Janice Turner on Labour u-turn

[southbiscay]

Is it safe for women to trust Labour again?

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/b5a6df40-2d70-11ee-aede-28bc53acbdb8?shareToken=463658bee75ab918efe6b0320e42aad3

He missed out the human,.
He only said adult female.
Female what? Spider, donkey, rat, dog? Who knows.

IMO that was deliberate to avoid association with KJK and other wicked women who talk about adult human females.

Yep. Or we might, gasp, think human rights apply to women

What then? It all comes tumbling down

This is an excellent article and captures pretty much my thinking. Pretty much “ditto” to everything Shonagh said.

I understand and accept the concept of a golden bridge, and also think that a movement with as much momentum as the TRA one is not going to be stopped or turned around overnight. The fact that publicly we will have to accept these face saving “apologies” is on one hand just politics (not the first or last time there will be a wholesale change of mind on something). On the other it just increases the cynicism that politicians these days don’t actually hold any fundamental principles/stand for anything any more. And I think long term that is just bad for democracy as we get fewer and fewer people who run for election because they want to make a difference. And fewer people vote because they think what’s the point, all politicians are the same etc.

Thank you for posting they, I wasn’t familiar with it.

I missed that thanks, and also for all we know they plan on having doctors sell certificates to children.

Well yes in the new 1984 it could well be drs selling certificates to all.

I dont understand how this is so difficult for some people to say.

I find it maddening that now we have to clarify each and every word spoken on this issue.

"You said woman, please define woman for us"
"You mentioned adult, what ages mean adult to you"

This is going to make conversations clumsy and fraught at best.

Just FYI, LWD do indeed have a fringe event, but I don't believe Labour Women's Declaration have been allowed a stand at Labour Conference yet.

This whole mess is going to be difficult for many to move on from, myself included.

A while back I was reading something, I think it was about Franco and the Spanish civil war. It included personal testimonies and one of the things touched on was how without a proper degree of truth and reconciliation it's impossible to go forward with trust.

I think a similar sentiment applies here. It's mostly not been a war in the physical sense but brushing it all under the carpet will not cut it in any shape or form.

Our politicians and formerly valued institutions have spent the best part of a decade insisting that women no longer exist.

They have spoken about us in dehumanising terms relating to our body parts and functions- bleeders, vagina havers, cervix havers, chest feeders and so on.

They have insisted that there is such a thing as a female penis and because of this they have put rapists in women's prisons and hugely damaged women's sport.

They have bought into the notion that babies are born with 'wrong bodies' and enthusiastically prescribed pharmaceutical and surgical fixes for children. All based on the sexist idea of blue/pink brains.

This is not an exhaustive list obviously. None of this is small fry stuff, it's all had massive ramifications including the fear people have been living under for speaking out, the loss of livelihoods and the threats and abuse endured for doing so.

IMO nothing short of a major inquiry in parliament complete with personal testimonies will be good enough.

Yes. Indoctrination and selling certificates to children could well be Labour’s aim.

I agree.

And yet, because the vast majority of those people impacted have been women and children, it won’t be seen as a Big Deal and the post-brushing lump under the carpet will only be visible to the same people who have been speaking up and vilified and condemned, but who will be told we’re all over it now and moving on.

Sadly you are probably correct.

Sorry I’m in a particularly cynical mood today.

Personally I'm not that interested in an apology. For one thing, even if Labour were to make one, it would be approved by lawyers and so insipid it would probably make me even more cross. And then someone would come along and say, 'See! you asked for an apology and you're still not happy so you must be a Tory'. And so forth.

So no thanks, I'll settle for them explaining how they're going to fix this.

The devil is in the details.
Do LWD get a stall at conference?
How does Rosie get dealt with, not just by Starmer/Streeting, but by the Lloyd Russel Moyles of the party?
What sort of team does Starmer put forward as his campaign cabinet? Does he sideline the gender ideologues like Lammy and Thornberry, and promote more GC voices?
Does Starmer/Streeting push for sex >>> gender clarification of EA?
What are their plans of GRC streamlining and who will do the assessments?
Will Labour support full reversion to single sex spaces, not just prisons and sports, but also refuges, changing rooms, toilets, even social situations (lesbian clubs, WI etc)?

I've mulled over Labours apparent volte face, and for me this is just an opening salvo. It's taken years of hard graft and any number of silencings and cancellations of women to get to the weak tea GC position that Dodds announced the other day. In truth, I want to give Labour the benefit of doubt on this. But this is just an opening offer from them.

Right now, GCs everywhere, especially the women who've done the heavy lifting so far, need to keep pushing. Acknowledging the positive first step. But like a football transfer fee negotiation, telling the other side it's nowhere near enough.

It's noticeable that Dodds laid out the change, Starmer backed it up, but it's Streeting out of the traps who's fleshing out the apologies and softer mood music of "regrets, I've had a few" messaging.

I genuinely feel Starmer/Streeting are likely GC at heart, but the overwhelming philosophy of the managerial Left ethos that has permeated the party and larger activist/unionist movement, backed up by the Left artistic fraternity, is firmly TRA.

Starmer could take on the anti Semitic trend because it was simpler to address and promote as anti bullying, and a clear break from Corbynism. The shift from TRA is much harder, so much more widespread and entrenched is this anti humanist philosophy.

That leaves so many of us on the horns of a real dilemma.

Let's see concrete change on the ground, mood music in the air, the shape of his cabinet going into the GE, and critically his fleshed out policies.

For me, it may come down to simple wording. Biological/women and single sex spaces is what's needed.
Understanding both sides and safe spaces, won't cut it for me.

We cannot cave on the first hints of apparent sanity. The patient needs to demonstrate they really are properly sane to be let out into the community.

Am just mulling what I can do in practice, and it has occurred to me that now might be a good time to write to my Labour MP, Mary Foy.
I wrote to her on this issue once before and got no reply at all. To be honest I felt frightened about writing, because I knew the danger that my letter would be misframed as transphobic (it was a very respectful template letter created by some GC group or other).
So when no reply came I didn't push it, fearful of a response that attributed something hateful to me . (I know; I'm a coward. But it would be a knife twist in the stomach to be faced with a situation like that.)
But the recent mood music might make it harder to ignore a communication on this subject, and I would at least find out whether my own MP is worth supporting.
I wonder if anyone is planning to compose a template letter that would simply ask MPs to provide a little more detail about the current policy, and some reassurance that it actually amounts to any real cultural change in the party.

@RealityFan i could not disagree more that KS is GC at heart. No-one who was would have treated RD the way he did, allowed the bullying of her ( allowing is enabling and not a neutral act), banned GC organizations from conference, or made comments like ‘ one shouldn’t say only women have a cervix’ or ‘some women have penises’. What KS has shown very clearly is that he, at best, is not interested in women’s rights or issues, nor in listening to our voices.

Having considered all this, I believe Keir Starmer thinks he has found a way to get in self-ID in practice, without calling it that, and he’s gambling on Gender ideologies realizing this, and GC women being too stupid to.

I think we now have the fight of our lives to try to make sure our voices and arguments are now not completely lost as the matter is now, politically, ‘sorted’. The fact that Dodds was not prepared to accept invitations from the BBC to talk about the proposals is not a good sign.

Completely agree with you. Starmer has shown such breath-taking disdain for women that I can't believe he's serious now.

So true. Very well said.

It makes me think of the mayor in Jaws telling people the water is safe

You have no argument from me that Starmer is terrible on all this, happy to take women for granted, small m misogynist in dismissing fears, big M in isolating Rosie and LWD.

My take is that he's not a gender ideologue, I think he's just dismissive of the concerns of GCs especially GC women, either couldn't see them, or they're obstructing the path to power.
Genuinely think he sees Rosie as a traitor to his cause.

And contrasted badly against how much praise he lavished on Luciana Berger and other Labour women over the Corbynista anti semitism period.

I'm in no doubt about this. Politics is the sewer of life. Otoh, he made meaningful change at the DPP, and I think his tortoise like long march to power is just him as the "anti Boris Johnson" type of leader that the late 2020s/30s UK may get.

I have to determine...can I look at his history in the round, good at DPP, awful w Rosie and negotiating trans politics...and then extrapolate to what a government full of trans allies, and locked down pro TRA union movement, would represent and carry out.

In the past it was worrying about a Labour govt letting striking unions dictate to the country, then Blair came along, and we had calm govt for 15 years.

Do I believe Starmer will be a Blair...or a late 70s type govt, but instead of the chaos of strikes, the maelstrom of genderised demands and acquiescences?

If this is true,then resign as an MP: if you can't think for yourself and outsource your thinking to some wet behind the ears,gobby , inexperienced, no nothing 20 year olds, then you are a danger to society if you expect to be in any form of a position of power or 'leadership'.
Two words, second one is 'off' ,Lisa Nandy

@RealityFan

I agree that KS is not a gender ideologue. That doesn’t change the fact that when he faced a choice of coming down in favor of gender ideology or women’s rights, he
chose gender ideology and enacted this fulsomely. By this, he has shown very clearly that he is not interested in or motivated by women’s rights.

And his fulsomeness in supporting GI is not currently being shown in supporting the GC position.

I still suspect he thinks he has been very clever in enabling self-id in practice., whilst shutting us down as it’s been ‘sorted’. We will have to fight hard to keep making progress against GI.

I still suspect he thinks he has been very clever in enabling self-id in practice., whilst shutting us down as it’s been ‘sorted’. We will have to fight hard to keep making progress against GI.

Yes. In contrast to the pp who thinks the fight is over I’ve not been so concerned as I am now on this.

That many think this is sorted is concerning.

We will lose if people don’t ask direct and practical questions.

I can't deny anything you've written.
Look at all the other areas he's reneged on or UTurned on screechingly.

All the policy positions he was elected to the leadership on.
His volte faces on the Green New Deal, two child benefit cap.
He also made favourable noises on maybe bringing PR voting in.
His move from Remainer to in some ways the most ardent Brexiter in Parliament.

And now this area.

You could even be cynical about his positions on anti semitism and Corbyn. He was happy to serve under him, with that atmosphere in the party to be transferred to UK wide public policy.

Once Labour were smashed in 2019, only then did he come out and row back. He's ousting of Corbyn et al from the party is typical boys games, showing to all watching that he's the biggest beast, the one not to be messed with.

The other interesting point about tortoise Starmer is that he's engineering a whole bunch of Mini Me Starmers as Labour candidates around the country, to parrot the proprietary Starmer lines.

But they'll have to wait until Starmer himself settles in those lines.

Clearest example is the wet behind the ears recent winner in the Selby bye election.
This guy will never have anything original to say, and has already slagged off Germaine Greer. He's the future, folks.

So, here's the dichotomy. Starmer has almost complete control of the party, as he inches them to crawl over the line in 2024. He's an Alpha Starmer in trouncing the Corbynistas. Is happy to disappoint activists with one flip flop over another. But is a Beta Starmer when it comes to asserting himself on gender politics.

That's why the doubt is still there, especially with the likes of trans activist lawyer Robin Moira White saying that this is messaging to get Labour in, then trans activist policy reasserts itself.

I'm not 100% how I feel about this.

Thanks for the thread though as it's given lots of food for thought as always .

i think ultimately it's what Hepwo said, what's the good of defining a woman as an adult female if any bloke can buy a certificate to say he is on and any bloke can use a certificate (that we can't even ask for a copy of of) to claim he has a legal right to be in spaces reserved for women.

The issue here is the GRC. It needs abolishing. No man should have the right to be legally female. It's simply absurd.