Lily Madigan, TIM, elected Labour women's officer

[jMillicentFawcett]

Lily is 19. Lily was instrumental in the hate campaign against Anne Ruzylo which resulted in her standing down.

You have to be a woman to be women’s officer but ‘The Labour councillor said that “lived experience as a woman” should be considered an advantage — but not a prerequisite — for the role of women’s officer.’

Lily could also have gone for the LGBT officer role but they didn’t want that. No, they wanted to show women that they can shit all over them and we will applaud them for doing it.

I’m absolutely furious about this ( as you can probably tell)

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/trans-teenager-lily-madigan-voted-in-as-a-labour-women-s-officer-mwchkhzq8?shareToken=472df23aa6315582a4f6558d7a1be5ba

I’m starting to think the biggest issue is that people do not understand the difference between the word gender and sex. I did see a trans woman on twitter saying that transexuals are being eroded by all this too.

A good example of the sleight of hand this leads to was given on the Transwomen are women Logic thread:

Women's only spaces are currently this:
Trans women are women (the gender)
Women (the XX-sex) have rights to...
Trans women have rights to...

Oh yes I saw that naut, and yes have been puzzling over similar qs the op asked.

I’m starting to think the biggest issue is that people do not understand the difference between the word gender and sex.

Yes, that is the fault line in this whole debate, and it's a big reason why feminists are having difficulty making headway in our arguments.

When taking this argument to politicians, journalists, any policy makers, it's essential that we drag the argument back to the ground of sex as a material reality which cannot be changed, and which must be socially and legally recognised as such.

The framing of the debate as being about 'competing rights' between 'women and trans women' hobbles us from the start, because it's essentially a category error: it is not about competing rights between two groups, but about the attempt by one group (trans males) to extinguish another group (females) as a socially and legally meaningful category of persons.

The creation of 'gender identity' as a legal concept by its nature eliminates 'sex' as one, since gender identity redefines sex as a feeling-state instead of a biological reality.

Not having a word to delineate us by sex means all our rights (that are not general all purpose human rights) are literally erased. Accommodation of gender-based self-identified TIM folk into womanhood = ejection of those who are materially women by dint of their sex.

Very well put. Instead of getting bogged down in arguments about who suffers more, or how likely trans-identified males are to assault women, etc., we need to keep insisting on the objective reality of sex over the entirely subjective concept of 'gender identity'.

Thanks donkey.

Even the (self defining) transsexual I saw on twitter, complaining of transgender erasing transsexuals, stated that there were ‘two genders’. And still didn’t quite get their own argument.

FYI, just read Helen Saxby's brilliant blog on this issue, and she sums it up more succinctly than I just did:

It’s sometimes difficult to remember, amongst all the arguments, exactly what women stand to lose here. The sex category ‘female’ is being asked to absorb the sex category ‘male’. What women are being forced to accept could literally not be any more extreme.

Keep pointing this out to people. This is the crux of the issue, when you remove all the obfuscating language around 'gender', and all the emotional blackmail around violence and suicide. What trans activists are asking for (and getting) is a legal and ontological absurdity. It has nothing to do with human rights, and everything to do with an extremist movement whose unreason and misogyny is out of control.

we need to keep insisting on the objective reality of sex over the entirely subjective concept of 'gender identity'.

Thing is though we are arguing with those who effectively state 2 + 2 = 5

People who believe that gender identity is material and biological sex is a social construct... even though the fact that they are here today arguing about it on SM is testament to every single one of their ancestors belonging to one of either of the two sex classes, pairing up, copulating and producing the next generation in continuum to the present day. And many of those female sex class inescapably suffering the consequences of being in said class such as mortality/morbidity in childbirth. Humans and their ancestor species could reproduce long before "social construct" became recognisable as a concept.

We need to emphasise that "gender identity" is tautological. If there's no substantive definition as to what a woman is, exactly what is it that transwomen are identifying as? Transwomanhood requires the existence of the category "ciswomen" in order to anchor their identity. But if the definition of "woman" is circular, the basis for transwomen's identities crumbles. They need biological women to exist to validate their identity, and yet they claim that appeals to biology and material reality are transphobic. They are in a double bind, and we need to keep pointing out the hypocrisy and doublethink.

And I realise that by the end of my post I ended up making the same point as I quoted you as saying in the beginning

We need to emphasise that "gender identity" is tautological. If there's no substantive definition as to what a woman is, exactly what is it that transwomen are identifying as?

Yes, absolutely. And you're right that exposing the doublethink is crucial. Doublethink is behind all of this: 'gender identity' is logically indefensible, that's why TRAs are so opposed to open debate and cast all disagreement as 'hatespeech' that 'literally causes death'.

YY the trans activists must realise they're on a hiding to nothing with their perspective, if their modus operandi is #NoDebate. It's not that they won't debate, it's that they can't debate as they don't stand up to logical scrutiny. They just spout out weasley thought terminating clichés.

I think part of this is down to people being very prissy about uttering the word sex, in any context.

I couldn't agree more.

I wonder - how does the rise in TRA ideology compare between English speaking countries / countries where the word for sex is a "rude" word and those where 'gender' and 'sex' are neutral terms?

We could do a rough comparison using Google Trends if we knew the correct terms. We could pool our knowledge of other langages to do this. (Or risk Google Translate!)

Are people interested in doing putting our heads together to see if there's something in this? I'll start another thread on it if so.

We need to find out who is judging that scholarship contest and let them know what will happen if they give this to LilyLiam - a few dozen places out of 1000+ applicants. He's being endorsed by the whole TRA lobby and a lot of foolish Labour people.
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LilyLiam has only just begun his Uni course, and has all these responsibilities as well, local party, womens officer + LGBT officer etc. He's much too busy to do anything else. That can be their excuse to turn him down, as well as this evidence of his political naivity.
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To give you an idea of what I mean, here's a comparison of the words "TERF" and "sexism" when used as search terms on Google.

This view looks at the last 2 years in the UK. 'Sexism' is a more popular search term - you'd expect that of course. But - it's surprising to me that sexism and TERF are even viewable on the same scale. It shows interest in the term TERF isn't as niche as you might think.

Also - concerningly I think - not only is the term TERF on the rise - at one point in September as many people searched 'TERF' as searched 'sexism'. What does that say about the direction we're headed in?

(In case you're wondering, the numbers in the scale are relative - 100 is 100% of the top value for "sexism" - it doesn't give an indication of the actual number of searches - need a different tool for that).

I think part of this is down to people being very prissy about uttering the word sex, in any context.

Yes I agree. That would be interesting raisins.

I've started a thread on 'sex', 'gender' and other languages here:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3098384-Are-sex-and-gender-interchangable-rude-words-in-other-languages

Does anyone know of a Trans Officer position?

Because I think it’s incumbent upon me to apply.

I clearly have all the requisite experience. And I will promote all kinds of women to be at the forefront of trans rights. Especially those women with uteruses.

We need to centre the issue of endometriosis in transgenderism.

Transgenderism is for all women.

Datun great plan.

I would do it too. If only to publish my rejection letter.

I would earnestly like to see them be able to get round the ‘not enough experience issue’.

iseenodust That's a really useful analysis of the currently legislation, I wish folk like Girl Guiding would read it

Datun if you have the time, please do it!

On a side note, I was discussing this topic elsewhere, and was told I was being a misogynist because I was a man, speaking for women, and women should speak for themselves. Do you agree with this, should I not speak out about this? Or if I do, should I keep my arguments purely logical, pointing out double standards, etc. but not explicitly talking about the attack on women that the TRA agenda represents?

You live in the world, you get to have an opinion.

I think you should say that women are being silenced and ask people to think about why this is.

I think talking about ‘the POV of a woman’ is subtly different to perhaps something that come across as condescending (or mansplaining? Don’t hugely like that word). I think if the emphasis is put on ‘women feel this and this is important to them because xyz’ then I don’t think there’s an issue. I don’t see that as misogyny?

I saw a conversation on twitter where a man was telling a woman she couldn’t possibly know what it was like to be trans so her comment doesn’t matter. (The obv response being you couldn’t possibly know what it’s like to be a woman!) That’s misogyny/ patriarchy. If you flipped it / reversed it, it would come across badly even if in support of the woman.

ALittleButter I did, I was told I and my fellow TERFs just love the victim role, and should get with it, feminists are intersectional these days, and we are dying out...

Ekphrasis I see what you mean, quite a subtle point, but thanks for the tip.

Glowerglass and of course, and I have no reservations speaking up, but I just wondered if I would be coming across as obnoxious, and were actually being harmful to what I am trying to get across.

MrGHardy I don’t see how pointing out the issues which women face from transactivists is misogynist. You are allowed to hold an opinion! I think if you are trying to speak for women, it becomes more problematic.

I was profoundly grateful for the careful, sympathetic words of a male colleague on this topic recently. There should be a debate; people should be able to express their views without being shouted down.