Kemi Badenoch: Diversity obsession has led to Kafkaesque madness (KB for PM?)

[IwantToRetire]

Another really straightforwarded down to earth practical commentary of where chasing the rainbow has led us. And ideas on how Government cant, without being dictatorial help solve the mess.

The root of the problem is a fundamental misunderstanding of the Equality Act 2010, often exploited by those with a separate agenda. The Equality Act is a shield, not a sword. It is about preventing discrimination, not social engineering. There are no protected groups in the act, only protected characteristics. A white man is just as protected on the characteristics of race and sex as a black woman, yet many believe the act is there just to protect minorities, when in reality it protects us all.

Many companies’ diversity and inclusion activities are falling foul of the law; for example by confusing legal positive action and positive discrimination, which is illegal — except when selecting political candidates (a handy get-out-clause Labour devised to use all-women shortlists). Encouraging people from underrepresented backgrounds to apply for a job or go for a promotion is positive action, and legal. Restricting applications for a position to a certain group is positive discrimination and most certainly isn’t. This has led to increasing calls for the Equality Act to be scrapped. The act is 13 years old and could be improved but the issue is not the law. It’s bad actors misrepresenting it to suit their agenda.

Many of these laws were written at a time when institutions knew how to self-regulate. Someone proposing a terrible idea would be checked by colleagues in the organisation. Today, those colleagues are scared of being called bigots for disagreeing, so they say nothing. What the Farage and Sawers cases have done is show that this problem is getting worse. Long-held tenets of liberal democracy — freedom of association, freedom of conscience, the presumption of innocence — are being tossed aside in favour of dubious inclusion strategies that themselves fall foul of the law. In some cases they’re cancelling people before any wrongdoing occurs, leaving them with no way to prove their innocence.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/kemi-badenoch-banking-scandal-natwest-niigel-farage-wdp3mmq0w
Also available via archive.ph

It started with you’re non feminists who don’t care about women’s rights

I mean swinging onto FWR of all places with that isn’t going to help discussion

Maybe change tack if they don’t want it back

Posters are generally very reasonable in debate

And then moved into bad faith etc

If people don’t want the same back, tone it down to start with

This is a great quote and I completely agree with all of it.

As a young woman I wanted observe and report on life in the way writers had in the post war years. After many non writing but enjoyable diversions I got my self into a journalism course.

I was doing that right at the change from reporting to columnists commenting. I was right in that pivot. I could see clearly what was going to happen and reversed back out into policy development because this NOISE, this polemicist environment, this bitter fight for inches of fury, this never ending 5 minutes in the big brother room being coached into taking a verbal dump on your fellow human for approval, is the most destructive thing that has happened.

So many people have grown up only knowing this way of public discourse.

That's what I think anyway 🤣

Tbh I do t really get the quote in context of this discussion

Males in female spaces is a yes or no? There’s no middle way

Compromise is a yes, by women

I was reading a retort to Chris Rufo's new book where he sees trans and CRT/other intersectional philosophies as a conspiratorial long march thru the institutions.

The retort said there was a lot to be said for this take, but also it was wrong in many ways.

And that we're nearly all, whatever side of the fence we sit on the issues that matter most to us, guilty of seeing only our own take as virtuous and too easily the other side guilty of bad intent, magical thinking, prejudice etc.

Which means that of course the other side see themselves as being on the side of the angels, and our take as the bad take.

And to really reconcile a position with as much truth and clarity, to be aware that we can all be guilty of the bad faith we attribute only to others.

I'm trying to apply this. In my personal case, gender v biological sex in this weaponised age is now a zero sum game, I don't see any rational or civilised reconciliation, Brian Cox's plea for compromise will never truly get realised.

But I'm doing my best to not see my antagonists in black and white terms, just as I'm not a black and white person. My previous takes of conspiratorial long walks and dalliances with demonic forces, now replaced by much more boring takes of "the most intelligent people are the most stupid and easily swayed/conned", and the thudding realisation that herd mentality is doing overtime in the last decade over this subject.
Helen Joyce's takes that the New Atheists were more interested in being anti-moralist than pro-atheist tickles me, because I was in that camp, and now I am a moralist as I declare "men cannot become women...it's evil to medicalise teens...I don't believe in the trans child", and that her sunk costs amongst the elites is the single biggest obstacle to reality returning anytime soon.

These analyses are now what inform my thinking, not hate of the other side, or magical thinking of my own that is an easy trap to fall into.

And it's what will inform my thinking at the GE, the only time I can make some kind of difference in material terms.

Don’t..

Anything that supports women having to say yes is just another spin on the same

Stand aside, be quiet

eugh

I'm trying to apply this. In my personal case, gender v biological sex in this weaponised age is now a zero sum game, I don't see any rational or civilised reconciliation, Brian Cox's plea for compromise will never truly get realised.

Well yes. If you read Cox without trans as a setting in which you read it it's absolutely reasonable.

Men who are driving this have never been about compromise. It's always been about acceptance without exception.

Except.

There are exceptions.

In the Equality Act 2010.

I'm a very non binary person, ok I might fight to the death to defend the 1970s music movies fashion over the 1980s, lol. But as a rule, I'm very live and let live. Wasn't always, I was terribly judgemental of society at large growing up, but in the last few decades, I absolutely have turned around many social attitudes. I'm even ready to vote Labour after decades of being very much a proud Tory voter. Austerity > Brexit mismanagement > Austerity 2.0 > realisation that the Conservative Party is as far from a CONSERVEative Party as you can get, is frazzling me.

For me, there are very few zero sum games in life, politics. And this is one.

Men in women's sex based spaces...NO.
Lifelong medicalisation of teens...NO.
The chilling of free speech to allow magical thinking...NO.

It would have been NO as a teen myself in the 70s, NO as I became an atheist in the 80s/90s, and NO today as I've refined my rational and empathetic side to life as a therapist and centered adult.

And from this zero sum game has come to be how I feel about the whole show, and how do very badly let down I feel, for my free speech rights and reliance that common sense was shared amongst my betters, and for girls and women metaphorically thrown to the wolves, unwinding decades and decades of progress.

I don't hate the other side. I don't understand them, and will struggle to trust politicians in future. They've reneged on conserving rights and free speech, and the very meaning of things. Problem is, they may never get trust back.

The EqA says men with a GRC can be excluded from single sex spaces where legitimate

Can someone say in which single sex space it isn’t legitimate to do so?

Well I understand.

Average. Just think of the word average...

As a statistician it starts to tell you a lot.

We, the country we, get very upset about people getting more than average.

Politicians pay is now determined by the emotional reaction to above or below average position.

So we have decided to only pay for a specific level of competency.

We are getting what we are willing to pay for.

This is a sweeping generalisation but I'm not the first to make it, but the people that the pay level is acceptable to on the left wing are very different to the people it can attract from the right.

Any thoughts? This is not a new hypothesis.

100% agree with all of this.

My problem is that one person's "freedom of speech" is another's "inciting racial hatred" or just downright misogyny. As women we fought so hard for the protections we do have that I am very wary of that being taken away.

So yes, strengthening the EA on the face of it is positive for women. But there is a whole right wing, individualistic, "small government" movement that hates acts like the EA and HRA and wants them removed. I think certain groups need legal protection because history has shown that humans can't be trusted to act for the greater good of their own accord.

This "small government" ideology is a faction of the Conservative party. And that's partly why I say women voting for this are turkeys voting for Christmas.

Anyway I don't want to reopen the name calling as we are becoming more conciliatory so I'll stop there.

That was directed at reality fan, I've gone off piste, sorry.

That was at realityfan at 20.24

I don't think competence is necessarily related to pay. I've met some very competent people on low pay and some totally incompetent people with a very high income.
I also think there is a correlation between how much someone is motivated by money and how much they generally are self interested and motivated by their own benefits. Those people are unlikely to go into politics for public service reasons.

‘Men in women's sex based spaces...NO.
Lifelong medicalisation of teens...NO.
The chilling of free speech to allow magical thinking...NO.’

Same here. This thread has taken a woolly turn. Feel like it’s another way to get women to say ok.

Competence is most definitely related to pay. Not thinking it is or referring to outliers will not undermine the basic facts.

We are just chatting.

Yes about compromise, with quotes. Not seeing why compromise is a good thing for women tbh

Men are either in single sex spaces or not

Plus in which single sex is it legitimate that men enter?

Any takers?

The EqA doesn't say that men with a GRC can be excluded from single sex spaces where legitimate. It doesn't mention GRCs. A man with a GRC is a woman (GRA2004 and Haldane). It would be a breach of the EqA to refuse a man with a GRC access to a women only single sex space.

Yeah, I know that it's shit. Hence the drive to change the definition of sex to biological sex in the EqA.

Posters that have interacted with trans people here know that they interpret the EQ2010 exceptions as default inclusion on the basis of identity.

I have not seen anything from Labour, lib Dems, greens, or SNP to counter that.

You may be right but it’s a long thread and I may have misunderstood

What is this part?

• a service provider provides single-sex services. The Equality Act allows a lawfully established separate or single-sex service provider to prevent, limit or modify people’s access on the basis of gender reassignment in some circumstances. However, limiting or modifying access to, or excluding a trans person from, the separate or single-sex service of the gender in which they present will be unlawful if you cannot show such action is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim. This applies whether or not the person has a Gender Recognition Certificate.

That was a bit blunt apologies, doing stuff. But if someone could point out where I’m wrong I’ll appreciate it

There is wording that says on a case by case basis.

This is contested as being person by person and that any service provider can't do what transactivists refer to as "blanket ban"

No actual blankets involved.

There's armies of lawyers hacking away at this calling any single sex services illegal "blanket bans "

The EHRC published new guidance last year saying that providers could have single sex services but TRAs has a meltdown about blankets.

Hence the need to add BIO FUCKING LOGICAL to the act

Helen Belcher then had a meltdown about being biological and they started reporting the EHRC to interplanetary, most extraordinary craft.

Oh no that's a carpenters song.

You get my drift.

Whatever we say these boys are lawered up to the eyebrows and whinging on a planetary scale.

Ha yes. I really do think adding biological sex is our only hope

And I’m sure lawyers are having a bloody field day

What are the chances? I hope Kemi (plus others) can do it