AIBU to think Labour have lost the plot

[Gin96]

Dawn Butler on Good Morning TV saying babies are born without a sex, has the world gone mad!

www.express.co.uk/showbiz/tv-radio/1243758/Labour-MP-Dawn-Butler-Richard-Madeley-sex-baby-ITV-Good-Morning-Britain-GMB-latest-video

I think richard was harried

Explain your penis comment!

Labour have well and truly jumped the shark. Most of the electorate were blissfully unaware of all the trans stuff until they started in making utterly ludicrous assertions that child rapists should be in prison with women and that babies are born without a sex. It’s almost like I can hear the sound of millions of pairs of eyes rolling across the country. If there was a how to make yourselves unelectable handbook they’ve decided it’s not quite thorough enough and rewritten it.

entirely correct to assert that sex organs are non-existent in very early fetal development.

Why would that be relevant to trans issues? They're on a developmental pathway based on their sex determined at conception, which sometimes goes wrong. She meant biological sex, because she isn't very clever.

Labour seem determined to make themselves unelectable

This in a nutshell.
I was convinced of it before the last General Election. They want to stand back and let the Torys get on with Brexit, then when its gone belly up, see it was them, not us!

Labour are not listening to their voters, that is the problem, they are right the voters are wrong, stupid an Labour knows best, well the public won’t vote for you with that attitude, Labour will never win election until they listen to what the voters want.

So depressing. The quality of candidates for leader, and of MPs overall, is poor to say the least. Grim.

@XDownwiththissortofthingX the garbage is coming from the Labour Party, sorry look at the comments, your attitude is exactly what’s wrong with the Labour Party “ I don’t give a damn what the general public think”

I wish DB's fanclub would stop rewriting what she actually said to try and make it sound a bit more sane. Even if she's said "embryos don't have genitalia" (foetuses do - from at least 19 weeks when their sex is often identified on a scan, if not earlier) they still have a sex because they still have xx or xy chromosomes in all but a tiny fraction of a percentage of cases. And anyway DSD & transgenderism are like chalk and cheese.

I didn’t watch the GMB interview but I did see the video of Lisa Nandy being asked if a child rapist who self id’d as a woman should be put in a women’s prison. Her answer was unequivocally that if that person identified as a woman, then they should be treated as if they were a woman and should be housed in the women’s estate. As someone who has always considered myself a socialist, I feel that Labour no longer represent my interests as a woman and so am now politically homeless.

I’m just waiting for this thread to be shut down, that will say it all, don’t you dare question the Labour Party

The media are quite purposefully focusing on this, which is an extremely complicated subject (saying this as someone who has both trans friends and friends who are concerned about self-identication) where both ‘sides’ are vulnerable to abuse.

But at the moment, the Conservatives are destroying our NHS, jobs, institutions, there are thousands of disabled and sick and underpaid people going hungry, there are more and more homeless people, including children.

THAT is what we need to focus on right now. I’d rather a politician tying themselves in knots because they are genuinely trying to be inclusive and concerned for everyone, than one with so little empathy that they can make racist comments, employ advisors keen on eugenics, and casually destroy people’s lives so they can make more money for their friends.

It’s Labour’s fault i’m afraid, until they start looking at themselves and what’s wrong within the Labour Party nothing will change.

What @duffeldaisy said

The left are fiddling while Rome burns.

I'm a feminist and I don't care whether trans people can self identify or not. It's a tiny fringe issue.

Meanwhile, the local surestart Centre which has helped several vulnerable women I know, to sort their lives out and go on to great things (think drug addict to law degree) has closed.

Oh FFS babies ARE born either male or female unless they are hermaphrodite. That's the point. It's not forced upon them by society. It's nature.

Women should have the right to spaces free from penises.

Trans women/ men should have the right to be transwomen/men. But this shouldn't be at the expense of the rights of biological women.

You can't know what its like to be trans if you are not trans.

You cant know what its like to be a biological woman if you are not a biological woman.

You can't know what it's like to be a koala if you are not a koala.

We need a third space.

What is so hard to understand?!?!?!

Tory central office is busy today.

This is another current Labour problem- any criticism or dissent makes the speaker a Tory.

I'm a union rep, never voted Tory and I agree with the OP. How many people who are pure enough will be left after all the feminists and the 'red tories' have been expelled?

I am stunned by women posting that self id is a fringe issue. Tell that to the girl who had to fight the transwoman trying to rape her in a supermarket female toilet. Tell that to the women Karen White assaulted in a women's prison. Tell that to the women in Canada taken to court for not wanting to wax the male genitalia of a transwoman.
How much collateral damage to natal women is acceptable to the Labour party? How much unscientific codswallop are Labour MPs allowed to spout before we are allowed to disagree and remain in the party?

I find that the issue of women’s rights coming into conflict is very often minimised. However, let’s not forget how it is connected to so many aspects of life.

It is not just about denying biology at birth. It is also about erasure of sex on medical records (and test results particularly in unconscious patients). Why should doctors be in the position? We had to fight to get my dementia stricken mother’s heart attack (she could not advocate for herself) to be diagnosed and it only was after she suffered another in the hospital on the day she was about to be discharged.

It is about the treatment of children and teens suffering from dysphoria, and the changes in sex education and the confusion at school of the use of gender and sex. I heard a transwoman on the radio last night say that they thought the dramatic increase of children seeking transgender clinics is a natural progression to the freedom of choice (she didn’t use those words but that was my take).

It is about women’s sports and the seemingly bonkers belief that lowered testosterone negates the biological benefits of male puberty and male physiology (women do have brains more prone to concussion etc). And it is about women’s spaces and this includes having only women in a rape and DV refuge, and no penises in women’s prisons.

Plus I don’t think that the effect on women’s sex based employment rights that come under fire when sex is removed and gender acts to minimise the relevance. Sure women’s employment stats look good when a transwoman is hired instead of a woman because they may not not have children at home to interrupt work (or they may but have not had maternity leave interruptions to their career ).

No problems to see here.... It is a small issue only.

@Winesalot Conflicts are not just minimised but actually denied, just look at number 5 in this Labour pledge. Denying any conflict at all has to be one of the most disingenuous parts of all this, too many people have seen and approved that pledge for it to be naivity.

This is a shame, I really like Dawn and DH and I were planning on voting for her.

I think she has mixed sex and gender up...

Yes Motacilla I agree with you. I am outraged by this pledge as well.

I have noticed quite a few minimising posts on MN and twitter though lately. And I feel activists for trans rights are pushing this as an undermining tactic.

*But at the moment, the Conservatives are destroying our NHS, jobs, institutions, there are thousands of disabled and sick and underpaid people going hungry, there are more and more homeless people, including children.

THAT is what we need to focus on right now.*

Sorry, Duffeldaisy, but I'm so so tired of hearing this every time women's rights are put on the back burner, and now actually under attack from the party that should defend them. There is no conflict between defending women's rights and attacking Tory austerity: Labour can and should do both. But they never take women seriously. If Labour politicians and activists had ever taken the trouble to give the same attention to women's issues and sexual politics as they have to economics, they wouldn't be in this mess with identity politics now. The left has failed to offer a feasible alternative to working class voters, who are now actually voting Tory.

Labour has to take a long hard look at itself and get back to it's roots, and that tedious old chestnut that we should all unite unite against the Tories (while supposed socialists stab women in the back) is no longer working on Labour women, or on traditional Labour voters of either sex.

The issue for me with Labour (always voted Labour and I'm a member) is that most of the leadership candidates signed a pledge which called for women who disagree that TWAW to be expelled from the party for being transphobic. It's the shutting down of the debate and calling anyone who disagrees with them bigots which is my concern. I am so disappointed in Lisa Nandy and I thought Keir Starmer was pathetic on the issue in the televised hustings the other night. I don't know if I am going to bother voting in the leadership election.

@theghostwriter
I do agree with you that Labour need to be protecting women's rights too (and I do think that, with a lot of discussion and some provision of very carefully designed spaces, we can protect women's rights as well as trans women's and also trans men's).

I'm just so frustrated when the Tories, who have a track record of being appalling for women's rights and choices, and for the rights, choices and wellbeing of all minorities, are not bothering to answer to all of this, whereas Labour are being questioned on it all the time. Under a Labour government, everyone's lives would improve to some extent (even the very richest wouldn't suffer, and would still benefit from living in a happier environment, rather than one where they have suffering all around them, where taxes are being used to help people who've hit such a terrible rock bottom that they're needing mental and physical help, as opposed to keeping a safety net in place). And so, while I care very deeply about women's rights, and rights for all people who are marginalised and have a harder time, I DO think that Labour should be focusing on the bigger picture for now, so that people like those in this thread don't lose faith in voting, or in the possibility of getting a government that cares for its people again as soon as possible.

duffeldaisy I do hear what you are saying but I don't think this issue for Labour is going away anytime soon. It's also really noticeable that MPs like Jess Philips and Stella Creasey who are happy to shout about their feminist credentials for likes on Twitter but have shown absolutely no support to the women who have been threatened with expulsion from the party.