Boris Johnson backs Kathleen Stock and LGB Alliance in trans rights row

[Igneococcus]

Times article:

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/bcd547fc-3281-11ec-820f-e2be9b2cb5fd?shareToken=5c3a9e0bca841aaf9e00e4221e557a2f

@DismantledKing

I’m not so sure about this. Carrie’s very close to Nimco Ali, who is an anti-FGM campaigner and very clear on what a woman is.

I think that they just agree to disagree about this issue. Carrie appears very pro-Stonewall.

But I find even that oddly reassuring. I feel a whole lot more comfortable with “Let’s agree to disagree”, than “TWAW. No debate.” or “This person has a different opinion, they must be sacked/no-platformed immediately. No debate”.

If Carrie’s not joining in with the usual Stonewall-mandated no-platforming, then there’s hope No.10 hasn’t been entirely captured.

I really don’t agree with 99.9% of her and Boris’s politics, but sadly the Tories aren’t going anywhere soon. While we’re stuck with them, at least there’s one thing to be hopeful about.

I haven’t read the article but good.

That's not "support", it's a generic answer that they'll send pretty much anyone who writes

Someone should tell The Times - they clearly thought it was significant.

Or perhaps they report on every event Boris's office declines each day - I had to use the share token so I'm not sure..,

Ahhh… now we have Boris’s assistant sending out templated letters offering congratulations without doing any checking at all on who they are sending them too….

Of course the prime minister’s office is so poorly run and NO staff have any concept of checking who they are replying to.

Must be hard to feel like yet another politician has voiced support for LGB Alliance which will certainly make others feel safe to follow suit. And if it just for political points, what message is that sending to allies and adversaries alike?

WOW Boris has finally got something right.

I find the suggestion that the PM's office send generic "good on you" comments to organisations that they haven't so much as googled ridiculous.

I feel I should be paying subs to Ig who continues to keep us in Share tokens

(& PLEASE would the photo editor at the times get a better photo of Prof Stock! If the best you can do is a still from video at least pick a frame in BETWEEN two words 🤦🏻‍♀️)

Well you know I care deeply about feminism and being clear about the science of what a woman is. Forgive me if I'm the only person who feels uneasy with the Conservative party as my feminism ally. (I guess for me history is hard to erase). Labour, the Libdems and the Greens have failed me. I'm on the ticket for one very, fundamental issue, but I'd rather die than be on the side of BJ for 10 million big ticket issues.

@Helleofabore

RepentMotherfucker

To be clear! I was not invoking your name in vain or yelling your name full volume!

Good to see you here though…

Did you say it 3x while looking in the mirror? Have you learned nothing from a certain genre of film?

I had to search out a source of the video as the original link has been taken down. I'd thought the tambourine exorcist sounded too good to be true but I should have known better.

mobile.twitter.com/DrewHLive/status/1450898191860203520

No, no everyone, we are wrong!

Boris’ staff could potentially start a war because they are sending congratulations letters out without due care. They could be sending a letter out to a terrorist group yet if we trusted Catharina’s assertions.

Maybe, just maybe the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom should get better staff! His aides are so clearly from the temp agency and are making it up as they go along.

FFS.

@EmbarrassingHadrosaurus how have I not seen this? It’s hilarious. As one of the comments underneath says “The people calling for tolerance and acceptance are not very tolerant or accepting.”. These people are crackers…

[quote TatoAndBeans]@EmbarrassingHadrosaurus how have I not seen this? It’s hilarious. As one of the comments underneath says “The people calling for tolerance and acceptance are not very tolerant or accepting.”. These people are crackers…[/quote]
I often wonder about all the cultural references that I miss in US dramas or video from US events.

Looking at the tambourine woman, I did wonder if this is an offshoot of someone doing a jericho march (with tambourines) as they seem popular among certain religious groups.

@Bouledeneige

Well you know I care deeply about feminism and being clear about the science of what a woman is. Forgive me if I'm the only person who feels uneasy with the Conservative party as my feminism ally. (I guess for me history is hard to erase). Labour, the Libdems and the Greens have failed me. I'm on the ticket for one very, fundamental issue, but I'd rather die than be on the side of BJ for 10 million big ticket issues.

It’s the concept of an ally that I, and I think others by the looks of it, have a problem with.

It’s all very high school. Not liking someone because your bestie doesn’t like them or vice versa. It’s part of the thinking that got us in this mess in the first place; that stonewall are the good guys and no one can say anything against them and they’ve been able to be above reproach while garnering public funds to push their one and only issue. But no one can say that because stonewall are the good guys, which must make anyone opposing anything they say be the bad guys, and round we go.

If it wasn’t abhorrent to hold a variety of differing views that all match with a variety of different political parties and views, and to all be free to challenge any party on views, then it would have been much more possible to call this out for what it was much earlier.

It’s obnoxious to suggest we all forget history also. I have disabled children. That Tory policies made the uk the first ever country to violate the UN’s convention on the rights of people with disabilities is deeply personal to me. That DC then increased his cuts to spending that continued to disproportionately impact disabled people and there’s been no Tory acknowledgment is beyond enraging and upsetting.

But I could say the same about the Tony Blair sending us into an illegal war.

We have to deal with here and now. I think in some ways I have it easy as I’m in a very safe Tory seat so I can stick to spoiling my ballot and keep my integrity (unless any candidate will publicly state they’ll go against their parties line when I ask them). But I have daughters so if I needed to vote Tory to keep self id out and keep free speech, without which none of us have any rights, I would.

@Bouledeneige

It's hardly surprising. The Conservative party are engaged in a 'culture war' against woke politics and in favour of populism. Much like Trump. It makes for uncomfortable allyship - there are many other aspects of the anti-woke agenda that I would be very opposed to.

Me too. Ironically, my experience of bias and inequality as a female person is why I am sympathetic to other groups talking about their own inequality and oppression. Because I know what it's like to have your disempowerment so thoroughly baked into society that people just see it as normal.

I probably agree with about 90% of what the genderist movement wants to see, and probably 100% of what the #bekind lot think it stands for.

The problem is that the 10% I don't agree with is so very very dreadful for female people it's a total dealbreaker.

It's a House-On-Fire scenario. If the house burns down, everything else is irrelevant. So it doesn't matter how much a party might check my other boxes, if they don't agree the fire has to be dealt with then I can't vote for them.

But while I may agree with "anti-woke" that the current situation wrt gender ideology is wrong and find myself temporarily aligned to stop it happening, I also know that once the excesses of gender ideology are curbed, that alignment will immediately fracture because what they and I think is right and should be happening instead is very different.

I don't want fighting genderism to mean going socially backwards. I want this crazy denial of female voices, existence and experience to turn out to be a crazy blip in a path that continues to move towards tolerance, acceptance, female empowerment and the deconstruction of toxic gender constructions.

I do worry, that rather than the other parties getting a blast of reality here as to what the public likely thinks, they become further entrenched in TWAW in order to take up the opposite position.

@Waitwhat23

If it's just a generic letter, filled out by someone tasked to 'fill in the blanks' and isn't a show of support in some even vague way, it shows an extraordinary lack of knowledge by the person filling in the blanks about the current situation at the University of Sussex and the continual attacks against the charitable status of the LGB Alliance by lobbying groups with an axe to grind. A strange stage of affairs from people working in the political area. Are TRA's genuinely claiming that this letter was basically sent out by accident?

A few years ago I used to draft No10 press briefings for one government department. Not for anything as potentially controversial as this though, it has to be said. Really dull and boring stuff that No 10 needed to sign off on. The number of reviews and officials they had to go through was ridiculous.

From me, a mid ranking civil servant, up to my Director and then Permanent Secretary. And then up to No 10. Can you imagine how many layers of officials that went through once it landed in Number 10? This wasn't done casually at all. This went through the proper process and were signed off and approved at every level. If the PM has written this letter then it has been reviewed and approved appropriately. Excellent!!

@Helleofabore

RepentMotherfucker

To be clear! I was not invoking your name in vain or yelling your name full volume!

Good to see you here though…

I'm getting invoked all over the show today.

Although I have apparently just been cancelled off t'internet so who knows how long my reign of terror will last?

Look I never expected to be here either. None of us did. My parents work/worked for the nhs. I’ve been labour through everyone, milliband, corbyn everyone. Voting Tory is an anathema to me, and sorry to get excited and silly and joke about shagging frogs. BUT I want to live. I want my daughter to live. I want girls and women to live and be proud and free to be daughters and women and not be scared to ever speak up for ourselves or share how we feel. I want children and teens to get the best possible care, and not mutilate themselves and make themselves infertile and forever patients and still be fucking miserable. I want women to have their own spaces and be safe, or as safe as we can be. If I have to vote for someone I wouldn’t ever normally countenance well that isn’t even on me, that’s on labour, greens and Lib Dem’s for abandoning us and forcing us to choose between our personal politics and our actual existence.
I know we are all on the same page with those things. Maybe this will wake the other parties up, and I hope so. But if it doesn’t I would rather vote Tory than against women.

John McManus has tweeted.
twitter.com/JohnMcM1/status/1451232213454966792?t=V4sTK9dCpzrMViYBLs3tLQ&s=19
Meanwhile, @BorisJohnson has sent a message of support to the @ALLIANCELGB conference - not hugely significant in itself, but what is, is the Downing St Spad who was also present to observe.

Personally I think this is significant. TRAs and Stonewall have overreached. They've been given enough rope to hang themselves. It was significant that no government rep attended LGBT event at the party conference.

Although I have apparently just been cancelled off t'internet so who knows how long my reign of terror will last?

It seems like those who cancelled you forgot it was the internet and that it won’t let you be canceled that easily. Because it is too late!!! There is so many Repent Motherfuckers out there now it will be like rounding up a thousand cats at once.

Repent ! Repent !!

@Bellendejour

Look I never expected to be here either. None of us did. My parents work/worked for the nhs. I’ve been labour through everyone, milliband, corbyn everyone. Voting Tory is an anathema to me, and sorry to get excited and silly and joke about shagging frogs. BUT I want to live. I want my daughter to live. I want girls and women to live and be proud and free to be daughters and women and not be scared to ever speak up for ourselves or share how we feel. I want children and teens to get the best possible care, and not mutilate themselves and make themselves infertile and forever patients and still be fucking miserable. I want women to have their own spaces and be safe, or as safe as we can be. If I have to vote for someone I wouldn’t ever normally countenance well that isn’t even on me, that’s on labour, greens and Lib Dem’s for abandoning us and forcing us to choose between our personal politics and our actual existence. I know we are all on the same page with those things. Maybe this will wake the other parties up, and I hope so. But if it doesn’t I would rather vote Tory than against women.

Because if women vote against women this time, then there will be no other time to vote for women.

If how women vote measured by ‘women’ as a group loosing transmen and including transwomen (men) then how women vote on women’s issues can’t ever be assessed anymore. It would be cutting our access to democratic process for good. There will be no party looking at how they can address women’s issues to get women’s vote or better represent women if women includes any man who feels like it.

I actually think this has more significance than we are giving it. I reckon the last couple of years has been the end of the beginning. But this last week or so is the beginning of the end. Boris knows it. Fuck knows why Kier can't see the wood for the trees.

I also think young people are bored with it too now. When you are told it's going to be Ru Paul fabulousness and when you turn up it's 'Girls like us' it's difficult to maintain your enthusiasm I should imagine. Fickle fickle youth.

Oh and, REPENT MOTHERFUCKER!

I don't care what our prime minister has decreed, nothing could cajole me to vote Conservative. They always make me poorer, and I was poor to start with.
Not just me, but millions of others. I currently live in an East Midlands town which has massive street homelessness. I mean fuckijng loads. The Tories have been in power for 11 years, almost as long as I've been NFA and have done nothing about it other than to say they're helping hard working families. Cunts.
'We' can't afford it apparently, but we can afford to fund Trident, our 'independent' nuclear deterrent, so independent that we don't even get the launch codes unless the US says so. What's the point? We keep the banks alive through quantitative easing, their failure in 2008 was blamed on us, but it was people like Sajid Javid made millions on CDOs and then avoided tax. Why aren't these arseholes in jail for knowingly crashing our economy?
So our Prime Minister can say whatever he likes, he's against people like me (poor and homeless) so why the fuck would i vote for his party? In fact, I'll heartily campaign against it.

@Gncq

Well, that's something I suppose.

The UK has a prime minister who despite being a (insert chosen derogatory term) and has _ (insert long list of examples of total ineptitude and disaster), does understand the basic tenets of living in a pluralistic society.

Agree. I'll never vote for him, though.

@donquixotedelamancha

I think it gives plausible deniability if they get more of a pushback than they're prepared to tolerate.

I agree, but it's still fairly significant.

The Tories anti-woke agenda also includes negating human rights, reducing legal aid, anti-Black Lives Matter, anti-charity lobbying and lots of other scary stuff. We agree with him on one thing but many other things are pretty regressive.

Being a Tory doesn't mean some sort of evil collective consiousness. There are lots of perfectly legitimate critisms of things like BLM (the organisation, not the cause) or NGO lobbying. I don't think there is any excuse for their policies on the HR act or legal aid but that doesn't make them cartoon monsters.

If we aren't going to seek to influence government policy WTF is the point of all this?

Yeah, anyone who has been following the Nolan podcast should be asking larger questions about NGOs, funding, and lobbying. And it's not like BLM is universally seen as good by leftists, Marxists, or black people, even in the US. Some are pretty critical.

So I'm not sure where the assumption that these things make people evil comes from, even if we are talking about some sort of tribalist perspective.