Wales - Threat of Self ID for politicians being snuck in by the back door

[fromorbit]

Leak reveals an attempt to allow political men to self identify as women

Row looms as Welsh Government plans to allow self-identifying transwomen to stand in Senedd elections as females
https://nation.cymru/news/row-looms-as-welsh-government-plans-to-allow-self-identifying-transwomen-to-stand-in-senedd-elections-as-females/

Congrats to Women's Rights Network Wales for spilling the beans.

It was an early draft apparently so possibly a basic look by a lawyer might have got it changed in later ones. In a way I hope they press on with it as the row will be glorious.

This policy seems odd do we need self ID after all we all know Wales is the most Trans friendly place in the UK for politicians.. We know Welsh Trans politicians can be elected here. We are the only the country to ever have a Trans MP - Jamie Wallis, the Tory MP for Bridgend of car crash in dress and pearls fame. Although obviously he was in the closet when elected it amazing to see his confidence and it is great to see transness at a high level. Though it seems he is planning to move to England.
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/politics/bridgend-conservative-mp-jamie-wallis-27959338

Perhaps Jamie would like to stand for the Senedd.

Just a reminder - this is LABOUR introducing this.

We don't care about anyone's gender we care about their SEX and transwomen are male and such are already over represented

You mean sex. As has already been evident in Scotland, it'll negatively impact women. The real kind.

Quite. Gender is irrelevant and nobody should pay any mind to what gender someone declares themselves to be.

Or sex, unless it's actually relevant. Which it isn't in the case of becoming elected as a politician. That's my point.

If women weren’t discriminated against by the process due their sex then I would agree. I do not agree with all women selection lists. But I do think we need to look at the process of selection and what the barriers are that are stopping women getting selected, then consider how to overcome those barriers. I suspect it would come down to actually listening to women at grassroots level - which we know doesn’t happen.

Sex is a massive barrier to public office. Just look at the emergency legislation that had to be put in place to allow a minister to have maternity leave. Look at the attacks that are disproportionately aimed at female MPs, MSPs and Welsh senedd members.
The aim is for parity between the SEXs not genders otherwise we get 50% men who id as men and 50% men who id as women that's not parity nor is the proposed bill legal if it uses gender which is not a protected characteristic it has to be by SEX. Transwomen are legally male unless they have a grc therefore they can't be included with women in this bill. Scotland tried this and lost so will Wales if they do this.

Anyway, like self-ID constantly interrupting our lives and wasting our energy, let's not have the usual suspects on this thread. I assume the S&B one was actually deleted, hence barging in here.

As annoying as fuck as it is, now we do have to start dealing with Wales doing a Scotland. When we could be spending our time on things that help women and girls. We have to spend time ensuring the very foundations of our rights are not destroyed.

@ResisterRex the s&b one was deleted, a shame really as it was good debate and useful to see both sides of where people stand.

I totally agree with your great summary of the dangerous implications of Labour/Plaid plan though. Obviously it will be a disaster for free thinking and minor parties Greens, Lib Dems, UKIP etc and is aimed to ensure ideological conformity in the Senedd with Labour, Plaid domination and Conservatives as weak opposition locked in.

Commentators have talked about this for a while, the Welsh Lib Dems called it out back in 2022:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-61406888

Yet the general public are completely unaware.

Yes the bill is is running into big issues due to sexism in Welsh politics it is very apparent I agree especially in Labour. Weird how the Tories can get a bunch of women in the Senedd yet somehow the Labour party struggles to do the same consistently after a good start. Huge battles ahead in Wales for sure.

The story is spreading. Daily Mail coverage here:
https://archive.ph/WMzNN

The most useful article to share might be the one surprisingly from Pink News as it makes it very clear how this is all about strengthening Men's rights. The misogyny is strong in this one.

Wales government to redefine women to include trans women in landmark gender laws
{[archive link]
https://archive.ph/iXqDC
Wales’s government has outlined plans to redefine the woman so that trans women are included.

A draft of the Welsh government’s Gender Quotas Bill, which was leaked on Sunday night (29 October) and seen by The Telegraph, proposes plans for a gender-balanced Senedd by having set equal quotas for male and female political candidates.
Under this draft bill, the definition of a woman will be updated, so that the female quota of candidates may include trans women.

Wales is in a really bad state with gender ideology being embedded in government, health and education there was a great survey of the problem and where we are recently from Genspect:
https://genspect.org/wales-watching/

Hoping this row will spread more light.

“Wales is in a really bad state with gender ideology being embedded in government, health and education”

It seems so. It’s scandalous.

because Welsh Labour want to change to a party list system instead of a constituency candidate system in the next Senedd elections

As soon as DH and I heard that we had massive concerns - not least this would increase group think which I think they've already suffered from.

“Wales is in a really bad state with gender ideology being embedded in government, health and education”

Absolutely.

Also in the Times:

It was an early draft apparently so possibly a basic look by a lawyer might have got it changed in later ones. In a way I hope they press on with it as the row will be glorious.

Welsh Government Draft Bills are drafted by in-house lawyers. The leaked one is supposedly a second draft, so anything they really didn't want or unlawful should have been filtered out unless the Ministers or rogue activist officials are adamant they want it there. You can see where they've attempted to lift things from other legislation, but overall it's scarily bad - as in crap legally and potentially damaging to women's rights in Wales. It's trying to square the circle between the Equality Act criteria for having the protected characteristic of gender reassignment and being the opposite sex. It's discriminating against actual women and benefiting any man who states he's a woman. A very cack-handed but blatant attempt to get TWAW onto the statute book in Wales. They're an utter disgrace.

KJK on GB news she is not happy:
‘All bets are off!’ FURY as Welsh government to redefine women to include transgender females - ‘CRAZY’
https://www.gbnews.com/news/welsh-government-slammed-for-redefining-women-transgender-kellie-jay-keen

Merched Cymru on Twitter

This story is concerning not only for women's rights in Wales, but for democracy.
WelshGovernment is not denying that the leaked draft Bill is genuine, only that it is not the latest version.

They claim that they aim to ensure equal representation for women in the Senedd, yet seek to include males in that definition. This is a retrograde move given the Senedd's fairly positive record on female representation to date.

Putting the focus on quotas does nothing to address the many structural and practical barriers to women's participation in public and political life.

If declaring you are a woman is all it takes the Senedd may hit a numerical target without any benefit to equality or fair representation.

Including a prohibition on any enquiry by a Returning Officer into the validity ..
of a candidate's declaration that they are a woman is totalitarian and chilling.

It also makes it transparent that this Bill is seen by Ministers and some activist officials as primarily a vehicle for getting 'transwomen are women' into Welsh law.

Underhand & anti-women.

Attitude Magazine like Pink News is all for it:
https://www.attitude.co.uk/news/wales-change-definition-women-trans-government-451207/

I wonder how Welsh Labour are going to spin this. Clearly it is going to be a major ongoing story. If they back off they will be accused of Transphobia, double down and it will be a Tory focus. Laura Jones MS clearly will be raising this already tweeted a few times .

Laura Anne Jones MS@LauraJ4SWEast
·
Labour’s gender quotas are insulting to women.

Once again Labour refuse to accept biological reality and cannot tell us what a woman is.

Labour and Plaid’s Senedd expansion plans are getting more and more farcical with each detail that is released.

It's always a surprise to see such ignorance about women's rights on a feminist board.
I suppose we should just revert to the old Victorian times where women were expected (along with children) to be seen but not heard. No vote, the possessions of men (their fathers then husbands), no independence, the urinary leash kept them as home as there were no toilets in the public sphere for them, certainly no politicians and on and on.

Fancy seeing such a Victorian approach to women on here. 🤔

@Draigosaurus Thanks for that summary - I hadn't understood the wider implications of the party lists. Yes this seems profoundly antidemocratic.

And until now I'd been generally a bit 'meh' about the shortlists issue because I don't think they're the right solution to the problem of underrepresentation. I'd been confused about the Welsh Government's promise in the LGBTQ+ Action Plan to bring in self ID when it doesn't have the power to do so. But now I can see that the plan is simply to legislate self ID into place in practice, area by area.

Once it's the law in this case that a woman is anyone who says they are (and there's also a law to say you're not even allowed to question it!) then it rolls out from there. Presumably the next step will be the schools trans inclusion guidance, where schools will no doubt be told that if a child says they're trans, they should be ushered into the opposite sex toilets, changing rooms and sleeping accommodation on trips. And you coach these children in school that this is what they can expect, and coach all the others that they have to put up or shut up.

We really are up the creek in Wales. No competent opposition and a nonexistent/supine media.

I'll write to my MS (for what it's worth) and I think my message will be that this legislation should be ditched altogether rather than legislate the concept of woman out of existence. If they're sincere about wanting to improve the representation of women in public life, how about doing something about the actual barriers - like the challenges of balancing work with pregnancy, maternity and caring responsibilities and the horrendous way that women are treated when they take a position.

The Times are reporting on this. The comments are robust to say the least - and critical of Drayford & the government. Share token:

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/7365bde6-7725-11ee-8195-f4db79f3b3e3?shareToken=f8f087fd6e978c4136426c70e1fad38c

I know first past the post is a dodgy electoral system but lots of aspects of proportional representation seem to take decisions away from the electorate.

With my electoral system geek hat on, I'm going to point out that this isn't an inherent flaw of PR systems. Closed-list systems are basically the worst option, which nobody involved in electoral reform would recommend. There are many alternatives.

It's just that the closed list is the only feature of PR systems that appeals to those with the power to effect change, so such dodgy systems are the only ones likely to get implemented, as happened with Scotland.

Around the same time as the Scottish mess, Jenkins commission proposed a non-closed-list system for Westminster - unsurprisingly the proposal was ignored. Also the EU required the UK to bring in a proportional system for the EU Parliament, and obviously the government went for the closed list again.

This is a great comment:

"They don't do sensible in Wales. The transgenger bloke will take longer to transition on account of having to travel at 20mph to the hospital."

Well, there were some that said that a particularly dreadful PR system was deliberately chosen for Scotland in order to make it fail.

No idea how true that is.

@Draigosaurus

The only reason this is needed is fromorbitis firstly: because Welsh Labour want to change to a party list system instead of a constituency candidate system in the next Senedd elections, to ensure that it’s political parties which control who gets elected rather than constituents controlling that, and to ensure that any list member who defects to another party mid term (like Ash Regan has just done in Scotland) gets booted out of the Senedd and replaced by whoever’s next on that party’s list without triggering a by-election, and without the party they’ve defected to benefiting from their defection (like Alba has just done). In other words Welsh Labour, in collaboration with Plaid Cymru, want to make sure that all candidates’ first and only loyalty is to the party which puts their name on the list, not to constituents/ voters. I haven’t seen any of the opposition parties point out how anti democratic that is. Presumably because they are quite keen on political parties having that control too.

Totally with you and the other vipers on the SelfID aspect. But as a mumsnetter living in a country ruled by proportional representation just wanted to point out this would be very unusual for a PR system. The usual norm for elected members in a PR system, even if they got in on a party list, is to be accountable to voters and their own conscience, not - for instance - to party whips. They could if they wanted (and didn't care about party standing, committee assignments etc) vote freely for policies completely opposed to core party policies. They also normally retain their seats if they resign/are excluded from the party. This is about to happen on a grand scale to the German Left Party which is about to see a quarter of its MRS - all elected through the party list - break away and as a result will go below the numerical threshold required for parliamentary privileges as an official party "fraktion". Also happens continuously, at least with individual MEPs, in the European Parliament.

I can't look at Dickford without wanting to smash something.

Not necessarily, it would make it impossible to know if women were under-represented if we don't know how to define women.

And then there are a number of areas where that kind of approach isn't applicable. I'm not a fan of sex based shortlists in politics, but there are other areas where sex is important.