Sir Keir Starmer on women's rights, sport, and penises, in LBC interview

[IsitM]

Not an original description, but 'car crash' is appropriate. From 9.30 this morning; if you want to listen to the whole thing.

www.lbc.co.uk/radio/special-shows/call-keir/sir-keir-live-march-28/

www.lbc.co.uk/news/keir-starmer-lashes-out-intolerance-transgender-issues/

twitter.com/LBC/status/1508363760834129921?s=20&t=k2pIF3WY0Y3dlwWEkwlz7w

twitter.com/LBC/status/1508364365367492615?s=20&t=k2pIF3WY0Y3dlwWEkwlz7w

twitter.com/LBC/status/1508365179708485634?s=20&t=k2pIF3WY0Y3dlwWEkwlz7w

So he can't possibly identify the female members of his family by their ownership of a cervix

How does he square his own arrival into the world then? Or that of his children? They were all delivered by storks?
How does he describe the sex of his own children? Or does he call his own children it and they?

This is unbelievable.

@ThisIsJeopardy

He said

"All adult females are women, of course they are."

Wouldn't that be considered an incredibly 'transphobic' statement by transmen and non binary, female sexed people? Doesn't it follow then that

All adult males are men, of course they are and therefore they have no business in women's spaces and sports?

I know that the TRA lobby has co-opted 'female' for redefinition, but surely when Starmer says 'female' he still actually means 'female'? In which case, he's admitted that he can see the Emperor is naked; he just didn't mean to declare it.

I think he slipped up there.

It's a shame Nick didn't comment and make him admit that if all adult females are women then all adult males are men, so transwomen are men.

I'm not sure how he'd get out of that, unless he started claiming that 'female' was also a category that males could 'identify as', so is just as meaningless in his world as the word 'woman'.

'I'm not sure how he'd get out of that, unless he started claiming that 'female' was also a category that males could 'identify as', so is just as meaningless in his world as the word 'woman'.'

This is exactly what he means.

@BacklashBacklash

Marsha De Cordova is also being told off for liking a tweet by Milli Hill, I think.

Marsha is my MP - does this mean I can vote Labour in good conscience

Why are they making it so bloody difficult for us!

I do feel sorry for him. But that's not a good emotion to have about a politician.

The problem comes back to there being a mechanism for a man to obtain a female birth certificate and strong id.

Few politicians want to acknowledge this process, how it works and the reality that it means that a man with a penis, who has no intention of removing that penis, is legally called 'female'. That's the bit that no politician wants to explain.

To avoid the real issue, it seems the tories are saying sex matters (but not really saying if it's legal sex or actual sex), labour is flip flopping between saying sex doesn't exist anyway to whatever the hell Starmer thinks he's saying.

As a feminist, I'm raging at politicians redefining women and our right to organise without the permission of men, and to even have words to describe ourselves with including men. But I understand that no political party is going to be truly feminist. So just getting them to be honest, would be a start.

I am speaking as an average woman, this could have been sorted out with stronger safety measures at the beginning. Unisex loos should have been available, unisex changing rooms and prison spaces at the start. Women's and girls' spaces should have always been a protected area for obvious reasons. Sports could be unisex in some cases, football etc and for the rest should be divided by sex due to the unfairness and disadvantage to women. Again the fairness and equality should have been the motivator to ensure women's sports were not wiped off the face of the earth.
And yet we had David Cameron bowing and scraping at the opportunity to be cool and down with the kids (he is doing something similar now in Poland) Just running after the applause and trends. Instead of standing up for the truly vulnerable (those at rape crisis units and such like) and yet the moment was lost when it was possible to really assert that 'progress' was not progress if it dismantles the rights of another.

I admit I thought it might even be good for women and girls, we will no longer have to worry about gender stereotypes, how naive! I even thought we might finally get something approaching equality! I did not expect our identities to be stripped altogether, our rights violated in hospitals and prisons and our daughters unable to compete in sports, our femininity stolen and rehashed as drag. Demeaning labels forced on to us like chest feeder etc.
I imagined in a world of Mx that we could overcome misogyny and everyone might be a winner....looking back I think many of us did. What utter naivety, because what is fuelling this campaign is not a wish to protect women but to erase us, it does not come from a place of love but one of hate. Anyone that seriously loved or cared for women would not put us at risk, would not ask us to give up a hard fought rights and would not take away our protection and safety. This is a hateful destructive force that has been hijacked, and now supported by huge political parties, seemingly happy to champion our demise.

I feel a bit sorry for Keir Starmer actually. I know he gets a hammering on here but he's not been in politics for long and I think lack of political experience shows. He'd only been an MP for 6 years before becoming leader and, really, it's just not long enough. He looked unhappy (at one point he looked ether constipated or that he was going to cry), uneasy, and he couldn't answer questions without looking shifty. As a barrister you'd think he'd be used to thinking on his feet but maybe that's just in films and actually barrsters have everything worked out in advance. His slow delivery just made him sound like he was unsure of himself and struggling. On top of that he doesn't have any connection with people or charisma. He's an intelligent man, who shows some gravitas which is a refreshing contrast to Boris Johnson. But if he can't act the part, he can't make a connection with his audience, and he can't state clear policies, I wonder how successful he's going to be. At this point he does seem to be investing his political career on Boris messing up rather than winning in his own right. He's so lucky he got Boris as an opponent, that's all I can say.

Six years is long enough to work out who half the population is, and to realise mathematically an election can not be won without them.

I'd feel sorry for him Nightlystroll if he wasn't so determined to throw women and girl's safety under the bus. He gets all huffy puffy about his record for dealing with VAWG as a lawyer, yet refuses to acknowledge that in supporting self ID and fetishising this group of people as the most vulnerable group ever, he fails to appreciate competing rights.
He's allegedly a political leader yet he can't string a coherent sentence together about why or how the sex category of women must now include men. His choice of "adult female" is yet another sleight of hand to avoid recognising that all this is a mess.

If any man can self ID as a woman resulting in crimes like indecent exposure being removed from statute and women and girls being required to undress, shower & sleep in the presence of the naked male penis, then he owes it to us to be explicit.

nightlystroll the mental image of Sir Keir looking tearful/constipated puts me in mind of the old Syrup of Figs adverts featuring listless schoolchildren. I daresay he could corner a small market in adult commercials once he retires from politics.

@Swayingpalmtrees

So the Labour party are an echo chamber with no one at all that truly represents us and our girls? Can understand our concerns for safety, for sports for identity? Is that what you are saying?

I always assumed there were plenty of dissenters that were keeping quiet, but may in time find the confidence to assert themselves. If you are saying that every single female more or less is signed up, then we really do not have a party in opposition do we? Not a serious one, because it only speaks for one half of the population. The Men. With the 'non women' cheerleaders/birthers/cervix havers that have swallowed the propaganda and either knowingly or not knowingly are and have been ignoring the consequences to millions of women.

That is one hell of a situation we find ourselves in today.
The seismic impact of Labour actually winning would be huge. Unthinkable.

From my experience as a recent (now ex-) Labour member -

To be honest, it just doesn't come up as a key issue. It's not something branch meetings spend much time talking about or passing resolutions about. It's possible that some women members are secretly thinking it's a load of cobblers, but for most it doesn't create real practical problems yet that require getting off the fence about.

Which is probably a pretty fair representation of most of the country. I think most people like the idea of defending trans rights, all else being equal. People shouldn't be discriminated against in job interviews, accomodation etc, just because they're trans. That's just basic equality awareness and taking forward the same attitudes that had to be fought hard to win for black people, gay people etc.

Most people haven't yet been in the situation where they've been sexually harassed by a transwoman in a changing room, had to face a transwoman in a rape crisis centre etc. So until that starts impacting directly on their lives, the inherent conflict of interests involved is just avoided.

@Swayingpalmtrees

Six years is long enough to work out who half the population is, and to realise mathematically an election can not be won without them.

Especially as he was extolling the fact that he's been protecting women for years whilst working in the legal profession! I just think this is all very new to him and he just doesn't have the quick footedness or agility of mind to deal with things not scripted. I'd just like politicians to have the courage to come out and and state clearly what they think and not prevaricate. Unfortunately excoriating social media makes it very difficult for people to move away from the herd.

He must think the electorate are idiots. He's obviously been told to say "I've been protecting women's safety for years as DPP" as if that is an adequate response to this.

fifteen My conservative MP, and I believe Liz Truss and others ARE bringing this up regularly, they do see the danger and risks. I have emailed my MP about it numerous times, as dd's college loos are constantly being used by boys with their mobile phones. They know it is an issue, and one that is growing. It will become even bigger once the sports thing takes off.

It was niche, it no longer is. Labour are late to the party on this. Most of my friends like me are very liberal and have become really aware of this.

I think you are underestimating what most women feel about this

As I've made clear before I have no time at all for Sir Keir, but I'm not sure that interview is quite as bad as people are saying. He's obviously bumbling around hedging his bets, speaking in semi-coherent half-sentences, avoiding the point of the questions and so on - but OTOH that's pretty much the Boris Johnson speaks ALL THE TIME. It would be interesting to put the same question to him and see if the response was any clearer. It would be miraculously out of character if it were.

He did raise the issue of exceptions (spaces for protection of women against violence etc.) that should be made to any equalities provision for trans people. Short of saying "I agree with Mumsnet, and all the TRAs can go fuck themselves", I'm not sure any politician can go much further than that in the current climate.

What are the actual changes Labour want to make to the GRA/GRC & knock ons’ for the Eq Act?

My then Labour MP was clear that the Equality Act was to be changed by removing gender reassignment as a protected characteristic in favour of gender identity. This was to be accompanied by making it impossible to have female-only legal set asides that exclude males who identify as women (i.e. their gender identity is woman, whatever the fuck that means).

That position I thought would not be maintained after the general election manifesto stating a commitment to single-sex exceptions, but the correspondence I got after that continued to insist that Labour would change the Equality Act "to better protect trans people".

If you want to know what it means to protect on the basis of gender identity rather than gender reassignment, it's like protecting Catholicism rather than the right for an individual to be a Catholic.

The latter allows for freedom of belief in Catholicism for Catholics and freedom of disbelief in Catholicism for everyone else. The former takes us back to the Middle Ages.

@tabbycatstripy

'I'm not sure how he'd get out of that, unless he started claiming that 'female' was also a category that males could 'identify as', so is just as meaningless in his world as the word 'woman'.'

This is exactly what he means.

Not good at all.

Re feeling sorry for him from pp, I used to, now I just feel annoyed

@Swayingpalmtrees Fair enough. Statements about what "most women" think are difficult of course because we all mix in different circles. Most of the women I know are either totally on board with TWAW or just don't say anything about it, but I probably move in generally pretty woke circles. You're right that I shouldn't extrapolate from that to the country as a whole.

It's also very possible that the ones who don't say anything have strong feelings against it that they just haven't mustered the courage to express yet.

He's obviously bumbling around hedging his bets, speaking in semi-coherent half-sentences, avoiding the point of the questions and so on - but OTOH that's pretty much the Boris Johnson speaks ALL THE TIME'

😁 Very good point. Still a pretty pathetic showing

At one point he says something like "of course adult female human beings are women.'

This means that he thinks trans men are women and that nonbinary (notlikeotherigirls) female-bodied people are women! Tut, tut, transphobe Starmer. (The latter two groups would protest this and so, indeed, would the whole faux woke gender movement).

So Starmer doesn't understand what the gender identity ideology actually demands: You CANNOT define any part of womanhood as based on a biological concept. NONE.

Starmer lumps together women who are biological women with women who are biological men but identify as women. These are NOT the same group of individuals in terms of the political issues which affect them.

This is a very common error (a foundational one) inside many of us (I had trouble with this for a few years), perhaps because we are so used to the biological part of womanhood and cannot quite believe that it is going to be erased. So we take the old category (women who are of the female sex) and add it to a new small category of women who are not of the female sex but wish to be seen as women and think that we achieved inclusiveness!

But then we are told that we are excluding the people who excluded themselves by walking out of the group 'women' and who now wish to be called men or nonbinary! They can now not just be added to the large group to preserve inclusiveness: the old group must be renamed. It will be called 'people' as anything else is now not inclusive.

I think there is consensus on some issues - safety on hospital wards, rape crisis centres, DV refuges, male midwives etc etc is broadly agreed in all circles in my experience. I have a diverse set of friends and we now talk about this - we lost a labour seat of forty odd years here to a female tory and she is very aware of the issues facing women and girls. I had a very direct conversation with her, because I believe it could be a dealbreaker at the next election.

I don't understand how so many women (not sure what percentage of all women) are on board with such very recent events as Lia Thomas being viewed as a woman in women's sports while the BBC article on endometriosis initially defined it as a medical condition which affects 'people,' even though almost every single case affects only biologically female individuals (The terms were changed after many women complained, though).

You take these two things together, and it is clear that 'woman' is becoming something that means people who like pink, sparkles, high heels, and pillow fights while the biological term is now being erased.

He's obviously bumbling around hedging his bets, speaking in semi-coherent half-sentences, avoiding the point of the questions and so on - but OTOH that's pretty much the Boris Johnson speaks ALL THE TIME.

Having defended KS, I just have to say that BJ, as you say, speaks like that all the time. That's how he talks. So it doesn't seem odd when he er's and ah's. Irritating but not odd. But KS doesn't speak like that normally. So it sounds shifty and ill-prepared when he speaks like that. He really needs to pull up his political socks. He can't just expect to win an election on pointing at the Tories and saying we'd have done better. He needs to develop political nous and speak better under pressure. This topic comes up in interviews all the time, so he must be be expecting it and yet he seems ill-prepared. He has to come out with something concrete rather than saying it's rude to discuss this. It's the cumulative effect of seeing him looking shifty that will be his downfall, not the actual issue of transgenderism.

" I think there is consensus on some issues - safety on hospital wards, rape crisis centres, DV refuges, male midwives etc etc is broadly agreed in all circles in my experience."

Only the voices that say that Transwomen should be allowed to access these are not being shut down. The head of Edinburgh Rape Crisis is a man who dresses as a woman. They lied about what sex they were and still got the job.
A woman has been raped on a single sex ward and was disbelieved for a year because the police were told there were only females in the ward. One of those "females" was a bloke.

"Be kind " got us to this point. Now it's time to be honest.

He's obviously bumbling around hedging his bets, speaking in semi-coherent half-sentences, avoiding the point of the questions and so on - but OTOH that's pretty much the Boris Johnson speaks ALL THE TIME

Good point fifteentoes - but Johnson does this because he knows he's likely to say something inappropriate - a joke when he should be serious, a racist comment, something offensive. That's why he's incoherent as he's learnt he must self censor as the "real" Johnson's thoughts are often so unacceptable.
Starmer bumbles when asked whether women can have a penis because he knows yes is not an acceptable response. If he was honest and said "yes" - then the floodgates would open as the population would realise the massive con that's been created behind those closed doors.

He's got a lot invested in concealing the female penis from the voters.