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.

💯. Plus there are all manner of solutions!!! And people use the topic to be inflammatory. Give them RADAR keys if need be. I seriously when it comes to bodies woman aren’t saints. Because of women - my boy at 5 who has not able to get out of his swimsut alone - was not allowed to change in the women’s change room at the YMCA!! The reasons are disturbing. So we had to change in a flimsy sigle person TENT on the pool deck - with no lock and a broken zipper. Seriously as a society we’ve got to stop making an issue about everything !! Insanity once nobody was in the women’s change room and it was freezing outside.

Sports - imho its going to mean finding a middle ground where not all is fair. But that said. Not all is fair anyway!!
maybe let them choose their team with a % change to their times based on science. Team sports - maybe its just not fair. Maybe a new category like tier system in paralympics? Transgender have 2x the rate of disability vs cisgender

I'm just saying that on balance, damaging Starmer's chances of getting a majority will be more harmful to most women in many more areas of life than not.

Do you think maybe pushing Kier to get off the fence before the 4th July and admit what everyone in the country already knows: that humans can't change sex is quite important?

Do you think Rosie Duffield deserves and apology? And can you see that holding Starmer's feet to the fire before he wins an Uber majority is excellent timing?

Being less shit than the tories is easy. Governing like a grown up who doesn't let the bullies mess it up for everyone else needs better leadership.

So you agree the issue is violent men. Not trans women.

How does one tell the difference? My partner, brother and late father to name a few I'm confident pose/d no threat to women. How do other women tell?

Does trying to present in a 'feminine way' automatically make them harmless?

Being obtuse is not the same as being clever. Just so you know.

People on this thread keep saying “if I saw a man in a dress” and my point was that you wouldn’t see that most of the time, you’d just see a woman and you wouldn’t know any different.

I for one more think JKR should be piping up more on this issue. A political party that accepts lies as truth, can’t accept biological reality, doesn’t support its members when they are verbally attacked , and is moreover prepared to push 50% of its electorate under a bus to gratify a tiny vociferous minority who have spent the last few years threatening rape and other violence towards the women who are prepared to speak out to protect rights enshrined in law, is not in my opinion a political party that deserves women’s votes. Or indeed men’s votes.

There are huge issues at stake in this election, and I would really prefer to be debating them , not worrying that the last hundred years of female suffrage is about to be subsumed by male privilege. I have nothing against trans people, but frankly don’t have the energy to fight their battles for them, I am too busy making sure my own hard won rights are not stolen from me.

I have no doubt that most transwomen are trying to live their lives.

But they are not women. No matter how much they want this to be so.

My mother died when I was a teenager.

https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/uk-hospital-admits-bowing-to-gender-ideology-after-denying-a-patient-was-raped-because-accused-man-is-transgender

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/women/sexual-assault-unisex-changing-rooms-sunday-times-women-risk-a8519086.html

It's not an issue for most women till it really is ie when it put their safety at serious risk.

I'm glad JKR has spoken out - it pins down Labour current position - which frankly has been deliberately ambiguous.

It's not the "only thing" I care about but it something I'm watching what's said by everyone and frankly I'm fed up at being told I'm not allowed to care or be concerned about mine and half my families safety.

Most men aren’t rapists. Most trans women are just women, trying to live their lives.

Most men aren't rapists, but we see the need for single sex spaces all the same - for women's safety and dignity.

All transwomen are men, so why should the sex-based rules that apply to men not apply to them also?

Lucky you @PupInAPram I've been raped by a man who liked to wear women’s clothing and held against my will in an otherwise deserted ladies toilet by a different transwoman.

I’ll be eternally grateful JKR is speaking out. I want better for my granddaughter.

You have no way of knowing whether your brother is a predator or a pervert actually.

I don't think JKR should pipe down and I don't think that women should be telling other women to do so.
Don't agree with her, fine. But why try and silence her?
Speak your truth and let her speak hers.

Glad to see the majority think yabu

She is not. I just headed over to Twitter, in the last few days she has also Tweeted about the Reform party and about Just Stop Oil's antics.
The women's rights stuff just gets more attention.

Why should a man who's been abused by another man go to a women's shelter?

I just wish she'd pipe up about things that affect far more women in far more areas of day to day life.

The woman literally set up a refuge shelter, and a children in need shelter, is the actual living definition of a philanthropist and "pipes up" about many things including Scottish independence.

So you agree the issue is violent men. Not trans women.

Yes ...

However a) they can be one and the same and b) how are we supposed to tell the difference between them as they access domestic violence shelters, changing rooms and single sex wards in hospitals?

They never say how they are going to protect those spaces though do they? They refuse to have sex clarified in the EqA, they are going to make it easier for people to obtain a GRC a piece of paper which you are not allowed to ask if anyone has so self-id by the back door.

It has been made blatantly obvious over the last several years that wishy-washy guidelines are worse than useless because determined Gender Ideologues will not abide by them so more wishy-washy guidelines and a please don't do that from Labour to the Gender Ideologues isn't going to make a blind bit of difference.

Well, I hope those people who decide not to vote Labour based on this one issue, which may put the Tories back in power, will be able to afford private health care; won't mind if their children are taught in substandard state schools; and will be happy to see disability benefits slashed for the most vulnerable in society! Good luck with the next 5 years of Tory government!

None of this will affect JKR of course!

I agree I should have worded it better. What I should have said is I wish she'd pipe up about child poverty, entrenched and worsening social inequality, underfunded public services. Etc etc etc.

I believe that more than one thing can be true.

Labour are the party to bring positive change and I remember Sure Starts and schools having money to bring art and music into schools etc. My own relatives benefitted from Working Tax Credits etc. I 💯 hope they get an outstanding majority.

Labour have let women down about safe spaces and equity in sports. Their own MPs have been denigrated for stating the biological facts Starmer now agrees with (only after Blair said it though 🙄). I think he has also realised that it is an important bone of contention.

Both the OP and JKR have points. I’m still voting Labour but hope they protect me.

You have no way of knowing whether your brother is a predator or a pervert actually.

Which is precisely the reason we keep ALL men out of places where women and girls are vulnerable. If we don’t know our male relations can be trusted, why would we welcome in some random bloke who thinks he’s a woman???

I think that's a much better position (wishing someone would pipe up, rather than pipe down).

How JKR seems to see it though, and I agree with her, is that she's been able to make a critical difference on an important issue, by focusing on that particular issue, by virtue of who she is. I doubt if she'd been tweeting about any of those other issues she would have made any difference at all.

There is basically no danger of her throwing the election to the Tories, so that doesn't really enter into it. (Plus, let's say she did feel that was worth the risk, or would be preferable, that's legitimate too in a democracy).

JKR should definitely not pipe down or shut up or wheesht, she is amazing.

I'm voting Conservative, based on this issue alone.

Majority of mumsnetters. Where the majority seem to earn over £100k !