Lost in the fog
I don’t think I’ll ever understand where people get the confidence to talk this kind of confused nonsense.
Why, at this moment of both national and international crisis, has the media decided that the most important question for a party that hasn’t been in government for 12 years, is a hypothetical one about genitals?
One, they haven’t – media questions are not exclusively about genitals, or gender. Two, news flash: women’s rights still matter.
It’s not really about vaginas, it’s a quest for the “gotcha” moment, the inescapable trap of deliberately twisted logic which merits unpicking.
It’s not really about vaginas perhaps, but it is really about women. If white people were furiously agitating to be “validated” as Black I think Zoe Williams would see the problem, but when it’s men, somehow she can’t make it out through the fog.
Labour’s position has not changed since 2019 – it supports both the reform of the GRA and single-sex spaces. This is the next battleground for gender-critical feminists, who would like to see the party drop its support for reform, on the basis that any such move allows for more trans people – generally cast by some as predatory men – to access single sex spaces. When faced with the question of what defines a man or a woman, Labour is not only being implicitly asked to row back on its own policy, but also to backtrack on current legislation which says that trans men are men and trans women are women, regardless of whether they have undergone medical treatments.
Legislation could “say” that airplanes are oak trees, but that wouldn’t make it true. Trans women are men who want to “live as” women; they’re not literally women.
As things stand now, the government has blocked reforms to the GRA and the Equalities and Human Rights Commission has provided guidelines extending the circumstances under which trans people can be excluded from single-sex spaces.
But the issue isn’t about “trans people” being excluded from single-sex spaces, it’s about men being excluded from [some] women’s spaces. That’s not a quibble, it’s essential. The men aren’t being excluded because they’re trans, they’re being excluded because they’re men. Williams frames it as cruel irrational exclusion of trans people, and that’s dishonest.
“Legitimate justifications” now include female-only fitness classes and the toilets of places of worship where it may offend people, on religious grounds, to have inclusive spaces.
There it is again. No, not “inclusive spaces”; toilets where men can intrude on women.
I can’t even wrap my head around the person who doesn’t want anybody trans in their aerobics class…
Again – it’s not the “trans” bit, it’s the male bit.
Labour needs to take a stand based on principles of equality with which they are familiar. They could also maybe learn from their history of being wedged – on Brexit, and long before that, on nuclear disarmament – by political enemies who care much less about the issue than they enjoy watching Labour fall apart.
What principles of equality? What does trans dogma have to do with equality?
Maybe a party whose members and leader are unable, or unwilling, to define one of the classes of people whose protected characteristics are enshrined in UK law isn’t really ready to govern. If they don’t know what a woman is, they’re not fit for office. If they know what a woman is but are afraid to say it then they are even less fit for office. Sometimes standing up and saying “no” is more important than being “kind” (or “kind of scared.”)
Many (if not most) of those asking for Labour’s definition of woman are not “political enemies” but are simply trying to wake the party up. They realize that Labour’s position is wrong and misguided but are unwilling to let it slide. The Labour Party is being held to account by those whom it seeks to represent. Is this not the very heart of democracy? Accountability and representation? If they cannot answer a simple question, if they are willing to give away rights that are not theirs to give in order to avoid pissing off a tiny, aggressive minority making unreasonable and unethical demands, how can they be trusted to govern honestly and openly? How is it that women are expected to sacrifice their own political interests in favour of men who are trying to take their places and spaces? Would Labour expect to go unchallenged if it had screwed over workers rights in favour of bosses, in the process espousing a mistaken and distorted view of relevant law promulgated by the bosses themselves? Not bloody likely. Well, this is the same but worse, because they’re helped to screw over half the population in one go, and they’re too stupid or cowardly to acknowledge it.
Courts have said that tomatoes are vegetables, and that whales are fish. No matter. Botanists still regard tomatoes as fruits, and mammalogists still regard whales as mammals. I suspect PZ would have no trouble agreeing with fruits and mammals. Why, then, does legal recognition mean literal truth in this one issue? Because…trans advocates have forced us into this situation by not only dishonesty but also by bullying. The courts didn’t bully botanists or mammalogists into accepting their legal definition, and the scientists involved regard it as a legal definition only that changes nothing in the scientific world.
But now we have otherwise intelligent, respected scientists leaping all over themselves to accept that men are women, and women are uterus-havers and front holes.
Zoe Williams:
This is what it actually says in the passage of guidance to which Williams links at this point:
I think I finally grok one of the linguistic bits of slight-of-hand that have been difficult to pin down for me before.
For GCFs, the noun is “trans”, with “man” or “woman” as an adjective suffix.
For the TRAs, OTOH, the noun is “man” or “woman”; ‘Trans’ is simply an adjective prefix.
As a result, the way they use the term ‘transwoman’ is very much a case of begging the question, in that they are assuming the point of their argument.
Freemage,
I don’t see it that way. The way I see it is: there are modifiers (or, to be more accurate modifier-noun combinations) that indicate that the noun is in a subset of the broader category (e.g., “black woman”, “tall woman”), modifiers that indicate that the noun is a marginal member of the category (“quasi* woman”, “semi*-woman”), and modifiers that indicate that the noun is not a member of the category (“fake woman”, “pretend woman”, “would-be woman”).TRAs insist that “trans” is a modifier of the first type, while GCFs argue that it’s of the third type.
But yes, that’s begging the question.
*Admittedly those don’t work well with “woman”, but you get the idea.
[…] a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Lost in the fog, with added […]
And another thing. It’s worth noticing, and pointing out, this rhetorical gambit of pretending that when we talk about sex we’re talking about genitals. Just genitals. It’s a framing that assumes that the difference between the sexes comes down to whether you have a penis or a vagina.
From this we’re to understand that sex comes in minor physical variations, like bellybuttons: are you an innie or an outie? Who cares? Only those gender critical prudes. They probably have an attack of the vapors whenever they see a penis (don’t stare! It’s rude!) How can you even tell who’s what unless you station genital police at the door of the loo to make you drop trou before you can enter?
What a hysterical lot of silly women. Now let’s move on to important grown-up matters, like validating each other’s identities.
At least she was correct on one point: she has not wrapped her head around this issue.
This is why I try never to put a space between trans and woman. “Transwoman” describes a discrete thing; apart they only mean what they ought to (though I guess “trans” isn’t anything in of itself)
@9 I’ve been reliably informed that writing it that way is literal violence.
I commented on Spinster the other day that I found this article noteworthy in that there is not one word in it about actual women:
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/labour/2022/04/inside-labours-clusterfuck-week-on-trans-rights
‘And everyone is aware of the competing tensions the party must manage: the squeamishness they feel talking about genitals, the concern they feel about causing hurt to the trans community and the desire to say something pithy and with common sense.’
Apparently those competing tensions do not include the risk of ignoring, disrespecting and pissing off half the electorate (not to mention the bulk of their volunteer base). I don’t think anyone is prepared to recognise the fact that women have the right to vote, and are carefully observing this behaviour.
guest – eh? I’m reading it and there are words in it about women. Wrong link?
The word ‘women’ is mentioned as an abstract idea, and as an optics issue, but there’s nothing in it ABOUT women, as people with agency, or about women as a voting block with our own interests and concerns. My pull quote shows what their concerns are, and women aren’t among them.
What is missing though is any awareness that women actually do have reasons to object to being forced to accept men in our spaces. The article mentions women but the point of view is entirely won’t someone please think of the trans women. It’s infuriating.
Cross-post. Yes.
And the writer is a woman – apparently not a trans woman. Sigh.
Women make up half the electorate, 47% of party membership, and I’m guessing the vast majority of volunteer hours, particularly for the unglamorous critical tasks that keep the party working…and yet are somehow completely invisible. Certainly no one’s talking to them, or listening to them if they’re speaking up.
I will definitely be supporting this campaign in our upcoming local elections.
https://women-uniting.co.uk/respectmysex/
Meanwhile “Grace Lavery” is on Woman’s Hour, with Emma Barnett apparently fawning over him as if he belonged there.
https://twitter.com/helensaxby11/status/1511998117457149955