This was the year women fought back and won

[Igneococcus]

Janice Turner in the Times
"This year has been one of remarkable victories for women. Or let’s be clear-eyed: feminists managed to stop decades-old rights and safeguards from being stolen without their consent. So much frantic paddling just to keep still. "
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/4df3b3eb-27c5-4f22-95f0-36f1d505c877?shareToken=a9fdeb3c0e2acf0489960da8cf596c32

All these disparate fights have another consequence: creating a new cadre of battle-hardened feminists who’ve relished solidarity often across Labour-Tory — or, in Scotland, nationalist-unionist — divides. Women who’d zoned out of feminism were abruptly woken by threats to single-sex refuges or the insult of being called a “cervix-haver”.

and

Grassroots feminist activism is at its highest point since the 1980s. The giantess had fallen into a giant slumber — but she’s certainly awake now.

I think will ring bells with the majority on MN. Onwards and upwards

I got quite emotional reading that and also furious. So much effort, energy and money just to hang on to what we already had

A new feminism is in the ascendant which believes in material change rather than postmodern individualism, seeks to improve the female condition rather than identify out of it.

and yes this!!!

[Labour] MPs like Tonia Antoniazzi, Shabana Mahmood and Diana Johnson told Sir Keir Starmer that unless Labour dropped self-ID, every election interviewer would ask him what percentage of women have a penis.

We still will, Keir; we still will.

When she mentions the sleeping giantess having been awoken, I did think, thanks you blue haired lunatics. We're back and it's all your doing.

Yes but...

"But the most important victory was the support of the shadow education minister, Bridget Phillipson, for the school guidance. Without Labour’s shift to a sane position on gender, all other gains could be swept away at next year’s election."

All that's happened is that Phillipson has said it's good there's a consultation, right?

And Labour has not abandoned self-ID.

Nor did Kemi or Keegan fact need their support on the guidance - which is what this implies reading on from the preceding paragraph.

The paper of record is painting a picture here.

I'm afraid I think Janice is painting a cheering but rose tinted picture.

For all the wonderful heroics of grassroots feminists, it sounds very much as if self-ID in Scotland was derailed largely thanks to the persistence of a Tory minister who doesn't have support across her own party and who quite likely won't be in post next year.

And even a force of nature like Kemi Badenoch might not have got anywhere without That Isla Bryson photo.

JT very much wants to endorse Labour with a clear conscience I think, and is prepared to paint her glasses pink to do so.
She is a great writer, but she was very mean-spirited re Glinner, I thought.

I felt a rather emotional reading that because we have come so far, and Janice’s articles have played no small part in that.

I haven’t seen anything in the press about Labours response to the new school guidance, I really wanted them to come out and fully support it. I’d be interested to see what Bridget Philipson has actually said.

I'm afraid I agree with @Floisme.

People wanting to push through self-ID just need to bide their time for another year and all the progress that's been made can be swept away by the new Labour government. It's depressing. The tide has not turned. Every time we make a small step forward, the trans juggernaut retreats, regroups and comes back louder and stronger. Many stupid people are highly invested (just look at the last 48 hours), won't engage in meaningful debate or l I sten to women's views and once they're in power I fear they'll push this through. That's what's happened in Germany. Last hope is the Constitutional Court, but I'm not holding my breath.

It's just all so exhausting and disheartening.

This is why mn is so essential.
I enjoyed the article, but was surprised to read how Labour had changed their stance, and been useful. But thought 'oh well, you learn something every day'
It's reassuring to know I was right, and they haven't changed.
Thank you all.

I think we’ve done really well, and I’m particularly grateful to women who stand up and take the heat

It still feels a bit shaky, especially with a GE looming

I’d love to keep going forward and will keep pushing

I think this is possible, ‘take the public with you’ etc

Depressing but we’ll keep going, changes to free speech around misgendering concern me as then we don’t even have challenge

It’s interesting to see NZ change after new gov when it was so captured, I dread the opposite here

To be clear, I don't just fear a Labour government - whoever wins, I think we'll be on our own.

I also believe that, wherever our party allegiances lie, we owe a huge debt to Kemi Badenoch, but I don't expect she'll be around to bat for us much longer. I don't move in Conservative party circles but we know she faces opposition within her own party and I also imagine that she's a divisive figure who has quite likely made some enemies. Even in the highly unlikely event of the government surviving I would expect her to be moved.

Really? I’m not seeing that

Kemi is doing well I think she’d continue

No basis for this but my feeling is that if Kemi did not have support, she would have been moved on some time ago. That others are not vocal might be for a number of reasons, perhaps including that it would "prove" the absurd and immature charge that she's weaponising the issue or some such.

Other Tory MPs who have been quiet, definitely signalled support for Kemi after the WESC if you look at their likes and retweets. Of course that then had a basis in proper procedure as the matter was being discussed in a Parliamentary setting, and makes the charge of "blah blah culture war epidemic you're just mean" much harder to stick.

I also think some credit has to be given to Keegan on the schools guidance here. She has either moved her position or she's been persuaded to for some reason. If she was in the Nokes mindset, you'd expect a resignation. Or she could have dithered and delayed, and dragged it out. So too, could Sunak.

Janice (and The Times as a paper) has gone increasingly soft on whole issue. That's a giant 🚩 we should be taking note of.

I'm simply talking about my own personal impressions of KB - I have no deeper knowledge. But we know she's had to fight for this - Keegan, Nokes and, by the sound of it Truss to name just a few within her own party. She clearly doesn't suffer fools gladly and I can well imagine her having pissed off some other colleagues and civil servants immensely. Plus I assume she's ambitious and so sooner or later, she'll inevitably want a more powerful post.

Janice Turner was in this fight long before I'd even heard about it. She's taken shit loads of abuse and I don't blame her in the slightest if she wants to step back, but yeah, the more I read this article, the more salt I need to take with it.

Oh, brava!

I feel much more upbeat after reading thar article. Thank you Janice.

Clearly we're not out of the woods yet and there is still a long way to go, but it's good to read something that isn't all doom and gloom.

I've decided in the last 24 hours that I really cannot vote Labour under any circumstances, regardless of what they do between now and the election.

Dawn Butler has sealed it for me.

Unless there's an independent candidate in my constituency I will have to vote Tory (which I've never done before) or spoil my ballot.

Thank you for share token.

Brilliant article from Janice.

I am a bit more optimistic than others here. True, we've won some battles but we've got a long way to go to win the war. And those wins could be reversed when Labour comes into power.

But although I think Starmer doesn't have many principles, and will change his policies once a day if it suits him, he is smart enough to work out that you don't want to piss off the electorate. And he knows from what happened in Scotland that self-ID policies are deeply unpopular with the electorate. Not only that, his own party is split so if he tries to push such a policy through parliament, it will expose some pretty nasty divisions in the parliamentary party. And what prime minister wants that?

So if he's got any sense at all - and I think he has - he will drop self-ID like a hot brick.

And the line was held by mostly ordinary women, finding time in between everything else they were doing, screamed at and threatened with violence and called appalling names, (here, daily), with eventually the aid of pitifully few people in positions of public responsibility who again in many cases have shown a great deal of nerve, resilience and capacity for independent thought unafraid of not being 'in' with the 'in crowd' and to be unpopular.

Isn't it staggering that a movement that spends so much time screaming about kindness, inclusion and not being afraid to be different is in actual fact the most rabidly unkind, exclusionary, viciously prejudiced and conformist movement we've seen in 50 years? The message so often boils down to 'get in the box and be like me or you're scum and I'll hit you'.

This gave me goosebumps by the end! Janice is wonderful.

I am however quite enjoying that even the Labour faithful have a grim distrust and dislike of Labour's current incarnation and leaders. Their loyalty is now grudging, reluctant, cynical and increasingly frayed.

If KJK stands against Starmer in his constituency, we'll need a lot of popcorn for the entertainment!

I think Janice Turner used the word feminist often when she should have used the word women. Women are fighting for women's rights. Some one will read that think 'oh those uppity feminists' like it's a wacky niche thing, and feminists are merely a subset of women. Every woman is affected by this.