Sunday Times: PM to scrap plan to make gender change easier

[HeyBells]

Just seen this on Twitter. Anyone got a sharetoken please?

So far I think he has deliberately tried to avoid culture wars.

Yes, Nick Thomas-Symonds was speaking this morning and basically saying a consensus should be found, given sensitivities involved etc. The government can take whatever credit to them will accrue but by 2024 it's hardly likely to be a major issue.

Starmer will do what he has been doing successfully until now, let his nuttier backbenchers scream but make sure the front bench sticks to the agreed line. Jeremy Corbyn was an MP throughout the Blair/Brown era and it didn't stop us having a sensible opposition and then government. Most people don't pay that much attention to politics!

Paris has a great line in dismissive gaslighting.

Is that gaslighting or just voicing a really bad argument?

Rebecca Root's article in the Times is just one long spiel about what Rebecca likes and what is good for Rebecca and what makes Rebecca happy. Female people and their needs are nowhere on Rebecca's radar; you'd think female spaces were just empty rooms. The entitlement, the subconscious sexism and the utter inability to notice or care about anything but Rebecca is written loud and clear, and many in the comments are pointing it out.

Yes, it doesn't surprise me, when I saw Rebecca do a DARVO gotcha on a woman in a refuge who was pretty much pleading for them to be female only, by saying "but what about my mum who's had a hysterectomy, you're saying she isn't a woman?" they don't understand our views, our arguments, or why we feel the way we do. Because they're sexist, self centred male people who don't listen to women unless they are endorsing their own views.

@happydappy2

In leaking this, TRAs are gifted time to organise a fight back-we must push twice as hard right now -Repeal the GRA, no more false documents stating men are women-topple Stonewall & Mermaids-return GG to single sex-re prioritise safe guarding of children above mens fetishes

Yes, one of the tactics of the TRAs was to ask for more than they expected. We should settle for nothing less than the repeal of this legislation. Let those already issued with a GRC keep it. But no new ones. It is ridiculous that new certificates can be issued to change a biological sex even if just for legal purposes - what other purpose is there? And that one can never ask to see one simply means that we have de facto self id.

I'm going to email Liz Truss, the Baroness and the others to thank them but merely cc my own Tory MP, who, nice man that he is, was not prepared to get off the fence. I won't forgive hm for that.

Looks like good news (although didn't they run the same story a couple of months ago?) I'm another one watching to see how Starmer handles this but not holding my breath. Judging from events of the last week I would say the Labour Party have yet to grow a spine.

@HPFA

David Lammy on Marr.

"We will need to look at the legislation when it comes forward".

Interesting. I hear David Lammy’s CLP is a hotbed of both TRA and terven activity. No way he isn’t aware of the issues!

I'm wondering how close OJ is to losing his career.

He must be sailing close to the wind of being a liability by now.

He tied himself to the extreme wings of the Corbyn project (ironically because he had misgivings about Corbyn's electability) and he is associated with that awful culture war/social media/cancel culture style of political communication.

That style is founded on killing compromise and inter-stance communication stone dead by raising the stakes, intensifying positions and arguments into black/white, larding it with the heightened rhetoric of zero/sum morality (good/evil), abolishing nuance, moving the terrain of the argument to more incendiary areas ('feminists are killing children in Brazil!'), and then no-platforming.

I think that debate style is beginning to really sicken people.

Much, I think, will depend on whether the Left manage to sidestep being drawn into a culture war.

They have everything to lose from politics being fought as a culture war. They can't win. Culture wars are authoritarian by nature; they inherently advantage the Right.

If the Left avoid a culture war, I suspect OJ is going to find he is increasingly seen as a liability.
He backed the wrong horse in the last election, he's associated with the defeat, many people quietly think the tactics synonymous with his journalism were a factor in that defeat.

And ... I suspect he knows all this. He's lost a little of the assurance he had. He's sailing a bit close to legal action territory. No employer is going to want to pay for a lose-lose liability.

Anyway. We'll see.

Definitely going to be interesting to see how Starmer handles this.

Is that gaslighting or just voicing a really bad argument?

I'd say it's gaslighting. Portraying a bizarre fringe worldview (that having a penis is just another biological difference for a woman) as the accepted one, and implying people who disagree are weird/out of touch. The example I provided where Paris implies it's not mentally healthy to fear male violence is more clearly an example of gaslighting.

Those who say cynically that this is just a distraction, that is incidentally true. However, if Boris had gone had on with the BLM issue, he would have simply been dismissed as being a racist.

And before anyone jumps into an outrage, I say here that BL do matter and racism is never acceptable.

Head on

But following Paris's logic, Freedom Passes are rude.

I'm wondering how close OJ is to losing his career.

I've been wondering this. In a way, I can't understand why the Guardian has continued to employ him for so long when he is so abusive to people on Twitter. It's deeply unprofessional and reflects very badly on his employer. Most employers, I think, wouldn't tolerate it. And as we know it's resulted in women - who knows how many - cancelling their subscriptions.

But he has his own following of loyal wokesters. The Guardian, which was once famed for its demographic of social workers, feminists and vegetarians, now has a lot of young people amongst its readerships for whom identity politics is the defining issue. They also have a large readership in the US. I think amongst the paper's staff (also mostly young London metropolitan types) OJ has a lot of support. So sacking him would probably prompt a backlash. Interesting to see how it plays out.

Guardian do not seem to understand the fundamental difference between a journalist and activist.

The example I provided where Paris implies it's not mentally healthy to fear male violence is more clearly an example of gaslighting.

I don't get this argument because I thought trans women needed access to safe spaces because of male violence. Or is that no longer a thing?

The Sunday Times poll doesn’t seem to be accessible on the app - so likely the results will be skewed away from some subscribers views?

Are all of Scotland’s best sport women going to be suddenly looking for an English grandparent? Joking aside, I’m very fearful this will just harden the SNP’s stance to be more ‘progressive’ than Westminster.

Having your age referred to is only problematic when it’s used as an excuse to dismiss your opinion.

All that ‘never ask a lady her age’ shit is just gender prison shite.

I’m 43. Too old to sleep on floors, too young for afternoon naps. No need not to mention it because I’m not trying to convince myself I’m still a teenager.

I voted on my phone and I'm not a subscriber. There was a community pop up thing hiding it at first but there was an X in the top right hand corner which I clicked to make it go away (Bill Gates, eat your heart out!) and bingo, there was the poll.

@FantaOra

There is certainly an interesting dynamic in Scotland now. Ignore the reality of thousands of men publicly screaming for JKR to be choked on their dicks and plough on with their female colonisation and child mutilation demand, or actually do what is best for everyone and show some respect for their most famous scotswoman.

Great piece by Neil Oliver in the Scotland section of The Sunday Times. Well done that man.

"She wrote: “At the same time, I do not want to make natal girls and women less safe. When you throw open the doors of bathrooms and changing rooms to any man who believes he’s a woman — and, as I’ve said, gender confirmation certificates may now be granted without any need for surgery or hormones — then you open the door to any and all men who wish to come inside.”

Any quotation from a longer piece is literally out of context. Careful and measured though the sentiments are in the lines above, I urge everyone to take the time to read the whole. Having done so, I fail to see how anyone could accuse Rowling of anything but a wish for fairness.

Fair is an ideal — a veritable golden snitch. We all know in our hearts what fair is, just as we know the difference between right and wrong. In times like these, when just to put your head above the parapet and open your mouth in opposition to dogma is to have the vilest slurs and threat rain down on you, it is certainly easier to shut up and keep your head down. That is also the wrong thing to do, and we all know it too.

Knowing the difference between right and wrong is not the same as living it, acting it out, in everyday life. JK Rowling is doing her human best to be fair. I stand by that effort, and her."

Haven’t been able to read the full article. But surely the GR act should be repealed ? We still don’t agree with the concept of living as a woman and so on, so why should some men be treated differently however many years they try to convince us? And if the GRC confirms this then we are still in the same How can we ensure women’s facilities are safe?

I don't get this argument because I thought trans women needed access to safe spaces because of male violence. Or is that no longer a thing?

Agree.

We should settle for nothing less than the repeal of this legislation.

And this is where Starmer will find the sweet spot.

I disagree with self-ID and agree with the GC line mostly. But I also think there should be provision for people to live their lives effectively as if they were women (or men) where that doesn't conflict with women's rights. I see no intrinsic reason why compromises shoudn't be found.

@minniebinnie

The example I provided where Paris implies it's not mentally healthy to fear male violence is more clearly an example of gaslighting.

I don't get this argument because I thought trans women needed access to safe spaces because of male violence. Or is that no longer a thing?

That is odd. Of course, a natal male with a criminal conviction for extreme violence might not be as afraid of the consequences of male violence as a smaller, less physically strong person socialised from toddlerhood to watch out for dodgy men.

I wonder...

But I also think there should be provision for people to live their lives effectively as if they were women (or men) where that doesn't conflict with women's rights. I see no intrinsic reason why compromises shoudn't be found.

That is surely more or less what the existing GRA was. A compromise, though one which didn't fully recognise the needs of vulnerable women.