Tony Blair: “A woman has a vagina and a man has a penis.”

[Horus]

I don't think Blair, at this point in his legacy, is someone you want on your side for anything.

If Alben's goal was to make me more pro trans with this post he may very well have succeeded. This is almost as bad as citing Cheney. Why would anyone with an ounce of humanity want to listen to a word out of this smug pig?

[MyLifeIsYours 🇵🇸 🇨🇩 🇸🇩]

Tony Blair should be at The Hague with his war criminal buddy George W. Bush.

[Samof94]

I actually have it on pretty good authority that Tony Blair doesn't have a penis but he is still a dick.

Hes a TERF and a war hawk. He is a politician from another time.

[OSR stands with Israel]

I don't think Blair, at this point in his legacy, is someone you want on your side for anything.

False, Labour has reembraced Blair and its not hurt them at all. Heck even in 2010 after 13 years of New Labour, Labour Party barely lost in midst of the Great Recession and their reaction to losing was to move away from Blairism which led to a disastrous 2010s for them.

Why do people care what Tony Blair says? No one cares what George W. Bush says now.

I mean the current Labour leader has openly embraced Blair

[Atlasia GM Liminal]

And Tony Blair and his cronies are war criminals that deserve to go to prison

[OSR stands with Israel]

Tony Blair was the best PM since Thatcher and the 2nd best PM the UK has had since Macmillan

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Blair, Bush, and Netanyahu should have a meeting at The Hague.

[Devout Centrist]

Best of luck in your ongoing job search

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Best of luck in your ongoing job search

I guess the checks from Sam Bankman-Fried started bouncing.

[Atlasia GM Liminal]

Article Link

He says this is an issue of common sense and also set out three points for how he thinks Labour should address the issue:

1. Protect single-sex spaces for women.

2. Don't refer to women in dehumanizing language (“pregnant people,” “people with cervixes,” etc.)

3. Carefully consider  any irreversible treatments such as puberty blockers.

All while still acknowledging some people genuinely do feel like they’re in the wrong body, even as it remains a biological fact that there are two sexes, male and female, with distinct physical traits.

Needless to say, I completely agree. And let me soapbox a little in an attempt to explain why I do and why after years of trans rights activism, I actually am if anything LESS understanding of the explanations for transgenderism and MORE skeptical of the entire concept than I was years ago, and don’t seem to be alone in that based on polls suggesting the messaging has backfired badly in recent years:

You can only even be “in the wrong body” if you acknowledge there are two sexes and your body isn’t aligned with the sex you feel you should be. It made at least a bit more sense when that was the explanation, but now that biological sex apparently isn’t real anymore, it’s become incoherent, illogical, inconsistent, meaningless, and beyond confusing. If a woman can have a beard and a penis and dress however she wants, then why would any man need to change anything to “be” a woman? He wouldn’t. So then what’s the point of surgeries and hormones and crossdressing? What are you trying to become if a woman doesn’t need a vagina/breasts/a dress? It makes no sense.

There is no way to logically reconcile the ideas “Anyone of any gender can be anything and look any way, biological sex is not real and gender is fluid and arbitrary and people are merely ‘assigned’ to one of two crude categories at birth” and “There are two standard sexes/genders and some people feel/identify as the opposite of the one they were born as so they need to change their bodies and appearance to conform more to that.” They are fundamentally opposing and incompatible ideas, yet the TRAs insist on both at the same time, cherrypicking from both to argue whichever is more convenient for them in the moment, in some sort of bizarre doublethink.

Again, made more sense before. The point back then (by which I mean like 10 years ago) was to pass and conform to “cis” (though that word wasn’t used) as closely as possible. The last thing most trans people wanted was to “identify” as trans or have a loud and proud movement. They wanted to blend in and be invisible, readily accepted as the opposite sex, and were willing to go all the way including a full “sex change” to do so. That I could empathize with (reasoning anyone willing to take such drastic measures must be truly committed) and there was a certain logic to “born with a female brain in a male body” or whatever; even if I didn’t quite buy it, I could accept it if it made people feel more comfortable. This “I changed my pronouns in my Twitter bio to she/they so now I can use any bathroom I want” thing is another story however.

Or basically in order to prevent people who were born as men but look like women from using the women's restroom, you're going to force people who were born as women but look like men to use the women's restroom?

Alben I hate to break it to you but you didn't think this one through

[ingemann]

Honestly I think point number two is the obvious one, using the dehumanizing language against a group because you’re afraid of not being inclusive enough is likely the single most alienating thing you can do as movement. I can see how it started and where it came from, but it has likely done more to push people away than everything else the transgender right movement have done.

[SWE]

Huge PR victory for the trans rights movement. Imagine how embarrassing it would be to have to be on the same side as Tony Blair

[Arson Plus]

Why do you think that people will change their minds based off of what Tony Blair said?

[ingemann]

Why do you think that people will change their minds based off of what Tony Blair said?

While I doubt Tony Blair will ever be popular a place like here or among the “No Blood for Oil” crowd, I think most Americans doesn’t know who the guy is, while in UK he remind most people of better times. So I do think he is worth listening too.

[Goldwater]

Why do you think that people will change their minds based off of what Tony Blair said?

While I doubt Tony Blair will ever be popular a place like here or among the “No Blood for Oil” crowd, I think most Americans doesn’t know who the guy is, while in UK he remind most people of better times. So I do think he is worth listening too.

So his opinions on trans rights are worth listening to just because people are nostalgic for the early 2000s?

[MyLifeIsYours 🇵🇸 🇨🇩 🇸🇩]

Why do you think that people will change their minds based off of what Tony Blair said?

While I doubt Tony Blair will ever be popular a place like here or among the “No Blood for Oil” crowd, I think most Americans doesn’t know who the guy is, while in UK he remind most people of better times. So I do think he is worth listening too.

Most regular Americans just forgot about Blair altogether unless they are politically aware people. He is still one of the better known prime minsters by knowledge, barring Churchhill and Thatcher.

[OSR stands with Israel]

Keir Starmer just said he agrees with Blair:


https://twitter.com/Telegraph/status/1803051421329195133


Amazing how the Ron DeSantis position on the issue is basically the consensus in the UK.

[Transgender for Everybody]

Amazing how the Ron DeSantis position on the issue is basically the consensus in the UK.

If the Rob position on the Transgender Question was the consensus in the UK, Blair wouldn't have noted that some people truly are "born in the wrong body," as it were, and that his GRA should remain intact. I'm sure DeSanctimonious would call him woke for saying what he said. The Labour position, frankly, is more comparable to Doug Burgum than Rob D. Sanctus--Starmer, like Burgum, doesn't want to talk about, or really legislate on, trans, but at the end of the day, he's willing to give lip service to transphobes (such as Kindergarten Cop absolutism) if need be.

[ingemann]

Why do you think that people will change their minds based off of what Tony Blair said?

While I doubt Tony Blair will ever be popular a place like here or among the “No Blood for Oil” crowd, I think most Americans doesn’t know who the guy is, while in UK he remind most people of better times. So I do think he is worth listening too.

So his opinions on trans rights are worth listening to just because people are nostalgic for the early 2000s?

Seeing that people reaction was “ugh we don’t need to listen to Tony Blair because he is deeply unpopular”, it seem something of a moving goal post you have there. I think it’s important to listen to Tony Blair because a lot of people listen to him, I don’t think it necessarily means he’s right.

[Atlasia GM Liminal]

Keir Starmer just said he agrees with Blair:


https://twitter.com/Telegraph/status/1803051421329195133

Amazing how the Ron DeSantis position on the issue is basically the consensus in the UK.

Watch the Lib Dem surge overtake the Tories by most of the Trans population voting Lib Dem

[Dr. Cynic]

Personally, I think people should just be allowed to identify however they choose.

[John Fettercuck]

Always inspiring to see the greatest Tory PM alive open his mouth again.

[HisGrace]

One would expect someone so obsessed with trans issues to have at least a passing familiarity with what pro-trans people actually believe. Just goes to show that expectations are deceiving.

I don't think he said that's what they actually believe, just that it's the logical outgrowth of what they believe, which is accurate, whether you want to tapdance around it with postmodern word salad or not. Which normally I wouldn't care about, but when you call people Nazis and threaten to kill people for not agreeing with said word salad it becomes a problem.

Personally, I think people should just be allowed to identify however they choose.

0 people in this thread and virtually no one in broader society thinks trans people should not be "allowed" to call themselves whatever they want, as in, saying they should be arrested or fired from their job for it. The question is how it will be defined in broader society. If you truly want to be postmodern about this and say people should be able to identify as they choose then a SoCon who says there are only two genders and you are born into them is just as legitimate as anything anyone else says and they shouldn't be harassed for it. No reason they should have less right to self identify than anyone else.

[Sic Semper Tyrannis]

One would expect someone so obsessed with trans issues to have at least a passing familiarity with what pro-trans people actually believe. Just goes to show that expectations are deceiving.

I don't think he said that's what they actually believe, just that it's the logical outgrowth of what they believe, which is accurate, whether you want to tapdance around it with postmodern word salad or not. Which normally I wouldn't care about, but when you call people Nazis and threaten to kill people for not agreeing with said word salad it becomes a problem.

Trans understander 2 has logged on.

[🥥🌴]

Glad to see the forum is finally seeing the light about who Tony Blair really is.

Hope I won't have to see him in x number of months in an individual politics poll trashing anyone else from Labour or any other leftist in forum because of "muh moderate hero" or "he won his elections for Labour".

He is war criminal and a transphobe, and it's all you need to know. I don't care what your alignment is in that case, but it is not mine.