Sex Matters meets Anneliese Dodds

[fromorbit]

Interesting.

Sex Matters had a positive & constructive meeting with @AnnelieseDodds
She reiterated govt "will protect single-sex spaces for biological women".

We said this requires the law recognise biological women as a group that needs protection.
We talked about FWS case & beyond.
https://x.com/SexMattersOrg/status/1854215442866246137

Obviously this doesn't mean there are no issues, BUT what it shows is Labour fully recognises that NO debate is over. Hence the stall for LWD and open meetings held with resistance groups by Streeting etc. Any law they try which tries to pretend that biology does not exist is going to be met by serious resistance, legal cases and terrible publicity. That resistance will be amplified by Kemi's Tories and will have impact with relations with Trump's US.

What does this mean for the Conversion Therapy bill for example? My suspicion is the final text, if it ever happens, will be so littered with get out clauses so it doesn't upset women, religious communities, sensible medics and trigger law suits that it may be meaningless. I may be wrong and it may have other secret implications. We shall see and we have to be ready if they try anything underhand.

Keep fighting everyone. They are only listening because people united to make it happen and as soon as we show weakness they will stab us in the back. The awful stuff the FA is trying is a typical example of the underhand bullshit the genderists are going to try in this new environment.

Keep funding court cases, keep posting, keep call stuff out.

Hmm. I'm not so sure that they haven't changed their views? I look at the vitriol directed at women insisting on the rights of girls and women to single sex sports, spaces etc coming from too many labour activists - especially but not solely men. (see Rosie Duffield, the LWD etc)
They've got themselves completely on the wrong side of history and it's only since Cass & the steady stream of court cases that they're frantically trying to reverse ferret without it being noticed. You've only got to look at Starmer's own drivel about never saying only women have a cervix suddenly morphing into 'of course sex is biological as Blair has told me so' (I'm paraphrasing). And I'll be kind and not mention Lammy's emotional incontinence about the cervix.

Now I'm relieved that they've finally noticed that their wholesale commitment to sterilising children and wedging male sex offenders into women's spaces is not good for society. But their acknowledgement of the law is very recent and only as a result of all the hard work from women (plus the embarrassment of appearing to be clowns when they spout transactivist slogans).

They're welcome across that golden bridge - but we shouldn't pretend that they didn't sign up to regressive transactivism for years and have done so much damage.

Thanks for the update, op.

I think this could go either way. I've still not forgotten Dodds declaring (in a Guardian article) that Labour was proud of the Gender Recognition Act, but today I will choose to be optimistic.

The nurses case does pass the buck to the courts because Parliament have made a hash of the law. There case is not without peril. What if God forbid they lose? We will then have a legal precedent for the TRAs to crow about and employers will be none the wiser and imposing mixed changing rooms everywhere. The court could always find that the use of the alternative office, though inadequate, is sufficient to balance the competing rights. We might hope that the nurses win in the court of public opinion but it could still backfire. If only we had political leadership. Labour really are a dead loss. I'm hoping Kemi does to Starmer what Trump did to Harris.

They're welcome across that golden bridge - but we shouldn't pretend that they didn't sign up to regressive transactivism for years and have done so much damage.

Agreed. However, I also agree with PPs who say that we're seeing weakness and a desire to hide behind existing laws (and watch them be tested) rather than strong leadership. The only exception I've seen to this is Wes Streeting. He's certainly come a long way since the days when he was part of the FB group that targeted women who spoke out about the impact of gender identity belief.

I'd like to see far more from Labour though, particularly on the school to gender clinic pipeline. Bridget Phillipson is dangerously silent on this. And by dangerous I mean that her inaction on telling schools how they should be approaching approaching this is filling up the hopper of children who are tumbling towards Wes Streeting's Cass-led approach. It's far too late for far too many children already. She needs to intervene, urgently.

Edited for typos.

I see Bridget Phillipson has been visiting this 6th form college busy promoting the social transitioning of 6th form students. Evidently Cass has passed them by:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14066109/School-trial-gender-affirmation-fund-clothes-makeup-trans-children.html

Oh Bridget 🤦‍♀️

Sadly, I am not surprised.

I really hope Laura Trott is a strong and well-informed Shadow Education Secretary. I'd not heard of her at all but it's promising to see that she has previously headed up strategic communication. She's going to need a lot of strategy and a lot of communication to call out the harms being done on the school to gender clinic pipeline, given Phillipson's seeming determination to maintain it. Come on Laura, please show us you can do this 🤞💪

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Trott_(politician)

This is what slays me about the "Trans rights now!" placards. They already have more rights than anyone else! There was a meme thread in the Old Place some of us used to frequent called "Free Weed For Blacks". You can imagine. This is much along those lines.

@BonfireLady - you are in for a real treat if you look up Laura Trott being interviewed by Evan Davies. ‘Strong and well-informed’ isn’t my first thought!

I'm assuming you're coming from a "GC" angle here.... in which case....

Bugger.

Why, Kemi? 😭 Surely you had better options?!

I am GC. I also dislike all incompetent, self serving politicians!!

Fair enough!

Decided I'd better listen and see what I thought before I lost all hope....

Oh dear re strong and well-informed on her brief re the Evan Davis interview. He utterly wiped the floor with her 🤦‍♀️

Looking at the timing of that interview, she was Chief Treasury Secretary at the time of the interview, so she really should be better informed than this.

However, as a small glimmer of hope, as good as Evan might be on fiscal understanding, he's utterly useless on gender identity stuff. Hopefully this experience gave her a kick up the bum on making sure she understands her subject area fully before going on air.

It would be great to hear her back on Radio 4, with Evan, in her new capacity... with her running rings around him on gender identity in schools.

Come on Laura. Do it for Marjorie and show her what you're made of (🤞 I really hope you are made of something good 🤞)