GC Feminists- what do you want to achieve?

[Faffertea]

I posted this on the David Blunkett thread but since I watched the clip of him I have been mulling over what he said, and the then Labour government’s role of bringing in the GRA and it has lead me to really think about my own position and what I want the end point of this to be. It’s sort of crystallised into the following…

The thing that bothers me is that Labour brought in the GRA with no consideration for women. Wasn’t DB part of the upper echelons of Labour at the time?

I can’t help but feel that for all his welcome talk today DB was presumably happy enough with the original GRA not to resign over it so does he really mean ‘women’s equality above all else’ or does he mean ‘women’s equality above else except for the small number of men we (politicians) feel are ok to be included in women’s spaces’? Are we really just back to males can be women but only the right sort of males.

And I don’t know about anyone else but for me that is not acceptable. It has to be no males in female spaces. No exceptions. No ‘but these males are harmless’ or ‘these males have radically changed their bodies and are distressed by being males’ or ‘these males have paperwork that says they’re really female’ so they’re ok.

No one who is male, in any shape, form or identity in female spaces at all. For those males unhappy with that they need to find an alternative that doesn’t involve co-opting female spaces.

We must have a name for people who belong to the sex which typically (but not always) produces large gametes. Without such a name we can't interpret data or analyse the reasons for sex-selective abortions, FGM, the gender gap in earnings (which is mostly a sex gap), why most victims of sexual trafficking have female genitals and so on. We can't even politically mobilise around the issues which affect our sex class.

Not having that name really does count as an ultimate patriarchal move.

The trans activists should have lobbied for a second set of names for gender identities so that those who believe in the concept could use them. They chose not to do that, but to appropriate 'woman' and 'girl' and now even 'female' from the established usage where those refer to biological sex.

I have never believed these stories. I think they are trying to persuade women that they are harmless by inventing them. We are supposed to forget the threats, the bullying, the ludicrous demands which give then more rights than anybody else including the right to put sex offenders among women.

I've been reflecting over the last couple of days. What I want most is for women to look at how far we've come in battling back, and keep going.

I can't remember when I first became fully aware of all this, but I do remember being in an FWR thread where posters were resigned to self-ID becoming law in the UK, Jenni Murray's lecture theatre having to be renamed, and FWR itself potentially taken down.

We have power. And once we've clawed back what should never have been taken we could move fucking MOUNTAINS - if we remember.

Yes,education not indoctrination.

Please, if you haven’t yet done so, consider signing this petition to update the Equality Act to make clear the protected characteristic ‘sex ‘ is biological,

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/623243

I would like gender identity to be given an equal footing with religions, rather than things that are objectively true, like age and sex. Yes, self ID for a GRC, but the GRC doesn't confer rights from the opposite sex, it does protect people from discrimination (but compared to their birth sex). This can cover all the different strands, nb, queer etc. it will also allow us to have proper conversations about their needs (prison wing, health care etc)

I'd like to see honesty and accountability for medical interventions, no more twee language. Patients can't be considered to have full informed consent if they think having boobs stuck on or taken off is going to confer a magic disguising trick where you look like a sexy or macho version of the opposite sex. They have only properly consented if they recognise the side effects and limitations of the procedures.

I'd like us to always make people use of the term "gender identity" rather than taking gender, which can be found in lots of policies and is a loophole way in. Gender goes back to meaning perceived sex.

I'd like people to be able to explore their gender identities, play around with clothes and have safe places to meet like minded people. But, like a church, I can choose to live my life without going in or having to use religious language. Live and let live.