Starmer (feels) weary of the incessant demands of feminist women that he commit to the annoying task of listening to them. He declared instead that “the people of the UK” are “exhausted” by the political battles over issues such as trans rights.
Keir (wants) to focus on “bringing people together rather than creating further division”. Who is Keir aiming to bring together? Women don’t want “bringing together” with men; that is rather the point and has been for more than a decade.
Sir Keir declared that he would “bring an end to those controversies [over trans rights] on day one.”
Is Keir assuming that all the women who have spent years campaigning, speaking, writing and lobbying in expectation that they would retain rights necessary for a safe and fair existence, simply forget what they were doing and wander off home in a daze?
It seems unlikely that immediately a woman from one of the large organisations advocating for women’s rights, like Sex Matters, said to another, “Come on Maya, you’ve had your fun, probably time to get a proper job now or sign on. People are fed up.”
Are we to assume the “vast majority” of these overly tired people are not women who want rights according to their sex? Women wanting single-sex prison accommodation, for example, are in Keir’s depiction of society, the unreasonable minority and it’s very tiring for the reasonable people to consider them. Although I imagine if you are the woman having to keep your eye on the male rapist in your cell, that could be a bit draining too.
Women are being cast as intolerant bullies in this Starmer-drawn landscape of female-imposed weariness. All the reasonable people want is peace. The “culture wars” have been long. Women have been putting culture guns to the tolerant people’s heads for too long and he will put an end to their irksome ways. The thing is, women are not a culture — the battle we fight is not for territory. Women are a sex, the female sex, and we fight for rights that we need when our bodies are the unfair focus of the opposite sex.
Moving ahead to day one of “The End of Pesky Women” I wonder what Keir imagines will happen. Perhaps at 4.30 pm exactly the miracle of women becoming silent women will occur; it seems a good time for women to wobble out of our various misguided, unreasonable groups, blinking in the sunlight, confused as to how we got it all so very wrong and made all the “other people” so exhausted. Perhaps there will be a party and women will clutch a plate of quiche and crisps, declaring to burn their rebellious t-shirts, ribbons, scarves and tea towels. Perhaps someone will be on the phone shouting over the music, “Scrap the ashtrays order, Kellie-Jay, it’s over love.”
https://thecritic.co.uk/culture-war-what-is-it-good-for/
(This is a much longer article raising many issues about Starmer’s Labour and women – I just pulled out the ones that struck home for me.)