Streeting apologies to Rosie Duffield

[Theeyeballsinthesky]

Well well

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/jul/28/wes-streeting-apologises-to-labour-mp-rosie-duffield-who-felt-ostracised-due-to-gender-views

Could they maybe possibly at last be listening?

Quite. Any sane person who thinks about self id for 2 minutes can easily identify the problems. And as you say, we pointed them out over and over again. One can only conclude that Wes and his mates didn’t bother to expend that 2 minutes.

All Labour have is different versions of women stop being quite so loud about men

Too divisive blah blah

They really are weak

“the process that people currently have to go through to get a GRC can be time consuming, costly, dehumanising, degrading.”

£5 is costly, is it?

So which of these is degrading Wes? Filling in some form before being given access to spaces where teenage girls are naked? Or being a teenage girl who cannot use a female change room without a male person - who’s been given permission and a sense of entitlement by politicians like you - barging in when she’s naked?

I want to believe Labour have woken up but, after the last few years, I find it impossible to trust them. I still don't hear them making unequivocal promises to protect single-sex spaces. "Adult human female" is not enough: many TW claim to be female.

Also, as PPs have said, even if Streeting & co have now seen the light, they still believed something incredibly stupid and self-evidently untrue for years, and silenced people who tried to point this out. I don't want someone like that in government.

You can change your mind on policies and still retain credibility as a politician. But if you spent most of the last decade proclaiming that the Earth is flat, the moon is made of cheese, or that humans can change sex through the power of thought, I am going to struggle to believe you should be in charge of packing a lunchbox, let alone governing a country.

LoobiJee · Today 08:06
“the process that people currently have to go through to get a GRC can be time consuming, costly, dehumanising, degrading.”

£5 is costly, is it?

So which of these is degrading Wes? Filling in some form before being given access to spaces where teenage girls are naked? Or being a teenage girl who cannot use a female change room without a male person - who’s been given permission and a sense of entitlement by politicians like you?

Could it be people end up needing to se private doctors?

Not that I disagree with the gist of your post at all.

“So I think we’re we’re trying to get this right, our approach, however imperfect and uncomfortable and bumpy it’s been at times is a better approach than simply trying to use a sensitive issue like this to divide people and divide our country which is what I think the Conservative Party are doing.”

Because the group Conservative Women, and Miriam Cates, and Kemi Badenoch couldn’t possibly be motivated by concerns about women and girls’ privacy, dignity and safety? Or by protecting vulnerable teenagers from being influenced by a ‘community’ which promotes teen breast amputation surgery? Conservative women could only be motivated by trying to ‘divide our country’ in your world view, is that right, Wes?

Or are you saying that when CCHQ recognise that Cates and Badenoch represent the views of many many women and spot that Labour’s disregard for child safeguarding is an electoral open goal of its own making, it’s divisive’ of them to take advantage of that? Whereas when you belatedly spot your own electoral open goal and try standing in front of it, you’re somehow morally superior.

If the Tories can be forgiven when they have actually implemented all this, then why is Labour being held to a higher standard?

(A) I’ll never forgive the Tories.
(B) I hold Labour to a higher standard because I expect them to give a damn about women’s rights and children’s safeguarding. Labour are supposed to be better than the Tories, are they not? Supposed to offer women a decent option to vote for? Not misogyny and threats? I feel incredibly let down.

This stuff is ground up anyway

Many times people react here first and then the press picks up on it after

The press on it gets attention because people are fed up with the current reality. Well most, not TRAs

Streeting thinks this will go away if he asks nicely. It won’t.

Well done to all the women who have got both many parties to change direction and see sense. If the Tories can be forgiven when they have actually implemented all this, then why is Labour being held to a higher standard?

Great question Flammkuchen and it’s very wearing when collective misogyny and homophobia is being attributed only to one political group or party even on these boards. It’s clearly a deep rooted cultural problem across politics and society that still persists or we wouldn’t be where we are now as women.

We will not, I repeat not, get anywhere in this struggle if it’s treated and campaigned on as a left vs right issue or a problem at a specific political party issue.

That’s a total luxury, we should return to that when we have well developed pro woman policies to choose between that are on offer from all parties.

That time is nowhere to be seen right now and we have a fucking GENERAL ELECTION next year. In a non sexist, non homophobic and non misogynistic political parallel universe they would be vying for our votes RIGHT NOW. Women are on the back foot hugely on this despite campaigning for over a decade on it. That’s how lowly half the population is seen in politics.

If you want to be party political about this, for me the only logical place to put ‘blame’ is with the government of the day., The Tories in power for the last 13 years have allowed this whole gender identity politics thing (in no way a feature of the political landscape in 2004) to capture all our institutions and politics on their watch.

The Tories also went to the first stage of lawmaking to bring in Self ID for the whole UK- just what the Scottish government have now also tried to do. The Tories actually did that, just a few years ago.

Women of all parties on here and elsewhere got together to oppose it and then the Tories not through principle (because, it was their own government policy they U turned on, so spare me ‘the Tories know what a woman is’ ) but, through the Tories’ natural Party Before Country will to survive, which is in their absolute self replicating DNA, backed off from this issue and just kicked it into the long grass legislatively.

If the Tories actually knew and cared what a woman is, and cared in a principled way about what women were saying to them about the effects of GRA on them, and about the chilling effect that GRA has on anyone challenging men in women’s spaces because of GRC’s secrecy measures, which creates effective self ID, and how that was messing up our public services and institutions and data, then perhaps the Tory government would have reformed GRA in a pro woman way, (or amended the Equality Act to ensure trans people were protected from discrimination and then abolished GRA)

As it is the Tories used the opportunity to bring in the £5 GRC. Even now they won’t reform the equality act to clarify biological sex vs gender identity. Schools guidance is still not available. Where is this pro woman government we need?

Well, that may reveal the real reason Streeting is offering his faux apology.

The Conservatives are of course doing it wrong and for the wrong reasons.

I'll be happy to see the Tories and Labour fight over women's vote, though. There's lots they can do to gain my interest.

In fact, I have a list.

Agree Arabella about what you say about fighting for our votes. If that’s what a political football is then bring it on please.
I hope you’re sending your list to your local candidates of all parties and current MP, that is exactly what they need to see

Me too. Bring it on

Better than the bumpf we’ve had for years that we don’t matter and no one cares.

And which is better? Party A, doing the right thing for the wrong reasons, or Party B doing the wrong thing (or maybe now half-promising not to do quite so much or it) for the wrong reasons?

Fwiw I don’t think Badenoch is standing up to this for the wrong reasons, at all, she gets it and leads on it clearly. Cates similar but I don’t follow her to know that much

Nor is Duffield, who has spoken out when facing misogynistic bullying from party colleagues

Maybe the men should step aside and let them lead for our votes

“If the Tories can be forgiven when they have actually implemented all this, then why is Labour being held to a higher standard?”

Labour brought in the GRA 2004 and EA2010. As soon as the Tories got elected in 2010 (and no doubt before) Press for Change will have been lobbying them behind the scenes, just like they’ll have been doing with Labour when they were in power. And just like Stonewall are doing now with their Chairman recently switching from Tory to Labour and having dinner with senior Labour figures in the last month.

What is noticeably absent from Labour’s new pre-election comms campaign on this topic is: unequivocal support for women and girl’s right to privacy and dignity and single-sex female-only (excluding males with/without a piece of paper) provision.

Being dissatisfied with that failure is not setting an impossibly high or unreasonably standard for them.

In threads about the Tories’ action/inaction (eg the schools guidance) they are given the same scrutiny. This thread is about Labour’s repositioning and whether it is meaningful or simply some rebranded messaging.

To try to avoid that ‘choice’ MissLucy we will have to influence them all on both their specific policies and their overall principles.. and now’s the perfect time given election manifestos are being written
There is nothing to lose but our votes!

Labour are trying to muddy the waters to such an extent, that when they come up against another Beth Rigby style interview they won’t crash and burn quite so spectacularly as that Stonewall chap. They also know that Kelly J Keen will have them in her sights at the hustings and she also cuts through the crap.

When one's constructed and heavily gatekeeped identity is challenged in even the slightest way then total destruction and instinction beckons.

When people have been nurturing and encouraging the development of such emotional and mental fragility, what else can be expected.

The whole world is supposed to tip toe around, walking on egg shells for fear of causing psychotic breakdown.

I hope there’s journalists who can ask direct questions on this.

Don’t let them warble on about division blah blah our poor GRA and Equ A that we need to ‘defend’, ask them - which men, which spaces

How does it work in practise

Women come across as being some kind of third category of human being:

"Women, and other people"

he says the laws are "designed for trans people", women are but a minor, secondary consideration.

“If the Tories actually knew and cared what a woman is, and cared in a principled way about what women were saying to them about the effects of GRA on them, and about the chilling effect that GRA has on anyone challenging men in women’s spaces because of GRC’s secrecy measures, which creates effective self ID, and how that was messing up our public services and institutions and data, then perhaps the Tory government would have reformed GRA in a pro woman way, (or amended the Equality Act to ensure trans people were protected from discrimination and then abolished GRA)”

True enough. But when you’re having leadership elections and new PMs every five minutes, and likely won’t be in government that much longer, you’re probably more focused on: internal party shenanigans, getting ducks in a row for your future no-longer-an-MP career, and delivering legislation that will shore up your most, ahem, supportive stakeholders’ long term future position. Leaving women’s rights as the thing you might use to give the next government a hard time while you’re in opposition, what with it being an open goal.

Your last paragraph hits it on the head for me. They're either credulous or easily intimidated - not properties I want in those who are in charge of making legislation and policies.

Actually, easily intimidated is not quite what I meant. Easily swayed is more what I mean.

I emailed:

Dear Mr Streeting

I was pleased to hear you speaking sense on Times Radio and that you were sorry Ms Duffield had been badly treated.

I hope that the Labour Party will now make a formal apology to all those women, particularly Ms Duffield, who have suffered exclusion and abuse for raising concerns about the impact that gender self ID would have on their safety, privacy and dignity, and, in the case of lesbian women, their freedom to choose biologically female partners without being coerced into accepting male bodied transwomen.

I also hope that the party will examine carefully its stance on the transitioning of young people as exposed in the Cass report. In my view the treatment of many using the GIDS service was borderline criminal and certainly unethical, especially those with autism or from abusive backgrounds, whose problems could be treated conventionally , without recourse to fairytales of transition, puberty blockers, cross sex hormones and surgery, leading to a lifetime of medication, pain, unhappiness, sexual dysfunction and infertility.

I hope that the party will also recognise that women’s sport needs to be protected from an incursion of mediocre male athletes who find that transitioning affords them to win the medals they had no hope of as men, but of course at the expense of the women who really deserve them. This protection should not apply only to elite events - what girl will persist in her chosen sport if always being beaten by a boy, or, worse, injured by one?

There is much more to be said but I won’t go into it here. Suffice to say that, though I despise the Conservative Party (especially in its current incarnation), and would never vote Conservative, neither can I vote Labour until it produces sensible policies in this area that acknowledge women’s concerns and centre their safety, privacy and dignity. This would at the very least, clarify the meaning of “sex” to be biological sex in any relevant legislation, the word “female” to mean of the female sex (not gender) and the word woman to mean, as per the dictionary definition, adult human female. Otherwise, when we listen to anyone from your party speak on these matters, we don’t know what they’re really saying, or whether they are ignorant, confused, or deliberately obfuscating.

Sincerely

Theireminence I think that’s a partial account of how GRA happened, it’s just a more complex situation than that. You’re also applying a modern lens of gender identity politics that wasn’t even visible far and away over the horizon for lawmakers of any party in 2004. It really wasn’t a long held Labour project to bring in any form of what we now have as GRA. It wasn’t on anyone’s radar for statutory attention.

GRA didn’t come out of long held political aspirations by any party to create a means of legal sex change. GRA in fact came out of a requirement from the European Court of Human Rights during the lifespan of the Labour government of the day that demanded legally (and rightly I would say) that the UK government respond to a legal case called Goodwin. This case challenged the UK government over the fact that a man couldn’t marry his male partner who had had a ‘sex change’ operation and that people who wished to ‘live as the opposite sex’ were discriminated against because there was a different state pension age etc.

This genesis via ECHR requirement and the lack of real care for same sex couples to be able to marry and lack of real thought for the needs of people who might transition is really a tragic missed opportunity by the Labour government of the day. So that much I do agree with you on.

The government could have gone in a different direction with their response to ECHR. It is directly traceable back to the collective homophobia and misogyny of the day because the GRA is so completely written as a law for middle age male transitioners who have had their family already that GRA doesn’t even mention pregnancy or fertility issues. )So hence we recently had the TT case about wanting to be a dad or parent (not mother) on their child’s BC brought by transman with a GRC, Freddie McConnell, who carried and birthed a baby, and who remains at the end of the failed challenge, despite a GRC, the child’s mother legally on the BC.)

The GRA is a terrible piece of lawmaking and it’s drafting by the civil servants involved betrays their own sexism and homophobia. It was also achieved pretty undemocratically in terms of Parliamentary support through covert lobbying by Press for Change et al with no real public discussion, hardly any press campaign, just quiet lobbying of all sides in Parliament to get it through.

The tragedy is that we could have made same sex marriage and equal pension age law there and then in 2004 and avoided any concept of ‘legal sex change’ but the government did not want to do that. And neither- key point to remember- did the socially conservative politicians who questioned the GRA. They did not offer a socially equitable alternative, they just (rightly!) didn’t want the GRA. That something actually fair and careful and respectful of women was not on anyone’s proposals is the tragedy. The ECHR wanted a solution from the UK gov to Goodwin, they in no way said what the solution should be. We fucked that one up all by ourselves.

In 2004 the Christian church whether Catholic or CofE held much more sway than it does now and so the reasoning would have been that same sex marriage would never have got through Parliament. All that upset for a tiny minority of unhappy men. Same with messing with pension ages- a huge social change. So instead we got the GRA. The magic solution whereby people can change their sex on paper. I really hope the misogyny, sexism and homophobia and lack of principle in that choice of making a GRA, which completely throws out safeguarding for women and children, is clearly evident to everyone by now.

Lots of MPs (again deep in their sexism and homophobia) would have thought GRCs would only ever apply to a few desperate men who had had a sex change. Because what man would voluntarily want to live without a penis, they must have thought, only those pitiable ‘tr*nnies’ that we can acceptably laugh at, or at best pity.

So in that social and Parliamentary context as legislation had to be made to respond to the European Court of Human Rights, this shambles of a GRA is what the government came up with. It was linked to supporting gay rights, even though the principle of legal sex change is antithetical to same sex attraction, and would have been linked to not upsetting the church and presumably not rocking the Northern Ireland peace process by applying any ACTUALLY socially liberal law to the whole UK.

So the social conservatives of the day from religious and right-wing backgrounds sometimes asked the right questions, for which I am grateful but they didn’t offer a compelling alternative. Something had to be done. And so their rightful flagging of the impact on women was not looked at too closely and GRA was born with the expectation it didn’t really matter anyway because only tiny numbers of desperate men would use it. You can see the socially ‘beyond the pale’ aspects of GRA in the requirement for two doctors’ views in it- as applied to that other group socially beyond the pale at the time the law was framed in 1967-women who want an abortion.

I just don’t think anyone can credibly claim a clear thread of rightful political party thinking for any political party around the birth of the GRA.