Labour Women Declaration responds to the UK Labour party’s “pivot” on sex and gender

[IwantToRetire]

We welcome –

• Rejection of self-ID as Labour’s policy: this is a major and significant shift.
• Labour’s new emphasis on distinguishing sex and gender.
• Indication of support for legal definition of sex in the Equality Act to make the operation of the single-sex exceptions (SSEs) more effective.
• Wes Streeting’s account of changing his mind when he realised that he needed to listen to women.
• Reference to the need to include consideration of sex offences in granting GRC.

Concerns/questions/flaws in Labour’s proposals –

• Spousal exit clause – not a veto, but a method of initiating a process to ensure basic rights for a spouse and needs to be retained not scrapped.
• NPF mention of need to look at international evidence: little comparable evidence is available, but there is emerging evidence of self-ID and puberty blockers being withdrawn in countries where previously available.
• Needs of detransitioners are not mentioned but must be understood and addressed.
• No mention of Section 22 of the GRA, which creates problems for SSEs, “effectively providing an ‘invisibility cloak’ for the characteristic of sex for one group of people”, see article.
• Keir Starmer’s reference to “safe spaces”, despite the correct term being single-sex spaces (needed by women for dignity, privacy and more).
• No rationale yet provided for one doctor rather than two; also concerns about lack of specification in qualification criteria for doctors to provide the diagnosis, given the prevalence of private doctors willing to supply report on request.
• Reduction to one doctor opens door to acceptance of more countries onto the approved UK list for apparent GRC equivalence.
• Inaccuracies in Guardian article, including claim that Panel involved in current process is made up of ‘anonymous doctors’ – it is a group of doctors and legal experts.
• Claim that “The process is intrusive, outdated and humiliating’ has never had evidence to support it – see, for example, this article by Fair Play for Women (particularly the latter sections).
• Using inaccurate language like “futile indignities” contributes to fear mongering.

Labour Women’s Declaration Working Group 2nd August 2023

The above is a summary. For full response go to https://labourwomensdeclaration.org.uk/lwd-responds-to-the-uk-labour-partys-pivot-on-sex-and-gender/

I know there have now been lots of threads about the Labour Party but thought LWD deserve to be acknowledged given the struggle they have been directly involved in.

So started this as a new thread rather than tagging it onto the end of an existing.

... which obviously makes us all Nazis. All reflected back in social media.

Well if that's the case, that's bloody awful - 2:

It was the article in the DT about Mhairi Black comparing gender critics to white supremacists. I dont think any other paper on news channel reported that.

The thing's on YouTube but I'm not sitting through it at this time of night (searching 'Keir Starmer Rutherglen' found it for me). The sound quality on my tablet is appalling, so I can't listen to it sped up.

I’ve written to my MP encouraging them to support manifesto commitments around women’s sex based rights and this response from LWD and to be public about it. Lets see what they say.

How long do you expect to wait for a response? Have you contacted your MP before? I did likewise with my MP a while back.

I have seen on Twitter Starmer “does a u turn on his u turn” . I knew he was not to be trusted when you see who he has been having meetings with lately.

when it comes to the election I want to see all the parties grilled by some of our wonderful ladies who have been through court cases on this subject . Perhaps then he will not be able to worm his way out with word salad.

There was a phrase I learned when I lived oop north... 'he can make his mouth say anything, that one'.

There's another Northern one that goes:

"..he just opens his mouth and let's the wind blow his tongue around"

Usually if they’re going to reply (they aren’t obliged to) then it’s within 10-14 days

@Slothtoes Thanks. Obviously all MPs get a lot of mail. My one previous attempt at an email (Brexit!) never got a reply bar the stock acknowledgement of receipt from her office.

yes it’s annoying when MPs don’t reply or just send back an annoying party central office cut and paste job. Sometimes, however they write a proper letter back and have really listened and that makes it all worthwhile.
I write to my MP all the time about women’s stuff and education and child poverty issues and climate stuff. I can’t spend a lot of time organising to do any in person campaigning at the moment so I feel like it’s just doing my little bit to send them off a quick email with a couple of links in on something I’m asking them to pay attention to.

It’s so good to see this thread because yes, it really really does matter what Labour think about women’s rights, mainly as Lab look likely to form the next govt. Just keep the pressure up, is all I say. Keep writing the letters, and ALWAYS answer the door to political parties, and give them your rather clear opinions. In fact, see them coming down the street and grab them by the collar as they go past. 😈 Make an appointment with your MP, better still at the HoC. Make them give time to the issue. Keep raising their awareness. We have stupid Conversion Therapy Practices legislation still in the pipeline - Labour STILL say they support it. And trans widows: why can’t Labour see that a small number of women would be seriously affected by removing the very small provision for spousal ‘exit rights’? If anyone is in Anneliese’s constituency, she definitely needs to get to grips with that.
Some Labour MPs have shifted because of conversations with constituents. LWD supporters are doing this constantly but we need women in every Labour constituency - lots of them. And tell them about Cass, and why the Tavi had to close. PLEASE make Labour MPs a priority, in the lead up to conference. They must take this seriously. Giving up on them and voting for another party is your right, but it won’t help KS make good decisions if he gets to PM.

Quoting:

https://www.thepinknews.com/2023/08/17/angela-rayner-trans-rights-womens-rights-labour/

For many, Labour’s change in policy is not entirely unexpected.

In April 2023, GB News’ deputy political editor Tom Harwood shared a supposedly leaked copy of the Labour policy handbook which suggested Labour was “no longer committed to reforming the GRA to introduce self-ID”.

At the time, however, a senior Labour party figure told PinkNews it was still committed to self-ID but the internal “language has changed from ‘self-ID’ to ‘modernisation without medicalisation’”.

Anyone had any response from their MP? @Slothtoes ?

I used the WritetoThem site to email my MP this time. I got a follow-up email from them today (after two weeks), asking if my MP replied, for their stats. She didn't. According to their rather out of date stats (it seems they stopped collecting them, for some reason unexplained), she replies to to 33% of emails. Making her 508th out of all the MPs. But hey, in good company down there with Michael Gove and Diane Abbott. And yes, I realise that answering emails is not necessarily a good, or the only, measure of an MP's diligence; they get a lot of emails, and have many other duties.

My Labour MP said they were grateful to read the Labour Women’s Declaration Working Group Statement and appreciated my feedback on this issue and had passed it to the Shadow Women and Equalities team.

Well, a rather better result than me, then! Thanks, @Slothtoes !

Am I missing something or is this just political flannel? This MP offers no indication as to their own opinions.

What the hell are we going to do about Labour?

I spoke to my Labour candidate recently. She said she agreed with the statement about 'taking the public with us'. The feeling I got was that self-ID is the preferred outcome but there is a recognition that the public are 'not yet ready' (my words). So the impression I got is that the strategy is 'convince the public'. To that end my candidate tried:

There are only a few trans people
They really are very distressed
There are bigger issues to focus on
If you prioritise this you are being manipulated by the Tories who are using it as a wedge issue

My answers of course were:

Just one male person in a female-only space means ALL women have lost that single-sex space
They may well be distressed but the solution cannot include causing distress to another group of people, namely women
Sounds like telling women their needs will be met AFTER everyone else's
The way to stop the Tories turning this into a wedge issue is to have a solution then when it's brought up you just state the solution and move on

My candidate has gone away with 2 pertinent questions that I doubt I'll get an answer to:

If I want to run a single-sex space and someone I can see is clearly a man wishes to attend, how do I legitimately exclude him when all his ID documents say 'female'? (She tried to turn it into, how do I know if he is male, which I corrected, no, I know he is male, I can see he is male, how do I exclude him when all his ID says female?)

And, if single-sex spaces are single-biological-sex and not single biological-and-legal sex, then what exactly is a GRC for?

The thing is, you cannot coherently hold a position that says 'we recognise individual self-ID of sex' AND 'single-sex spaces means single, biological, sex', because having single-sex spaces negates individuals' self-ID'd sex. These 2 positions are mutually exclusive. The sooner Labour realise this, the sooner we can get on with setting the limits of the GRA (and then realising that it's actually unnecessary and even unhelpful in preventing discrimination and increasing tolerance of differences in gender conformity and then we can scrap it.)

Despite all of this, the boost in Labour's lead in the polls is more down to women than men (20 points amongst male voters, but 30 amongst females). That suggests to me that women across classes and ages are so agged up by Tory failures since 2010 on austerity cuts, housing, NHS waiting lists, care failures, collapse in rape convictions etc, that gender issues are going to have close to zero effect in the GE outcome in 2024.

I'm thinking it's time for GC women (and men of that persuasion) to really gird loins for the real fight which will be when Labour are in office. Those of the Rosie Duffield persuasion within the party will finally be able to come out once the party are in power and be a thorn in Starmer's side, I'm sure KJK will act as a lightning rod for street protests.

And of course once Labour are in, the buck stops with him. He'll have to justify reform to the GRA, negotiate the EHRC advice on sex >>> gender, argue for bans on trans conversion therapy, put the case for beefed up anti hate crime laws, very much like once Johnson got Brexit done, he had to justify its progress.

It will be extremely challenging to finally have a party in power that could be so negative on all the things we worry about re trans mission creep into women's rights. But in power, Labour will have the trans buck, and GC women will have to influence how much it stops.

I do believe if events steer Labour into self ID territory, draconian trans conversion ban disaster outcomes, women will have to be heard in the same way JSO are heard, with massive street protests.

Anyone can be cynical about MPs’ letters if they want, but I take them at face value because I can’t mind read my MP. I want to put my trust in the democratic process so I don’t assume MPs are liars or cheats or whatever until I am shown otherwise. Mostly I assume MPs are just extremely time poor but basically well intentioned people who come with their own individual prejudices and don’t already know everything about everything, just like anyone else.

I have been writing to this MP for years on this topic. Their opinion is apparent to me in the way it’s been written.

I write often because MPs bringing in law to protect and enhance women’s legal rights is the only way that women will get the law changed without us bringing endless expensive law suits. And writing these reminders might start to shift the Overton window more in the direction of MPs considering the impact on women when they are making new law in general.

Wherever possible I hope all posters on here are writing to their MPs. Getting a reply is great but even if they don’t reply, a volume of constituents’ letters on the same topic at some point will make an MP sit up and look at what’s happening.

Especially in advance of a general election like we’ll get in a years’ time. That said MPs get hundreds of letters every day. They can’t and don’t reply to all of them and that’s normal. They wouldn’t have time for casework and Parliamentary work or eating and sleeping if they replied to everything.

In my experience at first I would get no engagement from my MP on this area, then after a while a few vague platitudes about yes supporting women but with a heavy whiff of most vulnerable TW, and now this type of tone which perhaps indicates a more nuanced or informed position.

My area has an active grassroots women’s group and I think that their engagement with this MP might have helped the MP to look beyond their own experiences to hear what women were saying about their own situations and what was happening to their kids. It’s probably also likely that with Starmer (not Corbyn!) in charge and 2024 GE coming up that they are starting to need to listen to women.

My email asked the MP to read the LWD statement and to ensure that updating the Equality Act to clarify sex based protections (what Sex Matters have been advocating for) would be put explicitly into the Labour election manifesto.

So that reply that they were ‘grateful to read’… the LWD statement seems good. it’s implying that they HAVE READ IT which is the key mission here, and that when they read it, they were ‘grateful’ to have done so which sounds like maybe it offered something valuable to that MP. Great. And the fact it’s been passed to the relevant team by an MP is a concrete outcome that I am pleased with.

(Also - as letter writers we can ask Labour MPs if they will share our correspondence with the Shadow Women and Equalities team who develop policy for the party on this area. I didn’t think of doing that before!)

Anneliese Dodds MP is the Shadow Secretary of State for Women and Equalities, Party Chair and Chair of Labour Policy Review right now, so she is key to this issue. https://labour.org.uk/people/shadow-cabinet/

She REALLY needs to see multiple factual and reasonable objections from women, to counteract the emotive TRA drama that she will be being flooded with. So it’s a great time to write to Labour MPs with the party knowing they will be asked about this issue and they will need a coherent response.

Dodds will be going on a journey at the moment which many people have already been on with this, I reckon:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4856027-annaliese-dodds-sex-and-gender-are-different

RealityFan I want to see a commitment to de fudging the Equality Act in the Labour election Manifesto as a minimum.

If Labour get into office I would then expect to have the GRA debate which would be a huge national conversation. As it democratically should have been, but it wasn’t, back in 2004.

You'll never make a politician, @InterestingUsernameTBC , your thinking is much too clear and unambiguous! And politicians like to be vague, as we've seen.

The thing is, you cannot coherently hold a position that says 'we recognise individual self-ID of sex' AND 'single-sex spaces means single, biological, sex', because having single-sex spaces negates individuals' self-ID'd sex. These 2 positions are mutually exclusive.

This is indeed the nub of it. The contradiction that should be, er, rammed down their throats. 😛

Pondering what Labour would in reality do in office, my best guess is,

a) No Grand Debate about the GRA. Some vague talk of reform, but the issue kicked into the long grass.

b) Some warm words about protecting single-sex spaces, but no new legislation.

c) Keep banging on about 'hard-pressed families' and the cost of living.

I'd like to see those things happen too, @Slothtoes . But I'd like to see Trump and Johnson in prison too, and neither of those will happen.