Hopeless.

That’s Julia Long asking the question.

Lisa Nandy says firmly “I believe fundamentally in people’s right to self-ID.”

She doesn’t though. She doesn’t believe in people’s right to self-identify as Lisa Nandy for instance (apart from the few people who really are named Lisa Nandy). She doesn’t believe in people’s right to self-identify as the rightful occupants of her house. She doesn’t believe in people’s right to self-identify as the owners of her car. She doesn’t believe in people’s right to self-identify as the MP for her constituency. She doesn’t believe in people’s right to self-identify as the prime minister, the mayor of London, her doctor, the director general of the UN, her cousins, the head of the Bank of England, the pilot of the plane she’s about to board…and so on. She doesn’t. It would be batty and unsafe to believe in such a right, and that’s why there is no such right. We all have the right to fantasize however we like, but that doesn’t translate to a blanket right to “self-identify” and be endorsed as such by all the world.

At 2:33:

2:33: But I think if you deny the right of trans people to exist, and you deny their very basic human rights, then no meaningful dialogue is possible at all.

But nobody is denying anyone’s right to exist.

Lisa Nandy is Lisa Nandy and not Andrew Windsor. It’s not denying her right to exist to say that, and it still wouldn’t be even if she “identified as” Andrew Windsor – not least because such a right would violate the rights of Andrew Windsor. We can imagine or pretend (privately) or dream that we are something we’re not, but we can’t enforce our imaginings on anyone else.

Nandy tells a story of a “girl” in her constituency who has been transitioning for two years and what a difficult process it is, then says she will never say anything that would make that “girl” feel bad. It’s quite ok to make a whole population of women feel bad though. The end of her story got a round of applause.

Sigh. Yeah.