The government having a conversation with itself
This explains a lot – trans activism gets massive government funding while feminist resistance to the parts of trans activism that harm women gets…can you guess?…zero funding.
It’s called “policy laundering” according to Mary Harrington. Useful term.
In its most blatant form, policy laundering looks like government departments using taxpayer money to pay lobbyists to influence government…
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Let us consider an example: the Scottish Trans Alliance. This is a project funded by the Scottish Government Equality Unit and delivered by the Equality Network, which is largely funded by the Scottish government as well as by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (funded by UK government).
The project delivers research, advisory, and training, including to government-funded bodies, who in turn repeat the ideas received via reports, training and consultancy back toward policymakers. Thus, a nested series of public sector grants has enabled government to conjure into existence a body that shapes public sector policy. Meanwhile, the pronouncements and statistics produced by this arms-length government body are treated by the (government funded) BBC as though emanating from independent civil society voices.
See what I mean? Explains a lot. I’ve been wondering for a very long time how all this incoherent bullshit got such a purchase on the minds of politicians, and this seems to answer that question.
The whole cycle amounts to a process of laundering, by semi-independent bodies, a series of policies the government already wanted to adopt so they look as though they come spontaneously from the society upon which they will in due course be visited.
Mind you, that introduces the question all over again. Why did the government already want to adopt trans policies?
The result looks like a thriving voice for civil society in the national debate. But in reality it is more like the government having a conversation with itself, via a series of proxies. Meanwhile, that part of civil society without insider status sits scratching its head trying to work out which form to fill in to get a seat at the table.
Under those circumstances, you might expect differences to emerge between the official conversation and what people actually think and feel on the ground. Taking our example of transgender activism: in 2018 then-Equalities Minister Maria Millar launched a consultation on changes to the Gender Recognition Act. The proposed changes would effectively have turned legal recognition as the opposite sex from a bureaucratic years-long procedure involving medical testimony into a simple matter of form-filling.
The initial proposal was developed in consultation with government funded LGBT charities, but included little input from women. Opposition to the GRA reforms first gained traction on the parenting messageboard Mumsnet and over 2018 morphed into the campaigning organisation Fair Play For Women (government funding: nil) and swelled the ranks of Transgender Trend (government funding: nil).
These groups, aided by a coalition of social conservatives, radical feminists, transsexuals, ordinary concerned women and the occasional man, challenged the GRA reform campaign led by Stonewall (2018 UK government grant funding: £233,000, Scottish government funding £90,000, earnings from delivering paid-for training courses to the public sector: higher still).
They’ve got a lock on the money.
It explains a lot. It’s depressing as fuck.
Via Kathleen Stock:
That explains a lot. I was wondering why trans activism was doing so well in the not so United Kingdom, with politicians like the thoroughly unpleasant Jo Swinson mouthing its propaganda.
So was I.
This is an excellent thread on how this works in Scotland. The SNP has branded itself from tartan Tories into progressives in a generation by championing gay rights. That is inexpensive, unlike changing its economic policies, and has attracted a youthful, liberal membership. The gay network got the ear of the government – which is very good – then they used their muscle to advance the trans cause.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1210621877292556288.html
I would never have believed Scotland would embrace gay rights so fervently as it now has. I’m proud of Scotland for that. I had no expectations then, least of all of the SNP who until 1990 were led by Gordon Wilson, a right wing homophobe. But I knew a revolution of sorts was brewing. At Glasgow I joined the debating team of a breakaway group of left wing SNP supporters under @MrJohnNicolson who were part of a movement that would in time sweep the old order away and recast the SNP as a progressive internationalist organisation for whom ever since gay rights has been an emblem of its self image.
That’s wonderful though it’s not that unusual. Lots of political parties have done much the same. Gay marriage even helped Cameron rebrand the Tories as the no longer quite as Nasty Party. Gay rights have for 2 decades been a useful (& painless) way for parties to appear modern without breaking from the consensus on anything genuinely radical like…economics.
But relationships forged in those days of SNP renewal partly explain now the influence of a small group of politically active gay men in the Party. Gay SNP members span out through LGBT charities who are themselves appointed official ‘partners’ helping to frame policy. They sit side by side with personal mates in the Scottish government who grant them funds they then use to …advocate policy to their mates. There’s a farmers lobby, there’s a fishing lobby. And there’s now a gay male lobby. Perhaps this explains how within minutes of the government publishing its Gender Recognition Act Reform Bill a dozen or so organisations had published almost identical encouraging responses. Co-ordinated, moi? As Captain Renault said, “I’m shocked, SHOCKED!” before he got a backhander from the croupier.
Here’s the totally uncoordinated and spontaneous response of one of these groups, the Equality Network. To be clear no undue influence was exerted by anyone associated with the completely transparent and utterly democratic front organisations that the Equality Network mentions almost as if they lobby together hand in glove. equality-network.org/equality-organ…
But here’s the thing: this Reform Bill and the new version of the trans rights campaign that inspires it are very different from the gay rights battles of the past. For one thing lesbians and gays won full acceptance by arguing we wanted to live our lives in peace. We didn’t demand everyone change their lives. Or their words. In a classic liberal argument we asked the state to stop interfering in gay lives. Even with gay marriage all we wanted were the same rights as others. If I marry a bloke it makes no difference to someone’s straight marriage. But this Bill is much more insidious. Trans activists claim it won’t undermine women’s rights but at the same time argue women should have no right to exclude trans women from their spaces both claims can’t be correct. The contempt with which women have been treated by trans activists in Scotland gives the lie to the idea that they care at all about safeguarding.
This is a full blown attempt at the colonisation of women’s spaces and indeed the meaning of the word ‘woman’. It would be akin to me telling straight peeps how they should define themselves. Or what they should or shouldn’t get up to between the sheets. The Bill matters so much to the trans lobby because it enshrines self identification of gender identity and sets this as a new benchmark. This will be disastrous because essentially any man will be able to say he’s trans and get access to women’s spaces including those where women are at their most vulnerable such as hospital words, geriatric wards, and girls changing rooms.
But here’s the terrible and tragic irony ..the other people who this Bill will damage are its greatest supporters. When a predatory man who says he’s trans assaults a girl the backlash will undermine the rights of the vast majority of good, well-intentioned trans people who need our support and goodwill. It will also damage the entire woke gay-stablishment who have so passionately supported this Bill, presenting trans rights as the next inevitable step in the progress of lesbian and gay rights.
And here’s the irony these gay men are so incoherent, so trapped in their own bubble they don’t even realise that replacing the reality of binary sex with some invented gender spectrum does away with the very definition of gay as same-sex attracted. Gays fighting for this Bill are like French aristocrats cheering loudly for the sans culottes. They’re championing their own non-binary Madame Guillotine. So if you’re Scottish and a gay man do yourself, your country and your Scottish sisters a favour -organise against this bill, donate to organisations that oppose it. Stand up and be counted.