Starmer furious that Sunak should mention his definition of ‘woman’

[HagoftheNorth]

PMQ’s today, Sunak highlighted Starmer’s famous comments that some women have a penis. Starmer was furious that Sunak should make that comment while Mrs Ghey was in the chamber. Surely Starmer should realise that it is possible to be respectful and compassionate about trans people without parroting the insane lie that transwomen are women (because ‘woman’ is sex not gender)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-68229785

But everytime a male says he's a woman, he's not being polite to women..When Starmer says women can have penises, he's not being polite to women. He's excluding me from the category of woman by deciding that the concept is not about biology. absolute disgusting behaviour and far from polite. The direction the politeness is supposed to flow is very telling.

Are you also planning to go round telling anorexic children some home truths about their illness and appearance too, or is it only when it comes to gender issues you think commenting is appropriate?

What about random teenagers in the street - do you generally comment on their appearance and how they present themselves?

JFC. Telling teenagers they aren't allowed to do something has been proven to be a very bad strategy in stopping them doing it.

We treat anorexia very differently to genderism. We don’t falsify and override biology.

I would be happy to see similar approach to genderism ie remove the GRA and treat medically

Absolutely what should happen yes.

JFC back at you for a very poor argument

I respect that as an opinion. I disagree yesterday was an appropriate time for Sunak to bring it up. He could have made the U turn point totally effectively without bringing womanhood into it. It was inflammatory to do it when he knew who was expected to be present.

Yes, I agree.

Adam: I’d be prepared to say that eating disorders are real and need to be taken seriously in front of (or even directly to) an anorexic. That’s the equivalent - it was Starmer who chose to make it personal (which I definitely wouldn’t)

Brianna wasn't attending school properly due to anxiety, was "obsessed" with the phone, was accessing pro-anorexia and self harm content, was trans identified, basically was suffering from every Gen-Z internet-led social contagion you can think of. The brutality of the murder shouldn't blind us to the fact that this was a very disturbed child with multiple mental health issues as a result of obsession with the internet.

I think Ghey's mother could be a force for good for lobbying for vulnerable children if she is allowed to without being used as political tool for removal of women's rights.

Adults who push genderism onto children are culpable in this lack of safe guarding

I hope they look back at some point and realise the part they played

The mainstay of treating children with anorexia is telling them home truths such as starvation and not eating is not an option. You can’t tiptoe around anorexics, they have be treated with direct facts.

Medics and parents do. Members of the public (I hope!) would think it was not their business to get involved in speculating about how specific individual children's illnesses were being treated.

It does disappoint me to see political commentators who can't grasp that Starmer is the one who was exploiting the tragedy, not Sunak.

What disappoints you is that other people (the majority) interpreted the event differently to you. Nobody’s said that Sunak exploited a tragedy, what they have said is pretty well summed up by The Economist.

As I say, the most generous interpretation you could give to Sunak is that he is a useless politician, overpromoted well beyond his grade, lacking the most basic of surefootedness, boasting all the social skills of a Saturday worker at CeX and destined to crash and burn at an epic level the first time he makes contact with the actual general public in an election campaign.

Because the alternative – that our prime minister isn’t just incompetent, but an inhuman, hateful, unprincipled man willing to delve into the basest depths of the culture wars, mocking trans people as a grieving mother sits metres from him, is too horrific to contemplate.

We don’t create new laws falsifying biological truths to try to deal with EDs

We treat

People have lost their minds on this. Get it together and safeguard better

OK. I'll make a point of telling a random thin stranger that next time I see them shall I.

Or even better, tell a parent who's lost their child to anorexia that they just shouldn't have allowed it. Safeguarding and all.

@IClaudine and you know what Starmer and Sunak knew how? You cant be both of them.

Starmer laid a trap - he thought she was going to be there but she wasnt. He exploited a child's death to hide his own failure. Gutter politics and he should apologise for that.

One of my best friends teenage daughter's is struggling with anorexia at the moment, her mother has not been encouraged by medics (or anyone else for that matter) to tell her daughter she doesn't need to eat or that she shouldn't eat because she might get fat. Quite the opposite.

I can't quite believe you have used such a poor argument.

Yes, because of course that’s the leap you took from my post 🙄.

Same. It’s on the floor.

Really poor argument.

Anorexia is basically the worst example you could use. No medical professional in the world advocates for an affirmative approach to anorexia in the same way they do for "gender" even though the two are so clearly linked, in girls particularly, as hatred of their bodies.

Can you say a bit more? What I saw was Sunak making a jibe about how starmer can't define a woman, which seems quite far from a conversation about how "womanhood is real and needs to be taken seriously"
And what I saw was starmer pointing out what he'd just done.
Was Starmer meant to ignore the blatant disrespect to his guest? I wouldn't.

It really is. If there was ever a model to oppose genderism and affirmation and new laws to falsify

And harm dc in the process it’s this

I guess the outrage loop got short circuited on that one

When this storm dies down, nothing will have changed.

TW still are not women.

Starmer will have to deal with this properly at some point.

We treat anorexia very differently to genderism.

Exactly. If someone presents with an eating disorder, no-one says "Well of course you're as fat as you think you are. Here, have some diet pills to validate that view and we'll help you put together an extreme diet to try and make you look the way you think you should".

And yet with gender issues, there is a cohort of clinicians and therapists who believe affirmation is the only option, in a way that simply would not be considered in any other setting.

Of course the individual conversations of "No, you're not fat/trans/whatever" shouldn't be held by strangers in the street and it's incredibly disingenuous to say that they should, or that this is what anyone here is proposing. But there also needs to be a general societal shift away from referring to "trans children". After all, society as a whole does not advocate that eating disorders are normalised.

I'm using it as an example of the appropriateness of random members of the public spouting a black and white opinion about a situation they have absolutely no knowledge of. Its extreme, to make my point. Which is family and parents can have an opinion but others should keep their beak out of other families business.

I find the way Brianna Ghey is being discussed (by trans supporters and detractors) dehumanising and disrespectful in the extreme. And how dare people assume they know better than parents and "children shouldn't be allowed to be trans"? Briannas mum seems like she was doing the best for a child with extremely complex needs. As most parents are. We need to support them by allowing some "grey" into the debate.

Thing is as long as Sunak’s PM it won’t die down. He’ll never be able to mention the issue again without it being thrown in his face.

Not necessarily, much as some hope.

And actually, many people will be happy to see he isn’t backing down on the issue (not regarding Brianna personally).