It shouldn’t be said that “only women have a cervix”.

[Paddingtonsmarmaladesandwiches]

Watching Keir Stammer on Marr this morning scrambling to answer whether or not it is transphobic to say “only women have a cervix” was the final nail in the coffin for me this morning with Labour. In the aftermath of The Lancet calling women, “bodies with vaginas”, I think I’ve finally figured out that the current belief system is that transwomen are women, but women who were observed female at birth are “bodies with vaginas”. Clearly Labour aren’t in need of the votes of bodies with vaginas, brains and a spine.

@Ninjawannabe

Just for arguments sake...

The Tories have been in power for the last 11 years. Is it really right to get all indignant at how you're never voting Labour given xyz when the entirety of this bullshit has come up under Tory rule? Why are Labour getting blamed?

OK fine, Keir isn't convincing anyone he'll make any beneficial changes, but Boris and his predecessors are the ones who have presided over all that has happened over the last decade +, and at least Labour won't be slash/burning UC, NHS, school budgets to the same extent? These all affect women too. And IMO these things affect natal women a lot more day to day especially poor women.

I'm donning my hard hat for this next comment but I think you're in a position of privilege if who shares the changing rooms at the local swimming pool is your most pressing concern rather than how to afford to pay for your children's shoes and food

I honestly think the tories don't give a toss about women, natal or otherwise, and are laughing all the way to the next poll that somehow Labour are being blamed for something which has happened on their watch. They've played a blinder

I'm late to this and haven't RTFT but just to pick up on the 'privilege' point...the real position of privilege is to be encouraging of an ideology that means intact males - increasingly those convicted of sexual offences - are housed in female prisons and welcomed into rape crisis centres and DV shelters. Generally speaking IME the women who chant TWAW are young, middle-class and university educated. The likelihood of them being incarcerated or needing a single-sex shelter are vanishingly small so it doesn't affect them, just as it doesn't affect wokebros and 'Metropolitan elite' journalists like Owen Jones.

Women are indeed disproportionately adversely affected by Tory policies. But if we're no longer able to define ourselves as women, if people can misrepresent their sex on something as official as a census, lay at 'lets pretend' in something as serious as healthcare, how do you measure that? How will any party know how to set policies or allocate funding to redress the inequalities women suffer if they don't even know - or at least pretend not to know - what a woman is?

Gender ideology is a luxury belief. Again, IME as someone who lives in a pretty run-down Northern village in an area of low investment and historically high unemployment, the women around me don't have the time or energy to indulge flights of genderqueer woo. It's not the women standing up to this ideology who are the privileged ones.

play at 'let's pretend'...

I should be a Labour voter. I'm Northern, working class, poorly educated, I left school at sixteen with no further qualifications.

My first job was as a carer in a residential home. Minimum wage and unsociable hours, I found the work to be emotionally challenging, but I didn't exactly have my pick of other, better, jobs.

I'm just reading on another thread about pseudo-vaginas, the fact that they need to be dilated daily.

If the number of trans people is rising, people are living longer in general, and more people suffering from things like dementia, then are we going to have cases of trans women with pseudo-vaginas who will want/ need their carers to dilate them on a daily basis?

At sixteen I would have been utterly mortified to even think about doing that, but I would also have been really upset if I'd been accused of being transphobic for not wanting to do so.

I don't expect Keir Starmer would ever be in that position himself though would he?

@BoredZelda

But it has already amounted to more than a hill of beans. We have no women's sports, women's wards, women's prisons or women-only refuges etc.

Except it hasn't because we do have all of those things and again those who will lose out are disabled and vulnerable people who are shafted by the tories but it's ok, eh, because Boris will call a spade a spade:

No, there are biological males in all of those places so it is nonsensical to call them women's unless you mean something nebulous and undefined by 'woman' (which is irrelevant anyway as what they were set up for was to be spaces only for females regardless of their identity).

I'm donning my hard hat for this next comment but I think you're in a position of privilege if who shares the changing rooms at the local swimming pool is your most pressing concern rather than how to afford to pay for your children's shoes and food

Anyone who thinks this is just about who shares changing rooms does not understand what's going on. If we're just going to use one examplar, lets talk instead about a woman who has been sexually assaulted repeatedly being locked in a prison cell for hours at a time with a biological male and having no say in that.

"I'm donning my hard hat for this next comment but I think you're in a position of privilege if who shares the changing rooms at the local swimming pool is your most pressing concern rather than how to afford to pay for your children's shoes and food."

Whilst it's true that the stress of not knowing how to pay for food or new shoes focuses our minds onto the immediate stressful situation being faced (and I've been there) it's not a privilege to have experienced traumatic abuse at the hands of men.
Knowing that if the doors are open for any male to walk into a women's currently protected space will mean that this is another area of life that's prohibited to women as male privilege increases. Knowing that it could mean you and your children are at (further) risk from unboundaried men means that your stress levels rise and your feelings of incapacity to protect and care for your children increase.

It's not an either or situation for many women and for womankind as a whole.

@BoredZelda

But it has already amounted to more than a hill of beans. We have no women's sports, women's wards, women's prisons or women-only refuges etc.

Except it hasn't because we do have all of those things and again those who will lose out are disabled and vulnerable people who are shafted by the tories but it's ok, eh, because Boris will call a spade a spade:

My daughter is disabled and she is the main reason why I won't vote labour. She needs female carers (at least for personal care) , not men who claim or believe to be women, no matter how genuine that belief may be. I'm not going to told I'm bigotted by some beardy brocialist twat (or one of their handmaidens) for putting the safety of my vulnerable daughter first. We live in a tory controlled area, far from wealthy, and tbh I'm pretty satisfied with the services we receive. Thankfully we still have men and womens toilets and the pronoun thing hasn't caught on.

@BoredZelda

I don't agree with your reasoning though @BoredZelda,there's a lot more to this than just language being offensive.

"More" that is equivalent to removing vital support from disabled people?

Nothing being said will amount to a hill of beans in reality and the only result is the Tories will continue to fuck up the lives of people who don't have enough voices speaking up for them
already.

I commented on your strange assumption that hardcore labour activists would casually leave the party. And then vote Tory!

And that it reveals a certain view of women and politics.

And yet you're still at it.

Women are grown ups. This issue is a disaster for us. As grown ups women will decide who to vote for/ if anyone based on their personal consideration.

What is the attempt at guilting us for? It will trigger female socialisation, be kind, and your posts which are off topic and make strange assumptions will hit home?

Fact is labour have fucked up totally.
Failing to address antisemitism.
Kicking out long term activists because they expressed the wrong thinking.
This whole left, centre shitshow. Infighting. No United front.
They have fucked themselves over.

Telling a few women on the internet off. Because they are turning their backs on labour for good reason. Assuming they will go yeah awesome Tories?

Well that's an excellent strategy :/

Who are and have always been the invisible backbone of society?

Women that's who.
All the volunteering, school stuff, church stuff. Looking after children. Caring for family members. Children with disabilities. Parents. Losing out on paid work, pension, as we take on the unpaid work at home, looking after others.

It's frankly out of line to say women are uncaring, as a group. We do it and it's unrecognised. Even though it's vital.

Do you go on male dominated websites and do this?

@MuthaFunka61

"I'm donning my hard hat for this next comment but I think you're in a position of privilege if who shares the changing rooms at the local swimming pool is your most pressing concern rather than how to afford to pay for your children's shoes and food."

Whilst it's true that the stress of not knowing how to pay for food or new shoes focuses our minds onto the immediate stressful situation being faced (and I've been there) it's not a privilege to have experienced traumatic abuse at the hands of men.
Knowing that if the doors are open for any male to walk into a women's currently protected space will mean that this is another area of life that's prohibited to women as male privilege increases. Knowing that it could mean you and your children are at (further) risk from unboundaried men means that your stress levels rise and your feelings of incapacity to protect and care for your children increase.

It's not an either or situation for many women and for womankind as a whole.

My 9 year old daughter was sexually assaulted in a swimming pool changing room.

I will tell her to check her privilege when she gets home although I think had she had a choice she'd have gone hungry and barefoot that day.

No one wants to vote for a party that, instead of listening to people’s concerns, comes back with …

The other guys are worse
Check your privilege
But, but, you’re wrong

These are such basic errors that I can’t even.

Remember the days when Labour was run by people who actually wanted power and were smart enough to get it? Sigh.

Spotify have just played me an ad for the HPV vaccine in which the phrase "my lad doesn't have a cervix" is used. I assume whoever is responsible for this is being marched to the gulag at this very moment. The lad can jolly well have cervix if he wants one 🙄

NewMutiny I am so sorry your poor dd.

Makes me so angry, the endless loud and angry demands that women care to the nth degree about male people's feelings about words and having to hear about other people's rights and safety, while those same males have no trouble saying straight out they don't care in the slightest about the real suffering and harm so many women and girls have suffered and will suffer while male people's needs come first.

Thanks Artichoke. I agree. I think the poster who described this as 'privilege' might be a woman.

Hi @NewMutiny.
I hope you realise that I was objecting to the notion that it's a privileged position to be concerned about the introduction to self ID,I'd be appalled to think that I could give the wrong impression on this.

I'm really,really sorry and angered that your daughter has been sexually assaulted,it's outrageous that safeguarding procedures are under threat.

For you and your daughter

@MuthaFunka61

Hi *@NewMutiny*. I hope you realise that I was objecting to the notion that it's a privileged position to be concerned about the introduction to self ID,I'd be appalled to think that I could give the wrong impression on this.

I'm really,really sorry and angered that your daughter has been sexually assaulted,it's outrageous that safeguarding procedures are under threat.

For you and your daughter

Thanks @MuthaFunka61 I do appreciate your sorrow and anger on her behalf.

My issue is that self ID is an anti-safeguarding measure. My DD is thousands of times more likely to be assaulted in a mixed sex space (she was) and if self ID goes ahead all spaces will be mixed sex. This isn't a luxury belief for me and it's certainly not for peope like women prisoners; women in refuges and rape crisis centres; women needing personal care; women on hospital wards who are some of the most vulnerable people in our society. I wonder if you would consider that for a moment?

The flowers are also much appreciated.

@NewMutiny. I'm in total agreement with you!

I think any confusion has come about as I'd quoted a pp who stated it's a privilege to be concerned about self ID, which, as it's now been re-quoted has my username at the top. It's appearing that I've stated, rather than quoted, the statement about self ID being a privilege.

My comment are the two paragraphs underneath,where I talk about how stress focuses the world view.

I hope this is clear!

Oh gosh I see that now! I was just responding to you because you responded. I was aware when I initially quoted you that you were responding but didn't have usernames fixed in my head. I am so sorry! I was agreeing with you too!

That will teach me not to be lazy and not look back for the actual quote So sorry

😅
I'm glad we've gotten that cleared up,how confusing?!

@BoredZelda

We need freedom of speech , but we also need freedom to vote for who we want without judgement from people like you.

Just because people don’t want to vote for Labour because of this extremely important area of policy that affects 50 % of the population, it does not mean they will vote Tory .

And if they do then perhaps they will do their own research and make their own judgement .

People are posting important quotes from all parties that we should all know about, and also do our own research to make sure things are not taken out of context ( that includes reading full articles instead of extracting odd words)

By all means say who you want to vote for and why. But don’t tell others what they should be doing .

Omg my severely disabled relative was shafted under labour as was his dm with hideous forms and all sorts.

Even Princess Diana's old friend did a documentary and said.. How come with brown and his son and in then opposition Cameron and his son.. Why isn't more being done for disabled children /people.

That was after a decade of labour.

If a Labour man like brown can't do anything who can?

I agree with pp poster about many changes occurring in children who have autism.

Margaretrie

Sp. Sorry.

I totally agree, unless you have direct experience it's hard to understand how utterly vulnerable these people are!!
So so so vulnerable and already a massive target of abuse

@MuthaFunka61

😅 I'm glad we've gotten that cleared up,how confusing?!

Thanks for not just telling me to fuck off the second time

for you

I'd love to see a political party for disabled people.

I'd love to see a political party for women and their concerns as the majority of us are or have been caregivers at some point,but WEP took that place and then fucked us over. This for me would include the treatment of elders,youngsters those who have chronic illnesses and those who have a disability.

@NewMutiny I save my fucks for very special occasions, I've not many left to give