Zoe Williams on Wes Streeting

[southbiscay]

Zoe is suggesting that Wes Streeting apologising for not supporting the GC position is an election wheeze to win votes. Whilst Wes has form for bending with the wind, it's nevertheless fascinating that she thinks the GC position is the vote-winning position.

Perhaps someone could tell Keir.

x.com/zoesqwilliams/status/1794842950272463176

As Alexi Sayle says, he looks like son that Starmer has fashioned out of margarine.

I’d say it’s promising to see someone (no matter how self-serving) who obviously thinks they’d better change their stance because otherwise they're going to be on the wrong side of history.
if he thinks it’s going to win him votes I for one am going to applaud it because it will encourage others in positions of power to switch too (I’m looking at you Kier starmer)
totally get why it’s fucking annoying for those who’ve been fighting in the public eye for ages but that’s the way these things go I’m afraid.

if he thinks it’s going to win him votes I for one am going to applaud it because it will encourage others in positions of power to switch too (I’m looking at you Kier starmer)
The problem with that is the worry they will change their mind back after winning the election. I dont trust him an inch.

He's now going to be our MP (providing he keeps the seat, there has been a huge backlash here against Labour over Palestine) as the constituency boundaries have changed. The area is heavily populated by somewhat traditional Asian families who were hugely up in arms over the new sex education guidelines, so I'd imagine Wes isn't in a hurry to nail his colours to the mast there, no matter what he personally believes.

We are also the area where the "Rainbow Dildo Butt Monkey in the kids' library" took place... 🤦🏻‍♀️

Here's the article Zoe is getting het up about:

Link not showing on the app, does this work?

Wes Streeting: Women concerned about single-sex spaces aren’t bigots

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/7c2eea52-b7cb-4bc7-8de8-7bb85e2e70c3?shareToken=9c2545927b7bb23b10346927caa6e980

The Telegraph have also reported on it. The comments below are incandescent:

They've missed a bit. Why?

"“I hope there will be some goodwill coming in from both directions.."

Both directions part is cut from TheTimes.

Sorry did women set up schemes that stole rights from others and gave colleagues licence to call other people bigots? Did we dismantle child safeguarding? Did we endanger vulnerable groups?

What both directions does he mean? I think we should be told.

How badly written is that tweet?
poor old Zoe.

It's difficult to trust streeting, but now he has come out more firmly on the side of womens rights, and has half apologised, its a position that he can't really row back on, because he has pissed off TRAs so much.

He is an ambitious man, who knows which way public opinion sits. He is speaking about this now because its politically expedient to do so, but he is clearer on this than either starmer and dodds. So it's a start.

As expected, Streeting's managed to enrage TRAs but still failed to actually convince he'll protect women's rights.

Zoe Williams is digging herself quite the trench, there.

Zoe Williams is an idiot.

How come Rishi gets a free ride. He came to the GC party late.
Very up in arms about Wesley but quick to believe flappy floppy Rishi. What’s your opinion about the feminist Miriam Cates, the great protector of women rights 😂as long as they’re at home birthing kids, going to church and certainly not being cultural Marxists (bit of nice anti semitism there). God help them if they want a uni education or even a termination.

The Tories stopped self ID, instigated Cass, and are updating school guidelines. Prison rules in E&W also changed.

The concern is that Labour are going to fuck all of that back up.

There are really very few who are still out there raging at women for asking for single service provision. That might have been a fashionable stance four years back; it certainly isn't now.

The idea that the smooth, attuned Streeting is in any way saying anything that isn't entirely bland and calibrated as an unexceptional 'reasonable' position is looking extreme and very brittle, tbh.

As if Williams has been sat with her headphones on staring at Twitter hard for the past four years.

Staring hard at the wrong bits of Twitter, for that matter.

The Labour Party have just parachuted a candidate into Southend West going against the preferred candidate of the local party and kicking off much resentment.
His biog previously said he/him and that he works for Basildon Pride. Both have been removed.
Funny that.
It's almost as if they can read the room.

As a PP has said, some of them at least can read the room and will say "yes, well, possibly" until the election.

Afterwards, they'll have five years to do whatever the fuck they like, backed by the Lib Dems, who will have more MPs due to ABTT in the shires and leafy suburbs.

Whenever a newspaper runs an article on this, I look at the comments. And they are overwhelmingly in favour of women having the right to single-sex spaces. Now it's true that in most cases the newspapers in question are the Times, the Telegraph and the Mail, which tend to skew right. But it's very hard to know what Guardian readers think because the Guardian chooses not to run many of the important stories, and when it does run a story, it closes comments - which I assume is because they became bored with having to delete so many gender-critical comments.

In common with many women, I certainly found, in the days when comments were opened, that even the mildest expression of a gender-critical viewpoint was instantly deleted, and sometimes followed by a suspension. So the inevitable conclusion is that the vast majority of people have no truck with the gender nonsense, and the only way the Guardian can pretend this isn't the case is by suppressing any dissenting view.

Their plans are still as Dodds outlined them. Wes is just saying some words. Interesting about the Southend candidate and his apparent attempts to scrub history.

Deeds, not deleted words...

I also agree that if we end up with the LDs propping up Labour then it's the worst outcome of all. This assault on women and children couldn't have happened unless there had been a coalition government. The LDs are partly bankrolled by Ferring. Labour MPs bankrolled by GLAAD have placed themselves (or been placed by LPHQ) in positions such as at the WESC.

It would be much better to make Labour have to defend it as solely their policy and observe if they dare to whip MPs, and see what happens. If it's a coalition then we are absolutely fucked.

@ArabellaScott ok a tiny bit of positive.
What about the multitude of other shite things ? Do you forgive them for the state of everything else ? Even Hitler built decent roads and Mussolini kept the trains on time. Not comparing the Tories to the Nazis at all before I’m flamed but focusing on one issue and ignoring the crap when the rest of the country is falling apart is short sighted. What’s your opinion on the other policies of GC tories like Miriam and Danny Kruger ? I’m sure you’re aware of the National Conservative conferences that they hosted ?

1. Wes Streeting never believed TWAW. No one who is an adult educated past primary age believes this at all, they just pretend to, so it does not require a huge amount of internal struggle to drop that belief.
2. We want these politicians to come out and say some variant of 'hang on, no, maybe that wasn't right after all'- it makes no sense to berate them because its too little/too late/not grovelly enough/fails to mention some pertinent point.

It doesn't matter if 'they're doing it to get elected' 'they finally realised where public opinion lies'. The point is that they are changing what they say, and that will necessarily happen in smallish steps. If we are waiting for the likes of WS to publicly declare a Damascene conversion we are going to wait a very long time.

we should welcome what he does say and ask for specific commitments (say clarifying that the EqA refers to biological sex) that we can later hold him to.

I think having this 'apology' from a gay man, late of Stonewall, is significant. They can't throw section 28 at him.

Zoe not even bothering to try to cobble together an illogical argument and cutting straight to the blustering impotent attack is just more evidence she doesn’t understand this issue and refuses to think about it. She just knows she’s right because be kind and TWAW and la la la la I can’t hear you.

Precisely.

I would formerly have described her as a useful idiot for the TRA cause, but I think that's only 50% accurate now.

And the thing she’s objecting to WS saying is that women being worried about losing same-sex-only spaces and the sex class of women being erased, are not bigots. That’s it. It’s about as mild and reasonable as you can be.

By her kneejerk attack on this, ZW is actually clearly saying that she doesn’t see TW as women - because she doesn’t think women should have same-sex spaces or be defined by sex. She thinks males should be in female spaces and definitions. If she didn’t think they were male, she wouldn’t think that way.