do you think that a Labour's policy on trans issue played a part in their defeat

[Gone2far]

and the same for the LibDem's, obviously?
It played a large part in my vote, firstly because of the policies themselves, but also because they were symptomatic of Labour/LibDem's attitude to Women, but I don't think many people felt that way, or had any awareness of the situation .
I was just wondering what other's thought.

I think even those that did know would think along the lines of it being about helping non threatening feminine gay men with severe gender dysphoria, etc.

I agree it's a broader brush of woke ideology. Most people aren't voting on the basis of women's rights specifically but obviously our cohort of labour/libdem/green losing women does intersect with that.

The average person on Twitter isn't following rad fems. The highest number of likes feminist gender critical threads get is usually around 2k and that is either journos like Turner or Joyce or well established academics like Kathleen Stock.

However a lot of people do follow accounts like Titania McGrath who touches broadly on the same points (sans the analysis) and easily gets 15/20k plus likes

Anyone who reads The Times regularly in the past year will absolutely be aware of this issue but they are paywalled so how many people is that? And how many were Tory anyway? Might have affected the Lib Dem vote.

The Daily Mail has covered it a fair bit there's so much fast moving content on the DM website it's easy to miss. If you're a Guardian reader well...crickets mostly.

I suppose what I'm getting at is that 'woke' is being roundly rejected but not in the most part by people overly concerned with vulnerable women or the safeguarding of children. That sadly is still niche to this board and other spaces we occupy.

I feel sorry for Old Labourites and how the party has gone. I have many relatives who are old school Labour, people who were miners and active on the picket lines back in the 1980s and still out there knocking on doors at election time. My local councillor is an ex miner and heavily involved in the community going way beyond what is expected of him. These people genuinely believe in real social justice, the plight of ordinary people and saving the NHS and self ID is definitely part of their ideology.

I cringed like never before when I saw the video of Corbyn announcing his pronouns, it just made him look a complete fool.

I voted SNP, there's no way I could ever vote tory just for GC reasons.

I really don't think self ID was a big factor in this election, I do think it might be a bigger factor in the Scottish Parliament elections where I will definitely vote Wings over Scotland for their GC stance.

Bit late to the party but better late than never - just had to applaud @ArnoldWhatshisknickers comment from page 1 of the thread (with an honourable mention to @MoltenLasagne).

No. I think it's not mainstream enough yet. Although Jo getting a grilling was helpful, most people wouldn't even think twaw is a real thing as it's sounds so preposterous.

@somanyresusablebags I hadn't heard about this, can you explain more on the neurodiversity angle?

Nah, I don't think so. I think barely more than 10% of the population (if even that) give any thought to trans issues and even fewer to party lines on them. One may have a social media world full of it, but I think it's not even on the radar of the vast majority of people.

^One of his replies was from a young woke thing with an anime avatar - who said:
"how can this have happened? #Vote Labour was trending at no.1 all day yesterday! It must have been rigged!^

theflushedzebra

That’s a great point. As you say, it’s because the echo chamber is sound proofed. I think it was Johnny Mercer who said something like ‘If you’re on Twitter a lot, the result is probably a big shock, but the rest of us are not surprised.’ I thought that really captured the profound disconnect which your quote illustrates. The thought of that awful medic crying into his cheerios has made me laugh though!

I think most people weren't aware of it. The two big things counting against Labour were their Brexit policy and the strong dislike of Jeremy Corbyn. That's come across in all the vox pops. I haven't heard anyone mention the self-ID thing.

I think people were aware of it at least on some level, but not fully aware of the implications. When I've talked to friends about trans issues (trying to peak them) they've known about it but assumed there were laws/exemptions that would prevent the obvious problems. Those that did get it had 100% got it via cases like Yaniv and Karen White.

I think there are overt and not so overt factors. Brexit and JC are what most people would probably say when asked, but there's been this background drip drip of intolerance and disdain, and most of us who have jobs have had some sort of infestation of ID politics in the workplace, so I think on some level policies grounded in postmodern ID politics probably did impact the result. It's hard to put 'I've been treated with contempt in lots of small ways for years' into a soundbite for a canvasser.

My colleague was going to vote Labour.... but then I told her all about the Madigan debacle and other similar stuff.
She was absolutely infuriated and when she came into work after the GE she said she was so pissed off about it that she decided to give vote for another party.

Its descent into far-left identity politics

I’m getting a little annoyed by the conflation of far-left and identity politics. In my view, ‘far-left’ would include structural, class-based analysis, which is the antithesis of identity politics.

If Labour had actually produced coherent, socialist understanding of structural inequalities, I would have supported them. I think a lot of people who initially supported Corbyn thought we were seeing a return of a socialist approach to politics. In stead we got wokeism and a completely rejection of coherent class-based politics, and not a smidgen of understanding of ‘gender’ as an axis of oppression.

Corbyn and his momentum supporters are about as far from far-left as you can get. Although they may of course self-id as far-left...

A symptom of the disease. Not bothering to listen to ordinary folk anymore and getting all their policies from lobby groups.

No! I think you vastly overestimate how significant this issue is to people outside a small MN/Twitter bubble.

^ This. It's significant to me, but if I did a poll of people in my constituency in Cumbria, I think I'd get a lot of blank faces tbh.

I think a lot of politicians have embraced twitter as a way to reach voters and listen to their concerns, without realising twitter is actuall6 far removed from the real world.

No. Most people won't have a clue what you're talking about. I'm fairly clued up on things but this is still in the "Keep in view" folder rather than have a fully formed view on it issue. So, for people who are bored/uninterested in politics, it won't register at all.

I’m getting a little annoyed by the conflation of far-left and identity politics. In my view, ‘far-left’ would include structural, class-based analysis, which is the antithesis of identity politics.

I also think this, but I can see why people are thinking that way.

I believe the sort of socialism represented in parties like the LP has changed over the years, not just in terms of how far left they are, but in a qualitative way. The association many people have now for far-left is a very state oriented kind of socialism, pretty authoritarian, with big programs, and a lot of them. And that's different with a sort of Blarite approach but also with a sort of low level socialism that maybe characterised a lot of British Labour members in the past, more focused on communities, unions and sometimes even co-ops, small businesses.

The last of those is opposed to an identity politics approach, but the first seems to have very much allied itself to identity politics. Back in the first half of the 20th century Belloc claimed that high level state socialism was the mirror of capitalism, both with an elite who makes the policies and controls the economy for the dependent workers below them, providing what they need to get by. So maybe it makes sense that it could wed itself to the same individualistic ideas around identity?

You could argue it was a mix of identity politics, people understanding that the maths behind the promises didn't stack up, the anti-semitism or several other reasons, but the underlying reason that the Corbynists didn't understand was that this country's politics is, and has always been, clustered around the centre.

We just don't do left wing extremes, just as we don't do right wing extremes e.g. no Le Pen winning a third of seats in our elections.

We are essentially pragmatic and down to earth. Idealogues don't appeal to those outside the ultra left/ultra right fringe.

I've voted in every election since Harold Wilson won in 1964 and remember the "longest suicide note in history" of Michael Foot. If nothing else, Corbyn and Momentum should have learned it was never going to work.

I don't think it played any part at all. Mattered greatly to me, but only a tiny minority if people know about this stuff, and certainly my Labour-canvasser friend said on the local very Labour-loyal doorstep it was Brexit Brexit Brexit, and a bit of Corbyn personally, that turned my area red to blue. Oh, plus no-one takes the LibDems seriously particularly after the coalition. I agree concern about self-i.d./trans activism/feminism is pretty niche (sadly).

Yes me and dh voted Tory for the first time due to this issue and others. We felt tories least likely to go with the woke agenda. We have a little girl and I hate to see harmful gender ideology in primary schools.

If Labour had actually produced coherent, socialist understanding of structural inequalities, I would have supported them. I think a lot of people who initially supported Corbyn thought we were seeing a return of a socialist approach to politics. In stead we got wokeism and a completely rejection of coherent class-based politics, and not a smidgen of understanding of ‘gender’ as an axis of oppression.

Yes. An actually socialist leader (but a weak one) and a supportive activist base with no understanding of socialism whatsoever. A terrible mix.

I have suggested elsethread that Momentum are Narodniks.

I like the analogy.

Obviously it played a part as many women here, me included, would have loved to have been able to vote for a Labour government. Not sure that part was huge, but it was enough for the Labour Party to spin a bit of a lie about protecting 'single sex spaces' in the campaign, and it's a general symptom of the key issues that failed Labour: essentially what the Deptford Women's Project tried to warn about over a year ago.

Deptford pointed out the issues with a bunch of largely affluent, white, middle class, highly educated bright young things who liked the image and identity of 'working class' and so appropriated and gentrified it, leaving the real working class nowhere. The Deptford project workers and users (most would have been generational tribal labour voters) including the homeless, the addicted, the sex workers and many other people in desperate straits the project was trying to support, were dealing with an influx of these rabid Corbynite students wanting to lecture them on pronouns and identity politics and incidentally how they were more oppressed and important and needy than anyone using the project.

They were oblivious to taking time and energy that should have gone to those people in desperate straits, they were oblivious to how totally alienated someone who hasn't eaten for a few days might feel when scolded about pronouns. The same thing is visible in Harrop's obnoxious rantings patronising a 'working class' as if they're some kind of pet, ignoring that the working class he refers to voted Conservative in their thousands for good reason. It's also visible in the shouting last night in the protests, where slogans from thirty years ago from communities who were starving and desperate are being used by a bunch who seriously believe if you don't have political purity they personally approve you should not be entitled to a vote, or to human rights.

These are the people that will refer to elderly people as 'a piece of shit' if they get thumped by a male and were possibly holding wrong political views. The people who bellow 'inclusion' while happily excluding women from women's spaces and denying them healthcare because people who think wrong deserve nothing. The people who talk about gulags, and really aren't joking. This bunch are what Stalinism looks like when operated by over privileged people who are emotionally and socially stuck at about year seven.

They're wrong in assuming working class people or women are this stupid, but they're too entitled and self centred to have noticed.

I think it probably made v little difference but is just another sign of how the Labour Party substituted 'wokeism' for issues that actually matter to people.

After the last election, when there was a real high and feeling that it was worth joining the Labour Party, DH and I considered it despite the fact we live in the safest Tory seat in the UK

We looked up our local Constituency Party and the Deputy Chair was a transwoman working as a therapist, ranting about TERFs.

So, we didn't bother.

This election they wielded a candidate barely out of nappies who is at least Twitter mates if not more with Lily Madigan. I mean, I know he wasn't going to win, but at least look like you are trying FFS.

Nobody, absolutely nobody, in this constituency is woke. I've spent the last 10 years traipsing round the whole place on home visits, I've not met one woke bro in all that time. You have to be electable first.

If Labour had actually produced coherent, socialist understanding of structural inequalities, I would have supported them. I think a lot of people who initially supported Corbyn thought we were seeing a return of a socialist approach to politics. In stead we got wokeism and a completely rejection of coherent class-based politics, and not a smidgen of understanding of ‘gender’ as an axis of oppression

Hit the nail right on the head. This is we thought we were getting vs what we actually got.