Quick, pretend to care
Oh no, Labour says, women are abandoning Labour because Labour abandoned women, how will we get them back??
It comes after the Harry Potter author said at the weekend that Labour had “abandoned” women and that she would “struggle to support them” in the election over their stance on trans issues.
Rowling, the Harry Potter author, wrote in The Times that she had a “poor opinion” of Sir Keir’s character and claimed he was “dismissive and often offensive” of women’s concerns about sex-based rights.
That is, dismissive of and often offensive about.
Ya think?
But you’ve been doing the opposite for years now, so women aren’t going to just stampede back to you. Women aren’t going to believe your efforts to pretend you’ve seen the light at last.
He said: “I think that we’ve clearly got more work to do to rebuild trust with people that we’ve lost on this issue. I think we can find a way through that both treats trans people with the dignity and respect that they deserve, and also treats women with the respect that they deserve, particularly protecting women’s spaces, women’s voices, and right to speak up.”
And yet he still puts trans people first, making women an afterthought, even as he tries to convince us he really does care about women despite evidence to the contrary.
“So, when women like JK Rowling do speak up, I think it’s important we engage seriously with the arguments that she’s making, with the concerns that she has.
“And also we listen to what trans people are saying about the everyday injustices and indignities that they’re experiencing too, whether that’s hate crime or poor provision in public services.”
There you go. Women have some vague concerns, which we’ll take a look at when we get a minute, but the really important thing is all these here everyday injustices and indignities that trans people face.
On Monday morning, Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, attempted to smooth over the row with Rowling. He said he felt “pretty depressed” about the article and admitted Labour needed to do more to “treat women with the respect that they deserve”.
Indeed Labour does, so how about working on that.
“So, when someone who’s too famous and too loud for us to ignore do complain, it’s politically necessary for us to make a show of “engaging”, because everyone else will notice if we don’t. Not that we’ll actually do anything; after all, we’ve been ignoring these same arguments and concerns for years (Oh, hi Rosie!), but we can’t be seen to be ignoring Rowling. All those other women? We’ll go right on ignoring and dismissing them.”
One of the early feminists–early 20th century–suffragette era–argued that oppression of women goes hand-in-hand with the oppression of labor. That women and labor should be natural allies in the struggle against this. I can’t reconstruct her words, but I found them persuasive.
I’ve long since lost the reference for this.
Steven – was it Sylvia Pankhurst? It sounds like the sort of thing Sylvia Pankhurst would say.
Translation — We need to keep soothing the stupid hags with promises that we really care about their stupid little concerns until after we get in power. Then we can tell them to su%& trans Di$% again.
Sorry, women, but you don’t deserve dignity.
Were I able to, I’d vote for Labour simply to get the Tories out – the latter have caused so much damage to just about everything – but after liking Starmer at the beginning, I have grown increasingly fed up with his mealy-mouthed, ambiguous approach to too many things, beginning with the waffling position he takes on the matter of men who claim to be women.