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?

People might be encouraged to trust Annaliese Dodds more if she was less Jesuitical in tone.

ArabellaScott · Today 13:17

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

It is, in a roundabout way, as the Government has cut council spending severely and told them to get rid of unnecessary services. As it's mostly Labour councils suffering, the Tories say, "See! They can't even manage a council budget, how can you trust them as a government?"

I don't think that they will attempt to introduce self-ID. But they will make it so easy to get a GRC it will be one baby step away from self-ID. They have said they will still require a diagnosis but presumably this will be as simple as going to a doctor and announcing you are dysphoric and believe you are trans. There is no test for trans it comes down 100% to patient self-reporting. As things currently stand we know that having a GRC confers extra rights on men to be treated as women. Until they sort that out either via the SC FWS appeal or via legislation confirming that sex in the EA = birth sex then any change to the GRA is bad for women.

See my comment upthread about complexity!

"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 ofsingle-sex services."

But this isn't how the law currently stands is it? The law as it currently stands says that men with a GRC should be treated for all purposes as if they are women. And although there are exceptions where men with a GRC can be excluded from services (if there is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim), we know from the analysis of academic lawyers such as Michael Foran (see link below) that associations currently have no way of excluding men. So an association set up for lesbians has to include men with a GRC.

Labour make statements about "safe spaces" but they are always completely vague on the detail. They never say HOW they will defend those spaces. That is because defending the spaces relies on the definition of sex in the EA meaning birth sex and they won't want to take on that particular battle because they know that the trans world will melt down and scream about genocide from the rooftops.

https://deliverypdf.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=983074096009080098016078015110007073019078004010056064085119115127006100102096070031052054028009107063023083094103013081014085119006064001081073064100024107094011068066000066013028121025126108020005098069116075067003002101006107125000088097004009122123&EXT=pdf&INDEX=TRUE

"But the Tories"

Is the limit and depth of discussion we can have on Labour and Free Speech.

Which in itself is an attempt to shame and close down speech. And very ironic given this thread's subject. I think it highlights a lot of the very fears women on FWR have.

I don't know if I can bring myself to vote for any of the main parties this time round. This isn't a situation I've felt to this extent before. I've been dissatisfied but not felt tried with such utter contempt by all.

ArabellaScott · Today 16:13

See my comment upthread about complexity!

Sorry, I wasn't intending to be critical.

😀

Now c'mon admit it RTB, you are and always have been a Tory party activist who would vote for a housebrick if it was painted blue! In fact, you're worse than that, you are a Far Right Nazi-adjacent goose-stepper. Also, you and I are both sock puppets of each other.

You know the Righteous can see right through your our tissue of lies

Yep. I was on the Front Row of the Tory Party conference in 2016 and bought a fake blonde wig for when I handed out Microwave Meals whilst canvasing in 2019. I also have a calendar of Dave on my wall next to my shrine to Maggie. May she rest in peace.

You've got me there.

Busted.

Please don't characterise people who do not believe it's acceotable to play along with the conceit that men can be women as "Ultra". It is not an extreme position.

I realise that in many controversial topics the reasionable compromise is somewhere between the two ends.

That is not the case for gender ideology.

There is not a reasonable half-way position where some men can be a little bit of a woman in limited circumstances, because as soon as you accept the idea that something in a man's mind makes him more like a woman than he is a man, you have unavoidably redefined womanhood as a mental characteristic rather than a physical reality. And when you do that, you unavoidably unwrite the real world expereinces and history of womanhood, both physical and social, as a thing that is expereinced by the physically female. That is not a reasonable compromise, that is an Ultra Gender position.

The actual reasonable, rational and compassionate position is to recognise that most people who identify as trans are labelling something genuine they feel, but also that this is a projection of their own beliefs about their own and the opposite sex rather than an actual meaningful commonality with the opposite sex, and rather than arguing for where to place trans people along some putative 2 dimensional line running between "a woman" and "a man", we shoudl be looking for an entirely separate way to understand what they are experiencing and give them appropriate support without appropriating female (or male) resources, narratives or lived experiences.

How well you have put that, and I completely agree though I could never have expressed it so clearly.

If you can't identify what a woman is, you'll fail to deal with women's issues.

The massive misogyny that underlies so much of the shit that is going on (eg the trashing of women's sports, to give but one example) is the issue we have to tackle.

Well you know, because it has been pointed out many many times, that without amendments to the Equality Act the Sex woman includes males with a GRC that means that their sex is legally females.

If Labour does intend to exclude males with a GRC then they could very easily do so and probably wouldn't be so gung ho about their plans to 'simplify the process'.

We've seen a lot of word salad on here. It is very difficult to see how, at law, men can be excluded without specific amendments to the Equality Act which the Labour Party claim are not necessary.

In the meantime women are being harmed by men in what are now mixed sex spaces.

Come on Labour, you can do better than this. We know that Jess Phillips gets it. Why else draw the distinction at all between woman sex and woman gender? And then why make it easier to obtain a GRC which gives men the status of woman sex under a simplified process?

Yep, it's all about her tone 🙄
That's a bit misogynistic

I think people can see for themselves how the "outgroup" are reacted to on here.

Yes. Not sure why it’s difficult to understand that a clear definition of what a woman is, consistently applied across all forms of data collection is vital to the effective deployment of funding and resources.

I’d add this also protects effective allocation of resources for trans-related services.

Why were you so mealy mouthed about Conservative racism then?

I'm using Janice Turners shorthand because I think there is a difference between the position you outline and other gender critical feminists like myself, who will use preferred pronouns in some circumstances, who do recognise the need for a GRC and can see why its offensive to trans men to be called women, and trans women to be called men.

"Ultra" and "lite" work for me.

If you want a different shorthand term for the position let me know, but otherwise I'm going to keep using it

Adam why is there a need for a GRC?

Why does any male who says he has woman gender need his documents to be falsified to indicate the wrong sex?

Absolutely not true.
If you address poverty, you benefit women over men.
If you address the effective decriminalisation of rape, you benefit women over men.
If you put in place affordable childcare, you benefit women over men.
If you address maternal healthcare so less women die in childbirth, you benefit women over men.

All of this can be done regardless of whether you use a sex based or gender based definition for people. Or even no definition at all.

This is so succinct and clear. Commenting to save as we can no longer save favourite posts for some reason!

The Labour Party have said they support clarification of the EA to be more sex based. They don't support "undermining" I.e. using a review of the EA as a pretext to water down the protections it provides to different groups.

I don't believe you are posting in good faith but to save both our time, the Chamber "analysis" you keep rolling out is an opinion piece quoting a single source, which is another lawyer's opinion piece. It isn't definitive legal guidance.

You don't believe what Labour say. That's fine, just stop misrepresenting their position to make it seem as if your belief is fact

Because there are people out there who have lived as the opposite sex for many years, are known as that sex by people around them. To suddenly say they have to declare their birth sex, be referred to as the correct pronouns seems completely unfair on them.

There are also people whose gender dysphoria is relieved by transition; I think those people should be supported (with adequate medical/psychological gatekeeping)

I find the fact that you 'don't believe I'm posting in good faith' interesting Adam.

You have absolutely no basis for that belief.

I maintain the position that it is entirely inconsistent for any party to say that there is a difference between a biological woman and a gender woman, yet make it easier for males to become the legal sex of woman through a GRC.

There is no legal basis to keep any male who has the status legal woman out of a woman's single sex space.

If it were the intention of the Labour Party to keep all males who identify as women whether they are gender women or legal woman out of single sex spaces they could be explicit that this is their intention. So why aren't they? All they are doing is talking about the distinction between biological and gender women and are ignoring the elephant in the room which is the GRC which they are going to make easier to obtain.

I know that you think that the GRC is necessary because you said so upthread (I have asked you why because other than to give additional rights I don't think it is) and that legal women should be in single sex spaces for women because you have said so on other threads. Many women disagree with this and for them this is a reason that they won't vote for Labour. I'm not the only person who says this but I think I am the only one you are accusing of voting in bad faith.

So you think those people should be in women's single sex spaces which is consistent with the Labour party position?

You think that they have gained the right to be woman sex?