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.

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