Oh fuck OFF, Emily Thornberry

And if your family member has been involved with puberty blockers, cross sex hormones and/or surgery.....then your emotions are going to be particularly heightened, especially if you have gone along with that as well as the pronouns.
And as you say, when your public face/job/career is very much tied up with a very a particular position on it then it becomes more difficult to back down.

I agree plus I do think it's different when said relative is a TM because I suspect she really does view her niece still as a girl/woman. Obviously she uses all the right pronouns/names etc but I'd be very surprised if she doesn't see her niece as a troubled woman in need of protection rather than as a man

My guess is that she hasn't really thought about it in any depth, but goes along with the groupthink of her political/social circles. The reason I think that's likely is that I was there myself only about 4 years ago – I assumed that trans was gay rights repeated, and therefore we must not make the same mistakes; we must be much nicer as a society to trans people than we were to gay people who just wanted to live their lives etc. It has to come very close to home for some of us to start to experience the cognitive dissonance that leads to reading trans books and gender critical books. Then we start thinking for ourselves, and following our assumptions to their logical conclusions.

I swallowed a lot of propaganda whole before I started having doubts when people close to me tried to explain their worldviews, or suddenly changed behaviour but couldn't or didn't want to explain why. I'm no more or less intelligent than four years ago, but my views on "trans" have changed considerably with exposure to the thinking behind trans politics. I still like the trans people in my life – I haven't personally met any horrible ones – but my eyes have been opened to some of the harms caused by trans politics, not least to trans people themselves.

So I don't think Emily Thornberry is stupid, but I do think she is blinkered, and she won't want to remove the blinkers or for anyone else to remove them. It's a disturbing process to have part of your worldview torn up. And then there's the politician's self-interest; they have to, or think they have to, calculate the impact of every utterance. That's how you get a PM stating that it's not right to say that only women can have a cervix.

I think she's blinded, on this issue, by her personal feelings - those that involve family members. It has been said her neice identifies as a trans man. Also, like many in the Labour party she has invested a lot of emotion into the concept of 'trans rights' and contemplating she could be wrong is not something she can, as yet, face.

I think we all have blind spots; chinks in the armour....and particular causes or ideas to which we are emotionally attached. Though I do agree there are different types of intelligence.

I'm curious - do you think she knows that what she says about transpeople/violence/marginalisation is untrue, but cynically says it anyway?

Or do you think that she hasn't actually read the statistics on violence and social marginalisation?
Or that she has read them but can't understand them?

Which do you think it is? There has to be some explanation for her saying such daft things

People are entitled to their own opinions, but not, as a PP said, their own facts.
Politicians in particular need to be scrupulous in basing their opinions on facts, because they have authority, reach, power and influence.

When politicians' opinions are clearly at odd with provable facts, those opinions need to be challenged, not accepted. 'Post-factual' politicians are dangerous.

There is an article in today's Guardian which forecasts electoral wipe out in London for Labour for "abandoning" progressive voters so I wonder if she is panicking and trying to position herself as separate from Labour policy https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/mar/06/labour-urged-listen-progressive-voters-or-face-political-earthquake-london

I haven’t forgotten her sneery comments, years ago, when she passed a house flying an England flag. The flag was for a football match.
It’s stuff like that that ushered in the dreadful tories, and possibly reform at the next GE.
They just don’t get it.
Happy International Women’s Day!

Yes, that infuriates me too! All these easily disproved lies about violence against trans-identifying men, all based on stats about male violence against prostitutes (most of whom are female anyway) in Latin America.

Male violence against women and girls is so unimportant to these liars, that they genuinely believe men should be allowed free access to all single-sex spaces. Who cares if they harm women?

I don't think she's stupid, I think she's a liar because she absolutely knows no one can change sex. She's entitled to her own opinions but not her own facts

given she definitely knows no one can change sex, it's up to her to come up with a solution beyond metaphorically wafting her hands around and saying beeee kiiiind

I wonder if there has been some research regarding "young" people and what appeals to them for elections etc.

Most of the "young" people I know think that its bollocks and are very tired of the whole drama. Its and its only the energised lot who want to be part of a civil rights movement to signal that they are good people.

Whether she believes its real the whole ideology has a short shelf life and will either expose her as an idiot or a liar.

Another well-heeled woman happy to throw all other women under a bus - but especially those at the bottom of the social strata - just because a relative wants to pretend to be a man to get a social promotion.

I don't think she is stupid, but I do find it depressing when intelligent people are completely blinkered and detached from reality because of the circles they move in.
I do agree

I don't think she is stupid, but I do find it depressing when intelligent people are completely blinkered and detached from reality because of the circles they move in.

I've read the article now. I held off because I knew it would annoy me. There is no substance in what she says. Where specifically does she think Labour have gone wrong on trans rights? Does she think Labour should be doing more to encourage people to circumvent the law? Bridget Phillipson is already refusing to law the EHRC code of practice before parliament.

And what does mean suggesting that the Labour Party are not looking after trans people? I haven't listened to the podcast that the article is based on, but I wonder if she is challenged on any of this? Where is her evidence that trans people are most likely to get beaten up?

And this, quite frankly, in bollocks “I think some of this social conservatism that was being promoted did not come naturally to us. We are not a socially conservative party". Traditional working class Labour voters (e.g in the North) have tended to be socially conservative, as well as Muslim voters. Who she is talking about are metropolitan labour voters, in London etc., which just goes to show how completely out of touch she is. She doesn't think people can be socially conservative and economically left wing. It is why Labour will never win back many voters in the red wall. And people like her have a complete blind spot and think the only threat now facing the Labour party is from the Greens.

I think she's wrong in this, and i disagree with her about other issues, but i think the overarching problem is that posters automatically jump to say that she's stupid.
What future is there in society if we can't accept that other people don't share our opinions?

I think the incident she apologised for when she tweeted a sarky comment about a white van household when she was canvassing is very telling. It is like when Lucy Powell said that those calling for a grooming gangs enquiry were engaging in dog whistle politics. They can apologise all they like but they have already revealed themselves as smug and privileged and out of touch with ordinary people.

I know
Why do they always go there when it's been debunked countless times?
It's like they think if they repeat it enough it'll somehow magically become true.
A bit like TWAW I suppose.

I would say that a person who does not exercise critical thinking skills is not intelligent. We actually have a problem in society about how we frame intellectual capability. What we generally label as "intelligence" is a performative process; people act in a certain way, and express themselves in certain ways, and get regarded as intelligent by others; one performs "intelligence" for respect. The reality is that this is often as far as the intellectual capabilities of an individual goes, and gaps in critical thinking are often very telling in terms of intellectual ability.

Perhaps she is a good constituency MP but in the article she is lying to the public, which is repulsive, particularly when she couches her lies in terms designed to imply that she is somehow better informed & more sophisticated than those who disagree with her.

It is the resulting pushing the whole business on to children as part of being kind to trans that is unforgivable. That unless you teach children about people having gender identities and being trans you are creating section 28 and literally erasing trans peoples’ existences.

Then you tell those children you have made think they might be transgender that they are a victimised minority, and that they might kill themselves if they can’t get trans affirming care.

TBH, I simply don't understand how an obvious woman of intelligence and capability can simply turn off her critical thinking skills when it comes to this issue; Helena Kennedy is another one. I simply don't get it. They both seem to keep talking about 'kindness' and 'understanding' as if this is supposed to negate all of the reasons we sometimes have single sex protections.
They turn all 'baby brain' -whilst also simultaneously talking about 'women's rights' and 'violence against women'. Helena Kennedy even wrote that great book 'Eve Was Framed'.

I remember when she posted an image of a house with a large England flag and made some derogatory remark. Such a stupid thing for a politician to do, so, yes she is a bit thick and in the Westminster bubble.

She has no idea - most women do not want penises in their bathroom. She often goes to Rabbi Mendy’s for Friday nights- we can contact him to speak some sense.

I don't think they believe it, I think they infantilise trans people as fragile souls who have to be accomodated by everyone else pandering to their delusions.