Why do Labour women make this so much worse than it need be?

[Pluvia]

I've come under pretty aggressive attack on another platform twice today. Once because I linked to Hadley Freemans's article The Week the Trans Spell was Broken:

unherd.com/2022/04/the-week-the-trans-spell-was-broken/

and once because I linked to an old Times article, which I won't link to here because I don't have a share token.

Each time I was shouted down and bullied by women of the left telling me I shouldn't link to Unherd or the Times because they are right-wing puppets of the Tory party. The women concerned — a group of about six of them — are the kind of hard-line Labour supporters who demand total purity. They have only fairly recently started expressing GC ideas, while I've been out there plugging away for years (and have been shunned as a Hateful Bigot by at least half the people I once counted as friends). Now they've crossed over to the GC side and they're patrolling it with the same ferocity that they do everything else.

I struggle to get my head around it because I have always been a Labour voter, am currently an active member of my Labour CLP trying to beat off the woke bros, and here I have Labour women telling me I can't post a Hadley Freeman article — Hadley Freeman of the Guardian — because the platform she's posting on was founded by a Tory and hosts people with right-wing views.

I've responded very firmly about women being blocked and banned and bullied from posting on left-wing sites. But ffs, if this goes on for very much longer it's going to drive me into the arms of the Tories.

@Narcoanonymoose

So are trans women allowed in female prisons at the moment ? Or are labour proposing it ? Likewise with trans women using women only refuges and trans women taking part in female sports ? Is it already going on ? I'm getting confused. Are these things happening now or threatened by a labour gov ?

All of those things are already happening. The first (exceptionally violent rapist) man established his "human right" to be transferred to a women's prison in 2009 so that he could continue his transition. A Labour government was in power at the time.

He was judged far too violent to be contained safely in a high security male prison so a judge ruled - under Labour's gold-plated Human Rights Act - that he should be accommodated with women instead.

Then came the Gender Recognition Act 2004, which was Labour legislation, but the Conservatives don't have clean hands either. Theresa May and Maria Miller opened the Pandora's box by openly supporting Self ID.

By that time, a new Conservative government realised what it would mean and Self ID was stopped through the efforts of Liz Truss and Kemi Badenoch - although their fellow Tory MP Crispin Blunt tried to sneak through a secret deal on Self ID and had to be admonished by the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner for breaching the rules.

As I say, none of the main parties can claim to have clean hands in this attack on women's sex-based rights, our safety, our privacy and our dignity.

The difference is that today, in 2022, Boris Johnson is clear that biological women have sex-based rights that must be respected. Liz Truss played a blinder by replacing David Isaac (former head of Stonewall) as head of the EHRC with Baroness Falkner of Margravine who in turn appointed Akua Reindorf QC to the board. I am sure I can detect Akua Reindorf's hand in the new EHRC guidance on women's sex-based rights.

Meanwhile, Labour, LibDems, Greens, SNP, are still fully committed to introducing Self ID and still cannot or will not define what a woman is.

To answer your original question, at present, out of the 197 male prisoners currently in English and Welsh prisons who claim to be women, about 60% are sex offenders.

Don’t take my word for it. Those are the MoJ’s own statistics. And claiming to be women means they have the right to ask for transfer to women’s prisons.

Now tell me this is not a predator's charter.

I will vote for any politician in my area who will stand up for women's rights, whether they are Conservative or not, but right now, my only choice locally is Conservative. If we are erased as a sex class with our own needs and rights, nothing else in any party manifesto will matter because we will be invisible and silenced.

That's not the only difference though @TedsFederationRep.

The main difference is Labour's policy is Self ID and the Tory Government don't want to beyond what the 2004 GRA states already: (legal recognition of Trans ID for most purposes, subject to two year life test and medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria)

So it's a very stark choice.

Sadly yes.

It means that once again, women are denied real political choice. That's not good for democracy or responsible government either.

@TedsFederationRep thank you for that. Agree that all are implicated to a greater or lesser extent. I will spoil my vote rather than vote for the conservatives. In their own way conservative economic policies have been horrendously damaging to the lives of ordinary women too and by voting for that party I am giving them the green light to carry on with austerity. Once they win another election and have cancelled self ID what are we left with ? The same old trickle down economics, privatise everything bar your grandma, inequality and corruption. By voting for them I am enabling then to carry on.

@Narcoanonymoose The economy will recover eventually and we'll all just have to tighten our belts. Our inalienable rights based on Sex, once repealed, will take a lifetime to recover.

Spoiling your ballot just means Labour have a chance of winning with a smaller vote share. That could end up us up a Scottish situation, where the SNP are now in power with a mandate to press ahead with GRA Reform, together with the Greens.

Your vote is yours to do with as you wish, but please don't make a virtue of handing off responsibility in that way, especially as the combined twin evils of austerity AND GRA Reform will mean it is working class Women, Women of colour, Women of limited financial means who will be disproportionately impacted by the repercussions of Self ID.

Women will be impacted. In Prisons. In Hospital Wards. In Changing Rooms. In Sport. At School. In Refuges.

Middle class women aren't likely to end up in a refuge. They'll kip at a friend's in the unfortunate event of domestic abuse. In hospital wards, middle class women are more likely to be on some BUPA scheme, that gets them a private room. Middle class women are more likely to be in secure jobs, or have the confidence to be vocal about a biological male in a female space.

I appreciate its difficult for certain Lefty people to engage with the reality of what will happen, but someday, you’ll pull a loose thread and the story you’ve been telling yourself will unravel. You’ll be left—as I am—without the consolation of appearances and slogans, but the unvarnished reality of what Labour are prepared to do to Women and Children, to pacify a few base activists.

I mean... in 2020, the TUC passed a motion implying anyone who shared Maya Forstater's beliefs regarding sex being binary & immutable could be regarded as creating a hostile environment for trans colleagues & potentially be sacked!

A Labour Party that violates my core values and commitments (to liberalism, tolerance, nonviolence, solidarity across difference, the pursuit of knowledge, freedom of speech and belief, language as a means to communicate and not obscure... women's rights, protections for children), is not one I will EVER vote for, or facilitate to victory by spoiling a ballot.