Wes Streeting on Rosie Duffield

[ChristinaXYZ]

I did notice on his more balanced interview more recently that he still did not come out to support Rosie Duffield. This rather suggests that his opinion has not changed much if at all from previous years. It is shame because women's rights aside Streeting is someone who could have brought me back to Labour post-Corbyn. But I won't put women's rights aside so this is deeply disappointing:

"Wes Streeting nowadays claims trans rights campaigners shouldn’t try to “shut down” people like JK Rowling for making similar comments, and even calling for more “empathy and understanding” on both sides. Refreshingly even-handed given the animosity these debates usually stir up…

Wes’s position has transitioned since pollster Deborah Mattinson convinced Starmer to order the Shadow Cabinet to avoid trans ideology issues which repel most ordinary voters, women voters in particular. Mumsnet’s chatrooms are on fire and livid with Labour’s mad woke positions on allowing penis owning rapists in women’s prisons and suchlike. In newly emerged footage from the LGBT+ Labour Coalition Launch last February, Streeting was less mollifying than he is now. In the past he’s repeatedly criticised Duffield for her “indefensible” posts, suggested she was “intolerant” of trans people… and even claimed those with “ill-informed” views should be given “less airtime”:

“On trans equality, you know, and I’ve had lots of private conversations with with some colleagues, I mean, there was sort of the higher profile cases like Rosie, where, you know, her social media has just kind of added fuel to the flames, bluntly, and is indefensible.

[…]

It’s our responsibility to step up to the mark not just the responsibility of trans people, but the responsibility of allies to to make sure that where these issues up debates are offered up for debate, and where there are arguments to be won, that we are there making the arguments, it means we need to give less airtime to those spouting ill informed views, whether through the columnists of Sunday newspapers, or the Twitter feeds of MPs, including, sadly, sometimes Labour MPs.”

Wes even suggested that it was ‘reasonable’ to assess the behaviour of people like Duffield as ‘intolerant’: “I understand why people are going, actually why should I be patient? And why should I tolerate people who are intolerant towards me? I think that is actually a really reasonable position, by the way.”"

order-order.com/2022/02/02/wes-streetings-conveniently-transitioned-stance-on-rosie-duffield/

"...why should I tolerate people who are intolerant towards me?" says Streeting, why indeed should any of us?

Why should women be tolerant to people intolerant towards us, Wes?

Although I'd argue in our case it's less intolerance and more outright hostility, discrimination and abuse.

Putting male rapists in women's prisons goes well beyond the definition of intolerant and firmly in the category of human rights abuse.

Agree totally @OvaHere .

So is he a craven little coward now, a bandwagon-jumping twunt or just a fucking liar?

Because I'm really struggling to believe he's acting in good faith.

I'm really unsure about what he's up to. He's very clever - quite clever enough to realise that if he's going to be PM he can't have a record of mad activism - can't be on the record as calling J K Rowling a bigot, basically, because that does not butter any parsnips among swing voters in East Midlands marginals that Labour needs to win.

So I'm quite cynical about him but was really struck by something he said in the most recent profile of him (in the new statesman maybe?) where he said (of this issue) 'people need to understand that women have had a lifetime of being told to sit down and shut up when they talk about their rights'. I'm paraphrasing but it was pretty close to that. And I thought... maybe, just maybe, he's had a moment of real understanding on this.

Basically I suspect his Stonewall heart is fighting with his ambitious head, and I don't know which has won yet.

Interesting that Mattinson was the one who persuaded Starmer that this was a toxic position for Labour.

Basically I suspect his Stonewall heart is fighting with his ambitious head, and I don't know which has won yet.

Ha! Yes!

Interesting that Mattinson was the one who persuaded Starmer that this was a toxic position for Labour.

It really is, I was too peed off with Streeting to fully appreciate it.

Does this mean Starmer might be persuaded to take a stronger line at some point?

I suspect they will go into the next General Election with their current 'sex exemptions are important.... but trans women are women' position, which passes muster among 90% of the electorate (because most of them really don't pay attention to this issue in any detail), allows Labour to have it both ways depending on which audience they're speaking to, and drives the rest of us (TRAs and GC feminists alike) completely mad.

Then I think if they are in government they will gut the single sex exemptions. That's my honest hunch. I wish I had good reason to think otherwise.

(Not least because the most likely outcome of a general election in the next couple of years is labour in coalition with the libdems/greens and possibly even SDP, aaaargh)

I think the recent web chat supports your hunch.

Interesting. It seems to be dawning on a few politicians that demanding that male born sex offenders are allowed to access women in prison, in hospital wards or when undressing isn't proving to be the vote winner that Stonewall told political parties it would be. Quelle surprise.

Streeting was at some point a part of Lily madigans Facebook group which collected information about women in order to get them expelled from the party. Until wes can explain that its a hard pass from me.

Did Labour ever investigate that group?

@PacificState

I suspect they will go into the next General Election with their current 'sex exemptions are important.... but trans women are women' position, which passes muster among 90% of the electorate (because most of them really don't pay attention to this issue in any detail), allows Labour to have it both ways depending on which audience they're speaking to, and drives the rest of us (TRAs and GC feminists alike) completely mad.

Then I think if they are in government they will gut the single sex exemptions. That's my honest hunch. I wish I had good reason to think otherwise.

and this would fit with the way Starmer dealt with Brexit. Try and please everyone with slights of hand and obfuscation. Daft these voters, they'll never get that when we say women, we mean All Women.

Was it this pacific?
Does he believe in biological sex? “Yes, of course,” he says. Does he think it’s helpful for his colleague David Lammy to accuse women with concerns in this area of being “dinosaurs” who were “hoarding” their rights? For a moment, he is silent. Then he says: “One of the things that men have always underestimated is the sense in which women have felt like they’re being told to be quiet, which is why in this context it is incendiary.”

www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jan/30/wes-streeting-labour-mp-interview-christianity-cancer

I think lots of people have changed their position on the debate as they've been exposed to different points of views. Hopefully Streeting is changing too

Yep that was it @AdamRyan. It does feel he's genuinely understood something there. I'd love to think it's possible for him and Starmer to properly understand and acknowledge the concerns those women are expressing too (ie, not just that lammy's remarks were impolitic, but that we might have a substantial point). Now they're no longer actively calling us bigots (see Creasy's Twitter in the past two days), maybe there's a direction of travel that we can be hopeful about...

I think the Guardian quote (with telling silence preceding it) is him thinking 'what was that thing they told me to say again so as not to offend women?' I don't think he truly gets it at all. And this quote from him in the OP's post: "It’s our responsibility to step up to the mark not just the responsibility of trans people, but the responsibility of allies to to make sure that where these issues up debates are offered up for debate, and where there are arguments to be won, that we are there making the arguments"... but they don't make any arguments do they (see web chat), they just tell us to shut up. Presume that means they have none

I suspect they will go into the next General Election with their current 'sex exemptions are important.... but trans women are women' position, which passes muster among 90% of the electorate (because most of them really don't pay attention to this issue in any detail), allows Labour to have it both ways depending on which audience they're speaking to, and drives the rest of us (TRAs and GC feminists alike) completely mad.

Then I think if they are in government they will gut the single sex exemptions. That's my honest hunch. I wish I had good reason to think otherwise.

You're right, which is why I won't be voting for them.

@teawamutu

Interesting that Mattinson was the one who persuaded Starmer that this was a toxic position for Labour.

It really is, I was too peed off with Streeting to fully appreciate it.

Does this mean Starmer might be persuaded to take a stronger line at some point?

What is worrying is that if he knows it is toxic but won't properly come out to support Rosie and women generally, then Starmer must really believe it. the gender ideology. Which means even if he does change tack later I cannot ever trust him.

@PacificState

I suspect they will go into the next General Election with their current 'sex exemptions are important.... but trans women are women' position, which passes muster among 90% of the electorate (because most of them really don't pay attention to this issue in any detail), allows Labour to have it both ways depending on which audience they're speaking to, and drives the rest of us (TRAs and GC feminists alike) completely mad.

Then I think if they are in government they will gut the single sex exemptions. That's my honest hunch. I wish I had good reason to think otherwise.

Yes, exactly. Oh, I wish we had a serious opposition so I had an actual choice.

@teawamutu

So is he a craven little coward now, a bandwagon-jumping twunt or just a fucking liar?

Because I'm really struggling to believe he's acting in good faith.

The two are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

The most heartbreaking thing is how ive told women to actively consider joining a political party on MN in the not too distant past.

I wouldn't now.

Get politicised yes. 100%. But my contempt for political parties of all shades has descended to that degree during the course of the last 6 years.

If I'm saying that as a poster who is particularly interested and concerned about politics on all subjects, it says a lot.

Indeed, i know all parties are struggling to find people to stand for them more than they have in generations. Such is the level of disillusionment.

Politicians have no one one to blame but themselves.

Interesting article on the Critic about Starmer's silence

thecritic.co.uk/starmers-silence/

'spouting'? One of the words that when I see it, it instantly tells me much more about the person using it than the person to which they are applying it.

Great article Christina thanks for posting

He's not really interested in listening to women, he just wants to appear to be reasonable before throwing away our rights.

twitter.com/feministroar/status/1480255202955571212?s=21