Labour promises to keep single-sex exemptions

[RoyalCorgi]

From the manifesto:

labour.org.uk/manifesto/tackle-poverty-and-inequality/

"Ensure that the single-sex-based exemptions contained in the Equality Act 2010 are understood and fully enforced in service provision."

This is quite something.

Here is a compare and contrast of the 2017 and 2019 manifestos on trans and women's rights:

2017:

• reform the Gender Recognition Act and the Equality Act 2010 to ensure they protect Trans people by changing the protected characteristic of ‘gender assignment’ to ‘gender identity’ and remove other outdated language such as ‘transsexual’.
• ensure that the new guidance for relationships and sex education is LGBT inclusive (getting gender identity ideology into schools)

2019:

• reforming the Gender Recognition Act 2004 to introduce self-declaration for transgender people
• Ensure that the single-sex-based exemptions contained in the Equality Act 2010 are understood and fully enforced in service provision
• mandatory LGBT+ inclusive relationships and sex education (that's compulsory gender identity ideology in schools)

So the stuff about inserting 'gender identity' into the EA has gone from the 2019 version, but self-ID is new. The commitment to enforcing single-sex exemptions is new. Huge HT to Woman's Place UK and the Labour Women's Declaration for that!

I'd really like to know if there are dangerous implications for transmen in all of this, I've seen no discussion of it.

That would seem to be the logical conclusion. Labour/Butler appear to be proposing that there should be no legal recognition of sex or or gender reassignment.

Only gender identity is recognised and a gender identity does not change.

GRA on Andrew Marr. Angela Raynor telling off Andrew Marr for use if language and then totally avoided the question.

Rayner unable to voice a single word in actual support of women. When pressed: "Yes we will keep some spaces" (very grudging) and then an immediate deflection to "WHAT ABOUT THE TRANS SUICIDES EH, EH, WHAT ABOUT THEM?"

And I realise this thread's about Labour but Jo Swinson even worse: wouldn't say a single word in support of spaces unlike Raynor's grudging one phrase. Immediate deflection to "WHAT ABOUT THE LESBIAN DV PERPS, EH, EH, WHAT ABOUT THEM?"

Angela - take note: a full-throated support of the manifesto compromise might have persuaded me to vote for you. Now, there's no chance at all. And I am one of thousands. Well done, love: tell women you don't give a flying fuck about them on the country's premier political interview TV show in the middle of a general election campaign. So yes, you can fuck right off. Along with your party.

(Testy this morning!)

Just to say, a depressing watch this morning.
Labour and libdems, have been on the Andrew Marr show, both spouting the suicide rates in young transgender people.

Labour skating round the same sex spaces question and being very careful not to commit to it.

Libdems straight out abolitioning single sex anything.

Not sure if the question was posed to Gove, as it's on in the back ground and I was in and out.

At present, transmen can decide which prison estate they should be housed in.

Are you sure of that? According to the new prison transgender policy which came into force on 31st October, all prisoners should be sent initially to a prison which "matches their legally recognised gender". So a transman with a GRC would go to a male prison.

Angela Rayner says she wants to

"make sure everyone feels valued",

but if you are female you need sex based rights regardless of how you identify or whether being observed to be female makes you feel valued.

More than that, we all have value because we are human. Why is the Labour Party promoting the idea that value is somehow linked to gender?

Labour and libdems, have been on the Andrew Marr show, both spouting the suicide rates in young transgender people.

And yet if they were really worried about "young transgender people" they'd be showing more concern about the enormous rise in the number of teenage girls suddenly identifying as trans and what is behind it. But all they're really worried about is not getting abuse from the trans lobby.

Angela Rayner says she wants to "make sure everyone feels valued"

Unless you're a woman who thinks sex based rights are important, in which case you can just fuck off.

Only gender identity is recognised and a gender identity does not change

Dear God!.....The truth is 'identity' shifts and changes in all of us throughout our lives. Identity is not a fixed concept or 'thing'.

The world has gone mad! When our, supposed, leaders and politicians believe this stuff. Even worse - when they don't believe it, but say they do, anyway......That's why the Labour party cannot be trusted on this issue. This is pure recklessness.

The trouble is, if I don't vote Labour I'll be helping to let in the Lib Dems (in my constituency) and I've a bad feeling this is exactly what Stonewall would like me to do.

The labour one, was say how it is so completed and hard to transition and it's not a easy decision to make, "it's not just growing your hair and buying a dress".

Yet that is exactly what self ID will allow, any Tom dick or Harry to do, or even not do.... and hey presto! They say they are a woman now they are. I was frustrated Andrew Marr didn't point this out.

Dawn Butler et al seem to believe both that sex that doesn't exist and that trans people don't exist. confused

Now I see! The Labour party has decided that the quickest route to 'Equality' is to abolish all the causes and reasons for inequality. By abolishing sex as an actual thing - we can all live happily ever after in the great Socialist utopia. We can all wear virtual reality head-sets and be done with it.

Ah ok @oldcrone I didn’t realise that had changed.

At least you could choose to say your gender identity had changed if you wanted to move - whereas you can’t change your biology.

The labour one, was say how it is so completed and hard to transition and it's not a easy decision to make, "it's not just growing your hair and buying a dress"

Total confusion reins.

Self ID means precisely that; in fact you don't need to grow your hair, or even shave your beard - you can just "expand the bandwidth of what it means to be female", and 'hey presto'.

And did anyone ask those old school transexuals how they feel about the abolition sex, and with it their identity?

abolition of sex

Now I see! The Labour party has decided that the quickest route to 'Equality' is to abolish all the causes and reasons for inequality. By abolishing sex as an actual thing - we can all live happily ever after in the great Socialist utopia

For years our staff survey at work indicated that there was a big institutional issue of bullying. Following a few years of half-hearted attempts to deal with this, the management then decided to no longer ask any questions about bullying in the staff survey. Hey presto! The university no longer has a problem with bullying. All sorted!

The quality of most shadow cabinet members and the Labour party front bench is shocking. Pure tokenism most of it. No intellectual rigour. No grasp of the brief! Shocking!

There's an article in the Sunday Times today

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/general-election-labour-putting-women-at-risk-with-manifesto-trans-pledge-k62klvldd?shareToken=1aae014e0dbe161a3b374c2974de14ee

Look, if nobody on the front bench is prepared to come and defend what is, in effect, a fairly lukewarm offer of compromise in the manifesto - it says all that needs saying.

The Labour party has decided that the quickest route to 'Equality' is to abolish all the causes and reasons for inequality. By abolishing sex as an actual thing - we can all live happily ever after in the great Socialist utopia.

That does seem to be what they want. "gender assignment" could be both "gender reassignment" and the "gender assigned at birth" i.e. sex. If they replace these with "gender identity", they will have abolished sex in a legal sense. And "gender identity" is a concept with no clear definition - even the adherents of the faith can't define it in a way that they all agree on, let alone one that makes sense.

I've been frantically trying to cling on to the notion that the single-sex paragraph in the Manifesto meant what it appeared to mean but, as Lang says, if that was the case someone senior would have been wheeled out to clarify it. All we've had is half a sentence from LauraP followed rapidly by a trans-supportive gloss. And then today's waffle from AR who clearly has no real understanding of the situation.

Much as I long to believe there's some hope that the LP will support us, there's no evidence to suggest that's the case, and plentiful evidence to the contrary. We appear to be doomed.

If they do change the Equality Act to gender identity what happens if you have no gender identity?
How can they measure...anything? It’s such a nebulous term that surely it will be unworkable in the long term, and dangerous in the short term.

I'm pretty sure Angela Raynor, like Butler, is on the TWAW wing of the party. She is also normally very loyal to Corbyn. My guess is that she understands the situation perfectly.

Much as I long to believe there's some hope that the LP will support us, there's no evidence to suggest that's the case, and plentiful evidence to the contrary.

I think they have been quite clear about what they want to do. They are going to keep the 'single-sex' exemptions in the EA2010, so they will still allow services and spaces to be segregated by sex - hospital wards, prisons etc.

At the same time, as Dawn Butler says "there is no way spaces will be permitted to discriminate against trans people." This means that they won't enforce the gender reassignment exemptions, which allow single sex services to exclude transgender people with a GRC using the proportionate/legitimate clause. I am not sure whether this exemption is actually enforceable in a real-life situation, and there have been some barristers saying the same.

Julian Norman said:
"it is legal for an organisation to exclude a trans person even with a GRC. Whether this is possible in practice is a moot point."
filia.org.uk/news/2018/8/23/has-everyone-really-got-it-wrong#

Claire McCann said her evidence to parliament regarding Transgender Equality:
"I would doubt that a service-provider of single-sex or separate services could turn away a trans service-user who holds a GRC because this is unlikely to be proportionate."
publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201516/cmselect/cmwomeq/390/39007.htm

Also, with their trans-inclusive AWS, they are showing no commitment to reserving anything for female-born people only.

TL;DR - Labour says single sex spaces will be kept but they will be fully trans inclusive.

Angela Rayner says she wants to "make sure everyone feels valued"

Dear Angela Rayner,

Rest assured I do not feel valued when your party allows any XY individual who declares themselves a 'woman' into spaces where I am vulnerable due to being in a state of undress or unconsciousness.

I do not feel valued when you try to prevent me withholding consent from XY individuals touching me intimately if they declare themselves 'women'.

I do not feel valued when you allow XY individuals who declare themselves 'women' to compete in women's and girls' sport or on to all women short lists or to take women's prizes.

I do not feel valued when you allow XY individuals who declare themselves 'women' to be counted as women for statistical purposes undermining the legitimacy of those statistics.

I do not feel valued when you knowingly put those women who are most vulnerable, prisoners, sexual assault survivors, women who have suffered domestic abuse, women from religious minorities, women with learning disabilities, at risk by allowing any XY individual who declares themselves a 'woman' into women's prisons, shelters, rape counselling services, support groups.

I do not feel valued when you undermine my right to freedom of thought, conscience, belief and speech by cowtowing to demands of XY individuals who declare themselves 'women' that people who do not share their unsubstantiated beliefs about themselves be punished for stating the truth that they are not, never have been and never can be women.

I do not feel valued when you try to prevent me speaking out against the horrific medical experimentation being carried out on children.

I do not feel valued when you try to prevent me speaking of how teenagers and vulnerable adults are being groomed online by those advocating this medical experimentation.

Take your lies and shove them. You don't give a shit about whether people feel valued, only whether people are willing to pander to an ideology that has no credibility and is causing enormous real world harm.

Yours, one of millions of not valued at all and very pissed off voters.