Are you wondering what the fuss over self id and Nicola Sturgeon’s Gender Recognition Reform Act is all about?
The Communist Party has produced a handy guide.
Incidentally, the Tories could enact the penultimate bullet point and mostly resolve the issue, but they see great electoral advantage in not doing so.
“Discrimination knows no party boundaries. A former chair of my local Ward Party berated female members about their not campaigning on issues like the equalisation of the pension age.
A little while later, he nearly had apoplexy when the party put on women only learning and development sessions to help them with campaigning and seeking election. The sessions were, understandably, on Saturday mornings and on site crèche facilities were provided.
He had, like I had, received through our work the sort of training needed to turn raw talent into campaigners and candidates. I got the impression he failed to grasp that.”
Another sorry chapter in the history of institutional misogyny within Labour?
That chap was very much Old Labour in the 1990s.
Today in 2022:
“It is perhaps stating the “bleeding obvious”, but Starmer needs to clean up Labour’s act on women’s rights. A leader who, at his own party conference, struggled to state clearly what a woman actually was, is now not trusted by a growing segment of Britain’s women, particularly those who are politically active. And, while Labour continues to support the politically-suicidal policy of trans self-id, that group will continue to grow.
If you are one of Labour’s many members and supporters who still firmly believe “this never comes up on the doorstep”, or “it’s not important, it will never swing anyone’s votes”, let me tell you two things.
First, you are probably a man. Women understandably find it hard to duck this one.
Second, please wake up: you are underestimating the potential of this single issue to provide a razor-sharp dividing line between Labour and Conservatives come the election (if it is not, why are almost all the Tory leadership candidates coming out against self-id, including Penny Mordaunt, so desperate to row back from her previous support that she outright lied about it?)”
The real work for Keir Starmer starts here
Reforming or weakening, depending on your perspective, the Gender Recognition Act 2004 is only popular with Labour Party members and 18 to 24 year olds.
It is not a wedge issue, but a Tory General Election steamroller.
Odds on, the next leader of the Tory Party will say no woman has got a penis whilst the current leader of the Labour Party is giving the impression he thinks some men have got vaginas.
How does that credibly advance the cause of trans-rights and improve Labour’s chances of winning a General Election?
If transwomen were women they would not need discreet rights and services.
They would just need to campaign for enhanced rights and services for women.
That is patently absurd.
Transwomen clearly do need discreet rights and services for which they needs must identify as transwomen.
Labour is brave enough, it seems, to advocate GRA reform that is unpopular with almost every group of voters, but will not advocate electoral reform, deals with other parties and softening Hard Brexit to “build a coalition of voters to win an election” as Rachel Reeves says is necessary, because those policies would make Labour unpopular with some (Tory?) voters.
Labour currently seems to be doing its level best to give the finger to every group from which it needs to draw voters to build that necessary coalition.
By the way, 51% of the electorate are women.
I gather the concerns that many women have over self-id are not a big issue for Tory Party members.
I wrote this passage a while ago about Team Corbyn.
To be fair to Team Starmer, there are many more women amongst their number than were in the ranks of Team Corbyn.
Many of the women in Team Starmer are middle class, some of whom say Labour needs to (re?)connect with socially conservative voters to win a General Election …
“The vast majority of those with a stake in formalising trans rights for transwomen want a solution that establishes those rights without subtracting from or trampling on the hard won rights of women.”
Smouldering skip fire of misogyny and the intolerance of extremist activists
As I see it, only a tiny, tiny minority of transwomen want to dismiss the legitimate concerns of women.
A minority of blokey blokes within a minority group think the world should revolve around them and that they should be free to trample over hard won women’s rights.
The fact that group of blokes does not empathise with those concerns rather suggests they have not transited much, if at all, because if they had they would not surely be so dismissive?
That at heart, they remain blokes?
Is it too much to ask that the leader of the Labour Party advocates seeking a solution that satisfies the vast majority of those with a stake in this matter rather than speaking up for a vociferous, intransigent minority within the trans community?
Post Script
There was no obligation for any of the parties in the Scottish Parliament to support a policy, not set out in their respective General Election manifestoes, that deliberately placed sexual predators into a confined space containing vulnerable women, ostensibly to check out the risk assessment and security arrangements.
The Labour Party in Scotland did …
“To the uninitiated, self ID means, in the name of “trans rights”, that any Scottish male will soon be able to declare themselves female – and any female male – by filling in a few forms and paying the princely sum of £5. They can then get all their government records changed to the opposite sex and, crucially, those who are men can legally insist on access to women’s spaces, in direct contravention of the single-sex exemption enshrined in the UK’s Equality Act.
This is a development that, if most of the public were made fully aware of it, would likely think insane.
However, it is not just the SNP: Labour MSPs also voted for this*, even though they did not need to. Their votes were unnecessary, they could have abstained or voted against and the SNP would still have won. But they were whipped to vote for the bill, because the top team seemed to actually think it was the right thing to do; their collective reputation now in the bin for nothing.”
“And now for the coup de grâce: last week, in Scotland’s primary legislature, MSPs of all parties except the Conservatives actually mobilised to vote against an amendment preventing known sex offenders from registering for self-id. Yes, let’s protect the rights of predators to get into women’s refuges and prisons: makes total sense.”
Labour MSPs should be ashamed of themselves
Imagine the media and political outcry, if sexual predators in Scotland were introduced into a confined space containing vulnerable women, ostensibly to check out the risk assessment and security arrangements?
Ah …
Trans Rights Activists in Scotland thought if they could prove it was safe to house criminals self iding as women in prisons for women born as women then access to no other single sex space for women born as women could be denied to them.
Mostly working class women have suffered physical and mental abuse in British prisons so self styled middle class progressives might get off on self id.
When Lee Anderson starts crucifying every political party that supports Nicola Sturgeon’s Gender Recognition Reform Act, some of us on the Left will be handing him up the nails.
The Trans Rights Activists behind this sick social experiment in self id in Scotland deserve to rot in Hell, because it seems they will not face justice in this life for the damage they have wreaked on some of the most vulnerable women in our society.
For God’s sake, they deliberately placed known sexual predators into women’s prisons in the name of the Cult of Gender.
It is a pity, perhaps, that more middle class women do not go to prison or work in prisons then maybe working class women in British prisons would not have had to endure this inhumane treatment that may well have infringed their human rights as set out in Article Three of the European Convention on Human Rights.
To cap it all, Sir Keir Starmer KC has recently found time in his busy schedule to have a private meeting with Tory, Iain Anderson, Chair of Stonewall, and clearly promised him a Gender Recognition Reform (UK) Act à la Nicola Sturgeon.
I think it is reasonable to assume that when Anderson speaks positively of Sir Keir ending the culture wars, as Anderson did in the Financial Times, Anderson is talking about ending the culture war over self id in favour of his and Stonewall’s position on the issue.
I do not get any impression Anderson is worried about the culture war over statues.
“We have a tabloid debate going on about people’s lives. It’s not a respectful debate, it’s turned into a woke war. It’s turned into a wedge issue… I was LGBT Business Champion not LGB or T, and that’s why I’m walking away.”
Sir Keir has yet to find the time to meet with Labour women and their supporters to discuss their concerns about self id.
Some people say culture wars are, by definition a bad thing.
But the campaign for equality for women, ethnic minorities, the disabled, gays, lesbians, bisexuals … for anyone, in fact, who isn’t straight, white, male, middle or upper class, has always been a culture war.
Anderson is gay, admittedly, but he is also white, male and middle class and clearly happy to suck up to anyone who promises him a Gender Recognition Reform (UK) Act à la Nicola Sturgeon.
Post Post Scriptum
Want to tie back Nicola Sturgeon’s Gender Recognition Reform Act?
Then sign Maya Forstater’s petition on the United Kingdom Parliament’s website, calling on Parliament to update the Equality Act to make clear the characteristic “sex” means biological sex in England, Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland.
The ramblings of a former DWP Civil Servant ... 
I have no idea what ‘terf’ means, but I do know that allowing men to ‘identify’ as female is a Pandora’s box that any sane person would flatly refuse to even consider. Being female, the thought of any bloke (however he ‘identifies’) being able to access women-only areas is terrifying.
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