Sunak in PMQs - thread 2

[AdamRyan]

Ongoing discussion about whether Sunak cocked up in PMQs by raising "what women are" when Esthey Ghey was present, whether Starmer cocked up by raising Esther in response to Sunak, whether Sunak had planned the line knowing EG would be there or whether Starmer set a trap he unwittingly fell into.

Many segues into gender politics and left right debates.

All views welcome.
Thread 1:
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womensrights/5002735-starmer-furious-that-sunak-should-mention-his-definition-of-woman

I think you have to be a certain kind of well-heeled, time-rich person, to care this much about the trans debate, the rest of us really have other more pressing issues to contend with.

I care deeply about the Trans debate because it is having a serious impact on women and children. I also have a daughter with blood cancer and brain and heart issues, a parent with dementia, a parent with various ailments including cancer, a step parent who recently came out if a 3 month coma due to a serious health issue and a partner with mobility problems.. I work full time and trying to split my time to support them all has been bloody horrendous so no, I'm not time rich.

I grew up on a council estate in the east end of London and know many people that have been to prison including a late sibling. So, I don't fall under the well heeled part either. No one I know buys in to the gender bollocks.

But all those things are happening under a Tory administration. Why does Sunak not do something instead of making stupid quips? Is it because these issues aren't actually high on his agenda?

@DialSquare I sometimes wonder what planet people who think that women's rights is a luxury middle class belief live on?

No one really thinks women can have penises. It's not a class issue.

Exactly. It's very simple. If woman can mean men and women then, as we have been saying on this board for years, there will no longer be any women's rights

It really pisses me off when posters come on here telling us what we should and shouldn't care about.

Honestly I don't get your anger about 'gender bollocks'. I get the anger about waiting on NHS waiting lists (especially for families like yours with huge health issues) , about crap housing, crap wages etc, but just can't get the anger over this. Why does it really affect you? Is it because you think it's stupid and you are being lied too and that the reality is there are two sexes? Well mostly that is true but nature creates hermaphrodites, it's ok for nature, why not for us? I wish working class people would get more angry about the state of this country, once upon a time working class people marched for jobs, for union representation, for an NHS, now they just seem to care about whether Harry and Meghan get on with Charles or whether someone is a boy or a girl. I was born in the early 1960s and have watched one thing after another disappear. Most of the council housing I grew up is gone and is now in private hands, the NHS increasingly becoming privatised, the free university places gone, the affordability of buying a house for most people - gone, it's shit for young people now! As for the climate debate, well I will be dead, but my kids and if they have any their kids, will have to face it head on. Sorry but I just can't get myself worked up about trans and still think Sunak is an arse to say what he did, when that poor mum was there and if he didn't know she was there then he's incompetent, either way he is useless.

Enjoy life, we're not here for long and try not to 'punch down' is always a good rule to live by I find.

Oh indeed. That's why so many of us are standing up for women in refuges, women in prisons, women in care homes. You claim with one breath to have worked with women in prison, and in the next that putting violent rapists in women's prisons is a non-issue that only rich people care about.

You are, to put it at its kindest, not making any sense.

Hermaphrodite 😳

I assume you mean people with disorders of sexual development

also trans men are women so no there’s no problem with them being in women’s prisons

I expect though that you meant trans women

I agree with you there that no violent rapist (trans or otherwise) should be put in with women or with men (men get raped too) they need to be segregated.

Sorry for the terminology, it has moved on probably, I am quite old!

Why am I angry?

I'm angry that children are being encouraged to transition and are being put on a lifetime of medication effectively making them infertile.

I'm angry that allowing males in to female only spaces makes them mixed sex meaning many women and girls will self exclude from those spaces, many of whom will be vulnerable.

I'm angry that women are being assaulted by males in female prisons.

I'm angry that women in sport can not compete with men so are losing out on trophies, sponsorship etc.

I'm angry that women's refuges now contain men so the only place they can go to does not put their needs first.

I'm angry that women and children of Transwomen who transition later in life are never thought of whilst society is telling the Transwomen how brave and stunning they are.

I'm angry that if anyone points out the above, they are often called bigots and in some cases have been arrested or lost their jobs for wrong think.

Why are you not angry?

I'm also angry about the things you mention too. I can be angry about many things at the same time.

Some people want or need to be trans, I don't want to be part of a society that stops them, but you are right, other people's rights have to be protected to. Nobody should be called a bigot for raising reasonable concerns and there are instances where men to women trans will have to reasonably face restrictions becuase of their muscle strength advantage etc and because of what they represent to women, who need safe spaces. It's a shame that we have a society where some men are so violent and continue to attack and kill and that's our big issue I think not trans people. Interestingly nobody really cares about women to men trans, which also says a lot, as the fear is about violence or unfair advantage maybe and women to men don't represent that? It has been interesting to discuss though, as I haven't really thought about it much before and obviously people here do care deeply. I do think it's a good point about young people transitioning early though as they may not know what they really need (but that's another discussion and I ahve to go and clean the house, gender stereotyped I know but true!)

I will not accept this twisting of words.

Someone was calling out mothers using their own empathy against them.

That was the context.
It was completely taken out of the context you and that poster are now trying to shove it back into.
No.

There's nothing disgusting at saying a mother's distress is hers to do with a she sees fit and that may include watching her child struggle and you are not allowed to leverage that struggle and call it disgusting.

that poster was making a strawman argument about mothers and their children, not talking about this particular child.

No.

I think your SIL comment sounds OK, just slight hyperbole rather than "putting words in your mouth". Some people just do talk like that.....the misunderstanding is the fault of the people who overheard the tail end of the conversation and took it out of context. I'm sure when you said "Of course I've heard of trainspotting, I just didn't recognise Danny Boyle's name" your family would just go "oh, right"

By contrast I also found Sunaks comment crass, nothing to do with Starmers reaction. If Starmer hadn't reacted I'd still have thought Sunak was inappropriate.

This is a standard misogynistic trope:
Those transfixed by her good looks and sex appeal fail to notice that.
Stop it. You disagree with Mordaunt; others agree. Stop trying to make out that's only because of her appearance

Don't be so priggish. It is well established that loads of men fancy her, and confuse that with her having suitability for the job. Her campaign speeches were vague, woolly and incoherent.

I think your SIL comment sounds OK, just slight hyperbole rather than "putting words in your mouth".

Maybe you don't see a problem with it because you do similar all over MN?

Someone says 'I'm not voting Labour because of X"
You then accuse them of being die-hard conservatives who just can't wait to vote Tory. It happens over and over again.

Do you really not see it?

I don't think it is true that people don't care about women identifying as men.
There are many threads which discuss the issue of young lesbians, and autistic girls, now feeling they have to, or want to transition; and threads which look at the multiple stories from female de-transitioners who outline the pressures and circumstances surrounding this desire to 'transition'.

Once again, you uncritically accept the notion that 'being a trans' is an actual thing - rather than a contemporary way of framing one's experience of discomfort in one's body or in one's self. One that is now very prevalent, and which creates issues of social contagion; especially for gender non conforming girls and young women.

So the young person had a previously unidentified DSD - and was actually bioogically male - like Caster Semenya.

I'm not " hung up on binary constructs", though people who believe in gender are. Sex is real, and it matters in certain circumstances; it also has consequences and implications.These implications and consequences matter, particularly for women and girls.

One's sex does not determine everything about you; we are all unique and have our individual characteristics and patterns - but believing that one is in the wrong body because one likes things associated with the opposite sex is just retrograde and truly binary nonsense.

The debate has also moved on and I suggest you do a bit more research and reading before dismissing people as. " hung up" and " punching down" etc. Being 61 years of age is no excuse,

Its not "priggish" to highlight misogyny

What do you mean the debate has moved on? It's a trans debate, there have always been people with all kinds of opinion on this yours, is just one, as is mine. I find your reference to my age, unpleasant, my views are not due to my age, they are due to the fact that I think that this is becoming a kind of newspaper led hysteria, when the real issues are elsewhere. Get some more money into mental health, stop stupid education that only cares about league tables and grades and focuses on real learning and kids might start feeling more comfortable in their bodies and some might choose not transition and then again they still might, who knows, unless you are experiencing it you don't and neither do I.

However absurd and cruel the British and US anti-trans bullies are, the global political momentum is in the other direction. Most countries are improving their trans rights and many are puzzled or concerned by the petty hatred in the UK. They have learned one of the things we learned about lesbians and gays after the hysteria of the ’80s: letting people who are doing no harm to others be themselves improves not only their lives but also society. (cited in Open Democracy). A bit of research done by me, thanks for the suggestion😄

I don't even know where to start with this. But I'll try.

It's not a trans debate. No one is debating trans people. It is the erosion of women's rights that is the issue most of us have. Laws were introduced the last time Labour were in government which have had, perhaps unintended (initially) consequences on women. Since those laws were introduced we have the frankly untenable and unbelievable situation that there is a legal fiction that some males can have their birth certificates amended to state that they are legally female. Originally it was a 'workaround' for gay marriage which was illegal but times have moved on since then, thank goodness.

Those laws have since been used by lobby groups like Stonewall to lobby organisations to believe that gender is what is relevant not sex. Fast forward 20 years since the introduction of the 'Legal Female' and we have women unable to get single sex rape crisis support, rapists in women's prisons, males winning & competing in women's sport and so on.

None of us want trans people to cease to exist, we want fairness for women. Women weren't consulted about the impact of these laws on our spaces, they were just invaded. None of this is unreasonable if you believe women are as important as men.

With regards to your suggestion that if more money is invested in schools perhaps less children would identify as trans, then many of us agree. But fundamentally the activists would think that this is a transphobic position. We want the many reasons for the explosion in numbers of trans identifying children to be looked at because the children who tend to be going on pathways to bodily harm and infertility (the impact of medical transition on them) are the vulnerable children.

So this has nothing to do with being unkind to trans people it's about keeping women and children safe.

This should be very uncontroversial in a democratic society.

Both of the main political parties need to do more on this.

Haha!

Your brand of feminism seems to be the equivalent of 'paint by numbers'.

Well thank you for joining in and having a decidedly less antagonistic tone than rebel cow, it was turning into a cow v pig battle there.

"Some authors, such as Julia Serano and Emi Koyama, have founded a stream within feminism called transfeminism, which views the struggle for the rights of trans people and trans women in particular as an integral part of the feminist struggle for all women's rights"

I have decided that I am throwing my lot in with the above I think we all agree on women's rights being important if nothing else. Let us sisters just agree to disagree. I am sure there is much that unites us in our struggles✊