Labour’s pledge re exemptions is meaningless

[HermioneWeasley]

In today’s web chat John McDonnell confirmed that they will bring in self ID for your legal sex, effectively
making their manifesto pledge re single sex spaces pointless

This is what I always suspected

There is no safety in Labour for women and they have not had a change of heart

The party is a lost cause. Same as Lib Dems and Greens but possibly slightly more aware of the female vote as they are trying to placate us with meaningless platitudes.

They can fuck right off.

Every labour politician has spoken in jargon and are being evasive. Which means they don't have a clue about what they are saying.

I think they are going to bring in self id and maybe will change laws if and when safeguarding issues make it impossible to ignore. Which will have to be something major.

We need to hear more questions on this on TV and radio. My own Candidate has gone silent...

Glad it's confirmed in writing

Come together, considered discussion, the feeeelz, blah blah blah.

I’m fucking sick to death of it. Labour are finished.

If they've misled people on this, what else have they misled people on? Someone needs to go over their manifesto with a fine tooth comb...

Discussed this on the doorstep this evening with a Labour canvasser. I am still a member of the party, probably not for much longer after tonight.
I said l am not voting for Labour. The canvasser replied, “ because of Brexit? “ and was taken aback when l responded no actually because of Self ID, Women’s protected status under the Equality Act, safeguarding, medicalising children etc.
I am in Jeremy’s Ward. The canvasser has said that they will take this back to Jeremy tomorrow. Jeremy has been known to knock on doors on our street in the week building up to the election. So if l see him l’m going in !!! Have had enough of this now.

Ooh interesting.

I have emailed all my prospective parliamentary mps re self-id. Only the Green Party person replied with a word salad which didn't address my specific questions.

I think I will reply to thank him for at least replying.

If Jezza pips rounds Ruby do show him all the threads on here about the ballot spoiling and the decimation of women's rights 100 years since we got to vote won't you?

I still have hope that somehow someone wakes up.

Yes, Labour's policy re self I.D and single sex spaces sounds confused. Manifesto states commitment to uphold Equality Act but also talks about reforming the GRA. I felt like I couldn't vote for them until I read the manifesto and interpreted the way it is written to mean that sex and gender are separate things. Single sex spaces are decided on biological sex and gender 'identity' is whatever that is, so people can 'identify' as whatever gender they like, make one up, whatever, but we retain our sex based rights.
Can we PLEASE take some notice of the FACT that the changes which have been happening around gender self I.D have ALL been implemented under a tory government. No one mentions this, we have had tory rule for almost a decade and during this decade, the transagenda has really taken off UNDER TORY RULE, so to all women saying they'll either spoil their ballot or vote to keep the tories in, things will NOT change, you are voting to keep the transagenda rolling over us with its current velocity!
I shan't be voting to keep 4 million children in poverty, any mum who does should be ashamed! As for the Labour Party, they have listened to women in the party and it's caused problems but it's a start and I for one will be voting for my Labour candidate and after this election I'll be fighting to keep single sex spaces single sex. There is change happening, people don't know what to do under pressure from the transagenda but we can fight. Please remember that these tories have allowed the changes to happen, so many women on various social media sites saying they're voting to keep the current situation because they don't like what Labour have said while being BLIND to the fact that it's not even Labour who've been changing the rules to allow men in women's prisons etc. Please don't vote for more children going to school hungry, please don't vote for people who take free school meals from already hungry children.

This is not a party political issue. No political party can be trusted with regards to the transgender ideology because we are looking at something other than traditional left/right politics and any attempt to frame it as such is never going to result in accurate analysis.

There are multiple strands to this but one is a split in the ruling class of this country that goes back decades and perhaps even centuries. And central to it all is a general disdain for the working classes of this country.

The strand of the ruling class that is now gaining ascendancy had one manifestation in a project called Mass Observation. It was started in the 30s by (amongst others) a maverick Cambridge-educated anthropologist called Tom Harrison. These largely southern members of the elite hated the values of their own class and favoured a libertarian and bohemian kind of freedom. They were a disparate group of intellectuals of 'leftish', anti-establishment bent.

They viewed the northern working classes as not much better than animals and decided to study us as such.

I have not had chance to research this as thoroughly as I would like but my interim impressions are that they expected us to be rutting in the streets. On the contrary, they found a working class culture that had its own moral code. I think they identified working class women as the major enemy to their plans - they kept a fairly tight hold on things and fiercely protected their children.

Members of this group included people like the Labour MP Tom Dryden who had close cross-party and secret service links.

People that despise the working classes are in all parties I am afraid. The transgender ideology is something other than traditional politics and has been waiting in the wings to transform society in a particular way for a lot longer than most of us have been alive.

Here is a quote fro Mass Observation to give you a flavour

'Walk about a bit: by now observer Wicham and myself (John Sommerfield) are convinced that it isn't bad luck on our part, it's true all the girls are ugly, not some but everyone...When we began work in Blackpool we expected to see copulation everywhere.'

tom driberg not dryden

I think he's just being evasive. If Labour say they are committed to the single-sex exemptions, then that means that we will still legally be able to have spaces that are for biological women only. Even if they make it easier for men to change their sex legally, that won't give them access to women's spaces. But he's not going to spell that out, unfortunately.

sorry lentil but I won't be voting Labour. I know several Labour women who are pointing at a muddled, unworkable, manifesto and saying 'look, Labour ARE listening' and then go on to say I should have faith - ignore Dawn Butler (only the equalities shadow minister, after all).
I find it insulting that Labour thinks I have such a short memory that I don't remember the disruption of the WPUK at Bournemouth and the total silence on the subject by MP's. That the only MP who has had the courage to publicly address women's concerns is a tory MP. Labour MP's? Silence.
Why should I have faith in a party that totally ignores women on this then - hey presto! - throws them a sop at election time?
Lastly, I hate the way that they ignore the fact that thousands responded to the GRA Consultation, and just wave through Self-ID.
So, in short, Labour can fuck right off.

Their manifesto says Labour is committed to reforming the Gender Recognition Act 2004 to introduce self-declaration for transgender people, they haven't made it a bullet point so I think that means they are not committed to doing it in their first term. They say that a 'cultural shift' is 'required' to make this happen.

They can take their 'cultural shift' and shove it where the sun doesn't shine.

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

And this one is a bullet point so presumably they are committed to this.

What does 'understood' mean though? Whose 'understanding'? Stonewall's? Dawn Butler's? Even EHRC's 'understanding', as described in their statutory code, veers wildly away from what the law actually says.

And now we have John McDonnell wanting to 'open up a whole debate around the single sex-based exemptions that will be maintained under the Equalities Act.'

When asked to clarify, he said 'the implementation of the exemptions has always been a matter of practical discussion'

Yes, that's because EHRC put 'case by case' in the statutory code. It's not what the law says and it makes the exceptions nearly impossible to use.

Can we PLEASE take some notice of the FACT that the changes which have been happening around gender self I.D have ALL been implemented under a tory government.

The removal of sex in EA policies have been made at a local government level, not at the say so of national government. The conservatives at least had a public consultation around changes to the GRA, that labour government bought in without a fanfare.

I don't think womens rights are secure with any political party, but the idea that this is a Tory problem and we are safe under labour is ridiculous.

My Labour candidate wouldn't even engage. I thought perhaps it was because he didn't want to put his views in writing, but after multiple emails went unanswered he finally offered to fob me off on the Women's Officer because he wasn't 'qualified to answer'. So disappointing - it wasn't that he was just uniformed, he actually doesn't care. Just what I want in my potential MP.

Lastly, I hate the way that they ignore the fact that thousands responded to the GRA Consultation, and just wave through Self-ID.

Yes. Laura Pidcock said on WH:

there were thousands and thousands and thousands of responses and nothing has been done with those. There's been no analysis of those responses and I think the next step, whoever gets into government, and we are saying we would do this, is to analyse those thousands of contributions on the GRA.

But it's there in their manifesto - Labour is committed to reforming the Gender Recognition Act 2004 to introduce self-declaration for transgender people

And it's there in all the other manifestos too, except for the tories ('don't mention the consultation!') and probably the brexit lot too but I can't even be bothered to look.

Screw the lot of them.

weekendrunner if your Labour candidate is not 'qualified to answer' a question about national law, he's not qualified to become an MP, surely.

There's been no analysis of those response

I can believe that there's been no in depth analysis, but the government, and probably the lobbyist, would know the broad feeling of the responses. Otherwise they would be at least publishing something - the lobbyist would be pressuing them to do so to strengthen their case.

Can we PLEASE take some notice of the FACT that the changes which have been happening around gender self I.D have ALL been implemented under a tory government.

No. Take a look at the agendas and minutes of the Women and Equalities Committee, who sits on it, and who they have been listening to.

ALL political parties are knee deep in this crap.
(Thanks to the Mumsnetter who originally posted the link to this, sorry I can't tag you, hope you see this, and thank you)

2015-16 is particularly interesting.

www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/women-and-equalities-committee/formal-minutes/

They say that a 'cultural shift' is 'required' to make this happen

They'd do well to realise that this isn't how democracy works. How often have we heard the words "the will of the people" in the last three years? You don't get elected by telling people that you're going to impose a huge cultural change on them against their will. That's, well, cultural revolution, and we have some evidence for how this has planned out in other countries. In any case, it's the inverse of how a functioning democracy works.

Oh yes, the 'cultural shift'. Meaning what exactly? A widespread belief that humans can change sex? The rise of the antivaxxers could be described as a cultural shift, but I wouldn't call it progress.

they ignore the fact that thousands responded to the GRA Consultation, and just wave through Self-ID.
I find this astounding. Is there any way we can push for the consultation responses to be made public? I am no legal expert but does anyone know if a Freedom of Information Act request would cover it?

I'm with you @LentilHearted, I'm approaching this election looking at the big picture in which women in general have been affected more than most by the austerity ideology of the Tories.

I just can't in all consciousness do anything but vote against this and I'd rather be appealing to and in discussions with Labour than any of the other parties. Before anyone jumps the gun and begins with accusations of being a Corbynista, I've previously campaigned for and been very active in another party,but I do think when it comes to negotiations Corbyn has an exemplary record and I think this is a skill needed to dig us out of this cavernous mess.

At this point I recognise that unless we vote Labour we'll be witness to and complicit in the deaths of many more people who are dependent on state support and state services, and I just can't stand by and watch this happen knowing I had the opportunity to influence the trajectory our country takes