Starmer: Almost no-one is talking about trans issues

[SidewaysOtter]

To quote from the rolling news section of this morning's Times:

"Almost no Britons are “talking about trans issues,” Sir Keir Starmer has said as he questioned why such issues are a focus of political debate.

The Labour leader sought to win over gender critical campaigners and MPs at the weekend, telling The Sunday Times there would be “no rolling back” of women’s rights if the party formed a government.

Speaking to LBC this morning he repeated his position that “for the vast majority — let’s say 99.9 per cent — biology matters” in defining a woman. He said that Labour was trying to agree a “common sense, respectable and tolerant position”, but that it was “not prepared to ignore” the small number of people who identify as a different gender to the one they were born in.

He insisted it was a marginal issue for many voters, however. “As we go around the country campaigning, I talk to thousands and thousands and thousands of people. They want to talk to me about the cost of living crisis, about the fact they can’t pay their bills, they want to know what they’re going to do about their council tax,” he said.

“Almost nobody is talking about trans issues. I do sometimes just wonder why on earth we spend so much of our time discussing something which isn’t a feature of the dinner table or the kitchen table or the café table or the bar.”

Funny, because I think there's quite a lot of people talking about "trans issues". Whether it's the treatment of Posie Parker and the 72-year-old woman who were violently assaulted last weekend, male-bodied people in women's sports/changing rooms/hospital wards/prisons, the medicalisation/mutilation of young adults, or the vilification of those who speak The Terrible Heresy that you cannot change your biological sex. And yes, we're talking about it at the dinner table, the café bar or wherever.

"No rolling back of women's rights" doesn't mean shit if you count men as women, Mr Starmer. And you can wang on about "respect and tolerance" all you like but we know what you really mean by that is wanting us to be quiet and stop being awkward. That isn't going to happen.

I normally love fudge.

But not this flavour.

To me his position is quite clear and has stayed the same:

1. update the GRA to modernise the process. As currently the process is ridiculous "live as a woman for 3 months" I don't have any beef with that. There still will be a process not just "a woman is anyone who says they are". As they haven't started this yet, I can't get too het up about it.

2. maintain sex based exemptions in the equality act. This is great as it will enable things like single sex prisons, sport, medicine etc

To me this seems eminently grown up. Yet we keep hearing "starmer hates women". I don't get it.

Perhaps because he has refused to actually meet with women to hear our point of view? The treatment of Rosie Duffield?

The fact that his position that some women have a penis is insane?

It's clear he thinks we are stupid. If sex means "something I got on a certificate by saying magic words" then "safe spaces" - as Labour keep trying to call single sex services - become mixed sex. He thinks we are dumb enough to go "Oh OK, yeah this'll work" in spite of the Bryson case. Which is exactly how this situation would be made even worse.

It is these people who can't afford private healthcare or a private nursing home move for their child or elderly relative if needed, as they are reliant on the state, so must chant TWAW, AGPs can wash my family members fanny!

Where as the middle class are more likely to have a blue hair TRA child their children are on the whole not the most vulnerable who are targeted.

They are sadists, they would rather have no power as a party and destroy peoples lives.

I know in some constituencies there are few members to choose from, in many places they have their pick yet the MPs are choosing saboteurs to work for them.

1. no one should be able to change sex, legally, through a process, if

2. it enables them to access spaces and rights reserved for the opposite sex.

The only point of people legally changing sex is to give them as much rights and access as the sex they are acquiring. If they weren't allowed any of that, they wouldn't bother legally changing sex.

Loads of transwomen don't bother getting a GRC, because they claim they get as much access as they want because women are too intimidated to tell them to fuck off.

Support for Labour is currently declining.

Tories have manipulated boundary changes to make it more difficulty for Labour to have a majority.

The Labour Party consistently fails to recognise that not only do they need to hang on to the red wall, they have to win back seats that turned blue to get a majority.

Sure your kid not being able to leave home is important - so is being deprived of grandchildren because someone at school is persuading your child they are in the wrong body. They have ruined your child's health and their future and you want them to vote for a party that supports that. My young trans relative is not my child, but I am still furious with everyone who supported the bullshit that has persuaded a mentally ill young person to do permanent damage to their health.

This is not just about the loss of women's rights, this is also doing increasing damage to the health of a generation of young people. Starmer wont even protect kids in school from a dangerous ideology.

Women feel very strongly about the safety of children and Starmer is trying to tell us that doesnt matter. I'll be writing Party of Women on the ballot.

I know, I agree entirely. I'm just saying I think he's actually got a much more nuanced view than an online debate cam reflect.

The TRAs think he's a transphobe for saying anything about "a process" and sex based exemptions. And we think he's a tra for saying some legal women have a penis. So maybe he's in the middle

Quite.

There is no way to live as a woman save as to exist in a biologically female body. That's it. All the faffing about has just been phenomenally damaging and harmful to women, in order to enable men in something that is not real or possible.

Single sex spaces, but men can identify as any sex they like?

No. The End. We've destruction tested this, it's over.

Incidentally while all this social experimenting had been taking place, had men managed the slightest capacity to see women as equally human, or demonstrate any of the kindness and inclusiveness they were screaming and threatening women about? It might have been workable.

Adam, you can't be in the middle of a zero sum game. You have to take a side.

There is no middle.

'Women' are either adult human females, or they are adult human females and adult human males.

Attempting to limit the numbers does not stop that being true.

There's nothing Starmer, or anyone else, can do to appear nuanced. Because any statement that tries to please both sides will just generate another question.

As Nils says, it is a zero sum game.

Either women have to be forced to accept some men in their spaces, or they don't.

I mean, even though I disagree with it profoundly, to me, a middle ground might be, yes, you can legally change your sex, but you're never, ever allowed into women spaces.

But, that's not their game, zero sum or otherwise.

Their game IS the spaces.

Or rather, the women in the spaces. It's the women they need to access, not an empty room.

We are their game.

I'm just saying I think he's actually got a much more nuanced view than an online debate cam reflect.

Funny, cos over here you're demonstrating zero understanding of nuance. Just thread derailing.

Suella Braverman vows to stamp out grooming gangs behind organised child sex abuse www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4776977-suella-braverman-vows-to-stamp-out-grooming-gangs-behind-organised-child-sex-abuse

The point is that his words make clear that he considers that those female single sex spaces should be accessible to males. Because they are women. He has kept calling single sex spaces ‘safe’ spaces.

The thing is that we don’t have any confidence in what he says because he says the things people want to hear but then you remember how he defines women.

Weasle words.

He has kept calling single sex spaces ‘safe’ spaces.

Weaselly isn't it. Especially as the concept of safe spaces gets a little on peoples nerves. Given that nowhere is actually safe.

He won't call them single sex, because then his statement is fucked.

But, to me, far and away his worst crime is smugly imagining that no one notices.

”He won't call them single sex, because then his statement is fucked.”

Yes. Strange that he thinks no one picks up that he cannot say the words ‘female single sex spaces’ and simply deflects to ‘safe spaces’.

It means that people think he is being reasonable.

I'm just saying I think he's actually got a much more nuanced view than an online debate cam reflect.

If he does not share any of this "nuance" with the public then I am sure it's political lies, all the way down. When he says "no rolling back of women's rights" and also thinks some men are women, it's no wonder he keeps the nuance to himself.

Tories have manipulated boundary changes to make it more difficulty for Labour to have a majority.

Can I just point out that the boundary changes have been proposed (first mooted years ago) by the independent Electoral Commission with the aim of making the number of constituents each MP has broadly similar (where geographically logical).

Not if you are trying to negotiate a truce! Then you have to find the compromise both sides can accept.

Hes a politician, it's his job to find the compromise.

Luckily I'm not a politician so I can take a side.

I don't need to be nuanced, I'm not a politician. I'm happy to state that I think the current Conservative party are populist, their views are reminiscent of fascist parties and anyone who buys into Bravermans position is being manipulated by a subconscious human fear of difference.

A truce is not possible.

It's a zero sum game.

Either women's rights are removed to make men happy, or women retain equality with men. Pick one.

There isn’t a compromise. Either women get single sex spaces or not.

Woman includes the small percentage of biological men or it doesn’t.

He’s trying not to address that issue but looks like a failing because you can’t fudge it.

No, you don't need to be nuanced. As evidenced by telling us on that other thread that:

the effort could be better spent elsewhere

Effort meaning prevention of organised child sexual exploitation.

Subtle as a brick.