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.

Not true. He chose to talk about violence on both sides. We tried to help: give an inch they take a mile. As Helen Joyce said, third spaces is not enough for them, we have to win instead. They are only interested in spaces with real women in them, not empty rooms as someone said above.

Depends how you define who counts under the single sex exemption. It is Starmer's fault that everyone rightly suspects words have changed their meaning in his genderwoo world.

Let's take sports.

What is the 'compromise' position between allowing males to play on women's teams and keeping women's teams for women?

There is none.

Either 'women' includes 'men' or it doesn't.

And bleating about 'single sex spaces' does nothing for women when men are entitled to be any sex they feel like, and women are not entitled to say no.

'They are doing the same thing Lady Haldane did, which claimed that single sex spaces exist, but also that anyone can choose or change their sex. Also remember Haldane said that 'sex' and 'gender' are interchangeable.'
I haven't read Hansard on it but I thought it was understood that the 2004 Act was just creating a 'legal fiction' and that it didn't give those with a GRA the right to access all single sex areas. There was also the provision for single sex only to achieve a legitimate aim/need.
So why did Lady Haldane, a woman, choose to interprete the Law in this 'gender identity ideological' way? Has she been Stonewalled? I mean we know that Stonewall helped draw up the Judges Bench guidance book, which is scary enough in itself.

I'm getting the popcorn ready for when Posie poses him all the relevant Qs.

I wonder how much anti-women violence she'll attract to hustings and media events ahead of and during the GE campaign, and how Starmer will react to this.

It's not starmers fault - it's the TRAs fault because as rightly pointed our, give them an inch and they take a mile. Genderwoo came from them.

Yet he seems to have managed not to trot like a sheep after Brexiteers, flat earthers and believers in the tooth fairy. It's almost like he has a mind of his own.

He does need to be clearer but i suspect/hope that will come at election time when there's less opportunity to make his position a point of difference for the tories.
So many games go on where there are clear differences of position between parties.

I think/hope his compromise is you cam change gender but not sex.
Sosex based exemptions can apply but gender based discrimination isn't acceptable - a TW will be treated legally as a woman unless a sex based exemptions is in place
Maybe I'm clutching at straws but I think that could be workable

It is Labour's and therefore Starmer's fault. They could have easily chosen to take a more common sense position and not assert that it is possible and desirable to change sex/gender. They could have spoken up for child-safeguarding.
What has stopped Labour holding the Tories to account as Stonewall has stormed through all our Institutions? The fact that they also supported it even more enthusiastically and the civil servants driving it are in Labour-linked Trade Unions. Unbelievable that the UK Trade Union movement fails to uphold women's sex-based rights in the 21st Century.
The only way to stop this is to embrace free speech (so despite everything this means voting Conservative). It shouldn't be necessary to have to keep bringing expensive legal cases for people to keep their jobs for recognising biological reality.

Adam, it's not good enough to leave this to election time. It's not like he wants to be springing this as a suprise. This is a point of legality and definitions, as it's is logic and human rights. It's not as if he needs to tempt us with a tax break to vote for him.

Clarity NOW.

The Conservatives opened the door to this with Maria Millers consultation and consequent self-ID recommendation. Somehow that gets conveniently forgotten. Here's a thread from the time

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/2563673-Maria-Miller-and-minority-feminists&ved=2ahUKEwjGhoHAnZD-AhVRT8AKHbJHAg0QFnoECA0QAQ&usg=AOvVaw1LWmo_Jez7h1mGVHeefnfM

Oops
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/2563673-Maria-Miller-and-minority-feminists

Yes, Adam. Tories love to play both sides off against the middle.

Also, their small boats migration policy. Designed to fail and still get votes.

My totally unqualified understanding is that Lady Haldane accurately reflected the law, which is, to use a technical term, an absolute guddle.

https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/our-work/news/statement-following-lady-haldanes-opinion-petition-women-scotland-ltd-judicial-review

'“We welcome this judgment which confirms that the effect of a Gender Recognition Certificate is to change a person’s legal sex, including for the purposes of the Equality Act.'

• Under Section 11 of the Equality Act 2010, sex is a protected characteristic and is binary (a reference to a man or to a woman). Section 212 of the Equality Act defines “woman” as a female of any age.
• The purpose of the Gender Recognition Act 2004 is to provide a mechanism by which people born in one sex could acquire the legal status of the other sex.

https://sex-matters.org/posts/the-legal-system/scottish-court-rules-that-sex-is-about-paperwork-not-biology/

'“in this context, which is the meaning of sex for the purposes of the 2010 Act, ‘sex’ is not limited to biological or birth sex, but includes those in possession of a GRC obtained in accordance with the 2004 Act stating their acquired gender, and thus their sex.” (Lady Haldane's conclusion)

Which means that 'single sex exemptions' is a completely meaningless phrase, given that anyone can choose and/or change their sex.

I suppose one could charitably say that Labour Sex Fudge is just reflecting the EA.

Which, according to Haldane, promises 'single sex exemptions' while at the same time rendering the phrase meaningless.

With all good will - what does this mean in practice? What is gender discrimination that does not fall under a same sex exemption? (So toilets, sport, hospital wards, prisons, changing rooms, refuges, counselling, same sex schools, accommodation on school trips, girls' groups and clubs, lesbian groups, women-only gyms, women-only swimming times ...)

Do you mean making it explicitly illegal to call your trans-identifying male rapist 'he' in court? Compelled use of pronouns? Misgendering, whether accidental or intended? Not allowed to say a woman is an adult human female?

Or the rights that everyone has, to no discrimination in housing, employment, education, access to medical care and civil protection from harm?

What specific gender-based rights are being considered?

At the time 2004 everyone used sex and gender interchangeably didn't they? That's why the word biological wouldn't have been used. The confusion maybe only arises with the interaction with the later 2010 Equalities Act?

Given that local elections are coming up, what questions do we want asked of our local councillors? Could we compile a list of say 3 points we want assurance on?

If we can share the problem, they key question and our solution to each one that would be something to share locally/with friends and family to get this issue a higher profile.

Where are there sex based exemptions?

i suspect/hope that will come at election time

He should clarify his position now and stop being weak and waffly.

Will Labour support using 'biological' to clarify the meaning of sex in The Equality Act?

The trans rights obsession seems to have been happening across the western world more or less simultaneously, so I think it is probably unlikely that it all started in the UK with Maria Miller and the Tories.
Even Germany with its linguistic nightmare of grammatical genders (der, die, das etc) has now fallen foul of gender woo.
Something sinister could be at work or in the water for so many to have been so complicit with arrant nonsense and anti-science.