Starmer rowing back on self ID - what do we think?

[JohnnyMcGrathSaysFuckOff]

The Times is reporting in its live politics feed that KS has explicitly said Labour will not push for self ID without public backing. I know not everyone can access their content so here is a copied n pasted version: what do you think?

Sir Keir Starmer has shifted Labour’s position on transgender rights as he said the bitter rows over Scotland’s Gender Recognition Bill showed the party must consider public opinion on the issue.The leader of the Labour Party has previously insisted it was committed to updating the Gender Recognition Act to introduce self-identification for transgender people.However, in a significant shift in Labour’s policy, he said the backlash over the SNP’s gender reform bill had made him think again. The SNP passed legislation this year that would make it significantly easier for people to acquire a gender recognition certificate and reduced the minimum age for doing so to 16. The bill was blocked by the UK government.Starmer said: “I think that if we reflect on what’s happened in Scotland, the lesson I take from that is that if you’re going to make reforms, you have to carry the public with you.

“And I think that’s a very important message and I think that’s why it’s clear that in Scotland, there should be a reset of the situation.”

It's irrelevant whether or not you think it helps or harms women.

If other people feel it is the best choice for women, even if it's the best of bad choices, they are making that choice because they think it is best for women.

They are not "pretending" to do it as you have suggested. They are not being disingenuous. It's not up to you to tell people their "real" motives nor are you in any position to do so.

You always avoid saying what choice you would make, only that you don't vote Tory or Labour. You always recommend that people think about other parties which are typically worse in terms of women's issues, or not running candidates in many areas. And you criticize those who spoil their ballots.

Which is probably because you don't actually live in England or Scotland or even Wales and so your options aren't the ones actually facing most people on the boards. So it's easy to pretend you would take some kind of high road and not be tarnished by actual politics.

Most others live in reality and are pretty tired of your continued misrepresentations of the actual political situation as it stands now.

I spotted this on twitter earlier. Apparently Labour are going to make a "major announcement" about.... ....what a woman is? which sex has a cervix? how drugs help men grow a cervix? they've remembered what a woman is? 😂

Bet it has the words "heat, light & kindness" in multiple times - none of them referring to women.

https://twitter.com/Aja02537920/status/1639936430620196870

@LittleFingerStrength
"How did this come about?

I recall them banning 'The sun' and Hillsborough."

In general people in Liverpool don't buy the Sun because of the Hillsborough coverage. It wasn't a Council initiative.

MrsOvertonsWindow · Today 13:54

Bet it has the words "heat, light & kindness" in multiple times - none of them referring to women.

Also:

“the most marginalised”,

“ the debate”

“both sides”.

I'll only believe Labour when the likes of Rosie Duffield can go to conference again.
Starmer seems hell bent on snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

He's just doing it for votes and will screw is over once he's in.

Unless I hear him explicitly say that men cannot be women and that transwomen are men, and that single sex spaces will be enforced and protected, he won't get any interest from me.

Also, finally knowing what a woman is is not enough.

They also have to do something about the Equality Act to make sure it is clear that being a woman means being a human with a certain biological state of being which a person with a GRC or Gendee Reassignment does not share.

Their party made arguably the worst law ever made. One that lies. One that constitutes totalitarian coercion.

Surely the whole point of ‘coming out’ is that you don’t need to lie anymore.

The answer is not force everyone else to lie for you.

You can dress as however you want, you can have surgery or hormones, but you cannot change sex.

And you stop making non-conforming, imaginative, sensitive, and possibly potentially Ho gay, autistic or abused children think they may have a trans gender identity.

If Labour want our votes they can join the debate and vote to clarify that 'sex' means biological sex in The Equality Act, and that 'gender identity' does not override it in any of the single sex exemptions, including sexual orientation.

I'd love Keir to host a press conference, to introduce Richard Dawkins and Germaine Greer on stage, flanked by Sharon Davies, Kath Stock and Helen Joyce, and a special guest, just flown in from Auckland with some apologies for her hair being mussed up.
And then I wake up, and what I get is...the usual gaslighting and flim flam.
And as was said on the Aja tweets, the fact that Labour have to make a special announcement just to define 51% of the population, beggars belief.

It must be the same setting where

"Don't vote Tory, they're a disaster for women"

somehow comes out as

"Vote Labour"

I just lost a long post so here’s a shorter recap (and it’s a tangent/derail so probably best to keep it short).

As far as I am aware the very successful Don’t Buy The Sun campaign originated from the same group of bereaved Hillsborough families, Hillsborough survivors and other football fans who formed the Hillsborough Justice Campaign (aka ‘Justice for the 97’ formerly ‘Justice for the 96’ or JT96 for short).

I can’t see the original website for HJC (I recall one that was very ye olde internet/geocities) but their FB page still exists.

A remarkable group of campaigners (and I’m not gonna lie, I proper bawled at the outcome of the second coroner’s inquest and I don’t even like football).

https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/dont-buy-the-sun-campaign-3353773

The official archive of documents is here:

http://hillsborough.independent.gov.uk/

To bring this back on topic a bit I reckon getting a proper inquiry into the damage caused by the genderborg will take
as long as it took HJC to get a proper answer re: what happened at Hillsborough.

You’d hope a lawyer-politician like Starmer would be interested in truth and justice but I see little sign of it.

..the backlash over the SNP’s gender reform bill had made him think again…if you’re going to make reforms, you have to carry the public with you.

See, these bits worry me.

First of all it took takedown of a major political player to make him ‘think again’ I.e., one politician’s hard time but not any of the negative impacts on girls and women being increasingly reported. It’s not "…the concerns over the impacts on women’s sports or single sex spaces that made him think again". Not even the placement of a biologically intact double rapist being placed in a women’s prison that made him think again. Nope, just that damn backlash.

Second, it’s clear by that last sentence that the public just doesn’t know any better. What’s therefore needed is for us public to to see the error of our ways and be educated into being carried along ie with the Labour Party on their gender ID reforms.

I had so hoped that labour had found an intelligent adult leader in Starmer and I just don’t understand how a CPS barrister doesn’t get it. So perplexing and disappointing.

But this is a thread ABOUT Labour?

🤦‍♀️

Anyway, back on topic - What’s Dawn Butler MP up to now?

Only I just posted the link to an old thread about a transactivism conference in answer to a question from a newcomer to FWR. Dawn Butler was one of the speakers:

Here’s the copy and paste:

(posted by) TheHarpySings · 18/10/2018

Keynote Speech: Dawn Butler MP: Shadow Women & Equalities
^^
This speech was fucking cringe. She said she was an ally of LGBT but had got a lot of messages moaning at her for “betraying women”. “Despite the fact I AM a woman.”
^^
She mentioned all the countries that have self ID (RoI, Argentina, Malta, Norway). Apparently she’d been to Malta recently and it was “really chill.”
^^
She blames the Tories for allowing this debate to drag on. “It is cruel.”
^^
The impact of self ID are “non existent”. She said if this had been done swiftly there would be none of the current fuss or transphobia.
^^
She said
^^
the LGBT community needs to mobilise
They need to contribute to the consultation
They need to change the tone of the debate (lolercaust)
^^
She also went on to say that a “phobia” is an irrational fear and there are three treatments:
^^
Hypnosis
Talking therapy
Immersion therapy
^^
Apparently the only way forward to deal with transphobia is talking therapy. DB said that the conservation needs to be around counties that already have self ID and it’s “fine”
^^
Hilariously, given that the audience contained fucking Dr Harrop, she said something like “keyboard warriors don’t know the consequences of their actions.”
^^
DB: “Labour will champion the unheard.”
^^
She said that this was another form of Section 28 on the trans community.
^^
She then quoted at length from a song from “The Greatest Showman”. I wish I was making that up.
^^
Also, she got cornered by Mermaids reps on the way out and is meeting with them and their kids soon.

How is Keir Starmer going to get Genderist MPs like Dawn to champion a sex based rights policy based in material reality? Or is he gonna expel them all?

I read if you’re going to make reforms line etc as still wanting reforms but without the backlash

So it seems that they still do want to press ahead and voting for that if you care re this issue it’s madness

The Conservative party hasn't thought it necessary to expel Gillian Keegan or Penny Mordaunt. Why should Keir Starmer have to expel the TRAs in his party?

That's my take on it too, I don't trust politicians, any of them, they say what they think people want to hear. I always think it's more important to look at what they didn't say.

Kier didn't say he wants to uphold women's rights and safety
He didn't say they will repeal the GRA or correctly define sex within the EA2010
He didn't say he will stop self ID
He didn't say woman is an adult human female

Is anyone saying expel the TRAs? If so I missed it

I’m not saying he should have to, I’m just wondering how he intends to get them onside, should the rumours of a pro reality sex based policy be true.

Unlike the Tories, Labour do have quite a lot of previous form for expelling party members, including senior party figures.

FourTeaFallOut · Today 07:45
I may well vote Tory, for the first time in the election. The totalitarian streak running through the labour party, right up to the front bench, is frightening. So long as women are treated like heretics in the Labour Party for knowing what a woman is and the cascade of consequences for pretending otherwise, then I won't be lectured by anyone, let alone posters who wail up and down the boards like a sweeper scanning for a women with the temerity to vote on a single issue or be asking for their approval.

I am like you. It would be the first time.

A party with a lawyer for a leader - who should know full well what the effects of self-ID would be - yet who smugly feels introducing self-ID would put the
party on the side of heroes and good guys - who had another lawyer leader at the time it created this utterly appalling Act ( as discussed here in the Hansard thread posted by ResisterRex yesterday 22.01
https://twitter.com/HairyLeggdHarpy/status/1049299981981470720)
an act of bad law so ridiculous it is beyond belief - the ill effects of which it now wants to compound even though the original promise had been “only the dysphoric” “only the most stringent panel” “only about 5000” “ only because we don’t allow same sex marriage” - a party that has its boot over the heads of its GC women dissenters - is one I don’t think I can bring myself to vote for.

Did Blair expel anyone? I don't remember that if he did. They need to be a broad church. They're not. They're bending to the demands of one group that's hurting women and children - hardly a good move for any political party.

I've been a feminist for a long time so your Tone Policing is water off a duck's back to me. I won't wheesht.

She also went on to say that a “phobia” is an irrational fear and there are three treatments:
^^
Hypnosis
Talking therapy
Immersion therapy
^^
Apparently the only way forward to deal with transphobia is talking therapy. DB said that the conservation needs to be around counties that already have self ID and it’s “fine”
^^
Hilariously, given that the audience contained fucking Dr Harrop, she said something like “keyboard warriors don’t know the consequences of their actions.”

Therapy, because you know what a woman and cervix are.

This is why I appreciate Labour women's declaration. I don't trust them or Labour to remove the GRA, they are mild TRA/genderists/Queer ideology, presenting as something else.

which would be conversion therapy.

@LittleFingerStrength
This is why I appreciate Labour women's declaration. I don't trust them or Labour to remove the GRA, they are mild TRA/genderists/Queer ideology, presenting as something else.
I bet you Labour's big announcement is to popularly protect single sex spaces but then later define sex= gender...