Keir Starmer can’t keep hiding in the gender wars

[Igneococcus]

Janice Turner in the Times:

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/b8d1103c-8b78-11ec-8600-c48a9935f856?shareToken=eb2987a03a02d570441b1ca67209f0b8

I also read Leo's comment that way. I don't think he is saying that feelings should trump facts but that this is what is happening right now.
Comments are taking a long time to come through. I hope the Times doesn't bottle it and just closes the article for comments as they have done frequently during the past few days for similar content.

@Lottapianos

'It's a great shame, really. He was promising. I had high hopes for him. I was hoping for a sharp legal mind and sensible pair of hands. What a massive disappointment he's turned out to be.'

Completely agree.

Yeah, disappointed is the word

@WTF475878237NC

"Blair says his son Leo, 21, has told him to keep out of the gender wars, because “there are feelings and there are facts, but right now feelings are more important”."

I think he is alluding to the notion that feelings are superseding biological facts and one can claim to feel unsafe^ and this has taken on an all powerful meaning in the gender/sex debate.

If I stand in front of a group of TQ+ activists and say that not having single sex spaces available as well as gender neutral ones, and that female type people being excluded from refuges and rape crisis centres and being compulsorarily exposed to assault from males in prisons makes me feel unsafe, will that have any powerful meaning?

It won't mean a damned thing.

It means nothing except the two tier society of 'provide me with what I demand from you right now or else'. Only special people's feelings matter and get to control everyone else. This is an abusive dynamic. Which is why women here are so alert to it.

The feelings of the Sacred Caste trump the facts of Everyone Else.

So many good comments under Janice's article.

Leo is just reflecting what is going on atm. I think he is spot on. It is all about feelings: I feel unsafe, I feel like a woman, I don't feel like a man/boy or a woman/girl and on and on. Whilst we talk about facts of sex based inequality/violence/discrimination the genderists talk about how it makes them feel.

That's what I thought too. He's saying there' s no point in appealing to people's understanding of the facts because people (ie Labour Party members and the wokerati in general) don't care about facts like biological reality. They care about feelings. If I feel like a woman, then I am a woman. If I feel the earth is flat, then the earth is flat.

Datum wondering why political parties haven't taken this on. I read an interesting article (wish I could remember where) about the Democrats in the US and how there is a big backlash against their GI policies. He said that The Democrats were such a broad church that they had to include policies for all it's supporters. However, will those states who voted for hard left candidates at the last election be voting for them at the next one. It seems that the very progressive areas are coming under a lot of flack from ordinary voters and Democrats are very worried.

I wonder if KS feels that Labour is a broad church and therefore he has to keep the progressive flame ablaze, not recognising that this may well lose Labour the next election. Maybe it will get through eventually, but what will happen to the Labour TRA's - Green Party I guess

people (ie Labour Party members and the wokerati in general) don't care about facts like biological reality. They care about feelings. If I feel like a woman, then I am a woman. If I feel the earth is flat, then the earth is flat.

But only some people's feelings.

Other people (like women in need of rape crisis services they can access) they do not have the faintest conscience about being rude, aggressive and vile towards, and to openly deride their feelings.

It's a cognitively dissonant mess.

Leo is correct. He is only pointing out the lay of the land not condoning it. You can't win an argument with facts when the other party will only consider feelings. It is postmodern nonsense and it is impossible to meaningfully engage with it (because it's nonsense).

Why "can't" he?

Labour are doing well in the polls, and the issue isn't likely to become so big as to affect enough people's votes. There's no incentive to engage in a massive row with this own party.

I'm GC so I wish it wasn't so but if I was an advisor to Keir I'd be telling him to sit on the fence. And I certainly won't be voting Tory!

With Ed Davey dropping his pronouns are the Lib Dems quietly positioning themselves to take advantage of the Greens sad decline ?

@Datun

I'll never understand why either political party won't take this on, head on.

You could make absolute public mincemeat of politicians supporting this ideology.

Rapists in women's prisons, can't say mother, cervix havers and chest feeders. You could go to town on this almost like no other issue.

All you'd have to do is claim that the other party doesn't understand the definition of 51% of their voters, never mind their rights.

Asking MPs what a woman is would be job done.

Politically, it's a gift.

But this is what I was getting at the other day when I started the "Why isn't The Sun all over this?" thread. It just turned into the usual debate (mostly derailed by barleybadminton). If all this nonsense was presented to the general public most people would be recoiling in horror.

That's such a good point blueirises. It's always interesting to see what posters who despise women want to derail / silence.

Has he changed his mind since last June?

@Apollo441

Leo is correct. He is only pointing out the lay of the land not condoning it. You can't win an argument with facts when the other party will only consider feelings. It is postmodern nonsense and it is impossible to meaningfully engage with it (because it's nonsense).

Yes, I think Leo is being given a hard time.

It's being assumed that he agrees with it when he's only stating how things are.

More generally, now that awareness of the issue, we need to think much more about starting where people are. There's a great article by Louise Perry here which I think strikes exactly the right tone.

twitter.com/Louise_m_perry/status/1491094055312556032

If Leo had said " People are saying that feelings are more important than facts", I'd be able to give him a cheer. But although he left it ambiguous (an heir to Sir Keith in the making?) I don't give him credit for it. Does he himself think feelings are more important than facts, and if so how? And naturally, the feelings of large numbers of women don't seem to be the feelings he was talking about. Then there are the feelings of the voters, which at least his dad was keeping in mind. Of course the heroic liberator of Iraq might know a thing or two about respecting what the voters think.

@TeiTetua

If Leo had said " People are saying that feelings are more important than facts", I'd be able to give him a cheer. But although he left it ambiguous (an heir to Sir Keith in the making?) I don't give him credit for it. Does he himself think feelings are more important than facts, and if so how? And naturally, the feelings of large numbers of women don't seem to be the feelings he was talking about. Then there are the feelings of the voters, which at least his dad was keeping in mind. Of course the heroic liberator of Iraq might know a thing or two about respecting what the voters think.

It wasn't a 'Leo quote', it was Tony Blair talking about what Leo has said to him in conversation when this comes up. It wasn't verbatim. My reading of it was that Leo was saying there's no point arguing with these people, they don't care about facts, only (their) feelings.