Refusing to catch on
Ministers must not delay single-sex guidance
A key part of Bridget Phillipson’s second cabinet role as women and equalities minister, one might have thought, would be trying to keep discrimination against women to a minimum. Luckily for her, that job was made a lot simpler after the helpful intervention of the UK Supreme Court this year. In April’s landmark ruling, the court clarified what even the most legally naïve onlooker might have been able to guess: namely, that when words such as “woman” and “man” occur in the UK Equality Act 2010 they refer to female and male people respectively, and have nothing to do with anyone’s self-ascribed gender identity.
Much the way anyone’s imaginary age – be it 12 or 18 or 35 – has nothing to do with eligibility to vote, drive, marry, join the military.
Yet, despite the explicitness of that ruling, senior Labour figures are refusing to catch on. [Bridget] Phillipson [equalities minister] is now sitting on revised statutory guidance, produced by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), as to how the clarified law should be implemented in gyms, clubs, hospitals and other public spaces.
Sitting on in the sense of not acting on.
Though the official explanation for the delay in presenting the new guidance to the Commons is said to be the care with which it is being examined, the likelier explanation is that gender politics is once again being weaponised within Labour circles.
How much care does it take to figure out that men are not women?
Such clumsy acts of self-compromise are a reminder of the damage gender ideology wreaked on the political left. Savvier politicians would have taken the Supreme Court’s ruling as a political gift: a cast-iron reason to never again feel squeamish about defending women’s rights.
Savvier politicians or politicians who give a shit about women. Why is that always such a neglected reason?
Paying political lip service to the notion that these rules are complicated or ambiguous is discreditable. Labour should banish such confusion to the unserious fringes of politics, for example to the Green party, which this month banned delegates advocating sex-realist policies from its conference.
Plant a tree, silence a woman. Good job, Greens.
It also offers a get-out-of-gender-jail card for anyone wanting to abandon trans “rights” as they become less politically palatable and harder to defend. But it seems there are stupid people who want to stay in thrall to genderism, defend the indefensible, and harm women. It’s a crazy mix of True Belief, Sunk Cost Fallacy, and Stockholm Syndrome that’s keeping them chained to the sinking wreck of trans ideology. The rats are going down with the ship, and apparently eager to do so. Or just completely oblivious, blinded by their own glorious self-righteousness.
And should be discredited. Those who are saying that this is at all “hard” or “difficult” seem to be under the mistaken belief that abandoning genderism will cost them more support than protecting women will win them. (Of course, this is partly true, as what percentage of progressive women and femminists are going to be willing to cut off their nose to spite their face by jumping to right wing parties who just happen to be right on this one issue and unacceptably wrong on everything else? In the US, the Democratic Party’s take-them-for-granted lock on the African American vote was once summed up iby someone n the phrase “What are you going to, vote Republican?”, forgetting that another option would be not voting at all. With undecided voters in general, being able to point to your Democratic opponent’s unabashed support for delusional bullshit can be a winning strategy. It’s an open invitation to stay home on election day if you’re unwilling to swallow obvious lies, however “kindly” wrapped or intended.)
Why are the needs of millions of women so easily thrown over for the unrealistic, misogynistic desires of a tiny number of narcissistic men and their “allies”? Why is female self-abnegation, acceptance of injustice, and “kindness” assumed? Do women have to become as violent and bullying as trans activists and Islamists in order to be heard and heeded? Do they have to instill actual fear in those they wish to influence? Do they really have to pick up the master’s tools?
Reason and justice are obviously not enough, otherwise transgenderism wouldn’t have gotten anywhere to start with, because it is both unreasonable and unjust. It is a regressive, patriarchal movement disguised by cheap, progressive, social justice trappings just flashy enough to convince those already eager to be convinced. It’s not a very good disguise at all, and had those left to pay the price of this strange new form of “progress”been men, it would have been shut down immediately. This becomes obvious when you see the asymmetry of erasure deployed in the name of “inclusion,” which leaves men untouched and women invisible. Men are quick to look good by handing out things that don’t belong to them, and that cost them nothing.
Female collaboration in these efforts is harder to understand, but presumably involves some calculus of self-interest that gives them enough confidence that their rights and safety are unlikely to be part of the collateral damage caused by their betrayal of all women who are not them. But life can turn on a dime, and today’s top dog can become tomorrow’s homeless mutt. When push comes to shove, support of “progress” will come second place to being female. Acceptance was always going to provisional, and contingent upon good behaviour. It was never guaranteed, and could be withdrawn at any time. Your “cisness” would always be considered immutable, rendering you always suspect, and betraying your own sex is hardly going to be seen as a demonstration of your relability and trustworthiness, even if they claim not to know what sex is. They always know to punish the woman. You might very well lose your “women only” position to a “trans siblings” if your party/union/company decides that the male in a dress lets them score a twofer in “diversity” by choosing him over you. Nobody’s face is immune from being leopard-eaten.