Scared and disheartened today

[teawamutu]

The Rosie Duffield interview in the Times, the commitment to make GRCs easier to get in Labour's manifesto, all the sneering about culture wars, the Tories doing SO bloody badly...

It feels like we're about to lose all the ground we fought so hard to regain, let alone the potential advances that just won't happen now.

I believe Reform and Farage are anti woke and support gender critical views. I asked their campaign manager in Scotland as I've been asking all the candidates so they know it's an issue.

They may know what a woman is, but I think their view of what a woman should be and should do is unlikely to align with second wave feminism. That’s aside from their abhorrent views on several other topics.

Single-issue voters should think carefully about the consequences of voting Reform. Your GC vote will be portrayed by Farage as being support for his far right policies. You may be OK with that of course, which is fine, but I’d rather stick pins in my eyes.

I don’t think anyone on this thread has said they would vote Reform based on the position they hold on sex v gender. Just discussed their position.

Anyway, even if they did plan to vote for them, so what. Reform are a legitimate political party and even if I find the majority of their manifesto to be abhorrent, other people are allowed to hold different opinions, being as we are in a democracy and all of that.

Well I won't be voting Reform but surely I could also say:

Voters should think carefully about the consequences of voting Labour. Your non-GC vote will be portrayed by Starmer as being support for his gender-woo policies. You may be OK with that of course, which is fine, but I’d rather stick pins in my eyes.

I doubt I'll vote at all, all the options are rubbish.

Simply being Gender Critical (not that Reform are, they are at most Gender Traditional) is not enough for a party to gain my vote. However being Gender Gullible is enough for a party to lose my vote.

I am British but have lived in a different - and completely gender captured - country for the last few years. I'm planning to move back to Britain in the not too distant future and one of the things I'm looking forward to is living in a country where women's and children's rights and interests are so much stronger (and have so much more legal protection) because of Forstater, Roz Adams, Jo Phoenix, JKR, Kathleen Stock, the Women who wouldn't Wheesht, Esses, Cass etc.

I share all the concerns about what a Labour win will mean for all of the gains women have made (and I would normally be a Labour/LibDem voter myself). But even so, regardless of the outcome of the election I don't think these gains can be simply overridden or wiped out. It might be cold comfort but they are part of a long haul fight and a big part of that is women feeling like they can speak out against the erosion of their rights. This is definitely not something I feel like I could do where I live now. British terfs have created a culture shift.

Maybe I'm overstating how far we've come and I'm looking at the UK situation with rose-tinted glasses because I live somewhere that is so very far behind in this fight. But I'm looking forward to coming home and having my speech protected by the Forstater judgement and the changes that Cass has brought, which impacts my field of work.

You aren’t wrong.

But there is a groundswell of GC Labour voices, and I think Labour is the least worst option overall, because they otherwise most closely align with my views on other things. That’s not to say I won’t be writing to my Labour candidate and likely MP…

What has the world come to, when we’re having to have these conversations in 2024?

They can’t put the genie back in the bottle. Women have woken up to it.

Dd aged 15 had this topic in her PHSE. She’s at a girls school. She was a be kind TWAW when younger but my influence must have gone in! She put her hand up and said people should be able to do what they want but girls need their single sex spaces. She’s a cool girl so all the others agreed. Dd then said her middle aged teacher “looked like she was going to cry” and said how proud she was of them as she wasn’t allowed to say that but they had said it.

I'm finding this really difficult. I Labour until Corbyn, so spoilt my last two ballot papers.

A super majority for Starmer would mean and end to any progress and interestingly, Starmer has shifted on just about everything, except self-id light

I'm torn.

I understand the importance of having a good opposition AS WELL AS a good party in power for a healthy society.

Unfortunately we have a crap party in power which looks like it will be taken over by another crap party and a collapse in a good opposition and the risk of Reform and the LDs becoming bigger than the Tories and this then entitled to more airtime on public broadcasters (the popular vote is actually important for this - everyone says well my vote is wasted, but in terms of agenda setting and political debate for the next five years it's actually massively important even if your candidate 'has no chance'.

Sonia Sodha. "The polite way to describe Labour's response [to Kemi] is 'legally illiterate'"

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jun/09/the-law-on-single-sex-spaces-is-a-mess-it-needs-fixing-not-political-point-scoring

https://x.com/soniasodha/status/1799714576847560850?s=46&t=WHoOZ_3Kv5G6-FyQuvE0LQ

Thanks for that article. I normally find Sonia Sodha very measured in her criticism so it's cheered me up a bit to see her going for the Labour jugular.

Sigh.
So no one for me to vote for.

We have labour, tory, libdem, green, reform, heritage, and an independent

its a tory safe seat, there is no way they won’t win but i will look at the independent as im not voting tory or reform and i really don’t like the sound of heritage

Worrying that the party with the former human rights barrister at its helm is the one which is 'legally illiterate'. Which raises a MASSIVE credibility issue for him, IMO.

He should be judged as the lawyer he is, and this is exceptionally concerning. Why is Labour's response a lie, essentially? Because Keir knows it is. What a fucking mess we're in with the choices we have next month.

Both Heritage and Reform want to repeal the EqA by the look of it.

Heritage seem very much 'it wasn't like this in my day...political correctness gone mad' with their policies.

We can pick new sexism or old sexism.

Just not women's rights, is pretty much my current feeling.

What a time to be alive!

I've checked my candidates and there is a liberal party one. Looked at their website to see what their policies are and this is the LGBTQ+ one https://liberal.org.uk/policies/lgbtq-rights/ Surprise, surprise there is no mention of LGB, it's all T but a mixture of good and bad.

Anyone come across Transform party? They are standing locally to me. No SDP or Party of Women. I think it is a disaffected Corbynist group. They do mention 'transphobia' as one of the many things they are against. Of course it depends what your definition of transphobia is. They're also against homophobia so may have a clash as many gay people are very much against male 'lesbians' and 'transing the gay away' for example. It might be back to spoiling the old ballot paper.

Is this issue going to come up for debate by party leaders or will it just be swept under the table?

It's of low interest to the public so is currently not seen as an important topic.

That's possibly because it's being framed incorrectly as 'about trans' when it's actually about women's and children's rights. The incorrect framing drives me mad.

This!

the question should be “are you concerned about the removal of women’s rights and children’s safeguarding?”

NoWordForFluffy · Today 10:48

Worrying that the party with the former human rights barrister at its helm is the one which is 'legally illiterate'.

Yes, I speculated on Sonia's Twitter that he's taking "advice" from Bob White.