Her team has clarified
It gets so wearying, watching political figures – people who directly affect our lives in many ways, or who aspire to – mouthing the nonsense as if it were just ordinary fact-based language. The weariness washed over me reading about Rebecca Long-Bailey’s “clarification” in the New Statesman:
Rebecca Long-Bailey’s team has clarified the Labour leadership contender’s position on same-sex spaces and the Equality Act 2010 to the New Statesman following her interview with Andrew Marr yesterday.
Long-Bailey supports reform of the 2004 Gender Recognition Act (GRA) to allow for trans people to self-identify as their preferred gender, as do all the candidates for the Labour leadership. Her team has clarified, however, that she would not reform the 2010 Equality Act, as has been reported following her interview with Marr.
In the increasingly heated debate over trans rights, confusion is widespread over the difference between what is covered by proposed reforms to the GRA to allow self-identification, as backed by Labour and the Liberal Democrats, and current provisions in the Equality Act.
The Equality Act identifies “gender reassignment” (i.e. being trans: having a gender identify that is different to that assigned to you at birth) as a protected characteristic…
That’s the bit. This is government we’re talking about, and we’re having to take seriously people’s positions on “having a gender identify that is different to that assigned to you at birth.” That’s not a government thing! It’s as if hopeful government-people were talking solemnly about what fantasies we’re allowed to have and what others are strictly forbidden. “Gender identity” that differs from sex is not a real thing that government needs to protect or banish. It’s exhausting seeing adults echoing solemn platitudes about it as if it were real as mud.
It could get worse than government asking about “gender identity.” It could, like UC Santa Cruz, start asking about how “masculine “ or “feminine “ you present. Look at this nonsense:
https://twitter.com/SwipeWright/status/1207102816273227776/photo/1
Tell me again how progressive transgender rights are.
The absurd thing is that, though the information they are seeking would no doubt be useful, a tertiary institution should be able to muster the resources to realise that how a person presents is not something accessible to introspection. Now I’m big and I’m hairy but I also have long hair an little interest in stereo-typically masculine pursuits. Do I present as “mostly masculine” or “somewhat masculine” or even “somewhat famine”? I’d really like to know, but of course I understand the answer will vary with individual and culture (and anyone of many apparently random things, e.g missing out on a job because you reminded the interviewer of someone who bullied them at school). But we live in a world were the only genuine injustice is class based justice so of course it becomes imperative that everyone ticks a box and identifies with a group so that bureaucratic minds can do whatever bureaucratic do.