Labour have committed to single sex spaces

[flumpetto]

Excluding trans

This is a step in the right direction at long last....

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/keir-starmer-trans-women-labour-b1924832.html

Sorry, I should add, it was clear to ME.

Vesta Tilley as Burlington Bertie:

Also Not Trans

How is any actor supposed to depict a person who starts off as male and doesn’t even know they are “trans” (that is, male yet likes silky fabric!) who then transitions and has surgery and becomes Lili? Surely at some point it will be an actor who isn’t exactly what they’re portraying , unless they go through transition at the same time?

Or are trans actors allowed to play anyone but no one else is allowed to play trans? Funny that.

According to Malcolm Clark's thread, Hirschfeld's colleague at the institute seems to have had opinions on women in male clothing, and it wasn't positive. So I don't feel either of them would have liked Vesta Tilley.

twitter.com/TwisterFilm/status/1408150603088510976?s=19

The things you learn when you look into this. Like how Hirschfeld looked for sperm in the vaginal secretions of lesbians.

@QueenPeary

How is any actor supposed to depict a person who starts off as male and doesn’t even know they are “trans” (that is, male yet likes silky fabric!) who then transitions and has surgery and becomes Lili? Surely at some point it will be an actor who isn’t exactly what they’re portraying , unless they go through transition at the same time?

Or are trans actors allowed to play anyone but no one else is allowed to play trans? Funny that.

Yup. Most recent article on it, including interviews with actors, from last month.

www.yahoo.com/entertainment/alicia-vikander-gets-why-danish-142054777.html

Oh fuck this shit about how only disabled actors should play disabled parts etc. Acting is being what you're not. Yes, you could have found a real disabled person to play Christy Brown, but not as good as Daniel Day Lewis.

Nothing like blackface because that is just silly and we can literally see through it. David Lean was stubborn about casting Alec Guiness in Passage to India, and it killed his career there and then.

Before long, you will be saying that only Irish actors can play Irish parts, only actual Klingons can play Klingons, etc.

I think there is grief about The Danish Girl partly because people have heard of it so it gets traction but partly because Redmayne is a man. Less grief about Corrie because a woman played the part of a trans male.

@Sophoclesthefox

Blimey purgatory and jaysmith, this thread really has turned educational now, thank you. Stuff there that I’ve never even heard of (it’s not cheerful stuff, sadly, but certainly interesting).

I agree. It is grimly fascinating. Thank you vipers.

Sorry to go on, but I've been learning a lot. I've been reading an article about wonderful transgender-inclusive Hirschfeld, and his efforts to legalise homosexuality, and also his attempts to cure it.

Whatever reservations Hirschfeld may have felt about the desirability of changing a person's sexual orientation were laid aside in favor of promoting Steinach's research. He sought and found volunteers for the proceduregay men who were desperate to become heterosexualand directed them to Steinach. Some further successes were reported, but eventually the procedure was exposed as ineffective. If only one of the volunteer's own testicles was removed, there was no permanent effect on his sex drive or sexual orientation. In cases where both of the volunteer's own testicles were removed, however, the consequences were more serious. Hirschfeld published one man's account of his experience.

"After my wife gave her consent, I underwent a bilateral castration. The operation was performed by a well-known surgeon, with the understanding that it would be followed later by the implantation of a testicle from a heterosexual man. As I was already over forty, the initial operation didn't have any dramatic effects. My voice and facial hair weren't affected. My sex drive declined in strength but didn't change its direction. I did lose my body hair, though. A year later the testicle of a heterosexual man was implanted in my abdominal cavity. My body hair began to regrow, but six months later it disappeared again. My sex drive gradually declined until it finally disappeared,but it never changed its direction. My desire to drink and use drugs did go awayI've been clean and sober for years now. So I achieved what I wanted. But I've been destroyed as a man: my drive and will-power are gone. I don't blame anyoneI asked for the procedure myself. But maybe I could have given up drinking if only my feelings of inferiority had been alleviated, by social or moral means. Steinach's transplants were much overrated in those days, even by doctors. I've researched the literature--there isn't one reported case of lasting improvement after a transplant."

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/books/chap1/queerscience.htm

If the Tavi has difficulties with staff recruitment, they could always resurrect him. I think he (and his theories of sexuality) would fit in nicely.

@Fitt I hadn’t read as far as your post when I posted.

Thanks Betty, my kids know their grandparents story but as WWII grows more distant people feel free to call the families of the Nazi's victims Nazis because it's not something that has affected them directly.

They're silly people, using it to dramatise their safe and secure lives. It's not worth taking seriously, and serves only to make everything they have to say unserious too.

I think if 'blomps' were to do that, in more than a tiny, tiny number of cases, it'd be an issue that politicians might want to address. But blomps don't exist ... and it seems that transexual women who are similarly aggressive and oppressive barely exist, either. I see your point in theory - you've done a fine job of detailing it - but I don't see it in practice.

@Ides

I think if 'blomps' were to do that, in more than a tiny, tiny number of cases, it'd be an issue that politicians might want to address. But blomps don't exist ... and it seems that transexual women who are similarly aggressive and oppressive barely exist, either. I see your point in theory - you've done a fine job of detailing it - but I don't see it in practice.

You're forgetting the very loud voices and clout of groups like Stonewall.

Gender self ID will ensure all spaces will become in effect entirely mixed sex.

There will be no 'males' and 'females' spaces. There will be only mixed sex.

There will be no 'gatekeeping' of any kind. Any male will be able to use any space at any time he pleases.

[quote PurgatoryOfPotholes]My own post has jogged my memory.

Butterfly, you mentioned Dora Richter. Did you ever wonder what the wonderful transinclusive, altruistic surgeon who did Dora's (and Lili Elbe's) procedures did next?

Well, it's not a very nice story. You won't like it. He became the medical chief of the Luftwaffe. He also participated in the scientific abominations at Dachau, such as some pioneering [sarcasm] research into how long humans can survive hyperthermia. For this little wheeze, prisoners were immersed in freezing cold water and it was recorded how long they took to die. Have a little think about that.

He got some great medals out of it all, though. Hitler seems to have been delighted with him.

twitter.com/TwisterFilm/status/1408150527918186499?s=19[/quote]
It's horrendous isn't it?

The history of the 20th century medical establishment's treatment of LGBT people is wall-to-wall awfulness, mired in regressive attitudes and occasional stumbles forward that almost seem to have happened despite, rather than because of, the attitudes of the clinicians involved.

The early 21st century treatment of certain cohorts of children isn't going to look that great in retrospect, either. At least most of them will probably be alive to sue the clinicians involved.

Labour will not do anything. They are in too deep to do a 180.

And in the end it's not even about maintaining the EA as is (although obviously should not be weakened!).

Most of it is done. Voluntarily. Or built into policy for years. To turn that back would be really hard.

Eg
Many / most support type stuff for women eg rape crisis. Relies on winning funding contracts from eg local council. The contracts stipulate what the service needs to provide to meet the contract. Many women's services have already accepted TWAW. Additionally. Councils etc are looking to cut costs and one way is to farm out services to big orgs that can deliver more cheaply. One area (Brighton) a service lost funding because they didn't accept men. This other service will. They are a big org. Their background is something to do with prisoners. Nothing to do with rape crisis..bidded won done.

Private sector places can do what they want to a point. And I think there is something about toilets in workplaces and single sex. BUT loads of orgs have changed in loads of ways. And how could it be challenged? Take them to court? I I mean we don't have endless money etc.
Maybe it will be challenged maybe it won't. Who knows if would get anywhere. The laws in workplaces are being ignored as they are in schools gyms etc all over the place.

And with the EA you can have the single sex exception but you don't have to. And if places don't use the exception then that's their right.

Hosps have had same gender ward policy since I think the 90s (govt told NHS to lie to public and say single sex). Language in NHS services for women is being changed left right and centre.

Prisons. How long has it been going on? The police?

And it's all on self id. What someone says. If they seem in wrong place don't say anything they know best. Etc.

So yes EA no change and no self id.

But to turn around all the things already settled and done? With only complaints from some women and well who cares about women. If they did they wouldn't have fucked us over without a second thought in the first place.

Anyway sorry that was depressing. No way have labour changed their tune.

@theThreeofWeevils

The early 21st century treatment of certain cohorts of children isn't going to look that great in retrospect, either. At least most of them will probably be alive to sue the clinicians involved.

Having been one of the children in question who, through careful and cautious case by case evaluation, was allowed to embark upon a course of experimental treatment that allowed me to lift myself from a suicidal pit of despair, I don't actually entirely disagree with you.

There are sadly organisations that claim that the systematic extermination of LGB and indeed T people in the 30's and 40's didn't include the T, but in light of the nazis having raided, murdered and burned their way through the first institution in the world that actually took the T seriously and attempted to respect the claims of those under its care, took steps to protect transgender people from institutionalised abuse, and even coined their name, this stance is pretty hard to defend.

Transgender people who were not hought to be homosexuals were not systematically persecuted by the Nazis. The Transvestitenschein, a certificate allowing the owner to crossdress continued to be issued throughout Nazi Germany. It's use was only discontinued in the 1950s.

There is also no evidence that Dora Richter was murdered on the day in 1933 when the Nazis destroyed the Hirschberg Institute. There is no hint at all about what happened to DR. No eye witness accounts, no sighting after that night and no body was ever found.

And the Nazis destroyed the Institute not because it contained works about transvestism, but because Hirschberg was Jewish and openly homosexual. He was the co-founder of the first gay rights organisation in the world, and campaigned to decriminalise homosexuality, and raise awareness of the fact that homosexuality occurred naturally, claiming that more than 5 in 100 German men were either gay or bisexual. A claim that was seen as so injurious to the psyche of the German man, he received endless hostility for it for decades thereafter. Including viciously violent attacks, one of which nearly killed him.

Rainer Herrn, who researched whether transvestites were persecuted under Hitler writes "Where trans people could refute the accusation of being homosexual, there is no evidence of a single prosecution".

(Zeitschrift für Sexualforschung Jf. 26 (2013) 4, S. 330–37. Original quote: "Sofern Trans*personen den „gegen sie erhobenen Homosexualitätsverdacht entkräften konnten, lässt sich in keinem Fall eine Strafverfolgung nachweisen“)

Germans are bureaucrats. They documented everything people were prosecuted for. They documented and catalogued everything they did to people. Everything, even the very worst things.

There is sheer endless evidence of persecution on the basis of sexuality. There is no evidence of persecution on the basis of gender reassignment alone.

Here is a peer-reviewed 38-page paper written by Ilse Reiter-Zatloukal published in 2014 in Beiträge zur Rechtsgeschichte Österreichs (Articles on the legal history of Austria. The journal is published by the Austrian Academy of the Sciences).

The paper is documenting cases of transgender people being allowed to officially change their legal sex in Austria after it was annexed in 1938.

I couldn't find it in English, but if you can read German, it's here: sexualityandholocaust.files.wordpress.com/2018/07/transvestiten-ns.pdf

Andrew Marr is interviewing Keir Starmer at 9 am. Should be interesting, given last week's programme.

@CharlieParley, thank you that's fascinating.

@endofagain

Andrew Marr is interviewing Keir Starmer at 9 am. Should be interesting, given last week's programme.

Would love to see Marr ask him the same question. Who knows, a legal mind Luke Starmer's may have a better handle on that question. If he's not been briefed on it, and well prepped (whichever side he chooses - or none), I'll be surprised. Not that I consider that impossible...

@Jaysmith71

Oh fuck this shit about how only disabled actors should play disabled parts etc. Acting is being what you're not. Yes, you could have found a real disabled person to play Christy Brown, but not as good as Daniel Day Lewis.

Nothing like blackface because that is just silly and we can literally see through it. David Lean was stubborn about casting Alec Guiness in Passage to India, and it killed his career there and then.

Before long, you will be saying that only Irish actors can play Irish parts, only actual Klingons can play Klingons, etc.

Well we now have heard of gay actors (or writers) saying gay characters should only be played by actual homosexual people, and Samuel Jackson who thinks black American roles should only be played by black Americans.

The changing of skin colour seems a arbitrary line though, it can work perfectly well depending on the setting and how significant the change is. It's ok to put a prosthetic nose on an actor but not change Angelina Joli's skin tone a few shades to play a Hispanic role?

Yes.

Because esp in USA and esp with black people, there is a history of horrendous OP oppression. And there is still huge racism esp in certain areas.

Having an actor what. Black up?! To play a black character is ridiculous when there are plenty of black actors. And those who are not white do experience racism still.

How often are black actors hired to play someone who was most definitely white? Prince Charles or something? An Asian or black or Hispanic person would never get that in a million years would they.

Example that pissed me off. Ghost in the shell. Incredibly famous, Japanese. The lead character is naturally Japanese. It was given the Hollywood treatment. Scarlet Johansson. What a piss take. This is something from Japan, really really famous. But they can't bring themselves to do the basic courtesy of saying yeah thanks for the story which is in a format intrinsically linked with Japan etc we'll respect the legacy. Yeah that pissed me off.