Keir Starmer unable to define a woman AGAIN

[IwantToRetire]

Suspect that the Sun doesn't care that much about women's rights, and are only trying to score points against Starmer. But his reply (if accurately reported is so avoiding in any way accepting women as biological females. And this will be our next PM.

Reading out questions of Sun readers, Political Editor Harry Cole asked the Labour chief if he still believed men can have cervixes and women can have testicles.

Asked again about his position on trans women and whether they can be defined as women, Sir Keir said: "We set out our position very clearly..."

He added: "Everybody knows there is a difference between sex and gender. I absolutely understand that and respect that. We will not be going down the road of self identification."

He went on:"As you well know the overwhelming majority of women, it's a biological issue...

"There's a small number of people in this country who are born into a gender they don't identify with and they often go through pretty hellish abuse.

"I think most people would say if we can find a way to be respectful to all the women we must properly respect and we have defended their rights and advanced their rights as a party, as a movement for many, many years and we will continue to do so, then fine.

"But we won't and I don't think we should simply abuse ignore, make fun or mock..."

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/26845883/keir-starmer-transgender-women-define-is/

@AdamRyan I genuinely don't understand your position but I am interested.
You think TW in women's changing rooms in unacceptable but in toilets is fine. Is that right?
You think women's toilets are mixed sex in a way that some males are free to use them but other's aren't. What's the difference between the TW who is allowed in and the sex offender/voyeur who isn't? Women's clothing? What about the overlap there of the sex offender who is also a cross dresser?

If policing toilets is impossible how is policing changing rooms or any other space possible?
I would say it's easiest to have a simple blanket rule that sex based spaces are exactly that.

AdamRyan · Today 11:27

Now its being used by anti-trans in the same way - "you want to harm women and children!"

Or to be accurate: "Some of you want to harm women and children and we don't know which ones and aren't allowed to ask, or challenge."

And that's not to mention women and girls who feel uncomfortable, frightened, or panicked, just being in the same space as a male.

Do you "enjoy" the presence of anyone in the loo? I don't. It's pretty uncomfortable. Taking a perspective of the status quo (trans women using the ladies) is not about a "desire" to be seen as anything. I just don't think its practicable or possible to change it.

Some women appear to use it as a means to put other women down. Oh you're so parochial, insecure, unworldly, etc. So unevolved.

Some women appear to use their GC credentials to put other women down. Oh you're so progressive, woke, man pleaseing, poorly read, don't understand etc. Such a woman hater who wants to harm children.

The fact there is no countenance given to different positions is why this is now a culture war and not a debate.

Why do you think safety and decency matter in changing rooms but not toilets and how will you stop males going in?

Yes this. It’s an odd premise

Why split it out like that it doesn’t make sense

Use a blanket rule and women use single sex spaces

This is very true. We see it all the time that ‘I’m alright Jack’ approach. What I noticed on a recent thread on AIBU was a number of women agreeing that they too have had to have a push chair stuck in the doors or have come across this still happening. As I work around the hospitality industry, I notice just how many times I go into female toilet with women half dressed cleaning their shirts.

But we still get the ‘I am fine with males coming in’. It is like they either live a narrow life going either to very few toilets while out or they live where there is wonderful toilet provision and no one doing anything in the female toilets that requires extra privacy. Or. They don’t actually give a fuck about those who DO need the extra privacy. They believe that those women can go and find other places or just suck up being exposed to the male gaze so those male people feel better and the women handing over the space can feel great about themselves.

@AdamRyan
I think the status quo works fine - womens toilets for biological women, trans women can also use them. That's been the situation for a long time, its the situation today. I am completely anti self ID and would be against a situation where a sex offender/voyeur could just stroll in and claim he "felt like a woman" so was entitled to be there.

What do you mean by 'trans woman' here? Can you explain who fits this category and exactly what distinguishes them from a man claiming he "feels like a woman"?

You think TW in women's changing rooms in unacceptable but in toilets is fine. Is that right? Yes, kinda. I'd prefer single sex but I'm not Queen of the World and its not a hill I want to die on. In France I use the gender neutral set ups without batting an eyelid for example.

What's the difference between the TW who is allowed in and the sex offender/voyeur who isn't?
A layer of gatekeeping. It's a bit like locking your house. A determined burglar will still get in, but if the house is unlocked then any old random could choose to walk in on a whim.

Also if TW are "allowed" but men aren't, then it's much easier for women to challenge someone who is giving them "creep" vibes. That's not possible under self ID.

If policing toilets is impossible how is policing changing rooms or any other space possible?
Because in a changing room etc they are in environments that have opening ours, receptionists or changing room attendants etc. They are part of a service being offered.
If a gym (for example) starts letting people use changing rooms on the basis of gender ID, they will lose customers and it will hit their bottom line and so they have an interest in policing use.

Toilets are a "facility". They aren't being monitored in the same way, and they often aren't being offered as part of a service. E.g. service station toilets. Who's going to monitor who is going in and out? I was in one the other day, very quiet, the ladies entrance was by the ext to the truck park. On the way into the ladies I met a male trucker leaving, on the way out of the ladies I met a male trucker coming in. I don't think they were being predatory, i think they were working and didn't want to spend "unnecessary" time and effort walking further to the gents. But noone was stopping them doing that and those men obviously felt comfortable as there was barely anyone around.

You know what a trans woman is, or you wouldn't spend so much time posting about them. So I don't think that's required.

There is no one standing at the door of our changing rooms, or any I’ve used

Is that what you’re suggesting? A bouncer type situation?

Or if someone sees a TW go in it’s fine to get a staff member to have them removed?

If a male is legally female with a GRC do you think you’ll be challenged on this?

Rather than the Wild West of photographing males in spaces which could result in a very unsafe outcome for a woman, use the law. Why on earth not?

What are you suggesting Eastern?
In Eastern world, what's keeping trans women out of toilets and changing rooms?

If it was "illegal" to use opposite sex toilets, how would that be enforced? What would happen in the services I described above?

Most people abide by the law, whether they are gender nc or not.

Use biological sex in EqA and make single sex mean just that.

For the few where the law does not matter use the same process as say someone harassing on the underground

@AdamRyan There are plenty of changing rooms that don't have attendants and plenty of toilets where the user isn't anonymous or impossible to police.

In school, college and workplace toilets it would be completely obvious if someone known to be male was using the women's. Where males do use female toilets in such places it is because it is permitted not because it's impossible to prevent.

And to me it makes sense that if we re-establish the societal norms that TW can use male toilets in these more controlled environments in safety, then attitudes to using them in other places should shift.

As far as I am aware, a 'transwoman' is any man who declares that he feels like a woman. You seem to be using a different definition. I was asking what that is.

I am completely anti self ID and would be against a situation where a sex offender/voyeur could just stroll in and claim he "felt like a woman" so was entitled to be there.

A sex offender/voyeur who claims to feel like a woman is a transwoman. You're not making a lot of sense here.

I will assume you are being genuine her not disingenous.

The people who want to maintain the existing, sex based understanding of man and woman (and yes, that is the existing underlying understanding, GRCs and trans women not withstanding, they all refer in some way to the core shared understanding of man and woman as the two sexes - which is obviousl really, otherwsie they would not be insisting on using the names that already existed for the two sexes to label feelings of gender) have a simple understanding of man and woman and understand trans women to be men who feel some need to be perceived as women or have access to women-only spaces.

However, you are proposing something different based on a different understanding of man, woman, trans man and trans woman. To engage with your suggestions we need to understand what you mean by those words.

So the question is what do you understand a trans woman to be and how in your preferred model would you differentiate that person from another male who does not have the right/social license to be called a woman or use access woman-only spaces?

Exactly. Men can stroll in if they feel like a woman

There’s no requirement on what a man who feels like a woman wears or how they look

What’s stopping them?

It’s incredibly muddled and contradictory

Also if TW are "allowed" but men aren't, then it's much easier for women to challenge someone who is giving them "creep" vibes. That's not possible under self ID.

So if a creepy bloke in a dress is in there giving me 'creep' vibes, can I challenge them?

Is an obvious man in a dress a creepy bloke or a transwoman?

Let's take a real life example @AdamRyan.

Jamie Wallis MP claims to be trans. He looks and dresses like a typical man.

Is he a transwoman? Should he be allowed in the women's loos?

What about other men who, like him, look like typical men? Should they all also be allowed in?

How do we distinguish a 'transwoman' from a man?

And yet, just being able to call the police or security would be one very easy way to ‘police’ it.

Not intimidating women so they feel they cannot even say something is another basic point of policing.

Not educating girls and women that leaving would be considered a micro aggression would be another basic point.

’How are you going to police it’ is a tactic that is meant to silence women whether it is meant that way by the poster or not. It is a ploy to make the policing of this seem insurmountable so why bother clarifying the law or calling for all the providers to enact the law available.

Before there were any more than a hand full of these male people in each country, social mores were followed and women could call attention when they were concerned. They could scream and alert others.

The ‘it was always this way’ is also a misrepresentation. It became this way and now it is considered to have been historically this way. However, it is a recent issue in reality. Sure, there wasn’t a law explicitly stating no male people in female toilets. But the reality is that 30 years ago, it truly was rare. It should never have been allowed but who would have thought it was going to be an issue. Until it was too late.

But no. ‘How would you even police this’ particularly used in conjunction with ‘it was always this way’ is a tactic that has the effect to silence or at least try to dispirit others. But we did it in the past. It is not insurmountable at all. Sure it won’t mean no women and girls could be harmed still. But we can fucking try. And if it needs the law to be changed, so be it.

Yes it’s such a strange take.

Why would you want the solution to be photographs and share price?

How incredibly unsafe does that make women? The wrong photo taken and then assault

How can a business protect their share price if the law is as it stands?

It’s utter madness. We have a more orderly tool to help women out, the law. Women get access to help by normal process with much lower risk not some mad version

Also if TW are "allowed" but men aren't, then it's much easier for women to challenge someone who is giving them "creep" vibes. That's not possible under self ID

Adam - TW ARE men as you well know. Such disingenuous rubbish.

And I'll point out again that any so-called compromise that allows some men to be called women and given access to women-only resources is effectively accepting the deeply sexist and unfeminist idea that something in a man's mind makes him closer to women than other men are - a concept that only works if you think "women" all have some sort of sameness other than their sex.

Middle grounds are what you look for between two reasonable but different positions. The assertion that something in some men's minds makes them empirically, not just in their own heads but really, in the real world, more like women than other men is not reasonable.

So the idea that we need to find a middle ground between women existing as a legal and social sex class in their own right and destroying that by accepting that men can be women as well is as daft as saying I need to find middle ground between me having full use of my car and the person who stole it having full use of it by letting them drive it a few days a week.

Even if they really genuinely wanted my car. Even if there are many many social reasons behind the reason they stole it that means I honestly pity and emphasise with them. Even if stealing my car was the only bad thing they ever did. The solution is not to say I have to give up half my car, it's to look at why that person stole my car - really why, underneath the immediate desire to own it - and if we as society decide that is a reasonable reason find another way to meet that need.

So I'm not saying that refusing to condone "some men are more like women than other men" means just ignoring there are people who genuinely identify as trans. I'm saying that given that they are manifestly not the opposite sex, the solution is to find a social identity that is separate to sex because the thing they are experiencing is also separate to sex.

Now maybe that will mean we decide "actually, it makes sense to split changing rooms based on mental identity not sex". I think it's unlikely but who knows, maybe once we start asking the right questions we see there is a genuinely good case for that. The point is we'd be building that case up from first principles, not this underhand appropriation of all things single-sex because we've (well, not we but some very loud and influential voices) have decreed that some men are more like women than other men because of something in their minds.

All this futzing about trying to find a solution that is somewhere in the middle of sex is based on the wrong problem and that is why is will never work. It's the drunk trying to find his keys under the lampost when he actually dropped them beside the front door. Every "solution" just throws up more problems because it's not tackling the real problem.

Gender isn't nearly as big an issue with the electorate as things like the cost of living crisis, the NHS, the economy, fuel poverty, the state of our waterways, cuts to services etc etc

Neither is the conflict in Israel and Gaza, but its having an impact on UK elections.

True. but what the cost of living crisis, the NHS, etc have in common with Israel/Gaza is that I very much doubt that a Labour government would have a big effect on any of them. Whereas, on gender, a new government really could make a difference, if it wanted to, and shore up protection for women and kids. So as for @Brainworm 's question, for me, it's not just about promises on single-sex spaces, it's about de-rainbowing our schools. Which is something Labour seems to have little appetite for.

The status quo of transwomen in the womens toilet is not true.

If it the status quo, why are there signs telling users not to challenge anyone using the incorrect toilet. If we all agreed that toilets are shared, but changing rooms arent, why are do the signs say exactly the same - 'women/female'. There would be different, agreed and undersood signage.

When was this agreement made? Who made it and why?

Or is there a suggestion that because women didnt kick up a public fuss in the 1960s, we are all bound to a status quo now?