Electoral Dysfunction podcast on the Supreme Court Decision - Harriet says "rebuild that consensus"

[AmaryllisNightAndDay]

Interesting podcast episode from "Electoral Dysfunction" Sky New podcast with Harriet Harman (an author of the original Equality Act 2010) and Ruth Davidson (ex-leader of the Scottish Conservative party and out lesbian)

s

Despite the episode title "Can Keir Starmer shake off his POSH image" the first part is about the Supreme Court decision.

Harriet Haman says we have to rebuild the consensus that (she says) existed when the Equality Act 2010 was written. (I'm not sure who was part of that consensus or how well the practical consequences had been thought through even at the time) Anyway, I think that ship might have sailed.

A listener wrote in to raise the first half of an irreconcilable clash of rights which the good ladies didn't pick up on: a transwoman doesn't want his breasts touched by a male policeman during a search. What didn't get said is that if the transwoman has the right (moral or legal) not to be searched by a man, then can a policewoman be forced to search him instead? There are women who cannot be expected to search a member of the opposite sex (trauma/religion etc), and more than that there are men who would get off on forcing a policewoman to search them and is that acceptable working conditions for any policewoman?

Tough. Is what I would say. I wouldn't want a policewoman touching my breasts. I wouldn't want to be strip-searched or even worse, intimately searched, at all.
But that's the law and it's inappropriate for a person of the opposite sex to carry it out. MCW got hormones and surgery to create larger breasts. Their problem. Still male.

Plus what OP said.

Get another TW police officer to search the TW? They could agree to be held longer to facilitate this, if it means sending one from another force.
Or a woman who officer genuinely care (there will presumably be some).

Harriet Harman supported the PIE. I have no time for her whatsoever.

Whenever I see Harriet Harman breezing through interviews, I wonder what kind of a brass neck she has to act so breezily when she has a serious flaw in her background, with the letters PIE written on it.

However, I don't think it's quite accurate to say she supported PIE. PIE was 'affiliated' to NCCL when HH was an official there I think it was a fait accompli before she joined. PIE also infiltrated other 'liberal' groups and organisations. I don't think she had any direct interaction with PIE, and probably the worst that can be said is that like the rest of NCCL, she didn't look hard enough at who was affiliated to them.
PIE was later ejected and condemned by NCCL.

I think the fact that she and the rest of NCCL ignored the presence of PIE and didn't condemn it 100% is bad enough. I think that was a serious failure of judgement and due diligence that should haunt her to this day, and should have limited her advancement in politics - unless she had fully acknowledged her failure to be proactive against PIE.

But in fairness I don't think it's right to suggest that Harriet Harmen actually supported PIE, or condoned paedophilia.

She didn't proactively hunt them down and move to have them kicked out of NCCL and that's bad enough. She should have remembered that 'all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing'. Or for legal officers of the NCCL to do nothing.

Yes, I don't think Harriet Harman ever actively supported or was an apologist for PIE. But that should have been more of a lesson and a warning of how a cause can be subverted and organsations infiltrated.

The podcast implied that women could always have called on the law and the Equality Act but oh dear we didn't, silly us. Which I might have accepted if Maya Forstater's case didn't have to go to appeal. Or if the Equality and Human Rights Commission hadn't said they wouldn't do anything about Edinburgh Rape Crisis' illegal appointment of a transwoman to a post advertised for a woman, not even issue clearer guidance never mind intervene directly. Organisations had been told by sources they shouldn't have trusted that it wasn't how the Equality Act 2010 worked.

She did acknowledge that following the EQA2010 and especially with gender recognition reform only one side's rights were being considered ... yet they were talking as if that all happened out in the open, as if open dissent had always been possible and the debate had become "toxic" and "polarised" by some kind of mysterious magic.

Just to be clear, as well as her past failures, I think HH is currently being mealy-mouthed about 'toxicity on both sides' 'protecting the trans community' 'finding a new consensus' .
instead of supporting the clear ruling of the highest court in the land.

It looks like she hasn't learnt the lesson from the 1970s that supporting for minorities who call themselves 'the most marginalised' isn't always the right thing to do.

Tbh at the time of GRA and the Equality Act it was discussed although possibly not as widely as today but the feminist groups I was involved with were all over it.

Incidentally, those feminist groups could be quite heated with different views on many things but as soon as someone suggested one should argue their views more nicely everyone would more or less be fuck that.

I rarely venture into “inclusive” feminist spaces these days as the “be kind” ethos often seems to really mean shut up.

I think there was a process. Yes it could be discussed at the time of the GRA and the Equality Act but for some people that was a necessary stage, a step on the road, and shutting discussion down was the next step.

I do agree that "be kind" often means "shut up" especially when there is no "kind" language to express dissent.

What I meant was - by the time gender recognition reform (not the original Act) came along the strategy was to not discuss it and not let anyone express dissent.

Thank you @MarieDeGournay, I stand corrected - she didn’t actively support PIE. But the fact that she didn’t run screaming in the opposite direction when she learned what the situation was means I am still not inclined to trust her farther than I can throw her.

I agree. It was the reaction to women wanting to discuss the implications of the law changing that made me pay attention.

In a democratic society it’s important to be able to debate and that means views you disagree with or even find personally distressing will be aired.

Framing as bigotry simply wanting to discuss the implications of the law was shocking to me. It was only a few years after the equal marriage debate and the difference was shocking.

although in the long term “no debate” was disastrous for the TRAs, they never tested their arguments, never listened to what their opponents were actually saying so they could counter it. Even now they are making arguments about the SC that are not correct.

I’ve never come across a social movement that believes it doesn’t need to make its case (no matter how upsetting) to make progress.

sorry for the merail.

I'm with you @dolorsit I felt very odd about the podcast. A lot of "yes but.." and as if there were a whole load of things that we know and they just didn't know about. Or they didn't want to go there.

Thanks TwoLoonsAndASprout - I completely agree with you about not trusting HH - not only because of what she didn't do in the 1970s, but because I don't think she has ever expressed enough sincere regret for whatever she is prepared to admit she got wrong, she's a bit yeah got some things wrong but let's move along nothing to see here...

The podcast implied that women could always have called on the law and the Equality Act but oh dear we didn't, silly us. Which I might have accepted if Maya Forstater's case didn't have to go to appeal. Or if the Equality and Human Rights Commission hadn't said they wouldn't do anything about Edinburgh Rape Crisis' illegal appointment of a transwoman to a post advertised for a woman,

And if this ruling hadn't been the Supreme Court - which the case reached only because 2 lower courts ruled the other way.