This Once Great Movement Of Ours

[JimJamUK]

No, he's just clumsily responding to a gotcha question that he hates being asked with a tautology. I can guarantee that there isn't a single subject that he would less like to talk about by this point.

It’s one of those questions where you would look ridiculous to almost everyone if you answered anything but “no, women don’t have penises”, even when many people would be able to have a much more nuanced opinion on transgender issues, including those yet to have reassignment surgery.

[CumbrianLefty]

Yup.

Frankly, moronic stupid gotcha questions deserve similar answers.

[JimJamUK]

On self-identification, the debate in Scotland really poisoned this issue. As much as some may not want to hear this, the uncompromising position of the Scottish government has led to a significant growth in anti-transgender commentary and made almost every moderately pro-transgender rights politician scared sh*tless of talking about transgender people full stop for fear of being tarred with unlimited self-identification (and all the extreme examples/hypotheticals that have now replaced ordinary transgender people in the debate).

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The thing to note about the formal position Labour has adopted on this issue is that it's actually example of this...

...and most of what cannot be explained by that can be explained by the usual needs to balance out particular interest groups in the Party, especially within the PLP itself.

...rather than a reflection of the need to appeal to the Party's main target audience (who do not particular care about the issue). There has been an ongoing and rather sharp disagreement on the subject between some of the Party's middle aged and older female MPs (often veterans of the AWS wars) and the LGBT group, both of whom form powerful internal sections in the PLP (and the former is unusually large at present due to the precise way that recent election results have dovetailed with selection patterns). If Labour's position now looks like a compromise hammered together by a committee in order to minimize the risk of something blowing up before the election, well, there's a reason for that.

[afleitch]

No, he's just clumsily responding to a gotcha question that he hates being asked with a tautology. I can guarantee that there isn't a single subject that he would less like to talk about by this point.

The adoption of 'adult human female' as a form of wording is absolutely a internalisation of GC categorisation though.

[XSandion]

As a PhD student at a UK uni working on queer media representation I have seen first hand how much more hostile things have gotten surrounding LGBTQ matters with trans issues and self-ID at the centre, and Labour seem unable to deal with this. I frankly do not trust them to follow through even on what they are now offering. Internal divisions may be a big reason for the present policy shift, but colour me sceptical that these won't resurface the moment Labour attempt to reform the GRA in any way if they win the next election.

Of course the question asked was absurd to begin with. Any normal person asked the "penis question" repeatedly for the last few years would have snapped by now. The phrasing Starmer used today, "adult female" rather than "adult human female," is also the same as Australian PM Albanese's wording and I can't imagine that is just a coincidence. Not that it really makes it less of a transphobic dogwhistle in my opinion.

I spend my time between both the UK and Japan and while it gets worse every year in both countries on trans coverage, it has gotten especially bad in the UK. My department has advised me to self-censor my work in fear of the media climate around trans and queer issues - we already have had a media storm in my exact, fairly small, sub-field and another may cause funding issues for the entire field. Labour being in power would never have caused that to change overnight, of course, but I have seen the effect that years of the horrible media coverage of trans issues has had on my field and it feels like Labour have just given up and bowed down to it.

[GALeftist]

No, he's just clumsily responding to a gotcha question that he hates being asked with a tautology. I can guarantee that there isn't a single subject that he would less like to talk about by this point.

The adoption of 'adult human female' as a form of wording is absolutely a internalisation of GC categorisation though.

Not just that – "adult human female" was originated and popularized by Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull, aka Posie Parker, who advocates for a world in which gender transition is completely abolished and whose events are so famously rife with self-avowed Nazis (who she proudly allies with!) that she is effectively a far-right provocateur herself. I don't know if Starmer knew this context at the time, but he sure does now. With any other group, parroting a dogwhistle like this would be, at best, grounds for an immediate and lengthy apology.

EDIT: FWIW, I think this is also true of Albanese – I am disappointed that he gave the response that he did and further disappointed that he did not denounce the individual who popularized his language.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

No, he's just clumsily responding to a gotcha question that he hates being asked with a tautology. I can guarantee that there isn't a single subject that he would less like to talk about by this point.

The adoption of 'adult human female' as a form of wording is absolutely a internalisation of GC categorisation though.

I think that's more a comment on the slippery use of quite ordinary language (and sometimes also symbols, gestures etc) as code, which has become a bit of a theme in more than a few radical political circles of various hues over the past decade or so.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Internal divisions may be a big reason for the present policy shift, but colour me sceptical that these won't resurface the moment Labour attempt to reform the GRA in any way if they win the next election.

They obviously will: this is very much a case of pushing back today's headache to next week and as far as the GC hardcore and their media friends go, well, no, this will absolutely not shut them up and anyone who assumes that is frankly delusional. Though things will be different when the issue does inevitably resurface: the composition of the PLP will be quite different after the election, and in particular it will be a lot younger. That will change the balance considerably, though that fact in itself could also make for an unpleasant rearguard action, especially if there are private members bills.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

A policy of 'you need a doctor to diagnose you' that doesn't properly engage with how unreasonably difficult it is to see that doctor in the first place isn't serious, and Dodds' piece does not

This is an interesting point as if things worked as they're supposed to, then getting a letter from a consultant should really be very easy: appointment with a GP, referral to consultant, diagnosis confirmed (for something like dysphoria this would always be a matter of self-diagnosis in practice) and letter signed. That sort of process shouldn't take more than a few weeks. However with how things are at the moment, it would not work like that.

Comparisons with attitudes to homosexuality back in the day are, indeed, available. After all, no Labour manifesto ever promised to repeal Section 28, it was pressure from Labour backbenchers and the Lib Dems that made that happen.

The same being true of a range of other difficult ethical issues: the death penalty, abortion, divorce...

[Zinneke]

As a PhD student at a UK uni working on queer media representation I have seen first hand how much more hostile things have gotten surrounding LGBTQ matters with trans issues and self-ID at the centre, and Labour seem unable to deal with this. I frankly do not trust them to follow through even on what they are now offering. Internal divisions may be a big reason for the present policy shift, but colour me sceptical that these won't resurface the moment Labour attempt to reform the GRA in any way if they win the next election.

Of course the question asked was absurd to begin with. Any normal person asked the "penis question" repeatedly for the last few years would have snapped by now. The phrasing Starmer used today, "adult female" rather than "adult human female," is also the same as Australian PM Albanese's wording and I can't imagine that is just a coincidence. Not that it really makes it less of a transphobic dogwhistle in my opinion.

I spend my time between both the UK and Japan and while it gets worse every year in both countries on trans coverage, it has gotten especially bad in the UK. My department has advised me to self-censor my work in fear of the media climate around trans and queer issues - we already have had a media storm in my exact, fairly small, sub-field and another may cause funding issues for the entire field. Labour being in power would never have caused that to change overnight, of course, but I have seen the effect that years of the horrible media coverage of trans issues has had on my field and it feels like Labour have just given up and bowed down to it.

Welcome to the forum

[MaxQue]

The thing to note about the formal position Labour has adopted on this issue is that it's actually example of this...

...and most of what cannot be explained by that can be explained by the usual needs to balance out particular interest groups in the Party, especially within the PLP itself.

...rather than a reflection of the need to appeal to the Party's main target audience (who do not particular care about the issue). There has been an ongoing and rather sharp disagreement on the subject between some of the Party's middle aged and older female MPs (often veterans of the AWS wars) and the LGBT group, both of whom form powerful internal sections in the PLP (and the former is unusually large at present due to the precise way that recent election results have dovetailed with selection patterns). If Labour's position now looks like a compromise hammered together by a committee in order to minimize the risk of something blowing up before the election, well, there's a reason for that.

You also omit the main problem for Starmer, i.e. making sure the MP for Canterbury doesn't defect to the Conservatives. She will anyways, but he is too weak to get rid of her on his own terms.

[CumbrianLefty]

Duffield going over to the Tories has been rumoured several times now, but still absolutely nothing.

It has been pointed out that aside from *that* issue, she agrees with them on relatively little and is not likely to be happy there. Maybe the other rumour - that she will retire shortly before the GE - has more chance of happening now after Labour's shift on trans matters.

[JimJamUK]

Duffield going over to the Tories has been rumoured several times now, but still absolutely nothing.

It has been pointed out that aside from *that* issue, she agrees with them on relatively little and is not likely to be happy there. Maybe the other rumour - that she will retire shortly before the GE - has more chance of happening now after Labour's shift on trans issues.

She is/was associated with the soft left Open Labour and seemed to take the standard progressive position on everything but transgender rights. The only time she has made the news for a long time for non-transgender issues was her recently attacking Starmer over his support for the 2 child cap, which is hardly the sort of position that someone about to defect to the Tories would take.

[CumbrianLefty]

Yesterday the courts ruled that the planned expansion of ULEZ could go ahead, a win for Sadiq Khan and a defeat for the Tory run boroughs that brought the action.

He almost immediately announced it would go ahead next month as previously scheduled - looks like all that talk last weekend that Starmer would "intervene" was a load of fluff. Who knew?

[JimJamUK]

Yesterday the courts ruled that the planned expansion of ULEZ could go ahead, a win for Sadiq Khan and a defeat for the Tory run boroughs that brought the action.

He almost immediately announced it would go ahead next month as previously scheduled - looks like all that talk last weekend that Starmer would "intervene" was a load of fluff. Who knew?

Well how was he supposed to “intervene”, explicitly attack Khan publicly and threaten to suspend him? The reality is ULEZ, whether you think it’s a good or bad policy, is going to be more electorally toxic before and around the time of its implementation. If you’re going to implement it, then do it ASAP and either show people’s fears were overblown or at least make them get used to the policy. What you certainly don’t do is delay it long enough to allow the 2024 mayoral election to be a referendum on it and keep the issue in the spotlight as long as possible. How some Labour “insiders” think the latter would be a good idea is beyond me.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The main issue with ULEZ from a political perspective is that Khan has done a shockingly poor job on the communications angle. Hopefully that improves now. On the court case itself: I'm amazed that the boroughs in question were stupid enough to bring it, there was never any chance of success. Waste of ratepayers money, that.

[Blair]

Yeah it is quite funny how a week later the by elections have basically faded into thought and it’s been accepted that it basically proved broadly what we knew before; the ULEZ and the Mayor is not popular in Tory outer London and Labour are doing very well/the Government are doing badly in Conservative ‘heartland’ seats.

The funny thing on reflection is how different the build up to the 2015 election would had been if we’d had by elections in say a Scottish seat, a liberal held West Country seat and a Tory held labour target in the late July ‘14 or even winter ‘14.

All we had was the Greater Manchester by election labour nearly lost to UKIP which the party just pretended didn’t happen.

[Wiswylfen]

Duffield going over to the Tories has been rumoured several times now, but still absolutely nothing.

It has been pointed out that aside from *that* issue, she agrees with them on relatively little and is not likely to be happy there. Maybe the other rumour - that she will retire shortly before the GE - has more chance of happening now after Labour's shift on trans matters.

In Duffield's own words, the only issues she has with them--and the only thing stopping her from going over to them--are Brexit and immigration.

[CumbrianLefty]

Apart from neither of those exactly being trivial issues, another example of her recently taking a not terribly Tory position was posted just upthread. I find her just as exasperating as most Labour people do, but let's stick to the facts here.

[Blair]

Peak THIGMOO as the Mayor of Bristol lost a election battle for the new Bristol seat to… the Mayor of Lewisham in South London Damian Egan.

Egan was born and was raised in Bristol and is impressive but still shows how unpopular Rees is

[JimJamUK]

Peak THIGMOO as the Mayor of Bristol lost a election battle for the new Bristol seat to… the Mayor of Lewisham in South London Damian Egan.

Egan was born and was raised in Bristol and is impressive but still shows how unpopular Rees is

Was just coming to post about THIGMOO. The People of Bristol voted to abolish the mayoralty last year so he clearly wasn’t popular with the public, but that didn’t necessarily mean Labour members/fixers weren’t still going to choose him as a candidate.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Peak THIGMOO as the Mayor of Bristol lost a election battle for the new Bristol seat to… the Mayor of Lewisham in South London Damian Egan.

Egan was born and was raised in Bristol and is impressive but still shows how unpopular Rees is

Only a little over half of the new constituency is inside the area covered by Bristol City Council (the rest is in the South Gloucestershire authority and mostly comes from the abolished Kingswood constituency), which might also be worth noting.

[Blair]

My hunch is that serving as a councillor especially leader really doesn’t help esp in the age of councils being underfunded and under popular- my favourite selection fact was Steve Reed got beaten for a seat where iirc he was council leader for and then a few years later beat the leader of Croydon Council for a seat in… Croydon.

[Blair]

Peak THIGMOO as the Mayor of Bristol lost a election battle for the new Bristol seat to… the Mayor of Lewisham in South London Damian Egan.

Egan was born and was raised in Bristol and is impressive but still shows how unpopular Rees is

Only a little over half of the new constituency is inside the area covered by Bristol City Council (the rest is in the South Gloucestershire authority and mostly comes from the abolished Kingswood constituency), which might also be worth noting.

First rule of THIGMOO is not to let facts get in the way of a funny story!