Kemi Badenoch appointed new Minister for Women and Equalities

[Manteiga]

And International Trade Secretary. I'd have preferred to see her as Secretary of State for Education in addition to Minister for Women and Equalities, but this is good news.

twitter.com/Conservatives/status/1584957913059454976

You are wrong. "Trans women" do not use women's loos".

For (1) they are not women's loos if a man is using them. For (2) lots of "trans women" use the men's, and (3) it is not "trans women" who use them, as "trans women" is a meaningless term. The people who are using them are men who claim a trans woman identity. I have no idea what percentage of them are actually "trans women" or indeed if there is any meaningful way of telling a trans woman apart from a man who claims a trans woman identity.

GC women don;t want to stop the proportion of trans women who exhibit their inherent male entitlement from using women's toilets. GC women want men who claim a trans women identity to stop creating mixed sex spaces and destroying single sex spaces at the same time.

I want males to stop encroaching on single sex spaces, services and sports for female people, yes, but males have never actually had a legal ‘right’ to be in those female spaces, services and sports so no, I do not agree that GC people want to remove anyone’s legal rights, they just want the same sex protections that exist in law to be properly upheld.

Indeed. John McWhorter described Robin DiAngelo's White Fragility as the second-worst book he had ever read. But then he's the wrong kind of black, too, I suppose?

That GC people want to stop them using women's loos?

Some women are happy for men to use women's loos. Some women are not happy for men to use women's loos. Personally, I think if there is still a group of women who do not want to share then an effort should be made to accommodate them. The infrastructure for single-sex loos already exists. All it will take is for a tiny minority of men to accept that a sizeable group of women do wish to share. If they can't accept women's boundaries then it really says rather a lot about those men. There probably isn't a lot that women can do about this in the long run but that's just life as a woman. We are used to having our boundaries ignored.

God I wonder what the worst book he ever read was. I thought White Fragility was in a class of it's own!

Providing a single sex toilet does not meet that criteria. There isn't a single legal precedent for this. I'd like to see someone try, though - it would require a provider to designate the space as such which to the best of my knowledge, no one has. It's certainly not illegal for a provider to allow them to do this.

I'm glad some GC people accept trans women in women's loos and it's certainly news to me, but back to the original point - Badenoch doesn't and wants to prevent trans women from doing this, which is an attack on their existing rights.

See, this is exactly what I think kemi understands, only too well.

That someone arguing for men to have the right to use women's toilets knows (and says) that they are already and a lot of women want them to stop.

"look I know none of you want us in there, so just admit it, and then we can tell you to fuck off anyway".

Providing a single sex toilet does not meet that criteria. There isn't a single legal precedent for this. I'd like to see someone try, though - it would require a provider to designate the space as such which to the best of my knowledge, no one has. It's certainly not illegal for a provider to allow them to do this.

There are no legal precedents because this has not yet been tested in court. That doesn't mean it isn't the law. It is in black and white in the Equality Act that TW can be lawfully discriminated against and excluded from single-sex spaces where there is a proportionate means to achieving a legitimate aim. What do you think this means?

Transwomen don’t have any legal rights because there is no such thing as a transwoman in UK Equalities law. Kemi Badenoch can’t take away a right that never existed.

CRT, like QT, is utterly insane and dangerous and regressive. I am not sure I knew or needed to know how insane!

I am still (for now) happy with the concept of white privilege.

Yes, again, repeating, I DO want male people to stop invading and using female only spaces. They are meeting their own needs by failing to care about female ones and excluding and harming females by doing it.

Now would you do the courtesy of stating your position too?

For the third time of asking: do you believe that females should have no right to spaces away from males, or a right to equality of access and inclusion with male people? And that it is ok to exclude females from female spaces so that male people can have all the spaces?

It was a truly terrible book about cartoon characters that he read as a child:

Don't you understand the meaning of "sex", DadJoke?

And do transwomen want to exclude religiously observant Jewish and Muslim women from women's toilets?

I’m not convinced you can divorce white privilege from CRT?

This is a Toby Young article, so obvs, take that into consideration, but it’s published in The Critic, which is always an interesting read!

thecritic.co.uk/issues/december-2019/no-need-to-plead-guilty/

This is the (fascinating!) chap who is credited with inventing the phrase ‘white privilege’ but like a lot of concepts, the modern day online social justice activists seem to have twisted a once interesting academic concept so far beyond the original point until it’s been rendered meaningless:

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._E._B._Du_Bois

see also ‘intersectional’ in the twisted until meaningless category!

Thanks. I've not listened to anything by McWhorter before (goes off to find a longer interview).

He does a regular thingy with Glenn Loury that is always worth a listen.

Will read properly later, but from a quick glance it backs my view up... by definition if a black person is disadvantaged compared to a white person then by definition that white person is advantaged compared to the black person.

If a deeply underprivileged unemployed male white Brit objects to the idea that he has white privilege why would he not also object to being described as having white advantage? In what way does he feel advantaged?

This British comedian dude’s take on Robin D’Angelo is well worth a listen as well.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=6sFdi5iZJ5Q

Thanks :)

The problem is isn’t the academic concepts or the linguistic choices per se, the problem is in the application of white privilege/white fragility to the real world and the ‘road to hell is paved with good intentions’ effect that believing and behaving as though a black person is always disadvantaged and a white person is always advantaged can create.

John McWhorter is excellent on this, as is Coleman Hughes.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=O3JJ633Pf_0

No point in me summarising badly when you can hear respected black academics and commentators directly via youtube.

I’m not personally convinced white privilege is a useful concept because it reinforces the sort of myopic western lens we’ve been trying to get away from.
Does white privilege exist in an African nation? Or in an Asian nation? How does it work in a country where there are many races and ethnicities?

Are we really talking about ‘majority privilege’ and ascribing that to white/black because we’ve imported an Americanism and not really thought about it? How is it useful in a way that improves material conditions?

What right allows Men to use womens toilets?

White privilege is a concept that is born from CRT. You can't really separate them. If you can see how crazy CRT is, can you not see that the idea that some people are born bad is also completely mad/dangerous/stupid?

Maybe I am just really really clever, but I really don;t get the issue IN THEORY.

"believing and behaving as though a black person is always disadvantaged and a white person is always advantaged can create." I don';t believe that at all! I believe that a white person will always (so long as racism exists) have the advantage of being white over a black person (in a country like UK or USA). That a white person has privilege in one respect, and potentially a relatively small privilege at that, says nothing about the two people's "net privilege" position which could be massively in favour of the black person. It could even be the case that two teen girls want to become singers and the black teen has the privilege of better education, more stable family, more wealth, nicer area to grow up in, straight not gay like the white girl, AND because of the "urban" style of music they both make the music industry prefers the black teen. But I would still say that the white teen has white privilege, even if overall she is massively disadvantaged, and even if her white skin disadvantaged them in their music career.

IN PRACTICE, if a term is misunderstood regularly then the people using it need to think about the best way forward.

When I talk about racism I talk about it from the point of view of living in a majority white country, the UK. I would never presume to lecture African nations on racism!

White privilege is maybe another way of saying "does not risk suffering the racism that minorities tend to suffer". I cannot see the problem with the term unless you don't understand it or you don;t believe that racism exists.

I do think that the shift (especially from the left) should be massively towards addressing economic underprivilege, and if one addresses economic underprivilege in a society which protects people from racial discrimination under the law, then huge swathes of black lack of privilege would also fall away.

Believing that white privilege is a thing does not mean that to address the inequality one must approach target dragging ethnic minorities up or (worse) dragging white people down. I think that racial disadvantage is best addressed by doing things like makign higher education free for all, and such a policy also helps those people who struggle to comprehend how they have white privilege.

That article in the Critic is very good. When people talk about white privilege they are often actually talking about class privilege.

Working class white boys are the group who are struggling most educationally in the UK. To say they have a privilege or an advantage because of the colour of their skin is just ridiculous, even if they don't experience racism (although depending on the area, they often do). Young black boys from wealthy families have many more advantages, regardless of whether they also experience racism.

What are real privileges? Having two parents who stay together. Having enough money to have opportunities in education and beyond. Being able to go on school trips. Having a childhood where you are supported and not having to grow up too fast. Having white skin may be an advantage in certain specific situations but what really counts is family, money and class.

Google threw up this definition "inherent advantages possessed by a white person on the basis of their race in a society characterized by racial inequality and injustice."

People (or some people) who believe in CRT might believe that "some people are born bad"... but I think that the term makes sense and does not need to be associated with the idea that some people are born bad.

I definitely have things to consider, and I definitely believe that there is a risk that using the term "white privilege" suggests that the way to address the issue is to restrict white people or elevate black people, whereas I am increasingly coming to the view that the main thing that needs addressing is economic equality, and in doing so one reduces how racist society is.