New Statesman - Inside Labour's clusterf*** on trans rights

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www.newstatesman.com/politics/labour/2022/04/inside-labours-clusterfuck-week-on-trans-rights

They see themselves as too nice to be wrong. On anything.

Yes this is the problem with labour and "woke" thinkers in general. They think they are morally right, because being nice to minorities is morally right and they haven't thought any further than that about what "trans" and gender ideology really mean, how complex it is, the many ways in which it is causing harm. Because they've been told that to even think about that is transphobic.

This is the problem with putting a smug feeling of being in the right before bothering to look at evidence. Even if you do think you're right, a clear evidence base is important.

Those at the top of the Labour Party believe that, despite the difficult media environment on trans issues, they are in the same place as the British public, who generally take a compassionate, “live and let live” approach to the question

I think there is someone giving huge donations to the Labour Party - I don’t know who, George Soros maybe - on condition they stick to their present stance on trans men.

@MoonOnASpoon

They see themselves as too nice to be wrong. On anything.

Yes this is the problem with labour and "woke" thinkers in general. They think they are morally right, because being nice to minorities is morally right and they haven't thought any further than that about what "trans" and gender ideology really mean, how complex it is, the many ways in which it is causing harm. Because they've been told that to even think about that is transphobic.

This is the problem with putting a smug feeling of being in the right before bothering to look at evidence. Even if you do think you're right, a clear evidence base is important.

This. Very much this. I have met very very few people in the real world who have done the needed heavy lifting to truly think through the issues here. That there is a clash with the new demands for rights (including the demand that all words be redefined and all non-transitioned people forced to accept the abstract, floating 'cis' identity) and women's sex-based rights is ignored, perhaps because most people really don't understand what it is the gender activists actually demand.

It's not letting a small number of trans women who have had surgery into women's toilets or shelters etc.

It is a whole re-writing of what it means to be 'women' or 'men' or something else, and it certainly includes the total erasure of the female biological sex in speech and laws etc. (except in porn, of course).

In that new system equality of the sexes disappears as a goal, and about the only way someone born female could then seek equal treatment in most arenas is by medically transitioning to being seen as male by most in the society.

So to note that this particular civil rights battle gets different attention from all the others shouldn't surprise the author of that piece: It IS different, because the trans activists don't want to pull up a seat to the decision-making table; they want the seat on which those who fight for women's traditional sex-based rights sit.

@38thparallel

Those at the top of the Labour Party believe that, despite the difficult media environment on trans issues, they are in the same place as the British public, who generally take a compassionate, “live and let live” approach to the question

I think there is someone giving huge donations to the Labour Party - I don’t know who, George Soros maybe - on condition they stick to their present stance on trans men.

Yeah, you don't need anti-Semitic conspiracy theories to explain Labour's stance - just good old-fashioned misogyny:

Women are less important than men.
Women should do what men tell them.
Women should put their needs last.

You mean transwomen by the way, but perhaps you're just on this thread to stir up a nice bit of anti-Semitism, to try to discredit us?

@Artichokeleaves

And from a Labour insider:

I think if people knew how uncomfortable Labour politicians are defending LGBTQ rights they’d be really upset

My heart bleeds, pal.

Women are constantly trying to explain how uncomfortable they are having to defend their rights and access and equality and they are really upset. No one gives a fuck.

Really no energy left to give to help Labour politicians through the trauma of trying to face up to the fact they are behaving like a bunch of snooty metropolitan misogynists.

Right?

They aren’t defending LGBTQ rights. Lesbians have the right not to be bullied for refusing to sleep with transwomen. Gay men have the right to be gay without being told they’re ‘not real men’. Women have the right to say that sex exists without being fired, cancelled and sent death threats.

Trans activism has been attacking lesbian rights, gay rights, and of course women’s rights, for years. And now they’re ‘upset’. Boo hoo. They’ve upset a lot of other people, including the world’s top female athletes.

Fundamental to trans activism is the belief that only trans people’s feelings matter, and no one else’s. Once the idea is introduced that other people have feelings too, the whole transactivist house of cards starts to tumble down.

Transactivists will never understand why this is happening, because they genuinely don’t believe anyone’s feelings matter but their own.

Exactly Tiphaine. That's what I mean.

I've heard Nandy et al argue that transwomen sex offenders should be housed on the female estate. Thats a big difference from having them sharing cells with other women.

Is it? Really?

Most women in the prison system are there for non violent crimes. This means that the female prison estate is a considerably less oppressive environment than the male estate as it allows much greater freedoms such as less time in cells and increased access to communal facilities.

Put simply the facilities are not designed to protect from a fox in the henhouse aside from the possibility of solitary confinement.

The notion that women are safe in prisons from predators like Karen White as long as they do not share a cell is incorrect.

Whilst at New Hall prison, Karen White had a cell to themselves. They did not share with anyone, yet they still managed to sexually assault two female prisoners and intimidate many others.

Most women in the prison system are there for non violent crimes. This means that the female prison estate is a considerably less oppressive environment than the male estate as it allows much greater freedoms such as less time in cells and increased access to communal facilities.

Lots of women are in prison for non-payment of their BBC licence fee. So the BBC is putting women in prison, and then not reporting accurately on the rapists that are locked up with them.

Rape is basically the punishment for non payment of a licence fee, if you follow that line of thinking to its conclusion. Top work BBC.

@ISaySteadyOn

The problem as I see it is that Labour feels that voters should be accountable to them rather than that they should be accountable to voters. This is why they can't quite comprehend why this issue is so important. Why can't the stupid women shut up? It's not important to us so it shouldn't be important to them seems to be the general attitude.

Yes I am so embarrassed that I was actually a member of this party for much of my adult life.

*"Labour figures all say that the line of media questioning over the past week has been cheap and unpleasant — one described it as “rude and gratuitous to talk about the genitalia of trans people”.
*"...the squeamishness they feel talking about genitals, the concern they feel about causing hurt to the trans community and the desire to say something pithy and with common sense."

Cheap. Rude. Gratuitous. Unpleasant.
Hurt caused to the trans community.
Labour doesn't want to be rude, or unpleasant. Cheap? Never.
Labour doesn't want to cause any hurt to the TRA community.
By gratuitously mentioning dicks and vaginas. For any reason now.
It'd be an act of self-sabotage.
It's much, much better not to say anything even remotely making any sense (common or not) on that matter. Just sense.
Labour's going to be an utterly pleasant and harmless proposition for any voter with a brain cell at their disposal.
Sounds like a perfect political manifesto to me. A winning formula for any occasion - elections or no elections.
I am personally wowed and dazzled.
Big fan of clusterfucks in general, so sorry for that.

Why is one of these ok and one not?

A - asking women if they have a penis
B - asking men if they might be pregnant

@AlisonDonut

Why is one of these ok and one not?

A - asking women if they have a penis
B - asking men if they might be pregnant

Thinking, thinking....

I was out this afternoon rather upset about something completely different. I needed the toilet and went into a large cafe attached to an attraction. The toilets had been rebranded with neat plastic signs saying gender neutral toilet. Sadly for them they weren’t securely fixed so I took one off and threw it in the bin. In my general misery it made me feel a tiny bit better. Also I’m 67 and have no time for all this nonsense. The word gender seems completely meaningless to me.
As you all were .

ToThistooshallpsss:

God Bless you, dear.
Cheap and cheerful. A random act of small vandalism.
I feel positively empowered.
With women like you, victory is ours. Amen.

todger doger has seriously made my weekend.

Lisa Nandy takes the view that TWAW so they are just women in a womens estate prison. She can’t admit that they would be housed separately within the prison as that would suggest there is a problem with sharing with female inmates.

She hasn’t said they TW who self identify as women will be housed apart from female inmates, therefore we have to assume they aren’t.

Those at the top of the Labour Party believe that, despite the difficult media environment on trans issues, they are in the same place as the British public, who generally take a compassionate, “live and let live” approach to the question.

They're deluded if they think the British public is with the likes of Creasy and Nandy, or GRA Man Lammysaurus on this.

The public might be live and let live, but that doesn't apply when things are so obviously unfuckingfair.

• Women pushed out of sports to accommodate the inner feelings of males = unfuckingfair
• Women banged up with male sex offenders to accommodate their sudden inner feelings = unfuckingfair
• Women unable to access rape crisis services because they're busy shitting a brick about saying no to males attending group sessions = unfuckingfair

And that's without the ideological garbage being pushed in schools. Or the sudden rise in natal girls wanting to transition. On and on it goes, with each public revelation less appealing than the last.

It's because the British public is compassionate and believes in fairness that it does not buy into this. Politicians must understand this or they're done.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I seem to recall hearing or seeing a quote of Lisa Nandy saying that trans (women, or was it anyone trans?) should be able to choose which prison they go into.

Am vague about the details but I do remember thinking: 'Hm...does anyone else get a choice of which prison they go into? Not likely. Imagine the mayhem if everyone had a choice. It wouldn't be allowed.'

(Oh, no. They haven't. They just think, and strongly believe we have the WRONG views. At the moment they are simply incapable of indoctrinating and gaslighting a sufficient amount of voters to win.

Yes. Arseholes. Well, long may they languish in opposition then. Or preferably, someone will come along to sort them out and put them back on the path of sanity and make them electable again. It just seems so insane when it's obvious how many people would kill for a sensible centre-left party to vote for, but will be forced to vote Tory or spoil their ballot papers.

you can make any position sound ridiculous if you start asking about penises and cervixes

Thing is, you can't. The Tories almost all just gave a straight, factual answer. Saying that women can have penises or that being a woman depends on context or that men can grow cervices when they become women all sound silly because they are.

Any policy which involves the state potentially legislating that people must disbelieve reality is going to seem daft- it's not the questioners fault for asking.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I seem to recall hearing or seeing a quote of Lisa Nandy saying that trans (women, or was it anyone trans?) should be able to choose which prison they go into.

Yes, that was the answer, but the context is much worse. She was specifically asked about rapists and her answer was to put rapists who self identify as women into women's prisons, if they wanted.

There is a video knocking about of it. I think Julia Long asked the question.

the concern they feel about causing hurt to the trans community
But fuck women, yeah?
It's not just hurt feelings that this whole farrago is causing women.

I have zero patience with Labour. They've already lost most of their remaining rural voters, and most of their Jewish voters have had enough, and now they're losing female votes. Do they actually want to get elected, or is it just more fun to sit on the opposition benches taking swings at the Tories.

I mean, if they were in power, they'd have to do difficult stuff like deal with the national debt, and inflation, and the actions of that nasty Mr Putin who their last leader seemed quite keen on.

It's not just a clusterfuck on trans rights. It's a clusterfuck on many, many things.

And the specific case put to Nandy, was of Christopher Worton. A child sex offender.

Thanks for clarifying, donquixote. And so much worse from Nandy than I thought.

Thanks, Resister. I must have just caught her answer but not the question as I don't recognise that name or the case.