How can we prevent the trans issue from being a gift to the right wing?

[TheTERFnextDoor]

I'm really worried about the direction politics is taking, not only in the UK but globally. The right wing is on the rise almost everywhere for various reasons.

Sadly, the gender debate will undoubtedly be a gift to the right wing over the next few years. It's the Tories ace card at the next election; the left as they are at the moment can't win this debate.

What can we practically do to prevent this? I have tried speaking to my local Mp (Labour), and he basically told me to "be kind".

Oh, don’t forget, Labour do have one clear policy! Their hate campaign against children in private schools. An odd choice of flagship policy: stoking hate and division and making schoolchildren a political football. It won’t end well.

@Augend23 What you are missing is that if you make it easy for anyone to be become a woman legally there are no single sex spaces left to "protect". We more or less have that now with people thinking it is currently the law that they have tolt any man in. It is not the law yet but Labour want to make it law while pretending they are not.

The medical profession have been brainwashed, only the increasing number of detransitioners wanting to sue will change that.

Meanwhile the stories can talk the talk - but DO very little. They can issue guidance to schools NOW saying they must protect the rights of the majority not to participate in a fantasy, they can make it far clearer that hate "crimes" are just that and nothing to do with someone who takes offence at reality. They have allowed this mess and they are not clearing it up.

I dont have to choose between 2 steaming piles of shit, 2 lots of liars, 2 leaders who may be more competent than their predecessors but who can not control their party - I can refuse them the legitimacy of voting for either.

I need to see real recognition from the labour party that trans activism is homophobic and mysogynisitc and that women need real safe spaces, I need to see action not words from the stories.

Labour is not going to do a U turn on Self Id. The leadership team meets regularly with Stonewall and Iain Anderson has recently moved to Labour from across the chamber. The reason he did this was so that he could further Stonewall's aims from the Labour benches when in power.

People are deluded if they think Starmer will ditch this manifesto commitment - and if you vote Labour he will take that as being part of the " consensus" he says he is trying to build around this issue.

I just really, really wonder why labour hates women so much?

It would be so easy for them NOT to lose the vote of left leaning women but instead they prefer to remove women's rights in favour of males and see nothing amiss in 'transing' children.

They are not a party I can even contemplate voting for, they don't do reality.

But it talked about biological women - and transwomen very clearly arent biological women. I can see you might find there are people legally classed as women, but if that's a legal fiction and they reference single sex spaces for biological women surely that doesn't include people who are biologically male?

Amazing. Posters on here blaming women AGAIN for everything.

Message received loud and clear - Women put up and shut up.

Look forward to some well-researched informative posts that show how Labour would be a good thing for the UK.

I am not on Labour's side (I have no idea at the moment who to vote for), but here's what the major political parties are saying about their policies:

Labour
Instead of policies, they are pushing 'missions,' presumably so their ideas can't be stolen prior to a GE.

• Secure the highest sustained growth in the G7 (work together + create more jobs)
• Making Britain a clean energy superpower (invest in infrastructure)
• Building an NHS fit for the future (says 'reform' but they skirt the details)
• Making Britain’s streets safe (Halve serious violent crime and raise confidence in the police and criminal justice system to its highest levels, within a decade.)
• Breaking down the barriers to opportunity at every stage (reform childcare + education).

https://labour.org.uk/missions/

Conservatives
They have 5 priorities. As they are in power, we can see how they are doing in real-time, so to speak. I think they are struggling on all five - for example, the national debt was 85% in 2019, and it's now at 100.1%, as of May 2023. Priority 5 has generated a lot of headlines and swearwords from me.

• Halve inflation
• Grow the economy
• Reduce debt
• Cut waiting lists
• Stop the boats

https://www.conservatives.com/

SNP
Another party of Government; I would be interested to hear from Scottish voters about their record and likely chances at the next GE. They are going through a period of change at the moment, with leadership positions open for voting at their national conference. These are their top five policies from the 2021 election.

1. Hold a post-pandemic independence referendum to put Scotland’s future firmly into Scotland’s hands – not Boris Johnson’s.
2. Deliver at least a 4% pay rise for NHS staff – the biggest in the history of devolution, giving a frontline NHS nurse an average pay rise of over £1,200 a year.
3. 100,000 more affordable homes with at least 70% for social rent, on top of the 96,750 new homes we’ve already delivered right across Scotland.
4. Create a National Care Service, abolishing charges for non-residential care and introducing a National Wage for carers.
5. Universal free school meals for all primary pupils, with free breakfast and lunch for all classes, all year round.

https://www.snp.org/pledges2021/

Lib Dems
Added because they may be a coalition partner after the next GE in some shape or form. No policies that I can see, but a lot of campaigns and it's worth noting they are active at a local level. These are their top five.

• Cut energy bills
• Stop sewage dumping
• Support proportional representation (PR voting)
• Burglary Response Guarantee (police to visit and investigate all burglaries)
• Offer a GP guarantee (24 if urgent/1 week for standard care)

https://www.libdems.org.uk/campaigns

Greens
It's worth noting that the Greens are a coalition partner with the SNP but Scottish Greens have split with UK Greens. I cannot find any current policies.
https://greenparty.org.uk/

But it talked about biological women - and transwomen very clearly arent biological women. I can see you might find there are people legally classed as women, but if that's a legal fiction and they reference single sex spaces for biological women surely that doesn't include people who are biologically male?

We have women with female birth certificates, female passports and female markers on their nhs records.

We have men with female birth certificates, female passports and female markers on their nhs records and we have to be kind and call these men woman with she/her pronouns.

But its ok, because the intention is that sse is for the first group only, not including the second.

How can a service provide differentiate between a woman with female id and a man with female id?

Hmm I'd agree with a lot of the above @RebelliousCow . With a large caveat : where us this conservatism of which you speak ?

Conservatives believe in the precautionary principle surely - first do no harm. Tories stopped taking precautions - in every sense - a long time ago. Since Thatchers landslide in 1983 they seem to have become addicted to a sort of politics of chaos or continuous revolution.

Interspersed with forlorn calls to 'bring back the old values!' They could do worse than electing a pragmatic moderate One Nation Tory leader next time. But I fear the temptation to veer towards the crazy will be too strong.

You don't. Let the left eat itself. Deserve everything they get.

I agree. My values have not changed. I see nothing left wing or progressive about gender ideology.

I am pretty sure Helen Joyce is and always has been a conservative. Maybe not always voted that way, but ideologically, especially economically.

This is one of the things I think some left feminists get wrong because they assume anyone who takes certain viewpoints, particularly ones they consider feminist, must be of the left.

Since Thatchers landslide in 1983 they seem to have become addicted to a sort of politics of chaos or continuous revolution.

There was nothing 'conservative' in the 'no change' sense about Thatcher's rule.

Sigh.

Why do you feel entitled to ignore all the women saying "no, you are wrong, this doesn't describe me"?

RebelliousCow Do you think that this might be a chance for the feminists to influence the PSOE / Sumar to backtrack also. Just going to have a look at the numbers of votos nulos ….

We do have a duty to vote against the worst. The parties that have lost all touch with material reality and women's/girls' sex based rights.

Yes.

Yes agree

The Tory party don't care about women. At all. They are actively fascist, want to remove women's reproductive rights, want to remove all sorts of basic human rights, want to remove freedom of speech (it's the Tory party that will result in you being arrested for attending a GC protest, and the Tory party responsible for police knocking on the doors of women who have tweeted GC stuff).

That's without the astounding level of criminal corruption and lies.

And yes they are actively trying to exploit GC believes to promote fascism and the rise of the far right.

Voting for a woman-hating fascist party is a vote against women.

There's a lot of posters who would happily vote for Gilead on the basis "at least they know what a woman is!"

The only reason the Tories define womanhood by our reproductive organs is to be able to label and control us. They hate women.

There's extra spice for me. Our last but one PM is my constituency MP. Voting for her would certainly have an extra, what can I say, frisson, lol.

I'm not sure what Kool Aid you're on, but screaming fascist and Nazi equivalent slurs will get you precisely nowhere.

The Tory party, the one that enacted same sex marriage, are fascists, is laughable.

Incompetent, untrustworthy, incompetent, unprincipled, yep. Fascist, nope.

There are going to be a very large number of angry and disappointed people should they expect some big left wing revolution should Labour get in.

Yes, exactly this.

Honest to god - how is this hyperbolic nonsense permitted a free reign on here. It is just embarrassing student politics.

A woman is an adult human female. Yes, women, as a category of human being, are defined by their biology.

That doesn't mean that women are just their biology, though; but that biology and its consequences are important.

Jesus wept! This is ludicrous.

Helpful thread OP, thank you.

I think the trick is to be less naive about allying yourself with people/organisations with a track record of hating women (in the Catholic Church's case a literally millenial track record) just because there's a crossover on trans rights.

In my rare hopeful moments I think there's hope for an alliance between the GC and the trans rights side - both agree on so much: your genitalia shouldn't detetmine whether you like rugby or ballet, maths or art; it isn't right that the world is run by straight white men; you can't reduce humanity into simple categories. But we won't get far if we keep on calling each other TERFs and handmaidens.