Gender Criticals - how are you going to vote in the election?

[ProfessorFlitwick]

My political views are centre-left. I am genuinely unsure how to vote in the next election because I am absolutely not voting for any party that supports harmful woke ideology. I am curious to hear how other GCs are thinking of voting next year?

I think suffragette colours would have more impact. A big purple and green stroke would be picked up by the cameras at the count.

And also considering that the parties you would think might be addressing these life and death issues such as climate change, the Green Party being one very obvious example, have seemingly so little interest in doing so and have become entirely ensumed with gender identity ideology?

The Scottish Green Party in particular. Despite the certain amount of sway to positively influence environmental policies they have due to the Bute House deal, seem to have gone out their way to completely fuck up any kind of environmental policies and have actually turned people off voting for them because they simply can't be trusted to do the little they've been given to do well.

Reform UK will be standing in lots of constituencies this GE. They're pretty straightforward on this issue.

Reform UK will be standing in lots of constituencies this GE. They're pretty straightforward on this issue.

Yeah, but they are cunts, no?

So are the Tories. At least Reform will actually sort it out.

Labour’s anti women stance too. See Rosie Duffield for how not to treat GC

Am reporting your edit, @TooBigForMyBoots . You added your second sentence after I had replied 'agreed'

I have an acquaintance who would normally vote Labour but is doing all the research and prep required to stand as a Women's Vote independent. She and I have been regulars at our Labour MP's surgery, talking to him about GI and trans issues, for years and he's basically told us not to come back with women's rights/ trans stuff because he's not going to change his beliefs and he won't represent us. My contact is retired and wants the opportunity to stand up at hustings and explain why she's standing as she stands next to him. I also know a couple of women who are getting very active within the Labour Party and setting up Women's branches, and they haven't had to raise the trans issue — the women have turned up in decent numbers, bristling about Labour's ambivalent stance. I'd hope that in the run-up to the election Starmer might make a clear policy statement confirming that Labour no longer thinks TWAW and confirming that woman = adult human female. But of course they can go back on that. My acquaintance doesn't expect to win the election, but Labour has quite a small majority and she would like to turn it into a close-run thing. Whether, when it comes to finding the money and the courage to take the shit, which she'll undoubtedly be on the receiving end of, I don't know, but I admire her.

Sorry about that. By the time my edit posted there were 2 more posts. So yeah, I'm happy to have it deleted and repost.

Thanks, @TooBigForMyBoots.

I'm voting Labour.

I've voted SNP for over 10 years but just can't hold my nose and do it again though I do support independence.

But the SNP stance on gender is horrific and though labour aren't great, at least a labour mp round here keeps the tories out, which is seriously important to me!

To me its life or death.
If women are not recognised, they have no spaces. No spaces means urinary leash. And that will be the end of us being in public. May as well *die free than live such a limited life. Great for those brought up with this, not so great for those of us who have gone where and when we wanted.

• yes hyperbole.

It comes down basically to whether you're prepared to live in a two tier society, where privileged women who can revolve around male egos and provide themselves for male use without encountering any personal issues can have full access to society and resources,

And where women who are not so privileged are a subclass who pay the same taxes, but have no access, no services, no resources, no public life.

On a sexed basis, privileging those women who are useful to men. All based on a selective reality, by those who will look you in the face and deny any problems exist, not even able to acknowledge 'seeing' them, never mind being able to deal with them. And happy to see some harmed in ways we haven't seen in decades, in the name of privileging others.

If you think that's going to end anywhere good for anyone - or is even basically morally ok - a) ffs, and b) please go and read a bit about early 1930s Germany.

Oh and you're up for a society where we sterilise and permanently harm our children. All dressed up in very nice language of course, and we're mostly sterilising ones who are gay, challenged with Autism, mental health needs, trauma....

Where is the money going to come from for these kids as adults when they can't work for a living because of their health issues, because it's hell on toast trying to get enough income if you're too disabled to work? Where's the mental health support going to be to get them through 50 years of pain and distress and endless medical complications? We can't even afford to care properly for our elderly in this country, there isn't going to be a magic money tree to pick up the pieces for them in a decade or so.

Exactly this.

If the Green party shut up about trans people for five minutes and actually did something meaningful about climate change then I might consider voting for them.

But if the bloody Greens care more about trans women than they do about the ice caps, don't bloody lecture women for caring more about their own rights than they do about the ice caps.

I'm not going to lie.

What a party proposes to do to support young people struggling with gender dysphoria is very much a secondary consideration for me. I'm far more interested in what they propose to do to protect women and girls and their right to single sex spaces and services, because that is a far bigger group.

The two things are interrelated though. Part of protecting women and girls needs to involve clamping down on the absolute nonsense being taught in schools and promoted by organisations we are supposed to trust, such as the NHS, about gender identity.

I think that if teachers were instructed to explain gender identity as a belief system, rather than something that everyone has, that would go a long way towards helping young people who believe they are struggling with gender dysphoria. A little tough love, so to speak.

"Hey kids, some people believe they have a gender identity. Not everyone does. There's no particular gender identity that matches any type of genitalia. If you feel uncomfortable with your developing body, it doesn't mean you're trans. It's actually a very normal part of being a teenager and your feelings will almost certainly resolve themselves with time. A large number of perfectly normal, happy adults felt this way when they were your age too. Now I suggest you don't give this too much thought and go and focus on your homework or your hobbies instead. If you don't have any hobbies, it's time to get one. No, the LGBTQ+ club doesn't count."

I'm not unsympathetic to young people struggling with gender dysphoria but they are tilting at windmills. Nobody has a gender identity which matches their genitals. You are not abnormal if you don't feel you conform to a set of narrow stereotypes. Gender dysphoria is a mental health issue, like all other types of dysphoria.

And I don't care more about young people with gender dysphoria than I do about young people struggling with other things, such as homelessness, sexual abuse, learning difficulties, eating disorders, addictions or neurodiverse conditions. Many of which, incidentally, are comorbid with gender dysphoria. The elephant in the room which groups such as Stonewall - who are supposedly advocating for these people's benefit - refuse to discuss.

It's not as important as life and death issues, like climate change.

All of the social, political and economic changes that we need to generate require a capacity to collect and analyse information. Very many of them require a capacity to collect and analyse demographic information about human beings.

A party that puts gender ideology on such a pedestal that it is prepared to gloss over the data errors generated by such nonsense concepts as 'gender assigned at birth' or the elision of 'gender identity' and sex lacks committment to evidence-based policy.

The catastrophic effect that will have in relation to a wide range of social issues is already evident. It isn't a 'single issue'. It is all issues insofar as they require any differentiated analysis of their impact on the 50% of the population that is female.

No doubt the reduced credibility of data will also have an impact on other issues too - it is part of the post-truth collapse of respect for expertise in policy making. Instead, we respect identities and tribes: The distortions created by gender identitiy are no more progressive and respectable than those created during the Brexit debate, which Gove articulated when he prioritised a fantasy version of 'Britishness' and 'ordinary' (non-elite) people over the experts he said the country was sick of.

EDIT: Just want to add that climate change is precisely the area that is most gamed and undermined by this trashing of expertise and lack of respect for, or understnding of , accurate data.

I really think we are pretty much singing from the same hymn sheet and I agree with pretty much everything you say.

Honestly though, I still think that Labour will handle it better than the Tories, because I think the answer as you say is better support for all young people. I really don't get the impression that the Tories give a flying f* about that, nor do they understand any of those issues you list. I don't think that trying to 'clamp down' on anything actually helps people, especially when it comes to belief systems - I think it just increases resistance. I think we need better investment in public services across the board.

Honestly though, I still think that Labour will handle it better than the Tories, because I think the answer as you say is better support for all young people.

Where do children get the better support?

Its not the NHS its already let these children down, and shows no signs of change. Some in the Conservative party did see the problem, but the clinics there to help children have doubled down.

We need a government that is willing to question gender ideology, not pretend more clinics and more affirming therapy is needed.

If labour are that party, why have they deselected Rosie Duffield?

Labour is clear that it isn't going to do anything whatsoever to support the young people who are female and going to grow up into women. Particularly the sporty ones, the homosexual ones, the disabled ones, the ones from minority faiths and cultures, the ones with trauma and PTSD and a history of CSA/DV/DA. All of them will be expected by Labour to learn to subordinate themselves to those who are male and command that they do, while they must pretend that sex isn't a thing and the determinator of who commands and who obeys.

Isn't this also the question with climate change and other issues though? Nine times out of ten the proposals around this are just garbage window dressing. Switching to electric vehicles etc.

I'm ex Labour member (left many years ago) but still often get emails as I'm fully paid up. Got an email about the local party has a women's group and a woman's officer. No mention of identifying or trans or non binary or other shite. Which piqued my curiosity. Tempted to find out their views and whether it truly is a women's group. But cba to go along as don't fancy getting strong armed into helping out.

Anyway, I still found it interesting. Took some hope but that maybe my desperation.

*as if I'm fully paid up that should say 🙄

Hoping Alba will be fielding candidates for my constituency.

Pro-indy, GC.

SNP's monumentally fucked it.

Would never vote Labour or Tory in a million years.

The last election here, I spoiled my ballot rather substantially.