Enough of us have had enough

Feb 15th, 2020 | By
Category: Notes and Comment Blog

Suzanne Moore in the Telegraph – the Telegraph, please note, not the Guardian, even though she’s a Guardian columnist. The Guardian must have refused to publish it.

I am well aware that Twitter is not the real world. But then nor is the Labour Party. Out of all the issues that might be bothering the leadership contenders – anti-Semitism, a reconnection with lost voters, a plausible response to Boris Johnson – instead, a bizarre set of pledges has been issued on trans rights.

Lisa Nandy and Rebecca Long-Bailey have signed it. It suggests the expulsion of “transphobic” members from the party and says that organisations such as Woman’s Place and the LGB Alliance, which are concerned to keep same sex spaces for women, are hate groups that have to be fought.

In other words Labour has said a big “fuck off” to women.

But this is not actually about trans folk at all. It is about a denial that women need safe spaces, whether that’s in prison or refuges.

That and more. It’s about a denial that women are oppressed or marginalized, it’s about barely disguised hatred of women, it’s about expecting women to give way to everyone else, it’s about hostility and contempt and venom that doesn’t have to be hidden any more.

Feminism and gay rights didn’t happen via Momentum. Some of us are aware that competing sets of rights may clash and we need to talk. I merely note that this discussion is always about trans women and not trans men.

Why is that? And who is the enemy of trans people? Who rapes and kills them? Feminists? Or men? The last time I saw threatening male behaviour was outside the Woman’s Place meeting at Labour conference.

Enough of us have had enough of being told what a woman’s place in the Labour Party is. We will go elsewhere. We already have.

And we won’t be handing out sandwiches.

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