Britain needs more trans people in public life, including the Commons

[Igneococcus]

Says Lord Herbert, Boris Johnson's first special envoy on LGBT rights:

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0e8d186e-db6a-11eb-8f14-0bb645f59db0?shareToken=8cf210f54c9d71aa462bb34a9c3e2aa7

I have yet to see a TW promote anything that benefits women. Its a movement that removes women's rights to spaces and words to define themselves as a sex group.
And so authoritarian. I will not be forced to believe that a male is a female. This is such a powerful group

highame
Where was the interview?

Times Radio. He's about to interview Lord Herbert,

No i don’t think we need more trans people in public life pushing their misogynistic ideology, excluding women’s issues, attacking lesbians. Anyone should be able to access the possibility of being elected on th3 basis of reasonable policies and ideas. Not much evidence at present of electability.

They've just finished. Mostly Lord H talked about LGBT rights but the emphasis was on LGB and it was good to listen to the strides that have been made. He was then asked about transrights and women and he said that the law had been finely balanced. He talked about the angry debate and strong disagreement. Transpeople needed support in healthcare and kindness and that they are getting caught up in this. Tenor of debate hasn't helped transpeople. Law has been struck and there are no plans to change. The GRA can legally change their identity intersting but he was careful to not use the word sex . He said that laws protecting transpeople have been around for 17 years and we shouldn't go back on that (this sounds like there is a lot of debate about backstepping). In a culture war, LGBT will get hurt. Tolerance and kindness are required.

A conversation about Stonewall that they are needed for prescriptive debate> some departments have withdrawn and Lord H said this was for specific reasons (I suggest mate that the Law is one of them). Don't agree with Stonewall on everything but should continue to have dialogue (that also sounded like a recognition that thngs have got a bit out of hand - my interpretation).

Tom Newton-Dunn then mentioned about women pushing back and Labour losing women's votes.

Hope I haven't cross posted but hey ho. Off now to do some house stuff which involves looking at cobwebs

missed something out. It appears Boris Johnson is looking to what Joe Biden is doing regarding LGBT rights, the word supercharge was used. Most of the talk was LGB but when he mentioned Biden, I had a shock moment.

@Miskirsky
Of course, HRT and surgery won't change my chromosonal makeup, but biological sex is not binary and not just chromosonal.

In all but a staggeringly tiny percentage of cases, yes it is, and even those are sorted into male or female differences. Almost no trans identifying people have these disorders.

Your arguments, as always, are built on sand.

@highame

They've just finished. Mostly Lord H talked about LGBT rights but the emphasis was on LGB and it was good to listen to the strides that have been made. He was then asked about transrights and women and he said that the law had been finely balanced. He talked about the angry debate and strong disagreement. Transpeople needed support in healthcare and kindness and that they are getting caught up in this. Tenor of debate hasn't helped transpeople. Law has been struck and there are no plans to change. The GRA can legally change their identity intersting but he was careful to not use the word sex . He said that laws protecting transpeople have been around for 17 years and we shouldn't go back on that (this sounds like there is a lot of debate about backstepping). In a culture war, LGBT will get hurt. Tolerance and kindness are required.

A conversation about Stonewall that they are needed for prescriptive debate> some departments have withdrawn and Lord H said this was for specific reasons (I suggest mate that the Law is one of them). Don't agree with Stonewall on everything but should continue to have dialogue (that also sounded like a recognition that thngs have got a bit out of hand - my interpretation).

Tom Newton-Dunn then mentioned about women pushing back and Labour losing women's votes.

Hope I haven't cross posted but hey ho. Off now to do some house stuff which involves looking at cobwebs

I wonder if he read the comments on his Times interview. I hope he did and I hope it was a wake up call.

He said that laws protecting transpeople have been around for 17 years and we shouldn't go back on that

That's all very well but women have had rights longer than that and there seems to be no issue about backtracking on any of those.

That's all very well but women have had rights longer than that and there seems to be no issue about backtracking on any of those.

Well said Ova hadn't made the link

Tolerance and kindness are required.

This is all well and good. Unless it actually means 'women need to surrender their rights', which is neither tolerant nor kind.

The 'rolling back rights' concern is mentioned a lot, however also important to remember that things like the right to send small children up chimneys or to exercise a right to marital rape were rolled back, to much protest, but because they unacceptably infringed on the rights of others.

Yay! A highly privileged white man has finally got a position where he can start to influence things. Cambridge-educated, former master of the hunt, is going to bring so much more understanding of oppression and intersectionality than anyone else might have done.

@highame

That's all very well but women have had rights longer than that and there seems to be no issue about backtracking on any of those.

Well said Ova hadn't made the link

Exactly. And we're still waiting on 'equal pay' to be implemented appropriately - it's only June 1st this year that the Euro Courts ruled on equal value and that's been going on for decades. UK Law introduced a right in the Equal Pay Act 1970 which came into force in 1975.

Employment Silk, Sean Jones' thread:

twitter.com/seanjonesqc/status/1400384517123215361?s=20

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4261093-European-Court-of-Justice-decision-on-Equal-Pay

Was just about to switch the radio off and they were rounding off this discussion and talking about what a minefield it was for politicians and that although Johnson has said don't get involved, it is very unlikely that will last. Difficult also for the media to grapple with trans rights. Also more talk about Joe Biden who within a couple of days of taking office centred trans rights. Therefore Labour are saying, well if they have centred it, why can't we!

In this round up one of the things they didn't mention was women!

I do wonder if this bizarre idea that males can earn the right to access women's rights and spaces is part of why certain people despise the women who say no.
Because by not acquiescing to a demand, and putting their own needs first, women are not behaving in a sufficiently 'female' way, and therefore have not 'earned' the right to a female space.

You can't have rights just by virtue of being a female. Unless you're born a male and really want them, of course.

I do wonder if this bizarre idea that males can earn the right to access women's rights and spaces is part of why certain people despise the women who say no.

I wonder if, for too many men, the idea that women can say "No" is a polite social fiction. If they hear it, too often the response is, "I did ask nicely" - followed by doing what they wanted anyway.

I wonder if, for too many men, the idea that women can say "No" is a polite social fiction. If they hear it, too often the response is, "I did ask nicely" - followed by doing what they wanted anyway

I think that's spot on actually. It's been heavily on display on this thread with the presumption that as long as someone is careful, they can transgress a boundary. It's really very telling, tbh.
No is always the start of a negotiation for certain people.

I think it's fair to expect a representative amount of MPs to be trans, in the same way that it would be fair to expect around 50% of MPs to be female (in an ideal world). There are 650 MPs, and between 200,000 and 500,000 trans people in the UK according to this:
assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/721642/GEO-LGBT-factsheet.pdf

A proportional number of trans MPs, if we take a conservative estimate of the number of trans people as 200,000, (seeing as we don't know how many included in that estimate are above the age of 18) would be: 200,000/68,000,000 * 650 = 1.9.
So 2 MPs for trans people would be the equivalent of hitting 50% representation for women. Any more than 2, and they would be over-represented.
The question is though, as trans can mean so many different things, what type of trans person would be elected into those positions. For example, can we really consider that a middle-aged AGP trans identifying male could represent well the interests of a young trans man? Trans is a meaningless term, because it includes such a wide variety of different profiles in terms of sex, age, and the type of 'identification'. Do we have quotas for religious groups, because it seems to make more sense to me to treat this as a religious belief rather than a specific identity as is race or sex.

As for 'trans representation' in parliament, sure, whatever.

The reasons for the lack of representation of women, BAME and disabled people are structural. If there is a similar structural block for, say a person like Pips Bunce, Helen Belcher or Eddie Izzard becoming an MP, I'd love to know what it might be. People not voting for you doesn't qualify, btw.

Although I would disagree with earlier posters saying that transmen are not trying to remove women's rights. Some of the most vociferous proponents of the anti-woman aspects of 'trans rights' are transmen/trans masc etc. Stephen Whittle has been on FWR waving away safeguarding for residential trips by suggesting handing out condoms, Freddy McConnell is constantly pushing to undermine women being called mothers and shills for the pro-surrogacy movement, and I've had numerous conversations with self identified trans masc people in church settings who promote overt homophobia and sexism.

If trans women are women, though, why do we also need trans MPs - surely if our experiences are exactly the same we just to fulfil the female 50% quota? Could this mean, perhaps, that trans women aren't women after all?!

@mrsborisjohnson

If trans women are women, though, why do we also need trans MPs - surely if our experiences are exactly the same we just to fulfil the female 50% quota? Could this mean, perhaps, that trans women aren't women after all?!

As the kerfuffle about the Fawcett Society not speaking up several years ago shows, some people would be intensely relaxed that a HoC with 50% men and 50% 'TW who are by definition women' would be representative in the way you express.

Oh, I'm sure they would!

He said that laws protecting transpeople have been around for 17 years and we shouldn't go back on that

Interesting that he is admitting that the debate now includes this. The window is shifting. The issues with the GRA are being recognised. The thought that you could change it is now out there.

biological sex is not binary and not just chromosonal.

We do see this phrase in many forms very often.

Biological sex is very stable and has been, in humans, for so long that you can probably say 'forever'. It doesn't require any philosophical discussion or underpinning. It doesn't require any further definition except that there are bodies formed around the production of large gametes and small gametes, regardless of whether that production has, is able to, or will occur in the future. And there are infinite variations of this but they can reliably be sorted.

Those who have a difference in sex development that cannot be categorised as being either a male or a female difference in sex development are very rare.

Biological sex IS binary, there are NO third gametes, there are NO third sexes. You are right, it is not just chromosomes that dictate sex, although the combinations that are not XX and XY are still quite rare and the majority of trans people do not have these medical conditions. Of course, there may be an intersection and there will be some people with differences in sex development who are trans.

It seems that those who wish to strengthen stereotypes are the ones who seek to destabilise the sex categories so that they can change the definitions of the words they wish to use to describe themselves.

However, we are always interested in reading new studies and papers. So maybe you could link up what has formed the basis of your beliefs so we can understand it better.

A proportional number of trans MPs, if we take a conservative estimate of the number of trans people as 200,000, (seeing as we don't know how many included in that estimate are above the age of 18) would be: 200,000/68,000,000 650 = 1.9.*
So 2 MPs for trans people would be the equivalent of hitting 50% representation for women. Any more than 2, and they would be over-represented.

yes. And if, as has happened in Mexico, people identify as trans to attain those set aside seats, who is going to tell them that they are not trans as their is simply no way to do so.

Yes, representative is great - so that will be 51% women, 1% transwomen, 1% transmen (they don’t make a fuss, but let’s be fair now) and 47% men. Everybody happy? I would be!