Will Labour introduce Self ID & curb free speech?

[Heylo]

I’ve never voted Tory, but as a lesbian woman who plans to have children (and obviously as a woman!) I am and will be part of the three groups most affected by Gender Ideology; women, lesbian and soon I hope a Mother. I am really worried about what happens when Labour takes power. The Tories have been rubbish no arguments there but at least they are finally moving against the steam rolling of Gender Ideology. I’m thinking Labour are not that fiscally different to the Tories and have said they will not cap bankers bonuses and they don’t intend to increase public spending in a significant way.

Really concerned about more gender identity clinics popping up under Labour and Keir Starmer possibly curbing free speech via so - called hate laws (in the feminist circle i run in we all agree this is a euphemism for silencing women about men in female prisons, rape shelters and other areas where women are vulnerable).

wonder what everyone else thinking?

I keep saying this.

In recent years people don't tend to vote FOR anyone. They vote against a party by choosing what they see as the least worst option.

And we've seen this repeatedly in voting patterns since 2010 as a significant driver of motivation.

Theres been an increasing dissatisfaction with the main parties and how they don't represent the public well. It's been demonstrated that Labour Members are more 'militant' in their views in relative terms than Labour Voters and this difference matters (the same can also be said for other party memberships so it's not a Labour Problem). They are fed up with dishonest, question dodging politician answers.

I was speaking to a local councillor about 6 or 7 years ago now and his comment then was he and his party were concerned about the rise of independent candidate in local politics.

Then Last Night has happened.

One of The Single Biggest Turnoffs in politics for voters, are the evangelicals who are utterly tone deaf to the public desire for moderation. Labour definitely has a problem with this. They aren't alone.

All parties have had an issue with not being inclusive of ordinary people with moderate, nuanced views. Instead we are stuck with a party who have a problem acknowledging racism, a party who have a problem with anti semitism and parties with a problem identified how we reproduce as humans cos not one of them can tell the fucking truth.

There was precisely nothing good in George Galloway's victory last night. Like Farage he feeds off public dissatisfaction and makes a career of it (but has precisely no solutions). It's depressing for so many reasons but it's definitely a protest vote. For me the second place was more interesting though.

But watch this next election: it's not as straightforward as people think. I think Labour will win, but not by the scale of the landslide many are anticipating. Watch the small parties and the independents.

The Righteous are one of THE majority problems in British politics. And tbh, I think actually this is where I sit: wanting to give the Righteous a massive slap for not listening.

Labour ignore this sentiment and dismiss it as pro-Tory at their peril. Too many people are fed up as being labelled as 'Bad' and no longer give a shit about the name calling. And these are people who traditionally and politically are left leaning...

It's local councils who control and therefore have closed the loos. Nothing to do with the Tories, at least not where I am.

"I don't believe in prisons."

Fucking hell.

I don't think prison reforms, but I'm not naive enough to think that some people are interested in changing either.

The problem is much much earlier and by the point you get to prison, you've already lost the battle for most. Why?

Because it's easier to just repeat mistakes and abdicate responsibility and humans have this tendency to look for short cuts and the 'easy' option and the tendency to 'simple' or 'quick fixes'.

Anyone who says they don't believe in prisons has their brains all over the floor in a mush.

It’s probable that the overwhelming majority of people who don’t believe in prisons have never been inside one and/or never met some of the people inside. Spoiler: some people are really nasty bastards who need to be locked up for public safety.

Ah — I think you meant to quote another post.

Only the most privileged and foolish are able to sustain a narrative as ridiculous as calling to abolish prisons and police.

I don’t know who said what to you.

For my part, I have not ‘had a go’ at you, in the sense that might imply a personal attack, for your saying that people arguing on the subject of sex based rights and gender are only worried about toilets. I know you are wrong and pointed it out.

There are thousands of posts on this board going back several years, with painstaking, backed-up responses by many thoughtful people, about women’s great concerns related to the effects of transactivism and gender legislation or interpretations of it, in schools, the NHS, in the police, in the judiciary, in the news media including the BBC, in language, in sports - and ultimately in women’s and children’s lives.

And in addition, and not least by any means, a grave concern about the authoritarian almost fascistic control over public organisations and public discourse that has crept in supposedly in the name of diversity and equality as it is related to gender.

So if you do think the only point of concern about gender is related to toilets then perhaps you have not been reading the gender related threads about other aspects, regardless of whether or not you have personally been posting on them.

As for the abysmal state we are left with after the conservative government and all that they have done wrong - just because some women here do not believe that a future PM who is so clueless and insensitive to the implications as to bring in self-ID, a future PM who wants to plough on with the present tra trajectory, a future PM whose party shuts up its very own women over their ‘gender ideology’ concerns as though they were guilty of a heinous crime is going to bring about magical transformations in all other aspects where people are being failed - it does not mean these women are not also worried about those other aspects where people are being failed.

We are between the devil and the deep blue sea probably.

@Ofcourseshecan · Today 13:29

So sorry, I did mean to quote another post. I tried to correct it here.

ScrollingLeaves · Today 10:13

That was in reply to this post:

PP82 · Yesterday 14:28

Hilary Cass has been 'captured' by you lot.

Children should be free to socially transition at school without their parents knowledge. It should be a place where they can explore their identities without parental interference

My response is:

Do you really think children grow up in a vacuum that means that, so long as their parents do not interfere with them, they will remain uninterfered with?

It has everything to do with the Tories because it's the Govt that have slashed funding to councils leaving the councils with barely enough cash to do the absolute minimum (schools etc) meaning there's none left for leisure centres, libraries, public loos etc.
Edit to add: That's why it's a bit rich when the self same Govt criticise the councils for not doing stuff.

I'm in Scotland. It's an SNP/Green coalition that has most of the control over LA funding, including Humza's attempted freeze on council tax.

Apologies - assumed "at least not where I am" meant you didn't have a Tory council. It's probably still the case that Central Govt funding cuts have affected the amounts available in Scotland too though?

It can be reasoned as long as 1) regular posters recognise you as "one of them" and 2) you're not saying anything controversial

Otherwise its not reasoned at all, just variations on a theme of "you aren't welcome here"

Not all GC posters feel like that Alexandra I'm glad you are posting on here.

That's a whole other quite complex argument tbh

No they haven't.
They are going to make it less bureaucratic, not a lower bar to being granted. The Conservatives are also doing that.

They don't want to see the EA undermined but that isn't to do with trans rights and really all feminists should be worried about the EA being undermined as it protects us legally.

Good lord RTB you are really on the party line aren't you.

All parties have had an issue with not being inclusive of ordinary people with moderate, nuanced views. Instead we are stuck with a party who have a problem acknowledging racism, a party who have a problem with anti semitism and parties with a problem identified how we reproduce as humans cos not one of them can tell the fucking truth

The Conservatives have a problem with racism, not a problem with acknowledging racism. What Anderson/Braverman/Truss etc have said this week is a lot more blatantly racist than the antisemitic racism that gets people kicked out of Labour.

"Moderate, nuanced views" are not what is being expressed by GC Ultras (by which I mean people who refuse to use pronouns in any circumstances and insist on referring to trans people as their birth sex at all times). "Absolutist views" are what GC Ultras are insisting on, and at the root of the "I'm voting Conservative, at least they know what a woman is" nonsense.

I’m not sure you have grasped the concept of whataboutery. GC women are not adverse to discussing the issues that you raise in your post. I imagine most will have lots of points of agreement with what you have said about funding and DV and rape stats and public toilets. But why not start a thread to discuss it rather than derailing one that is about an entirely different topic? If you aren’t dismissing concerns about free speech and self ID why not join in that discussion? Do you think that a Labour Government will push to restrict the speech of women who want to discuss their disadvantages in terms of their sex? Do you think Labour will move towards a self ID model of gender recognition? Can you think of a way in which DV provision might be affected by restrictions on freedom of speech? Did you follow the recent case in Edinburgh RCC where there are clear issues arising from the suppression of women being able to use clear sex based language?

Same with single sex wards, who is going to provide the staff for these? the land? the buildings? the additional med equipment? planning constraints.. even parking!
What?
Wards are already single sex; they've just started allowing men to identify into the women's. No need to build anything, they already exist.

Labour have specifically said they are not introducing self ID, as you know. There is not much more to be said that do you believe them or not? If you don't believe them, there is nothing they could do or say to make you believe them.

In fact the goalposts will just move again, like the toilet debate as shown upthread.

"Moderate, nuanced views" are not what is being expressed by GC Ultras (by which I mean people who refuse to use pronouns in any circumstances and insist on referring to trans people as their birth sex at all times). "Absolutist views" are what GC Ultras are insisting on, and at the root of the "I'm voting Conservative, at least they know what a woman is" nonsense.

I couldn't give two hoots what a person chooses to call themselves. The reason I now have a problem with preferred pronouns is because I can see the harm done to women by going along with lies about a persons sex. It all leads to the same ends, the destruction of women's right to single sex spaces and harm to children who are led to believe that they can be the opposite sex. It all starts with pronouns.

We've got a poster upthread who thinks women should be 'educated' 'punished' if they refuse to use a person's preferred pronouns.

Do you not see how Orwellian that is?

So how does that help single sex spaces like women's refuges, when they can include women and males who identify as woman gender?

Has Labour said it will exclude women gender people? Is it really going to exclude those who have the legal sex of woman whilst being born male through the GRC?

How is that any different from self ID in practice?

And I don't need you to come back with 'but the Tories', I'm not a Tory voter. I want to know how Labour intends to stop places like women's refuges from being mixed sex in practice? Because at the moment I don't believe they can or have any intention to.

'Not going along with this pronoun bollocks' is what people have been doing for millennia, up until a decade or so ago. And we've managed fine.

life Yes. I don't agree on that point. That is an opinion of a person though, not the government.
I'm more concerned about people like Sir Paul Marshal spunking vast amounts of money on loss making media to spread far right stories into the mainstream. And, as I've said repeatedly, the increasingly fascist approach of the Conservative government. I mean fascist in an academic sense, not as a solution.

Both those things are far more interesting than picking holes in a difference of opinion with a poster who's posting their thoughts in good faith. They are entitled to their view and entitled to vote wherever they want to express that view.

You know what they've said, we've discussed it before. But for the lurkers:

"We need to recognise that sex and gender are different – as the Equality Act does. We will make sure that nothing in our modernised gender recognition process would override the single-sex exemptions in the Equality Act. Put simply, this means that there will always be places where it is reasonable for biological women only to have access. Labour will defend those spaces, providing legal clarity for the providers of single-sex services."

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jul/24/labour-will-lead-on-reform-of-transgender-rights-and-we-wont-take-lectures-from-the-divisive-tories

That is the official Labour policy. You can choose not to believe them. Equally I can choose to vote based on what parties say, rather than speculation about what I think they mean.

I'm not responding on this again because we've been round the loop too many times so neither of us will get anything new from the conversation.

A pp claimed that posting on here requires that "regular posters recognise you as "one of them" and 2) you're not saying anything controversial".

Women on here have had many years of identifying posters spouting nonsense. When posters claim to work with children in schools, state they're education consultants, experts in midwifery or safeguarding, share the mad Sisters Uncut mantra about abolishing the prisons & the police, reframe criticism of some schools failing to adhere to their legal requirement to be politically neutral as an aspect of "fascist thinking" and more, posters on here who are "experts" and qualified or have thought about these issues in detail will engage in critical thinking & respond. As has happened on this thread.

As Mumsnet repeatedly warn us, it is not possible to know that people on here are who they say they are on here. All we can do is evaluate the ideas expressed & respond. Posting countless posts on a thread that then fall apart when exposed to critical analysis is not being "excluded" by those pointing out flaws.