Paul O’Kane: I regret turning off my critical thinking on gender reforms

[IwantToRetire]

O’Kane, who is now the party’s education spokesman and previously held the equalities brief, told Holyrood: “There is a lot that I regret about that whole process of the gender reforms. I regret sometimes turning off my critical thinking and allowing that thing to be something that somebody else would deal with, because I've got a view and my view’s fine.

I've since tried to take time to engage and I understand that we're going to have to try and find a way through that recognises the very legitimate concerns that women have and understanding where that comes from, because very often, for a lot of women, it comes from the deep-seated place of their own trauma and I regret not recognising that at the time.”

He also admitted that as Labour’s first openly gay MSP he felt “pressure” to “act in a certain way” when it came to the debate.
He said: “I think as the only gay member of the group, the Labour group, and the first gay man for the party elected to Holyrood, I did feel that there was a whole weight of pressure on me, on a whole range of issues. I think I did come in with a set view of who I needed to be within the Labour group and candidly, I probably didn't do a huge amount of critical thinking at times on the GRR bill and perhaps didn't engage until the end.”

From https://www.holyrood.com/news/view,paul-okane-i-regret-turning-off-my-critical-thinking-on-gender-reforms

I know that “some” gay people have not fallen for the nonsense, but my experience is that the more active rainbow gays adopted the trans trauma narrative without any thought at all.

You win the internet today 🤣

Not sure why there is so much focus on "trauma". That is just part of the Labour narrative that of course just a tiny few women (as if) have had "bad" experiences with men and so need their "safe spaces". That why we so kindly having prioritised trans rights in the EA bill we drafted, we were good enough to cater to these "few" women.

That's why we are now at last, even if it didn't transfer to public awareness now have groups like "Sex Matters" because that is the issue.

Not just the biology but that the sex class system that consistently and persistently puts the class of men first and above the sex class of women.

It just indicates (and of course not just the Labour Party) that men just do not understand the daily, endless, habits and social norms, that tell women "know your place".

It is only because this attitude is so entrenched that the Labour Party concoted an "Equality" Bill that put the needs of less than 10,000 people as being more important than the rights of 50% of the population because after all they are just women.

His focus is on "trauma" so he doesn't have to admit that he screwed over the lesbian half of his "gay community". A bunch of farty old Supreme Court judges managed to be more "intersectional" than he was.

I didn't mean his focus, I meant the number of commentators also focusing on trauma.

Rather that the basis of it all - the sex class divide.

It's good that he's admitted he didn't think it through. But it's concerning that even a politician with an equalities brief doesn't understand the difference between "rights" and "kindness".

Rights are something you have solely on the basis of belonging to a particular group, not because somebody feels sorry for you. A prisoner, no matter how terrible their crimes, has the right not to be kept in prolonged solitary confinement. A child, no matter how unruly, has the right to be educated.

If it's a right, you should just get it, you don't have to earn it. If women have the right to single sex provision they shouldn't have to justify it by talking about trauma, or anything else.

On the other hand, kindness you might have to earn. You need somebody to feel sorry for you, so that they'll bend the rules for you. Getting the other person to feel guilty for not experiencing whatever unpleasantness you are experiencing can be very helpful for you. But you will only get the benefit as long as you can keep the other person feeling protective towards you.

TRAs have been so successful because they are telling a compelling sob story while women have been countering with logic: "We are the group entitled to these rights; we don't need to earn them".

And even though it was literally his job to understand about rights, Paul still seems to be thinking in terms of kindness, and who has a good sob story.

Do you think @BoiledBeetle could ask a few of the Bluestocking Gerbils to give me a hand finding something? Only I'm too traumatised to find it for myself, and I know I put my very last fuck down around here somewhere..

I agree. It's one of the easier entry points for Team GC. Trauma, prisons and blokes in sports. It shouldn't be so, but it is, so here we are.

I think it works against us, not just with men but with women.

Because it is about othering. Those other women who have the problem (of course it is there fault).

By thinking that if we think like men we will win them over, we wont. They will just be confirmed as they always are, that they are right.

It is really important, and after all is the Supreme Court ruling, that women's sex based rights should NOT be considered less important than trans rights.

FO with the victim approach.

Focus on the oppressor, because without doing that women's rights will always be only what men on occasion think women should have.

Let alone the blatant fact that this approach hasn't worked. In fact it has worked against us.

It if the whole basis of why labour felt it could make single sex provision just a minority occassional need. Not a basic one.

See https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5507893-the-trans-lobby-takes-pride-in-stripping-young-girls-of-their-rights

I feel quite heartened by this. Yes the trauma bit is annoying but I like that he has said he didn’t think critically, he didn’t listen, and that he acted out of feeling pressured. We need to let people say they were wrong to make it easier for others to do so, and to encourage them to listen. Better if they could do it because of genuinely giving a shit in the first place, but I’d rather focus on the positives here.

I agree with all of this. I'm not going to pick holes with his response. We need a lot more politicians to shift their views as he has

But he's only saying this because there is an election coming up. Words are cheap. I'd be more impressed if there was some action to go with it - like putting pressure on the rest of the Labour Party to engage in critical thinking, too.
The LP in Westminster are in the position to do something, I'd be happier if some of them saw the light. Currently they are part of the problem, not part of the solution.

like putting pressure on the rest of the Labour Party to engage in critical thinking

or even the Labour Party responding to what is effectively a criticism of them, as well as implying the Labour Party position is not a true one, but one that has been engineered.

Until a politician says they will move every last man out of women's prisons, their soothing words are meaningless.

What did he think his role was as an MSP? To be some sort of puppet for the party who had to conform to a certain persona with prescribed views and who shouldn't engage his own brain and have his own opinions? That's how he makes it sound.

Did it really not occur to him that the people who voted for him expected him to behave like an intelligent, rational person, and that he should actually apply some thought to policies which were being discussed in parliament?

"I switched off my brain when these issues were being discussed" really doesn't show him in a good light, no matter what he's saying now.

That.

Words from all parties have now become meaningless; the intent and values can only be seen in their actions. And they're making it pretty clear about believing in binary sex and male superiority.

As the wise old saying goes:
'Don't look a reversing ferret in the mouth' 😄

Of course it's very frustrating that he didn't apply all this sooner, but ultimately this is a win and we should be treating it as such.

Golden bridges are important. It's hard enough to stand up the TRAs. If people are only going to get grief from our side for doing so, then there is little incentive for anyone else to follow suit.

Exactly 😂

Labour have done this to death. Talking out of both sides of their mouths, doing absolutely heehaw.

Deeds, not words.

'Trauma' in this context is a word to avoid being honest about the reality of a world with most power historically in the hands of men, including violent and sexually abusive men.

If I have an accident that results in a broken leg, that's trauma. If the break was set badly and the leg is left short so that I limp, that is the outcome of trauma.

If, like many women, I'm born perfectly healthy but six inches shorter than the average man, so that everything - supermarket shelves, steps, museum and gallery displays, car pedals, lawnmowers starters, wall mirrors in public conveniences - are a bit too high so that life is all stretching and straining, that is not caused by trauma, it is cased by society's planners not recognising women's needs as being as valid as men's.

We should not, at the start of the second quarter of the twenty-first century, be required to produce evidence of 'trauma' in order to get our everyday needs met. In a world where men are, on average, not just larger but also more aggressive, that includes the need for single-sex spaces in vulnerable situations.

I agree with many previous points made. I'm always pleased to hear a stupid man admit (sort of) that he has been stupid. I am all for facilitating reverse ferrets and if someone lands in the right place I'm prepared to swallow quite a lot of rewriting of personal history and sententious, self-justificatory crap.

However... There's an important principle at stake and politicians who realise that the electorate has a little appetite for the maximalist transactivist agenda must understand and concede it and I don't think that O'Kane does. Sex matters and sex must remain a meaningful legal category. We are fighting for women's sex-based rights, not trauma-based exceptions to legal and social codes based on self-determined gender identity rather than objectively determined sex.

Women's sex-based rights are legally protected because female sex places women at risk or disadvantage because of the biological reality that men - as a population - have a greater propensity to violence and sexual offending and are stronger than women. There are lots of reasons for recognising sex in law and in certain aspects of how society operates. I have yet to hear a coherent argument for organising society and the law on the basis of gender identity.

We should be more generous than I feel inclined to be when someone reverse ferrets, regardless of motivation, but we also need to make sure they recant gender ideology and can't get away with offering concessions on some single-sex spaces and services some of the time, as a new version of #bekind.

@LadybirdsProcessing I have yet to hear a coherent argument for organising society and the law on the basis of gender identity.

You're right of course.

The argument generally seems to be that these poor men (it's always about the TiM, isn't it, rather than the TiW) are just like women in every way, so we should treat them as women. And that "cis" men are the real threat to women. These two points are easily shown to be false, but they keep getting repeated (along with "threat", and "danger", while we have many other reasons for wanting some single-sex spaces).

Likewise, there are many strawmen and ridiculous assertions, such as "you share your house toilet with your male partner, so why do you object to sharing a public toilet with random male strangers?" Or, "this particular middle-aged unfit TiM was beaten in his sport by an elite female athlete, which does that TiM have no advantage over women." Again, incoherent and nonsensical, but they come up over and over.

@SwirlyGates The argument generally seems to be that these poor men (it's always about the TiM, isn't it, rather than the TiW) are just like women in every way
Argument from a false premise.

Also not important. I have very little in common with most women. Sometimes it seems the only thing we have in common is our sex. But when the issue under consideration is sex-based rights our female sex is all that matters.

I find this so difficult, because it's the ONLY political issue on which I am absolutely 100% certain that I am right and the RSOH lot are wrong.* I think the issue is actually quite simple and the argument clear. I like to think I'm fairly articulate and yet there are people I thought were reasonable, intelligent and capable of rational thought who apparently don't get it. I'm honestly not sure whether it's because they just don't actually listen (that weasel word 'engage' is so revealing) or something about the argument is more difficult than I appreciate.

*Even climate change. I'm sure about the basics, but there is plenty of scope for reasonable people to disagree about the implications of the science and what a sensible approach to tackling the problem should look like. On the other hand, sex vs. gender identity is as close to black and white as it gets.