The Times Lead Story - Labour Set To Annihilate Women's Rights

[Arealnumber]

Labour to simplify ‘undignified’ gender transition process

www.thetimes.com/article/29648ec1-5b29-4b35-97df-2a443c71d7e0?shareToken=fd3bf0c5a080ae78044dd82770d8e1a7

Fucking idiots. They were never listening.

Thanks for the link and the share token. While I was reading it I noticed another article, that imo is a bit slight/really plays down the batshit

www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/what-labour-key-figures-think-gender-trans-issues-fz9z352tp

https://archive.ph/cBAam McFadden's not a bad'un

Thank you for sharing that.

re
Clearly if someone is going in with a preconceived intent to change someone’s sexuality or their gender identity, then that is abuse

Don’t they see that even by speaking of going in to change [their] gender identity, they are assuming that it is a given that everyone has a gender identity [which could be different from their body]? This is in itself a preconception.

This statement jumps to a conclusion that precludes the possibility that other factors might be behind the feeling of gender incongruence.

They have it upside down in my opinion.

Why don’t they mention that one very real and present conversion practice is that of inducing possibly gay children to mimic heterosexuality through harmful trans body modifications, when being gay would not have caused them harm at all so long as they had felt they could be accepted and happy that way?

There is no mention of children in care, or the otherwise traumatised. Or observance that some children may be copying their friends who like them are looking at trans forums on their smart phones, alongside self-harm and anorexia sites. After they have already been primed about pink and blue brains in the wrong gingerbread body while they were at primary school. Why has there been a very sudden and recent increase x thousands of children saying they are trans?

Is there a written, modern analysis of conversion practices as they happen in the U.K.?

A year or so ago Channel 4 found one example from the 1960s, and even they said, quietly, after having interviewed the poor person affected, and shown how awful this had been, that this did not happen anymore.

But, if awful forms of conversion are indeed being practised, mightn’t they be illegal already?

It's all bloody go today isn't it?

Don’t they see that even by speaking of going in to change [their] gender identity, they are assuming that it is a given that everyone has a gender identity [which could be different from their body]? This is in itself a preconception.

Yes. Exactly Scrolling.
To me, this is the core issue that need to be addressed first.
The issue of belief in gender identity hasn't been resolved, and until it is (if it can be), there should be no legislation based on it.
We have simply been told it exists, but I don't think it's ever been tested- (or satisfactorily defined even)- and it is certainly widely contested.
That's what needs to be argued I believe.

I really think some of this will come down to the medical/scientific side. The legal and policy elements can only do so much otherwise.

The fact is that gender ideology is predicated on scientific nonsense.

The old idea of sex dysphoria had at least the element that it really did seem to describe what some people seemed to experience, and I think this is why early on it was impressed upon the public consciousness that this was what transition was about - alleviating what might be a very real experience for some people of feeling acute distress about their sexual organs and also their sexed body in a social context.

It's still entirely up in the air whether transition, even just social transition, really is a very effective way to deal with this for anyone. Totally apart from the legal elements, what it might mean for women, and so on - we don't know if it even works better than the alternatives, long term, for people who suffer sex dysphoria.

I think until medical people start speaking out that there is no such thing as a "trans" person, that this is not any kind of medical condition, but at best an attempt at a treatment for a condition that may have origins in things like sexual trauma, and there is nothing to "convert" someone to or from in these scenarios, there won't be a good basis to build policy.

Innit tho!

Bring it on, sez me; let's hold the politicians' feet to the fire while we have their attention ✊

I totally agree with this Tempest, but I fear that things have moved so far from that now- as we can see in the language of everyone referring to 'trans children' (see Wes Streeting) even when discussing implementing Cass.
Everyone has forgotten so quickly this previous understanding. The concept of children 'being trans', and of gender identity as an immutable characteristic and hard fact, have been so successfully and deeply embedded now. In an incredibly short time, and as if that has always been the understanding.

The way of the world moves so quickly now, I think people struggle to hold threads of understanding across time.

For so many people, it's as if their brains have been wiped clean of everything they understood before, and they can't even see what we understood before to be real- and as still held as true by other people.
They don't even realise that there IS an alternative to this new belief they have accepted so readily.
Hence, only being able to conceive of any challenge to the ban re gender identity (or the approach you outline) as support for conversion.

It's so mad, it does my head in even trying to explain it!

Apologies for derail.
Prob best for the Cass/conversion thread. Just difficult not to respond when the topic comes up!

I don't think it's really a derail.

It's natural that at FWR the discussion tends to center around how this affects women's rights, and children.

But fundamentally, I don't think that is the issue. Fundamentally, the problem is you can't have good policy, and a robust society, predicated on untruths.

In the end I think it would benefit feminists to focus on that element more sometimes, even if it seems like it's a different element of the discussion.

Yes we’ve fabricated a whole system which is based on an untruth

It’s also why those who believe in it so often use violence and threat to defend

You admitted that you don't care about trans widows.
"And the "annulment" - well I would be more sympathetic about it if people weren't such total arses to me on here."
I was married to a man who used to say he wouldn't be violent if I behaved myself. You sound just like him.

There’s just been a summary of the newspapers on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme and Labour’s mishandling of gender issues was up front and centre.

So much for nobody ever mentioning it on the doorstep!

Finally it’s good the BBC are covering it

They’ve been pretty hopeless

JKR is brilliant

I've had an excellent response from my local Independent candidate to my query on women's rights & GI. He has also prioritised safeguarding, so I will not have to waste my vote now. Check out your Independents if you have that choice.

Interestingly, he mentioned that he's hearing from many disaffected Labour voters like me.

Which independent party does he represent ?

Just checked out my independent candidates and one of them sounds great. It is a wasted vote but better than not voting or voting for Labour.

@TempestTost
Fundamentally, the problem is you can't have good policy, and a robust society, predicated on untruths.
Yes!
And that's the enormous blindspot in people (and those who you really would expect to know better) that we are dealing with in all of this.

It's not about the spouse having plenty of time to act - it's about the fact the responsibility is on them to act to end a contract which will be automatically and unilaterally altered in a fundamental way by the transitioning party automatically unless the spouse takes action.

With something as important as a marriage contract, it's not just or acceptable to say "right, your marriage contract is changing and we assume you agree to this change if we don't hear from you by x date". This is a marriage, not a credit card.

The two parties enter into the marriage contract as two distinct legal entities, and transitioning converts one party into a new legal entity with fundamentally different legal features.

This isn't like when a company changes its name and you can easily go on companies house and check its old name to show this company is still on the hook for the same contract - this is more akin to when a company fundamentally charges its nature (e.g. a limited company listing as a plc or other change of majority ownership), which obviously affects the other party to the contract and may well have affected their decision to enter into it in the first place.

A change that alters the fundamental nature of the other party in a business contract, would typically be an automatic breach of the contract in order to protect the other party (and so consent would be required from the other party to enable the contract to continue) because changing the fundamental legal personality of one party necessarily changes the contract, and one party can't change a contract unilaterally.

PPs have cited religious and administrative reasons why the spousal exit clause might be needed, but ultimately it comes down to the fact that a person has a right to consent to marriage and to refuse to marry if they wish. If the person they married doesn't legally exist anymore, they shouldn't be forced into continuing the contract with a different legal entity chosen by the original spouse.

To deem inaction as implying consent for a marriage contract is to force people into a new marriage without their actual consent. Can you imagine if silence implied consent for entry into marriage in the first place? This is no different.

The fact is that gender ideology is predicated on scientific nonsense.

It's unscientific nonsense. It doesn't have the backing of any science that withstands thorough scrutiny.

I would argue that we are already being subjected to mass conversion therapy, of all of us. We are being coerced into accepting the notion of gender identity as fact, even during routine interactions. The diversity monitoring part of the application form for a job I recently applied for asked me for my gender identity but didn't offer "no gender identity" or "no belief in gender identity" as an option. The nearest option was "prefer not to say", which could be interpreted, or in my case misinterpreted, as "I have a gender identity but it's none of your business". The religion question had "no religion" as an option.

This isn't just a fight for women's rights, it's a fight for mental integrity and the right to free thought.

Too right @MaidOfAle !

Neo religion.

You are right. I cross it out, but I am not a young person applying for a job.

This isn't just a fight for women's rights, it's a fight for mental integrity and the right to free thought.

Yes, @MaidOfAle that is absolutely right. This above all. It is a fight against authoritarianism, Newspeak, sheer stupidity, and the destruction of children’s minds and bodies.

The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible.
(George Orwell) The Principles of Newspeak^)