Labour party invents new bollocks made-up non-existent definition for woman

[pisacake]

labour.org.uk/members/get-involved/national-youth-elections-2018/

Sixteen uses of the word 'self-defining woman'. Zero uses of 'female', 'biology', or plain 'woman'.

'Woman' is now literally meaningless. A woman can be a bog-standard heterosexual teenage male (Lily Madigan), if he says so.

And obviously with half the places reserved for 'self-defining women' (not 'women', 'self-defining women'), then there's not really any reason why men wouldn't define themselves a women, is there?

If misogynistic shits like Lily Madigan can 'self-define as a woman', well ALL men are women, aren't they?

The whole bloody human race is 'self-defined women'.

Stupid Labour.

I don't think demanding equality and representation removes anything from anyone else. That is the argument that's been used throughout history, that allowing X to vote, to integrate, to marry etc will somehow remove rights from whoever the standard is at the time. I'm sorry I don't see it your way and I feel really sad that you're all upset about trans issues.

What are you talking about? Who has proposed not allowing transgende rpeople to vote, to integrate, to marry etc?

Why are you arguing against things people haven't proposed?

If you want to increase transgender representation, then either increase the share of positions overall, or take the places transgender people are going to take, from men NOT from women who are already under-represented.

Lily Maynard is a sexist 19 year old male brat. There is no fucking way he should be a women's officer. If he were a transwomen's officer, I would have no problem with that at all. But a male person should not be taking positions from women and setting himself up as speaking for them.

Does anyone think the language used against trans people is reminiscent of during the fight for civil rights, some white people thinking black people were infringing on their freedoms, "separate but equal" mentality etc

No. It's totally different. By the way, the analogy is false as men are the oppressor class, not the oppressed.

Lily was elected though, it wasn't a coup.

So what?!!! ALL men are elected to public posts!!!!!

"Maybe not specifically Malaysians, okay"

Why not? They are as numerous as transpeople.

"it's hugely important to have a number of gay men"

there are lots of gay men in Parliament. 45 LGB MPs (male & female). A lot of trans-identified people are gay, those 45 MPs are representing them.

And as for the trans-identified males who have sex with women, well they are heterosexuals, and the world is built around heterosexual males, is it not?

I really don't see the issue.

At all.

Maybe not specifically Malaysians, okay, but of course it's hugely important to have a number of gay men, black men, muslim men, gay black muslim men represented too

But ONLY you have an equal number of gay women, black women, muslim women.

seeing yourself represented is hugely important

Unless you're a woman, in which case you have to submit not just to being currently underrepresented but to a future of even greater underrepresentation because men won't budge up for other men who express stereotypically feminine personalities.

Nice erasure of women there. Why should women see themselves represented if there's a feminine-looking bloke who needs a special place just for his special self?

Lily Maynard

Lily Madigan. Lily Maynard campaigns against transitioning children.

ButFirstTea I can see why this kind of discussion would sound to you like it’s dismissing the real lives and real struggles of trans people. It used to sound that way to me as well. I also know trans people, I know that they have had to face some very real and very painful bullshit in their lives, and when people talked about men playing dress-up or this all being about men’s feelings, that sounded mean and dismissive and maybe ignorant to me.

So if it’s any reassurance: I don’t dispute that trans people exist. I think gender dysphoria is a real and awful condition. I think trans people should get to live happy and fulfilled lives, wearing what they choose, changing their names as they choose, and free from prejudice and violence.

But, I don’t think this should come at the expense of women. We are oppressed not because of how we identify, but because of our physical, biological bodies. I don’t have a ‘gender identity’ as a feeling in my head at all. I’m fine if other people believe they do, I have no reason to doubt them or doubt the strength of that feeling. But I don’t, and lots of feminists don’t, and I bet you don’t believe you have a female soul or a lady-brain either.

Redefining ‘women’ to mean ‘anyone who self-identifies as a woman’ means saying, yes, gender identity matters more than biological sex. And it’s our biological sex which oppressed us, saying that this isn’t what ‘woman’ means any more means that we don’t have a way to tackle the oppression we’re facing, and deal with real issues like domestic violence or reproductive rights or how many women are in frontline politics.

And the other part of it is that what ‘trans’ means is changing. There are a lot of activists now who don’t think gender dysphoria has anything to do with it. There are men who think they should be considered women, that others should include them in all-female spaces, that lesbians should consider them as potential partners, but are still happy to have and use a fully functioning male penis. And some of these men like to bully and threaten us. This is not okay.

We are not being bigots and bullies for talking about women as a class, for talking about our biology, or for having a definition of ‘woman’ that relates to bodies rather than brains.

Diversity matters throughout every part of society and seeing yourself represented is hugely important.

YY. And as a subsection of males MTF trans people should be represented. But not in women's positions. FTM people, of course.

This is a specifically designed piece of legislation within the party to get less women on board. The men who designed this know it.

I feel betrayed. By a party I loved. I can no longer trust them.

There's too many messages for me to reply to and keep track of argh

I totally take on board any points about trans men and fully support them too. Apologies if that wasn't clear but this thread started about trans women and I was mainly concentrating on them. Didn't mean to exclude though, you're right.

I think off the top of my head I could only name Chaz Bono so yeah definitely underrepresented/talked about!

And I refuse, point blank, to give a reason why I feel betrayed and why I've lost my trust.

I, as a woman, do not have to defend my thoughts and decisions. I know they are right.

Its being worked hard on to become common terminology because not enough people stop and think enough. It's not innocuous.

It is not the same as race relations: that's another appropriated fight that creates false sympathy. As said, it's the equivalent of white people insisting they were in fact black, were more entitled to use the black spaces than black people were, and that black people needed to immediately re define their language and how they act and refer to themselves because it's offensive to the trans black community.

As another point: if a woman has a problem with the colour of someone's skin, it in no way practically affects them other than their perception of being offended. If they have a problem with a gay couple marrying, it in no way practically affects them other than their perception of their existence and actions offending you. If you have a problem with having requested a female health care provider and being offered someone obviously male who is identifying as a woman, that does practically affect some women and girls, and disproportionately the vulnerable population of women and girls who already have barriers to accessing health care. If you find yourself in a communal changing room about to get undressed beside someone with a penis out and in clear view, who is obviously male bodied, that does practically affect some women and girls, and disproportionately the vulnerable population of women and girls who already struggle to access gyms, pools and in some case any social or public settings. If you need to use a public bathroom that any man can walk into without question, and the man who walks in is making you very uncomfortable that does practically affect some women and girls. If you are a young lesbian coming out for the first time and are faced with people telling you that sexual attraction is homophobic and you have a responsibility to agree to sex with self identified women with penises that does practically affect some women and girls. I could go on. And on.

I find it extraordinary ButFirstTea that you don't understand this.

I totally get the feeling that you want to be nice and inclusive. It's a gimme.

I don't understand how you can't see, with your own eyes, the way that transwomen forge ahead in their given industry, profession, but transmen don't.

Of the trans people who are successful, it's ALL men. Most of whom are incredibly mediocre in their field.

Nothing changes by identifying as the opposite sex. Literally nothing. Except more of a leg up.

In politics this is MASSIVELY damaging for women.

What rights do trans people not currently have? What is the 'struggle' that it could possibly be compared to the civil rights movement?

Tea What rights do you think trans people currently do not have, that everyone else have?

Yes the trans people in the news were mediocre as males.

India Willoughby, for example, was a shit male newsreader, who became more successful after transition.

Bruce Jenner was a retired male athlete with no relevance, then he became Caitlyn.

Laurel Hubbard was a no-hoper male weightlifter, but then he became a woman and won everything including world championship medals.

It's like people just don't give these things any thought at all. Sorry, don't mean to get at you, but poster earlier who had never considered that trans politics might affect women's rights was a case in point.

I’m tempted to say that those women who believed labour ever stood for them were kidding themselves but I guess that’s adding insult to injury.
Just to reiterate to those resigning memberships please tell them why. They need to know this idiotic posturing is costing them votes.

"I don't understand how you can't see, with your own eyes, the way that transwomen forge ahead in their given industry, profession, but transmen don't"

I mean I did just say in my last comment that I think trans men need more representation to, it's not that I "don't understand" it but thank you

Offending them , sorry for the incoherence, its down to typing while being aggressively lobbied for my MNetting to be puppy inclusive.

I mean I did just say in my last comment that I think trans men need more representation to

But doesn't it occur to you that there is a sex based disparity there, not a "gender" one?

And don't you think that rather says something about transgenderism?

So if a man or men want a shot at a board or committee position, they can just say "Oh by the way I'm a woman" and that's that. So with all these 'reserved for a (self-defining) woman' positions, they could potentially end up without any women at all on the board or the committee.

Please get it together Labour. We'll have the Tories for-fucking-ever otherwise.

ButFirstTea, first of all, thanks for sticking around to discuss, I think it's healthy to hear both sides. But I'd like to take you up on one point, and also ask you a question.

The point is this - you wrote: "I don't think demanding equality and representation removes anything from anyone else." I think this is an oversimplification (and the fault of that wretched "equality is not like cake" meme). Sometimes rights come into direct conflict - for example, feminists' assertion that women should have a right to bodily autonomy which includes absolute control over their reproductive functions, up to and including abortion on demand conflicts absolutely with the religious right's assertion that foetuses have a putative right to life. Society has to step in at this point and reach a consensus as to whose right is the one that is going to be enshrined in law. Either you allow abortion, or you ban it. There is no middle ground. And someone is going to come out of the situation feeling that the law is wrong.

I think in some instances trans rights is parallel to this. Take, for instance, Danielle Muscato taking up a place in a homeless hostel, with the result that two homeless women were then forced to leave because their complaints about sharing private, intimate space with a transwoman were deemed to be transphobic. Either women have the right to determine what counts as women's space, or transwomen have a right to come into any space designated as "for women" - there is no middle ground.

The question I'd like to ask you is why you think that historically and geographically, across all cultures at all times in history, women have been systematically disadvantaged as a group? Do you think it's just an accident, an accident that's repeated itself over and over again? Or do you think the question is ill posed (and if so, why)?

Radical feminists have an answer to this - to borrow the phrase from police procedurals about motive and opportunity, it is because men are physically stronger (have the opportunity) and because they want to control women's reproductive labour (the motive).

A friend of mine was fired for getting pregnant. She's far from being the only woman in that situation. I had to take a past employer to court for equal pay (for the same job) - because long pay scales led to a situation where women who'd had time out to have children got left behind relative to men who'd sailed up the pay scale unimpeded - even though both sexes were doing the job equally well. Even friends who have no intention of having children have been asked in job interviews (illegally, but it still happens) whether they want to start a family - then the job's been given to a man.

And that's before we get on to sex-selective abortion (the clue is in the name - no-one asks the foetus what its gender identity is), or FGM, or breast-ironing, or female infanticide, or forced marriage. All these are done to women on the basis of their biology, not on the basis of their gender identity or their presentation.

I mean I did just say in my last comment that I think trans men need more representation to, it's not that I "don't understand" it but thank you

The only time transmen get in the news is for having babies. Weird huh?