Paul O’Kane: I regret turning off my critical thinking on gender reforms

I'm not interested in humiliating anyone. I just want to tell them to fuck off.

I still just cannot fucking fathom how some men are unable to hear women. Its almost spooky.

Aye. He plans to sadface and then continue as before, I take it?

We need more people standing up and admitting they were complicit in the dismantling of women's rights. Ok, it's a mealy mouthed 'my bad' but it all helps.

Hi Emerald

I’m very much aware that there are many lesbian and gay people who do not support transactivism in its current form. Within parliament however, both in England and Scotland, some of the loudest and most powerful pro-trans activists have been gay men, which was what I was referring to. There are also many young lesbians and gay people who do support this cause. If some of these loud and loyal allies are deserting, it is quite significant.

Medical needs explanation: it was generally understood, when the push for men to enter women’s spaces began, that this was a small group of transsexual patients who needed our patience in allowing them access to women’s spaces because they had a genuine medical need for their mental health.

There are some who still believe this and some who still believe it wouldn’t be fair to ask these men to use women’s spaces on the (incorrect) assumption that all these men have had orchiectomy and penectomy.

Back when the IOC required this surgery for men who wanted to enter into women’s categories in the Olympics, it was obvious that the number of men taking advantage was so small that it did not cause any noticeable harm.

So when I came to this, which was a long time ago, I assumed women’s spaces were being opened up for a small number of male medical patients, who genuinely believed they were women and needed compassion because they were genuinely distressed.

Since then, it’s become obvious that the small group of patients who originally campaigned for the GRA, for example, always fully intended to open the doors wide for all the current cohort. I can’t describe the current cohort because Mumsnet would remove my post, but it’s perfectly clear that something that originally did look like a genuine civil rights movement for a small number of individuals undergoing a genuine process of medication and surgery, has now been revealed to be something very different and entirely unreasonable.

That's good to hear but we have been shouting about this FOR YEARS. Why has it taken him so long to listen to women??

Agreed MDG, whatever words they need to say to change sides. Just do it. The safeguarding of kids, and women’s privacy, dignity and safety is more important than trying to humiliate those who are willing to admit they were wrong.

So much this. Not trauma, mate. BAU in the patriarchy. But still important.

I'm intrigued by the notion that adherence to gender woo is a Labour vote-loser in Scotland. Be nice to think so.

100% this.

I think the trauma issue is an entry point for some people - my daughters are adopted and did suffer early trauma and my awakening on trans demands was due to realising that men could use the women's toilets and changing rooms and they were expected to be fine with that.

Then, once you accept that, you start to realise the other implications.

Yes that seems to be the rationale, if you can dignify it with that word. As the only gay man on the team it behoves me to back any policy which is manifestly unfair , unscientific and bonkers. Otherwise what's the point? I may as well be a boring straight.

Very insulting to gay men as a whole I think.

Even in the perfect world lesbians might like some bloke-free spaces.

He's a gay man and in the interview he makes a thing about being a gay man. OK, so he didn't think about trauma, maybe that's just being a bloke. But he also didn't think about hurling lesbians under the bus. Never mind we could have LGB without the T - he's G without the L. And he's an Equalities Minister? WTAF.

My fatted calf is remaining resolutely unslaughtered. OK, maybe I'll put out a wafer-thin slice of beef for him.

Unusually for FWR, I'm going to centre the menz here.

Women need single sex spaces, support and rights, and to maintain the truth of our history and our language, because of the bad behaviour of men.

If we somehow got to nirvana where no men, not a single one, rapes, pervs on, assaults, exploits, marginalises, talks over, encroaches on or sidelines a single women because of her sex, and where no woman has that experience in her past, and where men treat shared spaces with the same respect as women, then sure, we'll not need single sex anything.

Until that day, we do. Not because of something fundamental about women or because trauma makes us irrationally sensitive, but because of the ongoing and normalised bad behaviour of men.

Trauma might not be universal ,,,
True, but the potential for trauma is universal.

I've read the article now. He is awful. He talks as if everyone lives in a labelled box. Nobody is a human being, they are 'defined' as Labour / gay/ Catholic / etc.

"he added it had also taught him to “take time to engage” with a range of views during consideration of legislation."
And this from an Equalities Minister!!! It's a very Labour mindset, isn't it. All top-down power. He thinks it is his Party's job to tell the little people what to do. He doesn't think that it is his job to represent them.

Fatted calf, anyone?

I'm glad he's done it and I'm glad he talked about trauma - because that will get through to his target audience much more effectively than arguments that can be misconstrued as bio-essentialist nitpicking or conservative prudery.

Trauma might not be universal but it is real, particularly in contexts like prisons and DV refuges. Nothing wrong with getting people to think really hard about what 'inclusivity' means for women in those situations.

If he didn't apply critical thinking to this, what else didn't he apply critical thinking to?
Has he just said "I have no brain and no integrity"?

This.
Deep trauma should not be a precondition to recognising women's rights to privacy and dignity.

I welcome reversing ferrets and, as politician’s apologies go, this isn’t bad.

It’s almost as though there’s an election coming up and he’s suddenly realising that women have the vote.

I'm okay with him coming from the trauma angle especially considering a lot of people can understand trauma reactions but don't understand respect or dignity (just think of pavement chicken which has got worse since covid). Most people will assume some form of sexual trauma too but mine is from mental and emotional abuse, there are certain things that men do without realising - loud voices, slamming doors, heavy footed, standing too close/towering which in an enclosed space that usually echoes is not ideal but add in the fact my knickers are around my knees terrifies me.

Let's hope he is the first of many.

Well, it's a start, and I'm all for golden bridges. It's a good start that he can even say the word women and mean what it usually means. But "deep-seated place of their own trauma"? Well how convenient for him.

Because it's really not about trauma is it? Even as an openly gay man he still can't say lesbian or admit that - in the words of Jenny Wilmott of the Scottish Lesbians who intervened in the FWS / Supreme Court - "lesbians were at the sharp end".

I welcome anyone coming to their senses on this.
A great many gay men don’t consider women worth thinking about at all.

I think a lot of men, when they hear that almost all women spend our lives living with sexual harrassment and assault from puberty (or before) interpret that as 'trauma' whereas we interpret it as a fact of life in a world that includes men who are not constrained by law or custom.