Confessio fidei
Does he believe? Yes or no?
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer does not believe transgender women are women, his official spokesman has said. It comes after the UK Supreme Court ruled last week that a woman is defined by biological sex under equalities law.
In March 2022, when he was leader of the opposition, Sir Keir told the Times that “a woman is a female adult, and in addition to that transwomen are women, and that is not just my view – that is actually the law”. Asked if Sir Keir still believed that a transgender woman was a woman, the PM’s official spokesman said: “No, the Supreme Court judgment has made clear that when looking at the Equality Act, a woman is a biological woman.”
Well, to be more precise, or perhaps I mean truthful, it’s not just when looking at an Act that a woman is a “biological” woman. It’s all the time. A woman is always a woman; the “biological” part is redundant. There is no non-biological type of woman that a man can be. It was a mistake to divide women into biological and pretend. It was a mistake and an over-complication and an embarrassment. Women are women; men are the other thing. Works the same way in reverse: Men are men; women are the other thing. It’s called a binary, and it’s real. Without it, poof, no humans.
In 2023, Sir Keir told The Sunday Times that for “99.9%” of women “of course they haven’t got a penis”. Later that year he told BBC Radio 5 Live “a woman is an adult female”.
And in April 2024 he said Rosie Duffield, who quit the party last year, was right to say “only women have a cervix”, telling ITV: “Biologically, she of course is right about that.” Sir Keir had previously been critical of Duffield’s views on trans people when she was a Labour MP, saying in 2021 that she was “not right” to say only women have a cervix.
In short he said one thing one day and a different thing another day. The Guardians of Trans Virtue were always just a few inches away, with their pitchforks, breathing heavily. What’s a Prime Minister to do?
Asked whether Sir Keir would now use a trans woman’s preferred pronouns, the spokesman declined to comment on “hypotheticals” but insisted the PM had “been clear that trans women should be treated with the same dignity and respect as anyone else”.
Oh yes? So then they shouldn’t be addressed as the sex they’re not, and they shouldn’t be allowed to destroy women’s rights, and they shouldn’t take up all the oxygen? Good to know.
Labour’s Emily Thornberry said LGBT helpline calls had “skyrocketed in recent days” and highlighted that “the overwhelming threat to women and to all of the trans community is the violence that we suffer from cis men”.
No. Men who claim to be trans are not thereby automatically rendered not a threat to women. Some of those men threaten women on social media all the time. Some very violent rapists have claimed to be women.
Many Labour MPs will be uneasy about the comments from Sir Keir and Phillipson, although frustration did not seem to extend to being willing to criticise the government, but instead expressing concern about anxieties within the trans, non-binary and intersex community.
How about some concern about anxieties within the sick to death of hearing about the blah blah blah community? Eh? What about us? We have to buy a whole new set of teeth practically every week.
In one way, “cis” men are the biggest threat to women but only because there are so many more of them.
“the “biological” part is redundant. There is no non-biological type of woman that a man can be.”
One thousand thanks for pointing out a pet peeve of mine.
I strongly suspect their next strategy will be to insist that “trans women” are indeed biologically female (because “intersex”, and “brain-sex”, and “your model doesn’t meet this impossible standard, therefore my model wins by default, without having to meet any standards at all*”). There are, of course, already people out there making this
argumentclaim. I am sure they will be able to find plenty of biologists, like PZ Myers, prepared to insist to the death that this is more firmly established than the laws of termodynamics. Be prepared for people arguing that female only spaces should be inclusive of “all biological females” – Both the “cis biological females and the “trans” biological female (by which they don’t mean TIFs).* I call it the “Gender of the Gaps” fallacy.
India Willoughby, 2022: “I’m 100% a biological woman and female. The fact the GC movement can’t handle this simple fact isn’t my problem. Jealous.”
Who was that lunkhead TIM who said during an interview something like: “Well, I am, like, biological, and I am a female, so I guess that makes me biologically female”?
@5 I think that particular lunkhead was this guy:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veronica_Ivy
Bjarte: AFAICS PZ Myers had posted nothing on the subject of the UK Supreme Court decision until today. Go on, admit it: you pushed him over the edge!
Yeah, sorry about that..
Bjarte #3 “more firmly established than the laws of termodynamics.”
TRAs use termodynamics a lot. ;^)
OTOH thermodynamics is actually much better established than termodynamics.
Covfefe
Perhaps Bjarte is merely indicating that he wishes us to pronounce it in the Irish way? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It’s a pet peeve of mine. It drives me crazy when people mispronounce ”covfefe” :P
Bjarte, thanks for the belly-laugh. Fortunately, I have just finished my breakfast, or I would have egg and bacon all over the screen!