Harriet Harman says women are women, or men who are 'certified' women.

[ArabellaScott]

https://twitter.com/roseveniceallan/status/1713176479528300891

'There's a question of what is a woman and what is a man. But I would say a woman is someone who is born a woman or someone who under the GRA 2004 is certified as having transitioned from a man to a woman'.
...
'I support the GRA and don't want to see it rolled back. We brought it forward for a very good reason'.

Harriet Harman, at the Fawcett Society event.

Thank you, Julia Long, for asking the question.

Labour still seems far away from acknowledging the problems within the law.

They talk about the importance of recognising gender, but dont state how gender is defined and diagnosed. And dont say explicitly that a man with gender is given a female birth certificate.

They talk about the importance of protecting GR in the EqA, but dont talk about the fact that GR is self defined and allows men to be issued with female passports.

They say that they support SSE , but fail to mention that they allow services providers to exclude men from womens spaces, not force them to do so. And how service providers can exclude men given some have state issued female id. Woman and girls entering a female changing rooms dont know if the service provider excludes men or not.

They are talking as if the law is fit for purpose.

Worth bearing in mind Harman made this comment at the Fawcett Society event. She is Chair of the FS. This event had an audience of women and feminists - exactly the people who ought to be aware of the issue and will undoubtedly have an opinion on it one way or another.

So if they are tailoring messages for audiences, presumably this is as close as we can get to the truth of Labour's position.

Labour keep changing the words. They're just getting further into doublethink territory; I don't think they've changed position in the slightest.

This would be because they are absolutely fine with the situation as it is and still plan to escalate it at high speed further in men's favour and to the subordination of women. The confusing hints of noises that light might be dawning just a little bit on them is merely marketing in hope of stupid women being fooled long enough to vote for their own oppression.

We should be really glad HH is speaking plainly after a long period of Starmer apparently tacking back to some semblance of reality. Her plain speaking, that can only be borne of absolute confidence that this policy will not scupper the election of a Labour govt, is the only thing we need to bear in mind, because Starmer's pronouncements are just a truncated version of her statement here, which is Labour policy.

Starmer says only that women are "adult females". HH says "adult females are women plus those with a GRC stating women". Ergo, Starmer is deliberately only mentioning the first half of HH definition. We all remember his "99% of women don't have a penis". For all the sound and fury since, this hasn't changed.

HH is a player, and like all politicians she is easy with messaging. But she's also the closest we can see to a cultural elite, one of those on the long march thru the institutions.

Imagine, early in your activist politics and influencing change in the Labour Party, she pushes the PIE line, for this to blow up in her face. A half century later she's on track to be in power to lock down a policy that effectively negates woman as a meaningful category.

It's not called the long march for nothing.

What I still don't get is WHY.

WHY are they doing this?

What on earth do they think is in it for them?

So much this.

Woman = adult female (Starmer)

Woman = adult with "female" marker on ID document.(Harman)

Wrong on so many levels, but consistent.

Harriet is a fool, her judgment is warped and has been for a while. Her past connection to PIE is price of that. She did apologize for it, however her statement at Fawcett proves she is still a fool.

God knows. The GRA was passed without fanfare, so they werent doing it to appeal to the electorate.

They dont speak the truth in public, so they know the public dont want men to enter women and girls spaces.

But they want it to happen anyway.

I'd love to get a straight answer out of them as to why they're doing it. Politicians, though, innit.

What's in it for them?

Self-satisfaction. Smugness. Feeling virtuous. Feeling righteous. Felling superior.

I think they’re too deep in. Ideology and politically

It’s related to their base and who will make a noise if they don’t get what they want

Unions and centre left media occupy the same space

Aligned to TRAs vocally or trying to get women to look the other way

I think we all need to start loudly questioning why they want it to happen.

Because this should, by rights, be a fringe issue. Even if you care deeply about trans people's rights and safety, campaigning for third spaces rather than infringing women's rights would seem to be the obvious approach.

So if that's not what they're doing, if they're dead set on this approach which requires women and girls to compromise their own rights and safety for the sake of this small minority, I want to know how and why this position was reached.

I want to know who, from this powerful lobby group, has got so much power within the Labour Party. I want to know which organisations have donated to Labour. I want to understand where the money and power behind this policy position are coming from. Because I can't see anything else which would make a mainstream political party just ignore both science and fairness in this way. And that, to me, seems wholly undemocratic. Especially since there is no other party on the political left which has taken the opposite approach.

I think it is as simple as they believe in gender ideology or at least the party main backers do.

The left is sold on 'identity' in the western world. Even with the harms that can be seen in Canada and the USA, Trudeau and Biden STILL talk about harms to trans people without recognising the women and children who fall as collateral damage.

Unfortunately the LP aligns itself with these politics.

So that is why they are doing it, because they believe that men who say they are women are women and they don't care what harms that causes others.

But even if they believe it, believing it so hard when they KNOW that the electorate doesn't believe it, and being willing to throw half the electorate under the bus for the sake of it, is deeply odd.

We need a political system which would allow a new party to come along and win, like Macron's party did in France in 2017, so that long established parties such as Labour can be wiped out by the electorate if they become taken over by lunatics.

Can anyone from Labour Women's Declaration enlighten us?

Do Labour think that, come the real, intense pre election campaigning, this will not be something thrown at them at every single opportunity? I just see it increasing with the Tories’ desperation for votes and interviews with Labour candidates are going to be excruciating.

We need a political system which would allow a new party to come along and win, like Macron's party did in France in 2017, so that long established parties such as Labour can be wiped out by the electorate if they become taken over by lunatics.

Agree electoral reform is desperately required.

I live in an area where my vote is literally worthless because of the FPTP system.

It'll be this. Over and fucking over.

Again I think that, for whatever reason, they just don't care.

It's been made clear in the past that they don't want members who don't believe in gender ideology.

I genuinely believe that they would lose the election over it.

Perhaps that's what they want.

I live in an area where the Green Party are in power because of our PR system.

Yes there are definitely pros and cons to both.

I'd settle for a system where both nutters and sensible people are represented proportionately to their respective populations.

You've all got the wrong end of the stick!

I think "they" have a deep, fervent and unshakeable belief.

This belief is that they are Good People who are on The Right Side of History, and Good People all share a Bundle of Good Things.

The Things are Good because they're of the Good People, and the Good People are Good because they have the Things. It's a neat circle.

The next step is: Everything that Good People do, and any means they utilise to achieve those Things, by definition is Good and Right and Must Be Done to bring about The Right Side of History.

The actual Things are barely relevant, being merely props to signal their Good Righteousness, and thus do not warrant any actual examination or analysis.

(All that was needed was for some canny folx to sneak, um, PIEs and stuff into the Bundle).

How the fuck do they think that calling female rape survivors bigots for wanting single sex rape crisis support makes them the good guys?

Are they on glue?