Reasons to be cheerful/not despair?

[teawamutu]

Indulge me, I'm feeling a bit doomy this morning (and very sad to be so, because a few years ago I'd have been doing cartwheels about this result).

We're better off than we were five years ago, right?

We have the Cass Report.

We have Forstater and various other legal decisions, with more pending.

There's a conversation around the harms of medicalising confused children.

Gender ideology is more to the 'controversial' end of the scale than 'right side of history'.

No-one will ever unsee Isla Bryson.

What else? I know there's a long road ahead, but what other foundations do we have to stand on as we prepare to fight ALL OVER AGAIN?

How many women were elected this time around? Does anyone know?

Yes, sorry. I didn't mention Tonia Antoniazzi and Dr Cass in the Lords.

I think all the points in your OP are correct and the mood is changing worldwide re gender ideology. It's being openly discussed in a way it wasn't a few years back.

I think Starmer is a sensible and balanced kind of person and I think he'll take a sensible and balanced approach to this issue.

I think the Cass report has put the brakes on children transitioning and no party would dare to reverse that, and Wes Streeting had a sensible response to it when it was discussed in parliament.

I feel generally very hopeful that Starmer and this Labour government can gradually bring our country back to a better place. I am happy overall.

I’m happy as I’m Scottish and the SNP have got a doing! And my new Labour MP was absolutely clear on single sex spaces and standing up for the rights of actual women

I was very lucky to have a Party of Women candidate to vote for, I got a detailed email response re. Women's rights and these issues from my local Labour MP which was exactly along the lines of KS, but she at least appreciates the issues. As it's such a safe Labour seat though I voted P of W and have just seen she got 0.9% of votes here at 337 votes which I'm quite pleased about. The seat held as Labour but with a lower majority than previously due to increase in independents and Green.

I spent 20 mins or so chatting 1:1 with our newly elected labour MP earlier this week about women's rights as I was very undecided. I was pleasantly surprised by her response, she was clear she wanted to find a way forward which whilst ensuring trans rights protected womens rights - she was clear on the need for single sex spaces for biological women and the need to implement the Cass review. She was disappointed by the way the party had treated Rosie Duffield. She was receptive to my concerns and absolutely didn't TWAW all over me. She shares she felt there has been a swing in the party over the last year to a more reasoned position, she referenced how it has blown up in the SNP's face and they as Labour party are very alive to that (hopefully after tonight's pasting even more so).
My conversation with her gave me some glimmer of hope.

Labour will have noted what has happened to the snp.
Labour know that although they’ve won a landslide in terms of seats they haven’t come in on a wave of overwhelming public support.
Teens roll their eyes at the trans stuff now - it’s definitely not ‘cool’. I think this is particularly important.
people feel free(er) to discuss the issues now.
it might not be everybody’s number one issue but most people are aware of it (trans stuff) and don’t like it.

The Labour Party need to keep the support of a wide range of voters, not just the mainly white middle class metropolitan luxury belief guardian readers

We were always on borrowed time with the 2019 conservative wim, but it allowed quite a lot of footing and progress.

Now we will be set back quiet a few years, but 4 years can go quickly.

Progress with what, @frenchnoodle?

I think we have that a lot of what JKR says makes the media. She isn’t shutting up now. I think we have that the Mail, Telegraph and Spectator publish on this issue already and will probably go harder now as something to beat Starmer with. There’ll be more nonsense from TRAs which will get more sunlight onto the insanity and misogyny of their arguments. Unfortunately there’ll probably be more awful crimes committed by someone like Isla Bryson which will create headlines. When people understand more about this issue, they only move one way on it and it’s in our direction. I have to cling on to that atm.

The big increase in Rosie Duffield's majority - despite the lack of leadership support - is encouraging.

Um.

Penny Mordaunt is gone so she won't be the next Tory leader.

The SNP have been wiped out in Scotland.

The Lib Dems aren't the official opposition.

Rosie Duffield romped home in Canterbury.

Wes Streeting didn't lose his seat.

Dr Hilary Cass will be in the House of Lords.

Does that help?

I would have voted Labour had my seat been marginal.

I'm really pleased to see that, I think, all the labour candidates who've spoken up in support of women have got in.

There’s just so much more conversation about it now. Sadly because the things that we predicted have happened, eg sexual assault of women in women’s only spaces. But it is getting much harder to ignore and I’ve been speaking to more and more people who agree with me. We just need to keep up this pressure now Labour are in.

It's a little scary, but Reform have done better than expected- and do not think men belong in women's spaces.
We probably need to carry on fighting, as ever- but there are some MPs with some say now, who aren't into the wokery. And able to say so.

Also, Starmer is flipflopping all over the place with this... he seems to have only just realised women can vote. Hopefully, he will realise the tide change and is certainly weak enough to bow to pressure.

Jonathan “I’m not a toilet monitor” Ashworth lost his seat (to a pro Palestinian candidate) so that’s goodbye to a shadow minister who thinks our concerns are trivial.

I'm so grateful for all the women who have been working within political parties. We need you more than ever. I will probably join the Labour Party now to help where I can. I couldn't stomach it before.

There may be a hope that Starmer was keeping quiet on this to avoid saying the "wrong" thing, and rocking the pre-election boat.

I'm feeling most cheerful about the number of women who, over the last few weeks, have quietly said to me, without any prompting, that they're concerned about single sex spaces. They were committed to voting Labour and didn't want to hear anything that might rock that boat but they definitely weren't entirely happy about it and thought it was something that could be tackled once Labour were elected.

To be honest, I think they might be in for a shock about that - if Labour weren't prepared to listen when they needed our votes, I don't see why they should start now. However I also think Labour might be in for a shock too if they think they've been handed a mandate to proceed with quasi-self-ID without any clarification about what a GRC means.

I also understand where these women were coming from because it was roughly where I stood five years ago and, once today's out of the way, I'm really hoping this board isn't going to be rammed with threads telling them off for a choice that was made in good faith.

They tried to take down Duffield and Badenoch. they failed.

261 female MPs. Not enough, but the highest ever number, and heading in the right direction.*

SNP wipeout

Shapps, Rees-Mogg, Truss gone - possibly the three most unpleasant people in the house lost their seats.

*though I have to say female MPs have been a disappointment to me - I really believed they would make a difference. So many traitors to their own sex.

It could be worse. Some polls had the libdems as the opposition. And Mordaunt as the new Tory leader. Which really would have been the pits.

If Kemi becomes Tory leader, that would be a game changer on gender issues. She's a very clear communicator and she would bring publicity to the subject which just goes over the heads of most voters.