Julie Bindel & Sharron Davies can't believe women centre their politics around the trans issue

[ImpossibleDrum]

Julie Bindel

You may hate me for this (well, some of you at least, but I cannot BELIEVE that many of you on here are deciding who is good or bad for PM because of the trans issue ALONE. I mean, I KNOW it is an urgent issue, but so are a million other things right now!!

Sharron Davies

I agree with your too Julie. There’s a bigger picture right now with people potentially unable to feed or keep their kids warm this winter. We can keep bringing the sunlight to other issues.

I've been thinking about this quite a lot today. I thought radical feminism was based on a Marxist class analysis of oppression, how would that stand up if we are deprived of the right to use the word which names the reason for female oppression. Jean Hatchet is correct that feminism is dead if the word woman does not mean adult human female.

I expressed some reservations a few months ago when I saw JB assert, in an interview, that feminism should remain on the left. I think many the politics of many feminists have remained left of centre but Labour are nowhere to be seen. Are Labour actually a socialist party or are they a socialist party in name only, what has happened for them to prioritise the subjective experience of identity above objective material reality. I thought material reality was fairly central to socialist thinking.

It also occured to me that the timing of the tweet was unfortunate coming so soon after the woman who launched the "respect my sex if you want my x" campaign won a major victory for all of us.

I agree with pp that it is a strategic error to tell the party who are ignoring you that you will continue to vote for them even if they don't start to engage with you.

I'm left wondering if JB has a greater passion for things she opposes rather than the things she stands for.

I only hope that should we ever find ourselves in a negotiating position that we are not represented by people who would sell women down the river in service of blind allegiance to a political party who does not give a shit about women.

I do not give a shit about Conservative motives for putting the brakes on self ID, just that they have which has given us time. We will never get our rights back if they are given away, I think it's such an urgent, important and foundational issue that I'd be prepared to cut a deal with the devil.

I agree about women having more self respect, I've found mine and would like to encourage other women to find theirs. Any political party who does not respect my sex can fuck off to the far side of fuck off.

Sorry, I did not make myself clear.

Yes, it's true that some Tories are gender critical and will speak out on the trans issue. That's good. I am sure that many Labour politicians also understand biology and I wish that that they would have the courage to say so.

I just don't think that the trans issue is the only one that matters. There are so many Tory policies that are having a disastrous and disproportionate effect on women right now - especially poorer, more vulnerable women. I don't know why people are willing to overlook those issues simply because the PM understands basic biology.

The problems that have arisen as a result of current gender ideology have arisen on a Tory watch. Yes, I'm glad that we haven't got self ID, and I'm grateful for that, but it isn't exactly as if they have done everything possible to protect women as a sex class.

They did know they were supposed to be levelling up.

It was under Blair that the Gender Recognition Act 2004 was quietly passed without thinking ahead to problematic consequences. It is true the Conservatives were then following through, but then they paused.

Nearer the start of this thread people were trying to explain why they think that if the Labour, Greens, and Liberal Democrats cannot see, for a start, the horrible dystopian, Orwellian control of thought and speech that has been well set in motion, and are willing to dismiss women so easily, then there is not a lot of reason to have faith in their skills in general or their willingness to stop a sort of fascist like mind control. It feels like they fully support it.

“Only women have a cervix.”
KS’s answer: “You can’t say that.”
What else won’t you be able to say?

What about the indoctrination promoted in education instead of actual education?

The NHS advice rewritten according to unscientific TRA populist principles?

Above all, this path, if left unchecked is going to ruin a lot of lives.

Anothernamechangeplease · Today 18:52
Sorry, Anothetname. I had been trying to answer you.

I keep wondering - I hear this in every thread, oh, and why do you think the Tories will actually do anything?"

Well, because they are moving on it in the way that their statements indicated they would.
Do the people who say this actually not follow what is going on?

It doesn't suit their left=good, right =bad agenda.
The reality is much more nuanced and no one's rights can be protected long term if freedom of speech and thought is lost.

It was under Blair that the Gender Recognition Act 2004 was quietly passed without thinking ahead to problematic consequences.

If I recall correctly, some people in the HoL did look forward and question it - am I misremembering?

I say it because I do follow what's going on, and because I see the disproportionate impact of Tory policies on vulnerable women through the work that I do every day. The Tories might indeed understand basic biology, and I'm glad of that, but nothing will convince me that they care about the rights of women.

Knowing what a woman is is only half the picture. Giving a shit about women's rights is a completely different matter.

I am not saying that Labour or any of the other parties have the right answers either. They don't, and I am politically homeless as a result. I just don't understand where this idea has come from that the Tories are somehow the party of women's rights just because they don't buy into the gender ideology nonsense. There is so much more to it than that.

To be honest, I imagine that the Taliban would be fairly gender critical. That fact alone does not make them the guardians of women's rights.

‘Well, because they are moving on it in the way that their statements indicated they would. Do the people who say this actually not follow what is going on?’

I think they wanted to see stronger action taken, which I get. Johnson is an instinctive liberal - personally libertarian, extremely tolerant of a wide range of behaviours. Unusually so for someone on the right. The good in that for us is that he leans towards free speech. The bad in it is that he didn’t move quickly enough, and took his time to see that the people shouting about autonomy and inclusion were actually the authoritarians. Once he understood, he did move. Now I’m hoping we’ll get a PM who is actually selected on the basis that they will deal with this form of extremism.

‘To be honest, I imagine that the Taliban would be fairly gender critical. That fact alone does not make them the guardians of women's rights.’

What have the Conservatives done to women (in actual fact) that would lead you to compare them to the Taliban?

Nothing. I'm not saying that they are the same. I'm merely saying that an understanding of basic biology doesn't guarantee that people will be supportive of women's rights.

@Anothernamechangeplease the Taliban are the absolute opposite of gender critical. Their position is that gender is something to be enforced by draconian laws and punishments. They are not in any way critical of gender as a concept. They are all for it. Women by dint of their sex are forced into very specific restrictive gender roles on pain of harsh consequences.

You don't misremember. The HoL debates are recorded in Hansard. Some choice parts.

twitter.com/HairyLeggdHarpy/status/1049289194370002945

More extracts.
twitter.com/HairyLeggdHarpy/status/1052160108489334785

@Anothernamechangeplease

Of course you’re right (look at the US!) but actually the Tories have done a lot to protect women’s rights. They have had two female PMs to boot, and I see very few Tories (except Nokes, Mordaunt, Blunt) saying the batshit-crazy things I hear from Labour and LibDem MPs about what women shouldn’t be allowed to say.

Is that gender critical? I believe that they force women into certain roles because of their sex, rather than because of any notion of gender. I don't suppose that an Afghan girl would be allowed to identify as male in order to be allowed to go to school?

They understand biology perfectly well, and their discrimination is based on sex, not gender.

@Anothernamechangeplease

But their discrimination is what constructs gender. Gender isn’t something ‘in’ us, it’s in the collective minds of the people who enforce it.

And where they hypocritically conveniently made an exception in the law whereby a change of gender would not be recognised when it comes to descent of peerage.

Yes, I understand that. My point is that the Taliban do not buy into the notion that gender exists separately from sex. They do not think that male-bodied people can "identify" as women, or that female-bodied people can "identify" as men.

Perhaps calling them gender-critical is a misnomer, but my point still stands. The Taliban know exactly what a man is, and what a woman is, and I'm pretty sure that they wouldn't entertain any notion of people changing sex. However, that does not in any way ensure that they are willing to protect the rights of women.

The Tories are not the Taliban, of course. I am just surprised that people have so much faith in their commitment to protecting the rights of women simply because they know what a woman is. From what I have observed, I haven't seen much evidence of them really caring about women in the slightest.

Someone has posted this on another thread. Rishi Sunak’s pitch is based on supporting women’s sex based rights, and protecting children in schools, while also looking for ways to protect trans people’s interests.

He is stressing that he has two daughters and comes from a family of strong women.

www.mailplus.co.uk/edition/news/politics/200162/exclusive-womens-rights-top-priority-for-sunak

Anothernamechangeplease · Today 20:17
I respect what you are saying, and you have had some effect on my inner ear so to speak, but I recognise more Conservative defences of women’s rights over the last year or so than than you seem to - and this is in inverse proportion to the other parties’ refusal to listen to women’s concerns rather than disdainfully dismissing them.

Not apropos of what you have said, and not really the topic of discussion, but just as a point of interest:
I think it’s not true of the Taliban who wanted to ban the practice, but some Afghans try to cheat their ban on homosexuality by dressing little boys up as dancing girls before basically raping them.

I also read of poor Afghans sometimes dressing their girls up as boys so they can try to get some work outside their home in order to help their families.

In Iran they prefer to trans men rather than have them be seen as being homosexual.

Which of course makes him a jellyfish and not someone I'd want responsible for standing up against Putin etc. I want a PM with some guts.

The other thread title is
“New PM”
The Telegraph is also writing about Rishi Sunak’s views.

I am not entirely convinced so far that he understands the undercurrent of authoritarian ideology people have been trying to describe on this thread. and how far it has permeated so many official directives already; or the threat to the health of young women in particular posed by the current culture that has been created.

Why have we now got a random poster in this thread urging us to check out what a holocaust denier has been saying? No-one's interested. You might be happy to spend your time reading shit like that but it doesn't represent my interests at all.

And where they hypocritically conveniently made an exception in the law whereby a change of gender would not be recognised when it comes to descent of peerage.

Unless it's expedient to set that aside for special purposes, of course…

The House of Lords could shortly welcome its first trans peer and only female hereditary member.

Matilda Simon was this week given permission to contest the next by-election for one of the upper chamber’s remaining 92 hereditary seats.

If she wins, she will doubtless become the envy of peers’ daughters across the country, because the vast majority of titles may only be passed to a male heir.

However, because of a legal loophole, the candidate, born Matthew Simon in 1955, has inherited and retains the Barony of Wythenshawe, despite being in all other legal respects a woman..

www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4553555-first-trans-peer-a-step-closer-as-hereditary-candidate-claims-seat

Oh god yes even more hypocrisy; Matthew becomes Mathilda and is legally a woman but then she's not a woman after all as she is a he and legally inherits the title as a male heir.

Meanwhile poor Jane becomes John and is now legally a man but then he's not a man after all as he is a she and entitled to fuck all. Make way for male born little brother to inherit it all.

What's not to understand?