Not surprised. Several friends of mine have ended their party memberships over this.
And it seems like there weren’t any actual trans people consulted on this decision. Given how Labour had just been ignoring LGBT groups trying to reach out.
If this is what a Starmer commitment is worth then clearly it’s not much. Complete chameleon.
Can’t believe I may actually have to vote lib dems.
Starmer really needs to understand you cannot out tory the tory party.
The LGBT movement in the UK has come under some serious fire from the tories and should feel naturally at home with labour, but if he keeps this up labour are suddenly going to find themselves without a firm support base.
If the goal is to appease the GC crowd then it won’t work, there is no appeasement. Not only because Labour are trying to both sides the issue and sell trans people on the idea that Labour will still improve the GRA process, which antagonises GCs since it is unacceptable to them, but GCs are fundamentally dishonest about what they want so attempting to meet them in the middle just has them move the goalposts and repeat their song and dance.
Even the Labour pledge to ensure that women’s spaces are “protected” isn’t enough, because the desire of GCs is total and mandatory exclusion of trans women from them. The guidance they promise to allow women’s spaces to exclude trans women won’t be good enough, because GCs don’t want that. They already have that, and they’re still livid. There are still cases, such as the woman suing a Brighton based SA counselling service for operating in a trans inclusive manner, and I have not seen a single GC person, no matter how big or small a platform they have, say that they don’t agree with the upcoming legal challenge as unfortunate as it is. The fact that the law allows for such services to operate in a manner excluding trans women, touted by types like Rowling who know it does because they’ve spent years pointing to it and have made direct use of it, isn’t enough, they’re still livid. Why? Because there is a glaring disconnect between what they say they want, and what they actually want.
So if Labour thinks they can just say trans women aren’t women and give some guidance that more or less maintains the status quo and that’ll be that, they are sorely mistaken.
The worst thing about this is outside of trans people and the people that hate trans people no one cares about any of this. And I say this as a trans person
I would like it to be much much easier for me to access gender affirming healthcare and not have it be quite so hard to change all my documents.
But things like being able to afford to live, the world burning and the decline of public services are way more important. Without that improving all the other stuff doesn’t matter.
But instead we get this distraction. It’s terrifying to see as it appears to two main political parties have no answers to things that effect us all.
I feel desperately sad and worried for trans people and that they are being used as political pawns at the forefront of the culture war.
However, I wholeheartedly believe the Tory party is more of a threat to the LGBTQ community as a whole, especially with their recent moves to try to force schools to out trans kids to their parents etc and their links to the NatC movement and Tufton Street.
Public opinion has been moved to the right on this issue due to constant propaganda from the right-wing press. It’s messed up. I wish we were back to the days when Nadia won Big Brother and everyone just got on with their own business and stopped obsessing over how other people identify.
5 comments
Not surprised. Several friends of mine have ended their party memberships over this.
And it seems like there weren’t any actual trans people consulted on this decision. Given how Labour had just been ignoring LGBT groups trying to reach out.
If this is what a Starmer commitment is worth then clearly it’s not much. Complete chameleon.
Can’t believe I may actually have to vote lib dems.
Starmer really needs to understand you cannot out tory the tory party.
The LGBT movement in the UK has come under some serious fire from the tories and should feel naturally at home with labour, but if he keeps this up labour are suddenly going to find themselves without a firm support base.
If the goal is to appease the GC crowd then it won’t work, there is no appeasement. Not only because Labour are trying to both sides the issue and sell trans people on the idea that Labour will still improve the GRA process, which antagonises GCs since it is unacceptable to them, but GCs are fundamentally dishonest about what they want so attempting to meet them in the middle just has them move the goalposts and repeat their song and dance.
Even the Labour pledge to ensure that women’s spaces are “protected” isn’t enough, because the desire of GCs is total and mandatory exclusion of trans women from them. The guidance they promise to allow women’s spaces to exclude trans women won’t be good enough, because GCs don’t want that. They already have that, and they’re still livid. There are still cases, such as the woman suing a Brighton based SA counselling service for operating in a trans inclusive manner, and I have not seen a single GC person, no matter how big or small a platform they have, say that they don’t agree with the upcoming legal challenge as unfortunate as it is. The fact that the law allows for such services to operate in a manner excluding trans women, touted by types like Rowling who know it does because they’ve spent years pointing to it and have made direct use of it, isn’t enough, they’re still livid. Why? Because there is a glaring disconnect between what they say they want, and what they actually want.
So if Labour thinks they can just say trans women aren’t women and give some guidance that more or less maintains the status quo and that’ll be that, they are sorely mistaken.
The worst thing about this is outside of trans people and the people that hate trans people no one cares about any of this. And I say this as a trans person
I would like it to be much much easier for me to access gender affirming healthcare and not have it be quite so hard to change all my documents.
But things like being able to afford to live, the world burning and the decline of public services are way more important. Without that improving all the other stuff doesn’t matter.
But instead we get this distraction. It’s terrifying to see as it appears to two main political parties have no answers to things that effect us all.
I feel desperately sad and worried for trans people and that they are being used as political pawns at the forefront of the culture war.
However, I wholeheartedly believe the Tory party is more of a threat to the LGBTQ community as a whole, especially with their recent moves to try to force schools to out trans kids to their parents etc and their links to the NatC movement and Tufton Street.
Public opinion has been moved to the right on this issue due to constant propaganda from the right-wing press. It’s messed up. I wish we were back to the days when Nadia won Big Brother and everyone just got on with their own business and stopped obsessing over how other people identify.