Jumping aboard
Labour leadership contender Rebecca Long-Bailey has signed up to a pledge to expel party members who have expressed “transphobic” views.
#ExpelMe.
It is part of a 12-point plan by the Labour Campaign for Trans Rights.
The plan has also been backed by deputy leader hopeful Angela Rayner – but critics say it could lead to a “witch hunt” of party members.
It could and it will. You know it will.
The pledges include accepting that there is “no material conflict between trans rights and women’s rights” – and supporting the expulsion of Labour members who “express bigoted, transphobic views”.
The group states that “trans women are women, trans men are men”.
But they’re not and they’re not, which is why they’re called “trans.”
They also back the fight against what the group alleges are “transphobic organisations”, naming two in particular; Woman’s Place UK and the LGB Alliance.
Woman’s Place UK, which says it campaigns to defend women’s “hard-won rights”, said it “absolutely refutes” claims their organisation is transphobic, describing the allegations as “scurrilous” and “defamatory”.
Yes but they’re just women, so what do they know.
What about women? Do women matter at all?
Reminds me of I think it was Raging Bee after the 2016 elections saying “This is why we must get rid of the dudebros.”
I mean, reducing your membership is always an interesting response to losing an election.
It is also politically very stupid, particularly when the mere asking for clarity, and genuine questions about the problems caused by trans-rights activists’ definitions of what a ‘woman’ is, are immediately attacked and dismissed as ‘trans-phobic’ without any attempt at discussion – and when such attacks and dismissals are accepted as justified by people like Long-Bailey. There is going to be a great and justified backlash against the activists’ attitudes, I suspect, and if the Labour Party is going to endorse such extremism, they will further drive voters away. One wishes that L-B and others like her would focus on genuine injustices, such as the Tory government’s defiant insistence on continuing the disgusting ‘Windrush’ policy of ‘repatriating’ black people to the Caribbean and ruining lives. Virtually the whole of AngloSaxondom (the UK, the US & Australia) is descending into punitive savagery.
I would say I can’t believe they’d be such idiots as to produce this when it’s caused ructions in the famously unified SNP, except that politicians do not seem to be able to apply other parties’ experience to their own. You guest-posted a comment that I quoted from an SNP woman activist about how this was infuriating women within the party, and they are the ones that do the donkey-work like envelope stuffing. It’s the same in the Labour Party. Woman activists who have gone through the grind of trade union politics, door-knockers, canvassers, foot sloggers – they will be furious that their rights – not just their rights, but their ability to discuss these rights – are airily signed away like this.
It did Jo Swinson of the Liberals a lot of harm to blether about what is a woman anyway?
Now Lisa Nandy has come out for it – and people were speaking well of her. I wonder if Keir Starmer will just keep schtum?
I thought Labour, which we desperately need to get its act together, was cleaning itself up to be the party of the common people and general common sense instead of niche radicalism. Wrong again.
This is so politically dumb that I can only ascribe it to the phenomenon that some people are happier being in opposition, where they can preen in their moral purity, than actually obtaining political power and creating actual change.
I kind of sympathize with the moral purity dilemma though. Imagine for instance someone even worse than Trump running against him. Would you vote for Trump to avoid the even worse? I don’t know what I would do but I do know it would cause me agony to vote for Trump.
But the thing that makes the trans issue bizarre is the complete dropping of that whole idea that women too should be treated as equals, as if the renaissance of feminism had never happened. The complete displacement of women as an oppressed class by trans people as an oppressed class as if women were and always had been the oppressor class…it’s strange.
OB@5,
One nice thing about being a cynic is that it makes voting easier. I’m pretty comfortable with “lesser of two evils” reasoning. I kind of feel sorry for those people (and I’m not suggesting you meant to include yourself in this category) who want to be “inspired” by a candidate.
Heh. I don’t expect to be inspired, but I do cop to often feeling discouraged by the deep mediocrity.
Screechy, I second that feeling sorry for, and I feel even more sorry for people who think the president is going to be the role model for their children who don’t get that from their father (I would say, or mother, but most people aren’t going to look at any of our presidents and expect them to be a role model substitute for a missing mother – maybe the trans lobby. They all look like men to me, but who am I to judge what their gender identity is/pronouns are?).
I suppose it would be nice to be inspired, but I have favorite poets, playwrights, and artists for that. Not to mention real people in my life who give me inspiration to be better. As for role models, I don’t think Clinton was much worse than any of the other presidents we have had; I wouldn’t actually want my son to take any of them for a role model (well, maybe Obama).
Shit like this pretty much guarantees that the segment of the left that knows about sex and sex differences will not vote for them. Congratulation to the Labour Party for successfully fragmenting the left vote of the UK.