Starmer, JKR, what's most important to most women?

[PupInAPram]

In my more than 60 years, decades of being a single working parent, many experiences of being on the bones of my arse, Labour Party policies have made huge beneficial differences in my day-to-day life. Worrying if there is a man in the next toilet or feeling uncomfortable with a trans woman has literally never been on my radar. If I'm making a decision about voting for the politician who can bring about the greatest good for the greatest number, it's Starmer every time. I wish JKR would just pipe down.

You do realise you can disagree with someone without calling them stupid? Bring your arguments please, not your insults.

JKR also speaks for me.

And me.

You are absolutely right. I’m going to email Labour HQ. It’s an aspect of their policy I am the most disappointed about.

On the issue of sports, it seems to me there needs to be open categories.

To tell women that they just have to put up with the inequity that having had testosterone in a trans woman’s body for x amount of years brings makes me wonder why we have the para Olympics? Surely the one legged athletes just have to accept that life isn’t fair and compete against runners with two legs?

The danger is and until we deal with it properly will always be men.

We are brought up to be afraid of men. They’ll deny it, but it’s true. Women are still treated as less than men. Still treated as objects. Under paid. Underrepresented. Not believed. Then we are told not all men. But keep your keys between your fingers just in case.
Trans women are also vulnerable to violence from men. Now we are being told to be afraid of trans women too. So the men can carry on doing their thing, raping, abusing, murdering, while we are all in-fighting about who is allowed in which changing room. If they chose to wear a dress to trick their way into the changing room, we should blame trans women, not violent men?!

We have a huge problem with men and boys in our society. People like Andrew Tate, spouting misogyny and hate, are far more dangerous for our children than a trans woman who wants to go to the toilet.

I must admit that it strikes me as odd that this issue is considered simultaneously so unimportant that nobody should reasonably let it influence their voting choice, and so important that high-profile women shouldn't talk about it, because knowing the truth about it will mean that some women decide that they won't vote Labour as a result.

Sorry, just to come back to this because it's a fascinating point.

It suggests that people like the OP who don't want it talked about, absolutely knows how wrong it is.

But rather than admit that or challenge it, she just wants it silenced. Why, I wonder?

We have a huge problem with men and boys in our society. People like Andrew Tate, spouting misogyny and hate, are far more dangerous for our children than a trans woman who wants to go to the toilet.

Both are gross misogyny. Two sides of the same coin.

100% this.

OP, your posts are the epitome of “I’m alright Jack”. YOU haven’t experienced a man in a woman only space in the grounds that he calls himself a woman, so it’s not a problem. YOUR mother won’t experience non-same sex care, so it’s not a problem.

It doesn’t affect you so you don’t appear to care, and you don’t think other people should care either.

Just like Starmer.

And that's fine if the patient has consented. Not if they cannot consent.

The Venn diagram of people who claim to see a transwoman in real life just going about their day and feel uncomfortable and the people who would have called homosexuals “shirt lifters” decades ago is a circle.

To tell women that they just have to put up with the inequity that having had testosterone in a trans woman’s body for x amount of years brings makes me wonder why we have the para Olympics? Surely the one legged athletes just have to accept that life isn’t fair and compete against runners with two legs?

'Transabled' is already a thing unfortunately, so expect to see this coming up soon.

In your opinion.

An environment where trans people are openly portrayed as predatory and a "safeguarding risk" is hostile to trans people. In my opinion deliberately creating an environment that is hostile to trans people (as many GC campaigners and right wing politicians are doing) therefore encourages conformity to gender norms to avoid that hostility and so is directly about "trans issues".

There's a conflict between trans rights and women's rights and we don't get out of that by ensuring one side "wins" and the other "loses".

The rapist can say he’s a trans women if he wants, people can accept it or not, the fact that he’s a rapist will stop him being imprisoned with women. He was segregated from women for the short time he was in a women’s prison and then after the risk assessment he was moved to a male prison. This was blown right out of all proportion to undermine the Scottish Government’s gender reform act and paint the tories as the heroes when they blocked it. Anyone who thinks otherwise is on a par with those who think immigrants or benefits claimants are the cause of the country’s problems.

This is such lazy thinking, I can't even.

Do you realise you can disagree with someone and not try and silence them or tell them to pipe down? Irony overload.

"There is basically no danger of her throwing the election to the Tories, so that doesn't really enter into it.^"

With respect, you have no way of knowing that is true. OK, the polls show Labour ahead, but public perception can be changed very quickly.

The entire media is right-wing and will manipulate this for all its worth. I can already picture the headlines in The Sun, Daily Fail, Telegraph etc. They will happily demonise Starmer; before you know it he'll be portrayed across the media as some sort of misogynistic, woman-denier, which he clearly is not.

Do you think the timing of Rowling's article in The Times today is a coincidence? Mm, let me think - yesterday Tory MPs being investigated for insider betting; today a 2000 word attack by JKR on Labour's gender stance is published in The Times. Bloody massive dead cat - but people fall for it!

I'd have far more respect for the likes of JKR etc if they said want to see a Labour government, with the caveat that these gender issues need to be resolved - when Labour is in government.
^

Not in my opinion.
It's about clear legal definitions that are practical and workable in law.

It's not about being kind.

Interesting. See the homosexual people in my social circle and family seem to think that they are being erased by the Trans movement. Homophobia in a different form. One 16yo quite distressed as he’s constantly told he’s straight but in the wrong body and he was afraid to come out as gay. So the homophobia is getting worse and it’s not from people calling out this movement.

JFC! There's a reason she was part of a book called "Women Who Won't Wheesht"!

It really is

Trans women are also vulnerable to violence from men. Now we are being told to be afraid of trans women too. So the men can carry on doing their thing, raping, abusing, murdering, while we are all in-fighting about who is allowed in which changing room. If they chose to wear a dress to trick their way into the changing room, we should blame trans women, not violent men?!

Transwomen ARE men. Call them what you like, they are biologically male.

And yeah, all the time there are woman raped on hospital wards or perved over in changing rooms, or abducted and sexually assaulted or even just finding that women-only spaces and sports are used by transwomen who aren’t welcome, I’ll carry on treating them as the men they are.

Mumsnet is predominantly educated MC women. I wonder how many of the women who won't vote Labour because of this issue would consider themselves lower working class?

Because the women that I associate with have never mentioned this being an important issue for them. Including women who have been sexually abused by men. They are however, concerned about the state of the NHS, education and the widening gap between us - 'the poor people' and the rich and the fact that they can barely afford to live anymore.

Things like trans issues are barely on their radar.

It's on mine, but it's just background noise because there are more pressing matters for me. And I say this as a mother of two daughters.

@123H agree with your last paragraph. Whilst I agree with JKR’s stance on the gender issue, there’s no denying that she’s inevitably forgotten what it’s like to be living on a low wage.

That would be why I said I wished instead I'd said JKR should pipe up on other issues like social inequality and under funding of public services. What I did not and would not do, is call her, or you, stupid.