AR fluff piece in The Times

[Binting]

Just as I commend The Times for finally allowing comments that don’t support self ID, they delete the majority of critical comments under this article:

AR: ‘I find it difficult feeling happy’

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/e049ffc0-1abc-11ec-8d6d-67649e90fafa?shareToken=5ff96f99ccd28bb5fe93ba6204229755

First time I’ve violated policy when commenting. They’ve also stopped further comments.

I think the article has been paid for, so the Times have bowed to AR and her team and removed comments that don’t support her agenda.

Mine weren’t even that bad.

(apologies if the link doesn’t work)

Beckett and Harman were both elected deputy leaders. Yes and didn't get elected leader, why nit pick?

“He respected my role. He didn’t see me as a woman.”
I found this really jarring as if he had seen her as a woman then he wouldn't have respected her?!

She does seem to think she's the cat's PJs I suspect most MPs do but at least some try to hide it a little.

Yes the deletion of the comments is a disgrace.

Most were about the trans issue. It seems that criticism of her record on that is not permitted. Really poor show.

I have sympathy for her traumatic experiences but I cannot understand or forgive her throwing women to the wolves.

I too sympathise with her story and admire that she’s achieved why she’s achieved however the dog food/shaving foam story didn’t run true to me. I don’t trust her one bit.

Rayner was almost unrecognisable in the article. I was watching her speech yesterday and the photos did not match the woman on the telly in the slightest.

The dog food and shaving foam story didn't ring true at all to me either. Even if you can't read, the picture of a dog on the tin is a massive giveaway as is the fact that shaving cream isn't found in the fridge section but at the other end of the shop by the bubble bath. The smell of both when opened would be a bit of a clue as well. I could understand the story as abuse but not as ignorance. Tbh, as someone who grew up in abject poverty, albeit happily, and in the same wider region at a similar time, it all just seems odd to me.

The dog food and shaving foam story didn't ring true at all to me either. Even if you can't read, the picture of a dog on the tin is a massive giveaway

I've had someone confuse cat food with a tin of fish because the label and description were very similar. For dog food v stewing steak, I can see a confusion if they were the budget end and both had plain labels.

The shaving foam? If they were both put in the larder or cupboard rather than the shaving foam put in the bathroom, isn't squirty cream originally ambient and then put in the fridge after opening? It wouldn't be that unthinkable to confuse the tins.

Even if you can't read, the picture of a dog on the tin is a massive giveaway
Unless it was a picture of the food - which it sometimes is.

as is the fact that shaving cream isn't found in the fridge section but at the other end of the shop by the bubble bath
Spray on whipped cream isn't kept in the fridge section, it's kept on a shelf. In a supermarket it would be obvious what it was from the placement, but maybe not in a cramped corner store.

I don't have much time for Rayner, but I don't see any reason to doubt those stories.

I’ve met hh ar and TT and they’re all very impressive. AR at a Fabien’s Womens Zoom session in early lockdown last year. She was incredibly dynamic, fluent and energetic- mid evening in the Commons, and off to work afterwards. Put the rest of us to shame. I’m prepared to give her a pass on GC issues, anything else and she’d receive death threats and her political career end.

I’m prepared to give her a pass on GC issues

How nice for you. The rest of us aren't prepared to do that, given how important these issues are.

@CreepingDeath
I work front line women’s services and am at risk of losing my job for stating that tw aren’t women. I have my photo on Twitter and post about GC issues. There’s no hiding, can’t remember the last time I received an email without pronouns or had a conversation about VAWG (my job) without the obligatory most marginalised crap.
Angela Raynor being no platform wd, marginalised and losing her job over this isn’t going to help me or the women and girls I fight for.

Angela Raynor being no platform wd, marginalised and losing her job over this isn’t going to help me or the women and girls I fight for

Would previous resistance, consultation with women and frontline women's services in years gone by have helped?

If Angela R is voted leader of the Labour Party, do you anticipate that women would be consulted in the future? Or would AR continue with the erasure of women as a sex-class using the additional power and authority? In which case, she's not that different to others is cold comfort.

@EmbarrassingAdmissions “Would previous resistance, consultation with women and frontline women's services in years gone by have helped?”
Yes, but it didn’t happen. We were too busy being kind and heads down dealing with the problems in front of us. It’s also so frankly preposterous that people with penises should be sentenced to Womens prisons and counselled by rape services that there was and is a real resistance to believing it happens.
“If Angela R is voted leader of the Labour Party, do you anticipate that women would be consulted in the future? Or would AR continue with the erasure of women as a sex-class using the additional power and authority?”
I don’t know. I suspect she won’t become leader, she definitely wouldn’t if she declared herself gc.

Those of us with less to lose are going to have to fight this battle.

Angela Raynor being no platform wd, marginalised and losing her job over this isn’t going to help me or the women and girls I fight for.

I highly doubt that her becoming leader of the Labour party would be any better for them, given her stance!

If she can't or won't acknowledge what a woman is, how can she possibly advocate for the most vulnerable of women and girls? It's illogical.

My problem is that due to my background I have far more in common with Rayner than other politicians. On paper. Yet we seem to end up at diametrically different viewpoints despite that. My experience of adults with literacy issues means I view all the jargon like "person with vulva/vagina/cervix" as deeply exclusionary of people with literacy issues.

I wonder if it's that she sees it as a binary, i.e. people either can't read at all, so 'person with a vagina' is the same as 'woman' to them or they are perfectly literate and have no issues. I am most familiar with the people towards one end of the spectrum, who can handle high frequency words, but struggle beyond those.

@CreepingDeath

Angela Raynor being no platform wd, marginalised and losing her job over this isn’t going to help me or the women and girls I fight for.

I highly doubt that her becoming leader of the Labour party would be any better for them, given her stance!

If she can't or won't acknowledge what a woman is, how can she possibly advocate for the most vulnerable of women and girls? It's illogical.

My point is that the debate is so polarised and toxic that when we ask a high profile woman in politics to stand with us it’s asking more than for eg. a practitioner or academic or professional feminist (JB) This war will be won as more and more people notice TW in prison and in refuges, men standing up in dresses saying ‘as a woman’, not by expecting AR to comit political suicide. Why aren’t we asking the same of Corbin/ Blair/ Ball/ Milkibands?

I’m prepared to give her a pass on GC issues, anything else and she’d receive death threats and her political career end.

That's nice.

It'll be a cold day in Hell before I give any politician a pass on trampling women's rights.

Watched her interview with Trevor Phillips on Sky, and must say for a plain-speaking no-nonsense ecky-thump Northerner who was too busy getting pregnant behind the bike sheds to take her GCSEs, she is remarklably slick and media-trained when she wants to be.

@AlfonsoTheMango

I’m prepared to give her a pass on GC issues, anything else and she’d receive death threats and her political career end.

That's nice.

It'll be a cold day in Hell before I give any politician a pass on trampling women's rights.

So we don’t vote then. Because no politician is saying tw aren’t women and surviving politically.

This is a calculated and premeditated challenge to the Tories. If they get outraged by Rayner, she and the rest of Labour will rattle off a few Johnsonisms: Tank-Topped Bum-Boys. Piccannies with Watermelon Smiles. That sort of thing.

Expect Tories to be silent in the main.

[quote Etinox]@CreepingDeath
I work front line women’s services and am at risk of losing my job for stating that tw aren’t women. I have my photo on Twitter and post about GC issues. There’s no hiding, can’t remember the last time I received an email without pronouns or had a conversation about VAWG (my job) without the obligatory most marginalised crap.
Angela Raynor being no platform wd, marginalised and losing her job over this isn’t going to help me or the women and girls I fight for.[/quote]
She's not going along with this just to keep her place, though. She's completely signed on to the ideology, working hard at instantiating it and institutionalizing it, and thinks people who have a problem with that are scumbags.

@LobsterNapkin
I honestly don’t know if she is signed up and going along whole heartedly. Anyone I’ve spoken to who isn’t gc soon is after a couple of minutes. The difficulty is starting the conversation without being shot down with cries of ‘Terf’ or ‘I have an MA in Gender studies’🤦🏻‍♀️
I don’t feel this is a battle to be won at the ballot box but in the courts and front line.