lawyers and we have the funds. The clever in Labour know this. So they will be keen to avoid judicial review by drafting a bill which isn't open to challenge. However to do that they need to concede a lot of ground to reality. TRAs will not like that at all. Which makes the Parliamentary debate more fraught.

Which leads to my final point.

Operation Let Them Speak

Our biggest allies will be the TRAs themselves. They will describe any bill which admits reality as genocide. They will undermine the more dangerous clever activists who cloak their aims in favour of the most crazy ones. They will make Fox Killer their legal expert. Right through this process Labour will be being described as monsters. Which links back into the question about effort.

How important is this stuff if you are going to be described as transphobic bigots whatever you do anyway?

Knowing if you screw it up a child rapist might be waving his GRC weeks after the bill is passed saying "thanks Starmer".

That you might have child psychologists being prosecuted for telling girls they are not boys.

Yes bills are likely to be passed, but we can challenge them and hope to amend them enough they are dead letters. Or make the bills so toxic through publicity they badly damage Labour electorally.

Plus ultimately a Tory/Reform government would tear them up in 5 or 10 years anyway if they anger people enough.

That is a very generous statement.

You mean a man noticed that women were not being very well treated or respected?

Don't forget Cass includes a trial for 1000 kids.

Presumably that'll be subject to ethics approval.

Ok thanks - interesting.

(Sorry, I posted this yesterday on another thread so did not re-post)

Yes, it was seeing the abuse that Rosie D got and the attacks on JKR that made him think and presumably, prompted him to investigate (Seeing the light bit is my spin 🙂)

Wes Streeting: I should have spoken up sooner at Stonewall to defend women (telegraph.co.uk)

Did he really @misscockerspaniel ? Did he say that?

Good points @GiveMeSpanakopita - not exactly persuasive though.

Afaik body dysmorphia is now mostly treated with cbt.

He saw the light after seeing how JKR and Rosie Duffield were being treated - it made him think, and as we all know, once seen you cannot unsee.

LOJ is so unbelievably SPENT as a quasi-serious political/sociological force.

I knew he was a wrong-un when I read his book Chavs. I grew up in a WC family in a WC community, and the vast majority of WC people don't think and talk like the so-called WC people in Chavs, who basically ape all the views and speech patterns of Highgate Guardian readers but with names like Shelley and Darren as opposed to Isobel and Sebastian.

Sure enough, once the book was out, some of the subjects complained that their words had been misquoted and misrepresented.

Despite this, there aren't many WC people in the media, so Chavs was taken seriously as was his next book, The Establishment.

How do you write about The Establishment without including critiques about the BBC and the Guardian which are both as about Establishment as you can get? But according to LOJ, the Beeb and the Graun are plucky outsider subaltern grassroots organisations fighting The Man. Gimme a break.

So yeah I always knew he was a faker and a poseur and I'm glad he followed the TRA movement right over the precipice, it exposed him to so many more people. How many copies did his final book, This Land, sell? Maybe about 7?

Now what's he got left? A bunch of impotently angry neckbeard followers and a Patreon account. Loser. Mean-spirited misogynist.

I used to hate him, now I just cringe.

I'm struggling to think what other medical situation is ideologically based bar some religious beliefs which request no medical intervention.

Circumcision and FGM are the only ones I can think of (if you class religious/cultural beliefs alongside ideologies). And that horrible surgery which apparently promises to create a new hymen.

The Katie Hopkins model of employment. But for the left.

If anyone ever doubted that LOJ was a weasel his grift jumping is painfully apparent for the world to see.

Trans kids and Gazans are just dollar signs for LOJ.

I've forgotten

What was I saying upthread about an absence of saying things???

Kim Johnson, Labour Liverpool mp

The proposed ban on puberty blockers for young trans people is very concerning.
Labour's manifesto promised to "remove indignities for trans people who deserve recognition & acceptance" -this entails ending the ban on puberty blockers.* I will always stand with trans youth.*

x.com/kimjohnsonmp/status/1812865611103441137?s=46&t=A2fpFNgDRyXF2d6ye97wEA

I was going to say that women are not Streeting's problem - but of course the nurses are. And single-sex wards.

Interesting times ahead!

Cass did bring this firmly back into health.

Don't forget Cass includes a trial for 1000 kids.

They're following the science.

The ideology is yet to be seen, but how can the nhs "medically treat" using drugs and surgery based on ideology?

I'm struggling to think what other medical situation is ideologically based bar some religious beliefs which request no medical intervention.

Streeting is the Minister for Health. If he has serious leadership ambitions he is going to want to make a good job of Health. Anyone in their right mind in such a role, with such responsibility, cannot ignore the warnings of one of the country's senior paediatricians; or fail to take seriously GPs when they say they do not want responsibility for diagnosing and 'treating' children with a post-modern condition.

He's probably now looking to the new NHS child gender clinics, that are already up and running, to see which way to go next.

Does anyone know what was the turning point for Streeting. As far as i know it was shortly before the Election. Was it facing the possibility of being the person in charge that he realised he could not longer make emotive statements to show the most discriminated group in the world he was on their side, when he would become accountable for any negative outcomes once the Cass Report raised this as an issue?

I think a few of us have discussed our own moments of eye-popping realisation that the emperor is naked, @IwantToRetire.
It seems you can't be a little bit gender critical.

Like many other feminists, my journey started at be kind. Once I reached hang on a minute, I was on the fast train to Hell, no. And I've not had the opprobrium on Twitter that Wes has. Whether it was Cass or not, now he gets it the Twitter tantrums are likely to harden his position.

Peter Tatchell sticks his oar in.

https://twitter.com/PeterTatchell/status/1812873571552698626?t=7_XR7B4gqYtqzausch5ZXA&s=19

Wes Streeting condemned by Labour MPs over his decision to permanently ban puberty blockers for trans youth

He cited the Cass report to justify his decision but Cass recommended caution, NOT a complete ban

Labour perpetuates Tory policy that harms trans

She's already replied to a couple of emails, but not the one I send asking for a public inquiry.

<rolls up sleeves>

When term ends I'm going to start writing to my Labour mp. Who is in the education dept.

Thanks all for your replies, I will think them over but for now, I'm just going to pick out one statement:
Really it depends what the bills say and how they are worded. We fight those battles when they come.

How do we fight them?

OK more writing to MPs, more supporting court cases, like we did before the election. But I just don't believe this will persuade anything like enough back benchers to defy their party whips, especially not new MPs. And even in the highly unlikely event that it does, the government can probably count on enough Lib Dem / SNP / Green support to get it through.

So what else? Or is that it?

Good question. Was it the report itself?