Self-defining
Benjamin Butterworth at Pink News yesterday:
Labour’s shadow equalities minister hosted a string of anti-trans activists in parliament for an official meeting on ‘trans inclusion’, PinkNews has learned.
Dawn Butler, Labour’s lead MP on LGBT rights, met with activists opposed to transgender women being included on all women shortlists in an official capacity on Wednesday.
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A spokesperson for the Labour Party told PinkNews: “All women shortlists are and always have been open to all women, which of course includes trans women.
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“The Labour Party recognises the vital importance of self-declaration for the Trans community, which is why we are calling on the Government to reform the Gender Recognition Act and the Equality Act 2010 to change the protected characteristic of ‘gender reassignment’ to ‘gender identity’ to support self-declaration.”
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Labour is currently facing legal action from activists opposed to transgender women being allowed to participate in women’s reserved spaces.
After a surge in anti-trans rhetoric, a fringe group of women’s rights campaigners within the party led calls for transgender women to be banned from standing on women-only shortlists for parliament, which are used in a bid to boost the number of female MPs.
There has never been an openly trans MP, but vocal activists complain that women they refer to as “male-bodied transgenders” are taking away women’s places in politics.
A leaked copy of Labour’s proposed policy on trans women, expected to be adopted in May, explicitly affirms that “All Women Shortlists and women’s reserved places are open to self-defining women”.
Now we go back 6 years to March 2012.
But you see, women simply don’t inherit intergenerational trauma as a class, which racialised minorities do, so that makes it totes inappropes to identify as a race other than the one you were born into—you just have to accept it, and work within its limiting constraints to make the world more accepting of it without stomping over the efforts of other racial groups. At least that’s the latest excuse I’ve heard from Twitter.
And, Seth, the trans-identified women, even though male bodied, have suffered more oppression than women, because, well, cis-women are totally comfortable in the societal expectations placed on them when they are raised as women. So it is worse not to notice that these are actually women, even if they look like men and still travel through the world as men, they are receiving more oppression than those of us who are recognized as women because we have woman shaped bodies.
Or something like that. I can attest to exactly how comfortable I felt being raised as a woman with the expectations society placed on my as a woman (and no, that level of discomfort does not mean that I must actually be a man trapped in a woman’s body. I am merely a woman who doesn’t believe that women have to be…frilly…pink…made up…nail polished…high heeled…etc etc etc)
I’ve heard that one too.
See, each woman springs fully-formed from the head of her father, like Athena, and any pesky history, familial or societal, that might affect her is magically wiped away.
What’s that you say? Mothers and grandmothers and generations of foremothers who were restricted and abused, and likely passed on their trauma and their internalized notions of what women could and should be? Centuries of belief in female inferiority?
Nah, that doesn’t count. Because, that’s why.