Spectator article: Don't fall for it people

[JenniferJames]

Comrades,

The framing of the self-id debate as 'Corbynistas vs. Mumsnet' is a deliberate tactic by the right wing propaganda machine and done to undermine Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour party and paint it as hopelessly divided. We're not.

It is important to remember that only a Corbyn gov't will lift women out of poverty, build homes, invest in the economy, make tuition fees free and stop invading the Middle East. Jeremy, though he doesn't hold our position, is the only Labour MP who has not only come out and said that women are entitled to a debate and to campaign against self-id, but that we have a right to raise money to see if the Equalities Act 2010 exemptions are being misused by AWS.

Hope everyone is well. Mumsnet you are indeed mighty.

Can I not be a leftist who just doesn't really go in for the whole hero worship thing? Why is that not an option? That was honestly my biggest issue with the guy before he got involved in this gender nonsense.

(Well, that and Brexit.)

I have skimmed the thread, will return to read it more closely.

I am a Labour voter both by upbringing and by subsequent conviction. I am so, so depressed by the way that the lefty dudebro has taken centre stage in the party. There were always male dinosaurs of the "make me a cuppa, love" type, but I find the current male activist "I'm a better feminist than you, bitch" type way, way worse.

I'm in the happy position of being able to vote Labour at the next election, because my (Labour) MP has given me a sympathetic hearing on this, and I genuinely believe that he understands the problem - and he's pledged to talk to others in the party about this.

If I was in Jeremy Corbyn's contituency, or Dawn Butler's, I honestly don't know what I'd do. There's nowhere else to go:

• the Tories are spearheading this whole bloody mess - Maria Miller started it, she's got Theresa May onside, they are really the ones to blame here.
• the Greens have been full of men of the "I'm a better feminist that you, bitch" type for as long as I've known about them.
• Lib Dems? Because they've been so good for women? Not.
• WEP useless witchunting handmaidens.

I'm more likely on here to write more of my disappointment with the Labour Party than with the other parties, because, basically, I expect better of them. I expect the Tories to be utter shits. I expect the Lib Dems to be useless. I grew up being inspired by some really amazing Labour women activists, second-wavers who taught me what feminism means, and I hate what the party is doing to shit all over their memories and work. Basically, I expect better from my friends than I do my enemies, and I am more angry when my friends stab me in the back than I am when my enemies do so.

I can totally understand why anyone is left without a political home, though. There isn't any party which at national level is standing up for women.

I want to thank you JenniferJames for all that you are doing. And all the other people here who are taking the time and making the effort to explain what is happening. It had all passed me by until very recently and I feel like I am having a sort of Rip Van Winkle experience.

I stopped voting Labour many years ago after the awfulness of Militant Tendency in the 80's and then Tony Blair and Iraq and finally with Jeremy Corbyn I thought Labour had changed and was in with a chance again. So I gave money and joined up for the first time.

Now I feel betrayed. I have replied in harsh terms to their email wanting me to buy the tat 'celebrating' 100 years of some women having the vote.

But who else to vote for? All the main parties seem to have swallowed the nonsense hook line and sinker. At least the Tories have backpedalled a bit, but I can never vote Tory. But I won't be conned again by Labour.

I agree that maybe the campaign needs to try and focus on the issues as it affects all the main parties policies and not just be seen as an internal Labour row. Trouble is JC & the Labour Party have scored so many own goals on it.

I am so sorry this is causing you so much trouble and making you ill. I have contributed to your campaign and I have told the Labour Party that I will not be funding them until they change their tune.

I think the thread has move on since I started this as I had to register first so apologies if my thoughts are now redundant.

1. calm down dear

2. finally someone has done something - perhaps you've missed the parlimentary meetings, reams of letters and emails, the secret meetings with barristers, the public meetings, newspaper articles, tv and radio appearances, violent beatings, social media presence, women being doxxed, harrassed and losing their jobs for sticking their necks out on this issue that have been going on for YEARS.

Thanks.

Can I not be a leftist who just doesn't really go in for the whole hero worship thing? Why is that not an option? That was honestly my biggest issue with the guy before he got involved in this gender nonsense.

Yes! I'm with you. I'm actually a little disturbed by the hero worship and singing. It's all a bit Chairman Mao for my liking. But even Mao said "women hold up half the sky" -have no idea whether he ever acted in line with this! Men just seem to pay lip service to women, then get us to make the fucking tea and sandwiches

I voted for Jeremy - but I feel very betrayed now. Sorry Jennifer - but he's allowed a fucking trans teenager to orchestrate women being suspended from his party. It's made me so angry.

Personally (not saying anyone else should feel the same way) I'm prepared to accept that she is massively frustrated - after what has been an absolutely full on time (widespread abuse, suspension, rejection by 'comrades' etc.) - that it is only the "right wing press" that is supporting her on this issue and feels that it is a ploy to create a further divide in the labour party, for which she does not want to be made responsible. Maybe it partly is but I think it's also because they know that the majority of their readership will agree, as well as pulling in readership from left/centre-leaning women.

As someone said I think upthread - this is the fault of the left wing press, not the right wing press, nor the left-leaning women who are putting this issue above party loyalty.

I am a signed-up "supporter" of The Guardian but I don't read it much at the moment.

What have they said on the issue?

Seems to me that if/when this all blows up in our face the right wing press will be able to quite smugly claim to have been ahead of the game.

GirlScout72

Apologies. Really. I meant something accessible and not too scary. I know women have been out there organising and often at great personal cost and risk. I didn't mean to be glib about that or elide it.

Sorry!

No worries, but this is far bigger than Jennifer and really has very little to do with Jeremy Corbyn.

And perhaps if we had some allies on the left we wouldn't be in this pickle. sad to say I'd far rather a right wing sexist over a left wing one, at least the right winger agrees I bloody well exist.

The tories need the right wing press, if that means they drop this lunacy all to the good. If they then decide to make hay with it that's on Mr Corbyn and the reams of lefty dude bros currently shutting us up.

I'm more likely on here to write more of my disappointment with the Labour Party than with the other parties, because, basically, I expect better of them. I expect the Tories to be utter shits. I expect the Lib Dems to be useless. I grew up being inspired by some really amazing Labour women activists, second-wavers who taught me what feminism means, and I hate what the party is doing to shit all over their memories and work. Basically, I expect better from my friends than I do my enemies, and I am more angry when my friends stab me in the back than I am when my enemies do so.

Yes! This!

mirialis - the Guardian and the Independent have drunk the Kool Aid and bought shares in it. Disgustingly so. The Times and - to a lesser degree - the Telegraph have been prepared to publish gender critical pieces, the Spectator is the new one to the fold.

Red

That's a great document, thanks. Definitely going to vote NONE if this doesn't change.

Going to put it on twitter

How about

#VoteNONEagainstGenderSelfID ?

BTW I'm sure Jennifer is a good person, and painful as it is, maybe it's good she has her lesson in the dangers of political naivete now rather than later.

Labour have dumped her, she's behaving like a codependent woman, trying to win him back. He doesn't care, if he did he'd have done something already. it speaks volumes that he hasn't. So let's forget him and crack on with winning this thing by any and all means necessary.

He doesn't care, if he did he'd have done something already. it speaks volumes that he hasn't. So let's forget him and crack on with winning this thing by any and all means necessary.

This, I wholeheartedly agree with. It's clear to me that the Labour leadership have made the calculation that they need the youth vote and student activism more than they need women. When they're proved wrong, it won't be the fault of women.

*I am a signed-up "supporter" of The Guardian but I don't read it much at the moment.

What have they said on the issue?*

On the list of papers I would rather clean dogshit off my boots with than read, the Guardian & the Independent are now joint top. They are actively misogynist & champion the likes of Lily Madigan & Owen Jones.

Yeah, I'm not disappointed in the Tories because I had no expectation of decent behavior from them in the first place. I'm angry with Maria Miller, but disappointment is something you only feel towards people who you didn't expect to act like arseholes.

I really don't mind the 'cult of the personality' thing as long as 'the personality' is enacting the correct measures and winning elections....which JC by polls evidence is failing to do, despite sooo many Tory own goals.

I'd tend to think JC hasn't given the consequences of self i-d much head space and dismisses it as only affecting a few people and doesn't wish to lose the younger voter over such a small electoral favour. (That's not to say I have any faith that when the light is switched on for him he won't still not nod his head along in an 'inclusive' ticket).

Is this where JJ got her information that the NEC were on the brink of issuing a statement a few weeks back?

(Tip: don't watch the "6 things transgender women want you to know" video at the bottom of the page, unless you need to raise your blood pressure)

Hi Jennifer

I hope you are ok and looking after yourself and I'm endlessly grateful for your work in opposing AWS and shining a light on the issues of self id

I don't want another Tory government and I will never vote for them. But unless JC reverses his stance on this I will not vote Labour again. I admire many of his views but he is not infallible and this issue is too important for me.

I am politically homeless as all the main parties support this madness. It is very sad and frustrating.

Hi all. Long time lurker, first time poster. I’ve peaked and more and am now looking down on Mount Everest. For a while now I’ve been just fuming about the transgender thing, seeing it in isolation, but then this morning after ranting to a friend about what I’d been reading on this thread, somebody said something to me that really made me think.

She was sort of smiling about the whole thing – not in a nasty way, but more of a “didn’t you get it? I got it years ago” kind of way, and then she pointed out that many men on the left have always had a problem with what they see as a kind of biological essentialism of which they ideologicaly disaprove. Think the Soviet ‘scientist’ Victor Lysenko trying to re-educate wheat to grow in unsuitable climates.

She pointed out that these sections of the left have been denying the existance of women when it suited them for years. When I asked her what she meant by this, she replied “don’t you remember back in the 80’s when they constantly used to say of any female politician they didn’t agree with – usually Tory women - that they’re not real women?” And she was right. I sat through so many meetings where I heard this shit. It rankled then, and in truth it’s rankled ever since.

Womanhood isn’t something that the left can use as a tool when it suits them, it’s something that just is. It’s XX not XY, and IT IS NOT NEGOTIABLE! If they want to disagree with a woman because they don’t like her politics, fair enough. But too many times now I’ve heard them deny that she even is a woman. The whole trans thing just seems to me to be an extension of this: Don’t like what women think? Easy solution – make new women.

And after watching the video posted by GirlScout72, that it was Donald Trump who scrapped the guidance on gender identity regarding Title IX in the US should serve as a lesson. We need to let them know just how far we are prepared to go. Anything less than all the way and we will be walked over. I’m no fan of Trumps, but a stopped clock is right twice a day as they say.

SerciteEland “TBH now I'm a bit worried that her whole GoFundMe campaign has been a Corbyn backed operation the whole time, designed to demoralize those of us who are actually against self-ID. I can be paranoid though, but it is a worry with politics being the way it is these days...”

Interesting thought there. I wouldn’t call that paranoid myself, Nino Maciavelli said that if you want to know who is conspiring against you, then you should set up a conspiracy and see who joins.

Hadley Freeman has been quite good on Twitter about self-id but generally The Guardian has been very pro-trans. I used to be a Guardian reader but I've subscribed to The Times in support of Janice Turner on self-id.

Just subscribed to Times too, though was never a Guardianista.

the youth vote and student activism more than they need women.

Overlap?

The Times = Rupert Murdock.

I subscribe to The Times cheap package (the one they offer you when you go to cancel your subscription after the free trial) and support The Guardian for roughly the same amount - I can afford it and think it's important to have a balance and I don't want the cash-strapped Guardian to go down the pan but it's disappointing that they are doing this. I wonder if they would let some more critical articles creep in if labour women really do start to actually show they are leaving over this issue.

Kazzabites - very interesting post. I'm pretty sure you're right - depressing as it is.

Olenna, I think JJ had initially contacted Rhea Wolfson (NEC member) who subsequently made a statement on the legal position after an equalities sub-committee meeting.

Wolfson wrote:

"The position was clarified that transwomen with a Gender Recognition Certificate are welcome and encouraged to stand in AWS, as per the legislation".

Which is what we expected, that self-identifying transwomen cannot stand for AWS.

And then Wolfson withdrew that statement afterwards pending clarification.

Wolfson definitely did give the initial statement. It is on the crowdfunder page. Update number 6.