Labour 'stands back' from transgender war

[BovaryX]

I haven't seen this already posted, apologies if it has been. The Times reports that Labour is 'standing back' from the transgender issue in recognition of the fact its threats to expel members with 'transphobic' views during the last election contributed to a collapse of Labour support in the 'Red Wall'. Meanwhile, an Amnesty International spokeswoman claims that the Conservative proposals amount to a 'hostile environment' for trans people in the UK.

^any such proposals would cause a headache for Sir Keir Starmer after disputes over the intersection of trans rights with feminism overshadowed the Labour leadership election. Sir Keir was the only candidate not to sign a pledge calling on the party to expel members with “transphobic” views. He instead tried to take the heat out of the issue.Last week JK Rowling was criticised by the stars of the Harry Potter films after she used her experience of domestic violence to express concerns about female-only spaces and warn against attempts to “erode ‘woman’ as a political and biological class”.
Labour has committed itself to reform of the Gender Recognition Act and David Lammy, the shadow justice secretary, said: “There’s now a change of view that people ought to be able to self-identify and not over-medicalise.” But he declined to go further, telling the BBC: “We would have to look at the legislation when it comes forward in detail^

Labour 'stands back' from transgender war.
Of course they are, the penny must have finally dropped.
That's ok for now, they'll have to do a lot more than that before the next GE.

I've used my Labour Party membership subs to pay for mumsnet premium

@Floisme

I am desperate to vote Labour but this is like getting a bunch of flowers from a petrol station the day after your birthday with the half price label still on. I agree it's a start and I will stand by and watch, but even I've got a bit more pride than this.

That pretty much captures my feelings too.

Labour: take the needs of women in prison, in rape crisis centres, in locked psychiatric wards, trying to make a living from women's sports (or indeed - witness the current GMB fiasco - trying to make any sort of living at all), take the safeguarding of children seriously rather that pushing off-label prostate cancer drugs at them...

Then I'll think about voting for you again.

@BovaryX

the problem for any mp who might secretly agree with our concerns is that after the vehement and orchestrated reaction to JK Rowling they will be even more petrified of the potential consequences of doing so

MPs who are petrified of challenging a Twitter mob are unfit to represent anyone. They are unfit to be in any position of power.

This.

Labour and the SNP really do need to take a close look at themselves if they want people's votes in the future. Labour's stance on this is literally the reason why I didn't vote for them. They are moving so far away from the core of what the public knows to be true - the cess pit that is twitter really isn't representative of what real people actually believe.

Ahh great, thanks OP

The best thing Starmer can do at this stage (and let's remember, he didn't sign the pledge and has only ever made woolly statements about human rights etc.) is to stand back, watch the argument play out and dissipate without adding any fuel to the fire.

Yes. Poor Starmer's inherited a toxic mess. I blame Ed Miliband for this: when he stood down as leader of the Labour Party he introduced a new system that enabled non-members to pay £3 to register to vote in leadership elections. The result was an influx of far-left nutters who voted in Jeremy Corbyn, spread their anti-Semitic hate and pushed this deranged trans agenda. Starmer has to find a way of getting rid of these people, but it's not easy because in the past five years they have risen to positions of influence in the party.

Rebecca Long-Bailey and Lisa Nandy were so desperate to win the support of these people that they were prepared to sign a pledge agreeing to expel the decent members (gender-critical feminists, most of whom are longstanding members and activists) to win the votes of the wokesters. Thank heaven that Starmer didn't sign it, and thank heaven that he won. I wouldn't like to be in his place now, sorting this mess out, but I remain hopeful. In the past two years left-wing women have done something amazing in bringing this to public attention and forcing the government to change its mind. We can do the same in the Labour Party too.

I'm not convinced that the Tories are doing this out of some amazing commitment to women, so it suits all of us for Labour to strengthen their own position and provide a credible opposition in the future.

Neither am I (I think it's unforgivable that the Tories have sat on this to put it out when it suits them), but that^ is exactly what many of us thought and hoped Labour were quietly doing during the couple of years before the last GE. And what did they do? They came out with manifesto pledges that shat on women.
All they have done now is retreat back to their pre election positions. It's not good enough.

"Trans women are not men! Jeez"

They were born male, have XY chromosones, therefore they just are.
Never argue with logic and biology, they trump emotions and feels.

What Bollixtogender says: Pro woman does not mean anti-trans.

I don't get how the trans lobby, of all groups, is finding it so hard to grasp that this is not binary!

I was thinking recently that they would have to do this, and IMO it's the best course of action for now. Of course I wish they would come out in favour of sex-based rights and have done with it, but things have gone a long way in the other direction and it's going to take time to turn the .ship.

I don't believe for a second that Keir Starmer, a highly intelligent and very accomplished lawyer, really thinks TWAW or that he doesn't have a full grasp of all the arguments on both sides. And there are GC people in the Labour party who will be talking to him. His job is to formulate a labour party policy while also working with a lot of people who have been loudly proclaiming TWAW whether they believe it or not, and somehow make that make sense. If he doesn't bat it into the long grass, it could bring him down now, but IMO a tipping point is coming when he can do it more effectively.

Of course I'm making assumptions as I don't know him. But if he was all TWAW he would already have said so.

I have a friend in Scotland who has been massively involved with the SNP because of indyref.

She is struggling incredibly with their pro-TRA stance - as, she reports, are a lot of other Scots GC women she knows.

Starmer has lost my next vote already. If he can't stand up to such obvious pseudo-religious nonsense then what else can he be captured by. No spine. No power. Cannot be trusted.

@CASCASCAS

Trans women are not men! Jeez

Well thank you for giving me that very scientific analysis of what a man is. That’s me convinced.

"Trans women are not men! Jeez"

You get this kind of ALL THE TIME from trans ideology followers - i.e. not an argument at all, but using "Jeez" and "Wow" and "I can't even" or whatever general outrage and anger, to try to make someone with any other view feel ashamed and stupid.

But it won't wash. If you want to really convince me that trans women are not men, you'd need a reasonable actual argument. Otherwise it's no different from saying "White people are not white! Jeez" "This orange isn't a fruit! Jeez" Jeez schmeez. You can't shame or bully me into accepting nonsense.

That doesn't mean I'm anti-trans, it means I don't accept that trans can change biology and I have a right to believe in biology and "identify" as a woman on the basis of it.

Given the Labour Party and the Unions have all been hopelessly captured by the Stonewall agenda, I think Starmer trying to stand back from it is the best we can expect at the moment.

The alternative is he starts a Clause 4 type battle in the party, which he's not going to want to do as he'll have other priorities.

this kind of statement sorry

The thing is, many women have been radicalised by the top-down attempt to erase sex as a political category and Labour have been utterly complicit, all under the guise of ‘kindness’. I don’t trust them on quite a few policy issues now. That trust will be hard to re-build.

Besides, there are good arguments not only to maintain existing protections for women but to abolish the GRA altogether. I wouldn’t have been willing to listen to these arguments a couple of years ago but that has changed.

I am desperate to vote Labour but this is like getting a bunch of flowers from a petrol station the day after your birthday with the half price label still on. I agree it's a start and I will stand by and watch, but even I've got a bit more pride than this.

This.

Their attitude towards women on this issue has been appalling.

Yes it's a start but tbh it's still crumbs from the table and if they want to win women back like me it's going to take a Michelin star meal.

Right now the party. still has a very unhealthy approach to debate on topics that fall into a woke agenda.

It's punitive and bullying and shelving certain issues doesn't make that culture go away.

Agree on a general lack of trust. The letter from the black Labour MPs to Priti Patel was shocking. Incoherent wittering. I think what they were basically saying to the most powerful BAME woman we have ever had in this country that she is doing Asian Woman wrong. And that's me inferring their meaning which was lost in their atrocious identity gibberish. I have no time whatsoever for Priti Patel. But that letter would be an embarrassment to a Y6 child or a daft student.

Craven must be the name of the Fifth Hogwarts House.

I am desperate to vote Labour but this is like getting a bunch of flowers from a petrol station the day after your birthday with the half price label still on. I agree it's a start and I will stand by and watch, but even I've got a bit more pride than this. A few posters have referenced and agreed with this comment and I just don't get it. If the party doesn't stand for your beliefs or ideas why be 'desperate' to vote for them. It's like me saying I'm desperate to find Mrs. Brown's Boys funny, but until they change the jokes, the format, the woman face, I just can't, but I'm desperate to! Labour is a misogynistic, anti-semitic, anti working class party mired in identity politics and wokeness. Who was the woman who was up for leadership who said babies are born without a sex ffs?! I dislike the conservative party but Labour scare me.

Craven must be the name of the Fifth Hogwarts House.

Ern

I can't speak for anyone else but I'm currently politically homeless.

I'm generally left wing in my politics and would like to have the opportunity to vote for a party that held those values without selling women down the river.

Basically I'd like to be able to use my vote - which currently I'm unable to do as no party imho is worthy of it.

Yes it's a start but tbh it's still crumbs from the table and if they want to win women back like me it's going to take a Michelin star meal.

Yeah it would take more than wining and dining to get me back into bed with Labour at this point.

A radical rebuild from the ground up, plus prolonged action and results that demonstrate a rediscovery of females actually being human and having votes might do it, but it'll take a couple of years and seeing those results. By their deeds shall ye know them.