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?

No, you got that right. Your idea of "ultra" and "lite" doesn't align with GC analysis and maligns people who have an actual GC position as extreme. I suggested your position is better described as "partly GC".

The "strawman" from you is the insistence that I am arbitrarily insisting on a personal definition of GC. I'm not, I'm telling you that your understanding of GC, particularly the distinction yoir are drawing between rejecting gender as a "reality" but being prepared to accomodate gender over sex to respect the "belief" doesn't align with what most people who are aware of the issues would call GC Feminism.

I'll ask again, why is it so important for you to label your position "GC"? You clearly believe what you believe and that's ok, why does it matter that it's not a completely GC perspective?

I guess tolerance is what we should be hoping for in all of this. I have no expectation that anyone else should respect my beliefs. I can tolerate those with views that I don't respect and accept they have as much right as me to live in the world free from harm, so long as their views don't harm or impact on me or others.

Trouble is with trans ideology atm is it clearly does harm women and children in a multitude of ways. And to link back in with the OP it also has serious consequences for freedom of speech.

These harms are no longer theoretical harms. There are many many real world examples now: from men assaulting women in prisons; men in women's sporting competitions; women being de-platformed; women being sacked; women being assaulted at public events; women losing their livelihoods; women and men facing extremely stressful and expensive court proceedings; children being medically harmed when there is no evidence for such "treatments".

Naomi Cunningham recently submitted in the ERCC hearing that transgender ideology was not worth of respect in a democratic society because (and I'm paraphrasing) of the clear and evidenced harms it is having on the rights and dignity and privacy of women.

I think she is right and trans ideology does not even deserve our tolerance let alone our respect. And any woman who advocates for it to become easier for men to be able to falsify their sex marker on official documents when we know that as the law stands this will make things worse for women is having a bit of a laugh when she calls herself a GC feminist.

We aren't there yet so I just do my best to contribute to a peaceful society by respecting others beliefs and not trying to assert my views on others.

The problem for you is that it's impossible to "respect" cross sex language and identities in any practical sense without imposing on all women the outdated and sexist view that a woman have a different type of mind, that it is this rather than the reality of sex based differences and social biases that lead to women's different risks and social outcomes, and that women's resources put in place to mitigate sexism should therefore be available to male people if they have the certain type of mind.

You may not believe in that yourself - in fact I hope you don’t - but in accommodating that belief in others you nevertheless impose the consequences of it onto other women.

@Signalbox I totally agree.

Yet another violent sexual abusive male paedophile has been convicted in Durham for secretly filming & sexually assaulting women in public toilets and on a bridge. The bloke claimed he had the right to be in the women's toilets because he identifies as a woman.

How can views that enable paedophiles to assault women by claiming to be women be worthy of respect in a democratic society?

I do think a tipping point will come where society will stand up and collectively ask 'what the fuck we were thinking?' by enabling this.

I don't find AR's position very coherent, but I would really warn against creating a little club where only people who think the best way forward falls within a very narrow range are seen as ok. There are swathes of people who have been committed to standing against gender ideology, often to great personal cost, who will not fit into that narrow way, and to say they are fools, stupid, don't get it, o can't stand being seen as not nice isn't just counter-productive, it's counter-reality.

It's the same narrow minded righteousness that seems to infect left wing causes constantly which involves a real inability to see that there is often more than one set of logically coherent ways to frame problems and solutions, especially when you get into the realm of real concrete political action. People who see things differently are not just think or bamboozled or insufficiently caring.

I'd have thought feminists, having gone through the experience of the rise of GI, might have some awareness of this dynamic, but it seems not. I can't decide if it's an inability to both be able to maintain an argument for what you think is the best outcome, and also see that there is room for disagreement and discourse and allow for a kind of space for differences in viewpoint, and the possibility that there will need to be a kind of social-political space for differing views even on important issues..

The list of people who don't meet the standard keeps creeping, and I imagine people like JKR will soon not meet the high standard. And maybe people want to stop and think about what they are actually doing with that.

It's the same narrow minded righteousness that seems to infect left wing causes constantly which involves a real inability to see that there is often more than one set of logically coherent ways to frame problems and solutions, especially when you get into the realm of real concrete political action. People who see things differently are not just think or bamboozled or insufficiently caring.

What solution do you propose which meets the demands of the activists, that trans women should be treated as their adopted gender whilst also protecting women from predatory males (and I am not saying all trans woman are predatory males), or from self excluding from society?

I can't see how there can ever be a solution to this that satisfies everyone, so I am very interested in the way you frame this problem and how you would solve it?

Advocating for it to become more easy for men to be reclassified as women in law doesn’t even fall into a wide definition of gender critical feminism?

It’s one of the main aims of trans activism.

Time and time again we see things framed in a way which only talks about the benefits to trans people. Women and girls remain invisible and there is a total lack of impact assessment.

This is why the very concept of centring women and girl first is so important. I genuinely don't think you can be gender critical if you fail to do this.

I'll say it again: which women are you willing to harm to be nice and respectful to trans people?

You can't say that this isn't an issue the second you look at any kind of impact assessment.

Take prisons. First of all the Scottish Government finally did an impact assessment. And mysteriously it's been buried with a refusal to make it public. Why?

Secondly there is this notion about how it's only a tiny number of trans people. (This is understandable debate with social trends tbh). What this fails to address is the impact a single transperson has on sex based groups and protections. One person can after hundreds of not thousands across their lifetime. And this is more pronounced in certain professional capacities.

Say we put the right to legally treat a trans woman with a GRC as female in all incidences. How does this work by putting the rights of a worker before the rights of a vulnerable patient who may suffer trauma. Keeping in mind offending patterns and a problems that have already arisen due to this. We need to address and resolve this head on rather than disciplinary other staff who raise legitimate safeguarding queries on behalf of their patients.

The list goes on.

Dennis Noel Kavanagh talked about the implications of the draft Conversion Therapy Bill if it went through unamended. He talked about healthcare workers and parents (amongst others) potentially finding themselves in a position of needing a reverse burden of proof:

Placing a requirement on a Defendant in a criminal matter is known as a “reverse burden of proof” (because the burden of proof ordinarily rests with the prosecution). Reverse burdens are generally considered undesirable as a matter of principle, though it is correct to say that despite this many offences do impose them. Reverse burdens in crime are discharged by a Defendant if they meet the civil, rather than criminal standard of proof, that is to say a Defendant would succeed in discharging this burden where they can prove that their case is more likely than not

This has significant ramifications - in order to defend yourself in this way you a) need good legal advice b) need big pockets to find it c) are able to cope with the stress of it. Reverse burden of proof is undesirable for a reason.

Yet we have this situation where, in practice, we have these all over the place already with women having to argue the case. It's always the women - not because they have privilege, these cases always demonstrate why they have LESS power than those they have to make a case against.

For example women have to argue why males in women's sport is problematic despite the purpose of women's sport and why it was set up in the first place, rather than the males having to provide proof why it's not a problem.

It's for women to argue why measuring the gender pay gap by sex rather than gender is a problem, despite it being well known that the main reason this happens is because women have to take time out of the workplace to have a baby and have greater caring responsibilities placed upon them as a consequence.

It's for those who are disabled to argue why bathroom stalls designed to ensure safety for medical issues are no longer needed and for women to demonstrate why mixed sex toilets and changing are problematic despite there being clearly evidence.

It's for gay and lesbians to prove why queering straight people harms them and is homophobic.

It's for whistleblowers to raise the alarm about transing away the gay, the rates of autism and histories of sexual abuse amongst children who identify as trans rather than institutions to carry out studies and do follow up longitudinal studies.

Every.single.time.

We see a reverse burden of proof which requires individuals or the public to establish an impact rather than systematic corporate and institutional impact assessments which take into account the actual consequences to other groups by centring trans people and THEN assess whether it is a good policy. And all of this is REGARDLESS of whether this approach is even compatible with the Equality Act.

We should as a matter of routine be doing impact assessments for all interest groups. The concept of being Gender Critical exists because of this failure to do so.

Saying you are a 'little bit in' and being 'polite' is AGAIN an act of failing to do this. Just in a different form.

What is required isn't being nice or being polite. It's being diligent and exploring the evidence and actual impact.

This is why I'm going to keep repeating the point, which

'women are you willing to sacrifice to being nice?

Without that proper assessment without the judgement label (which always carry the ideological bias with them) instead of actually looking at the problem from all angles properly and doing an on balance assessment about harms.

How many women are you willing to sacrifice?

In giving your consent, you still aren't seeking the consent of others and you also need to assess which women are in greatest need of the protections you are happy to give away freely. Every time the most vulnerable women aren't even consulted by the more privileged women who are happy with 'being nice'.

Why is it always for women to demonstrate and fight back against men? We know the answer to this, but it just gets treated as something which isn't real even though some of the most intelligent women saying, who understand and support feminism, are well aware of how society is made by men for men with women a rare afterthought. It's like they get so far with it and then get what want and give up because it doesn't affect them. It's the 'im alright jack's school of thought I'm afraid. Until it does affect them and they wonder why.

(As a side note, the conversion therapy bill was debated in parliament yesterday. It failed to progress due to a lack of support at this stage. Yet it's being framed on twitter as having been filibusted rather than running out of time and support because it was just so unfit for purpose. This is great news for the time being. There were a number of MPs who did stand up and raise a lot of the problems with it, but equally some others who liked to lecture on morality and what people should believe rather than understand the workings and practicality of law. I think this may be 'a dynamic').

The list of people who don't meet the standard keeps creeping, and I imagine people like JKR will soon not meet the high standard.

I think it’s probably dawning on many women including JKR that using women’s language to refer to men is harmful.

Many people will shift their position when they see evidence of harm. We can see this happening all the time even in ourselves. After I watched the ERCC hearing I could not view this issue again in the same way. I imagine that case had that affect on a lot of people. And obviously JKR was significantly involved in that case.

Question: in what ways can we provide legal and practical protections for trans people WITHOUT declaring they have literally and legally changed sex?

It's a question that ISN'T ever discussed.

In this sense, if you are trans, what constitutes harassment versus practical and ideological differences? How can we ensure they are less at risk from physical attack? How can we ensure that healthcare isn't ideologically captured and presents clinical risks and outcomes in an unbiased way? How can we ensure that respect is given without others feeling compelled? How do we address issues surrounding gender stereotypes in 2024 rather than trying to reimpose them? How do we ensure threats by those with protected status are actually dealt with appropriately where applicable? How do we stop vexatious law suits and career harassment cases?

This isn't EVER discussed.

This reframing and refocusing by turning the narrative on its head needs to change.

This is precisely why women's sport touches a nerve because the concept of fairness is so obvious and why issues with prisons focus minds because they've exposed the concept of the most vulnerable in society to be massively flawed and reshaped and redirected narratives away from 'be kind'.

For me this needs to be about problem recognition and resolution.

If you don't see sex and replace it with gender, even out of politeness, you don't do that.

We must be able to see sex at all times. If you want to put gender as an add on, then that's where it has to go but that also has to have a fair and recognised opt out without discrimination and harassment too.

JKR is watching and waiting and following the evidence and picking her battles and causes accordingly.

See my above point.

She knows all about narratives and evidence based arguments.

She speaks with those points to back her, rather than from an ideological position. And that's what the activists REALLY hate.

And why you see so many attempts by activists and ideologues to smear others as being politically motivated rather than driven by the practical applications and understanding of law, ethics and reality driven health care and the impact of the lived female experience being intrinsically different to a male one.

I take your point but I think you have missed mine. One doesn't have to be gender critical to stand against TRA-style gender ideology. I've said many times we can find common ground between different perspectives.

What I object to is

1. being painted as "ultra", as extremist, based on a misapprehension of what gender critical feminism actually means.

2. assumptions like these so called "ultras" would not support third spaces, for example, when the evidence abounds that this is again a misapprehension.

Despite the TRA usage of "the GCs" to mean anyone who disagrees with them it's not just a catch-all term for anyone opposed to TRAs. It is a position in its own right with base concepts, one of which is that "gender" is a system of social stereotypes that are fundamentally harmful to both men and women.

I was gender critical feminist long before the issues with trans activism were on my radar. Indeed there was a time I thought that trans women and feminists would be natural allies, the former a perfect demonstration that so much of what society deems "natural" to women was actually socially constructed and could just as well be expressed by men should it occur to them to try. It was only when I understood the push for trans rights was becoming an ideology that seeks to undefine the physical basis of womanhood that I realised how incompatible the current view of trans rights is with feminism. I still live in hope that this is a passing blip and we find our way back to a mutually supportive relationship where we understand society's belief in gender, whether it allows for trans identities or not, is constraining all of us.

I'm not only prepared but actively enjoy finding common ground. I tend to find once we look.l at concepts not trigger language people are closer than they think. Just read my posting history. But it has to go both ways. I can't demonstrate our common ground to someone who isn't listening to what I'm actually saying, preferring to argue with a strawman in their own imagination.

This is how the likes of Stonewall et al have seriously failed people who call themselves trans. The point at which they decided to advocate for them on the basis of a lie (that twaw) was the point at which they turned their struggle into an ideological battle that they can never win. If they’d chosen to advocate for those people from a position of reality I think they would have had so much more support and so much less resistance.

'Gender Critical' (capital letters)* *as a label wasn't a thing though. It was just plain old boring feminist. Or radical feminism. Even though it was critical of gender (small letters) 1

One of the dynamics has been to try and seize and claim feminism as their own by the TRA movement precisely because if they openly oppose it, it shows them as in direct conflict with feminism.

Thus 'ownership' by males of feminism has become increasingly relevant and dominating.

(1 As conservative is to Conservative and labour is to Labour in terms of phraseology and language and Political Groupings).

For clarity that was a reply to @TempestTost - thread moved on while I was writing.

I did wonder Rhinos, but I also think it's an important observation how TRAs had to colonise and occupy feminism and feminism must now always be deemed to be kind or it is not valid.

Bewilderness's Rules of Misogyny:
5. Women and Feminism must be useful to men or they are worthless.

@RedToothBrush

'Gender Critical' (capital letters) as a label wasn't a thing though. It was just plain old boring feminist. Or radical feminism. Even though it was critical of gender (small letters)

Yes that's true. What I'm wanting to make clear is that being gender critical isn't something we are only thinking about now in response to TRA overreach. Feminist critique was naming the social constructs applied on top of our sex "Gender" to make them visible and differentiate them from innate differences of sex way before this.

I'm not 100% up on my Feminist history - do you know when the explict terminology of Gender vs Sex emerged in Feminist thought? I have a sense it was the 1960s but I don't know at all.

I honestly don't know Rhinos.

I'm going to answer this and hopefully at the same time give a bit of history. I'm not an expert in feminist theory though so happy for people to add/correct.

In the 60s/70s feminists started to talk about the fact that women were a group oppressed and exploited on the basis of their sex, by men through the patriarchy. These became defined as "radical feminism" (because it is calling for a radical rethink of society). Many radical feminists had a problem with transsexualism (as it was called) because they felt it was equivalent to colonisation by men.

In the 90s women started to talk about being "third wave" feminism which rejected radical feminism as being focussed on too narrow a group of feminist interests (particularly being too white). Third wave included ideas like intersectionality and being more inclusive to women from all different backgrounds and this is when greater trans acceptance in feminism started because many third wavers viewed trans women as women.

In the late 2000 the term Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist was termed to specifically separate a sector of radical feminism that didn't accept trans people from those that did. It was quickly acronymed to TERF and weaponised.

By the mid 2010s in response to the TERF phrase "gender critical" was coined. Initially as a way to say that GC feminists rejected gender and were about sex as the primary axis of oppression. That GC feminism was not about trans people and was not "trans exclusionary", so that we could lose the TERF label that was preventing womens sex based differences being discussed. This is when I became actively involved. Self ID was being mooted as being written into legislation and there was a flurry of activity around reporting crimes as being committed by women, obfuscating stats etc.

In the UK lots of women started self organising and I think most of us know where this has got us to today. But now I'm seeing a splintering where feminists who were previously accepted as GC are being turned on by the wider movement as not GC enough. Janice Turner, Kathleen Scott, Karen Ingala Smith etc.

Janice coined the term "GC Ultra" to describe this idea that there are a group of people who are against the idea of trans people being a valid group and want to enforce them being referred to as their birth sex.

Interestingly I think this is a bit more in line with the original definition/misrepresentation of TERF, that was then rebranded as GC and later reclaimed as women started to feel safer about expressing GC views.

So what has that got to do with my position? Well, I started following the debate in the early 2010s (mainly through MN) and identified as GC precisely as it was about sex and women, not trans people. We objected to being called TERFS because we didn't say trans people weren't valid, we were just focussed on sex and gender.

MN helped me to give a name and shape to the feminism I'd always had (radical feminism) and GC gave me the language to talk about trans issues confidently, without being shut down by being called transphobic.

I'd say over the last 5 years the movement particularly on MN has moved away from that to GC being much more about actively removing the concept of gender altogether. So that's very different to the original way GC was conceived. Its completely valid as a movement, but its not the entirety of GC.

I like Janice Turners short hand because again, it gives me the language to talk about different positions within the GC movement. The idea that some feminists are GC because they want a movement focussed on sex based oppression, and some are GC because they want to remove any possibility of people being able to be legally recognised as trans gender.

I don't like someone else telling me that an identity that's important to me is wrong. "Oh you aren't a GC feminist, because you don't agree with the MN version of GC ". It's like telling you you aren't a Christian because you are C of E, not Catholic for example. I find it very rude and unnecessary.

I don't like someone else telling me that an identity that's important to me is wrong. "Oh you aren't a GC feminist, because you don't agree with the MN version of GC ". It's like telling you you aren't a Christian because you are C of E, not Catholic for example. I find it very rude and unnecessary.

Great. Drop the rude, unnecessary use of Ultra and we'll be peachy.

My GC feminism is not and never has been about trans people. I do believe we need language and legal status that is specifically and exclusively female to fight sex-based oppression, disempowerment and marginalisation.
The latter is not compatible with cross sex use of language and legal cross sex status. I do not consider this an extreme position and I reject utterly your imposing your own prejudices on to me.

This is very true. I 100% agree with JKRs essay, and it makes various statements that would not be acceptable to posters on here if she made them under cover of anonymity.

E.g. "I believe the majority of trans-identified people not only pose zero threat to others, but are vulnerable for all the reasons I’ve outlined. Trans people need and deserve protection. Like women, they’re most likely to be killed by sexual partners. Trans women who work in the sex industry, particularly trans women of colour, are at particular risk."

And "I want to be very clear here: I know transition will be a solution for some gender dysphoric people"

And FWIW I don't think "trans people" have to be referred to as their birth sex except when sex is significant. I do think, as I have stated many times before, they should not be referred to as the opposite sex because this is priotising the trans person's projections onto the opposite sex over the reality of being that sex and removes the possibility of sex specific language and therefore the possibility of sex specific rights and activism like.

The solution, as I have also said before including on this very thread, is to find new identities and language for the identities currently constructed as "trans" that are not rooted in ideas about biological sex and sexist gender constructs.

Maybe take it up with Janice Turner? It's not a phrase I imagined. I don't particularly want to be "peachy", I want shorthand to talk about different types of GC feminism.
If you suggest some I will happily use it but in lieu of anything different I'll stick to "ultra" and "lite" as its a phrase someone else coined.

And FWIW I don't think "trans people" have to be referred to as their birth sex except when sex is significant. I do think, as I have stated many times before, they should not be referred to as the opposite sex because this is priotising the trans person's projections onto the opposite sex over the reality of being that sex and removes the possibility of sex specific language and therefore the possibility of sex specific rights and activism like

How would you like them to be referred to then, if neither birth sex or identified sex are the answer?

I feel like we probably think the same thing, which is they need to be referred to in a trans identity which is separate to sex. But then it clearly becomes only about pronouns - will you use she/her for a trans woman or will you use he/him? Or do you want an entirely different set of pronouns?

E.g. "I believe the majority of trans-identified people not only pose zero threat to others, but are vulnerable for all the reasons I’ve outlined. Trans people need and deserve protection. Like women, they’re most likely to be killed by sexual partners. Trans women who work in the sex industry, particularly trans women of colour, are at particular risk."

I certainly agree with this and have stated similar many times.

Where you amd I differ @AdamRyan is I do not believe this solution and safety will be found by creating "in between" states and legal fudges between the state of being male and the state of being female. Its like the medieval scholars trying to make sense of the motion of the planets with the Earth in the middle...every solution threw up more problems, more workarounds, moe complexity, because they were fundamentally trying to make the world fit into the wrong explanation.

The true source of mental distress is very rarely what the conscious mind fixates on, and so is very rarely solved by fixing the superficial "problem". I don’t just care about TRA activism because of the impact on women, I care because it's going to fuck up a lot of trans people as well.