Election Time

[Susan B. Anthony]

WELL THAT IS IT

LOOK AHM HAVIN SOME BRIEF REFLECTIONS GIS PEACE

I'm sure we're all feeling emotional.

That conference lasted nearly 50 minutes, but these 16 seconds are the only ones that mattered.

Feedback to the journalist shows how lots of people don't know what journalists are supposed to do.

Quote of the day:

In the past, even her fiercest opponents were forced to concede that she was a formidable politician. An expert performer in debates. An unflappable interviewee. She possessed a rare ability to answer a question politely while giving the impression that, if the reporter dared to push it, she could reduce him or her to rubble with the merest glance.

In recent weeks, however, that ability has deserted her. When asked whether transgender rapists should be housed in women’s prisons or men’s, she looked alarmed, confused, all over the place, like a giraffe on ice skates. As far as I could make out, amid all the spluttering and stammering, her message seemed to be that trans women were definitely women – unless they’d committed certain crimes, in which case they immediately became men, although only until they’d completed their prison sentence, at which point they immediately became women again.

[George Washington]

I live in Rosie Duffield's constituency

Just had local election door knock from Labour party. He asked what my main concerns were. I said my main issue was that I stood with Rosie and felt that Labour, as a party, from the top down, did not offer her enough support. And my main concern was women's safe spaces.

Man said, well, this is local elections and not about that, and that issue is more complicated than you think. What are your concerns, locally?

I said the local council is involved in issues to do with women's safe spaces. Like the women's refuges, the woman's changing room at the local pool, etc. All spaces where biological men should not have access and that women's safe spaces was my main concern.

There followed a debate. And his stance is that it's not that simple, I am being brainwashed by the right wing media, and that Rosie is in fact, (drumroll please...), mainly being supported by American right wing anti-abortion groups.

Arrrrrghhhhhh. So that is where my local Labour door knockers are at. Saying Rosie's main core of support is American right wing anti-abortion groups and I am being fooled by them. Silly, foolish, female me.

A reminder of where Labour stand
A little birdy told me.

Don’t knock a good knock knock joke

[Tullia]

Helen Lewis on Starmer's policy shift

So look at that policy – it is a huge deviation from what he was saying to get elected as Labour leader, which was ‘I will introduce self ID’. He has now said sex and gender are different, that women have a right to single-sex spaces, and that being trans is to be treated as a medical issue, not a kind of spiritual self determination. Those are three huge changes towards the gender critical position in the space of three years.

And what did he do? He got Anneliese Dodds, a politician that basically nobody has ever heard of – I know she was briefly shadow Chancellor – and ran an op-ed in the Guardian, the most pro self ID newspaper out there. Then he refused to go on the Today programme the next day to defend the policy. When he was later asked about it on LBC he said, ‘We’ve always been in favour of safe spaces* and a woman is an adult female’ and I’m thinking: did I receive a blow to the head at some point here?

He just very ruthlessly ditched a whole load of stuff, and actually severely embarrassed a lot of people in the shadow cabinet. David Lammy said people who think that women are biological females were “dinosaurs” hoarding their rights. And it turns out – update – we love dinosaurs. We meant dinosaurs in a good way, hoarding their rights in a good way, clinging on to their rights with their little dinosaur hands.

Then there is Lisa Nandy, who said during the leadership campaign that a male rapist should be put in a female prison. Those people will now be quite embarrassed in future interviews, but tough. He needed to close down that issue in order to stop every interview before the next election being: does a woman have a penis? And he’s done it. And he did it in recess, without a big blitz to go out and defend his position. It’s been pretty effective. The usual suspects – [Labour MPs] Lloyd Russell-Moyle, Nadia Whittome, Zarah Sultana – have really not kicked off about it. Because Keir has been wandering around with his big stick for some time now.

*Labour's way of weaselling out of saying 'single sex spaces'

[Richard von Krafft-Ebing]

Why did Mhairi Black compare feminists to white supremacists? – Joan Smith
A belief in biological sex is now heresy in nationalist circles. Black made one concession, acknowledging that people should be allowed to hold different views from herself, but only as long as they don’t express them. Asked whether someone with a different philosophical position on gender could be “thoroughly decent”, she said to applause, “if you keep it to yourself, aye”.

Black’s remarks were apparently delivered without irony, even though she has blamed a “toxic” culture at Westminster for damaging her mental and physical health. She is standing down as an MP at the next general election after being elected at the age of 20 in 2015. Now 28, she is evidently one of those people who think the name “Karen” is an insult — and that reaching 50 is a poor lifestyle choice.

One day Mhairi Black will be a Karen, too – Victoria Smith
Ageist sexism is central to trans activism. The idea of “womanhood” that it promotes is bound up in the social construction of femininity, whilst utterly dismissive of the material reality of ageing female bodies. Through history, patriarchy has not just sought to define and exploit women as a sex class; it has done so in different ways depending on where women are in the female lifecycle. Trans activism, as an expression of patriarchy, does this, too.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Lisa Nandy in the Evening Standard

How the fuck is this next government going to cope with, say, Defence? Foreign Policy? Starmer shits himself if anyone says women have cervixes, and Nandy can't handle reading Harry Potter.

The scene: Headquarters, some unspecified foreign hostile power. A flunky enters.

'Your Wickedness, we are ready to attack'

'Excellent. Aim Harry Potter series at London. Weaponise trauma. Activate literal violence with malicious misgendering. Ensure the rearguard are equipped with hurtyfeels including pointing, laughing and mass debate. '

'Sire, I have to point out that some of that entails Non Crime Hate Incident Material'

'Do it. And furthermore, I sanction use of the word 'woman' with no care or thought given to those who are Differently Identified'.

<Flunky blanches, breaks sweat>

“Before you go, please hand me the launch codes”

<flunky turns back, visibly shaking>

”Sir, are you…sure?”

”Yes. ACTIVATE JKR”.

[Auntie]

In all his glory:


See what I did there?

How nice someone has highlighted every word as it's being spoken. That isn't annoying at all.

So from now on, I shall be submitting my every comment and thought (particularly those mainstream views which most people agree with) to the former Labour Prime Minister so that it may officially be de-toxified...

The witches:

The question wasn't about Tony Blair.

The question wasn't about Brianna Ghey.

The question was about women, Keir.

a frankenstein answer of butchered soundbites hastily sellotaped together. AI could do better.

They are absolutely tying themselves in knots because they can't grasp, apparently, that if you want to protect single-sex spaces you can't simultaneously make it easier to get a GRC, if you also believe that a GRC entitles you to enter the single-sex spaces of the opposite sex. They've had a long time to get their act together over this, but they haven't done it, either because they're too stupid or because they have decided it's not sufficiently important.

To quote from Victoria Smith on Twitter:

It's kind of funny to see Labour wading in, all mature, to solve "the culture wars". Feminists worked out years ago trans activists will not accept compromise of any kind. They also pointed out this was creating an open goal for the right.

It would have been a lot easier to manage this if you'd listened to feminists back when self ID was Tory policy and the UK was one of the only countries with a predominantly left-wing, pro-feminist and pro-LGB response to the problem.

But no, you thought we were stupid. Silly older women, clutching their pearls, making up problems that didn't exist. All that work, research, writing, speaking ignored because we can't possibly have anything important to say.

https://x.com/glosswitch/status/1805335079067034040

The chief witch:

Last month, a man received a suspended prison sentence for sending both of us death threats. Rosie was to be taken out with a gun; I was to be beaten to death with a hammer. The level of threats Rosie has received is such that she’s had to hire personal security and was recently advised not to conduct in-person hustings.

Is this what Starmer meant, when he talked about toxic, divided debate? A female MP in his own party being intimidated and harassed? Or was he referencing the activists in black masks who turn up at women’s demonstrations with the declared intention of punching “Terfs”, an intention that has more than once translated into action? Was he perhaps thinking of the trans activists who sang “f*** you” over a microphone as women from all over the world queued outside FiLia, the feminist conference, to discuss issues like female genital mutilation? It didn’t seem so.

The impression given by Starmer at Thursday’s debate was that there had been something unkind, something toxic, something hard line in Rosie’s words, even though almost identical words had sounded perfectly reasonable when spoken by Blair.

[Tarzan]

https://x.com/whatisawomanuk/status/1806627142731518422

We need new lyrics for this – it shouldn't be too hard:

How glorious to have a thread blossom into a real life grilling of the future prime minister.

I'm asking Keir a question about women's rights on 5 live - how to phrase it?

I want him not to be able to give me the flannel that we have to be kind to the woMen. I want assurances that we do t have to share our spaces. I want to not sound like the very nervous person that am I!

Women are NOT walking resources for men to use.

No, we're not. But they are absolutely determined to make us so.

And not only that, they can't fucking see it.

Women's spaces are to be repurposed for a handful of men. Women are therapy, we're validation. And yes, wank fodder.

That's our bloody job, right?

And it's so ingrained in Starmer, that he can't even recognise it.

And I know I sound like a broken record, but this is the reason why it does need pointing out. It's so undeniable, so irrefutable, and suddenly so perfectly, blindingly obvious that it really does highlight the rank sexism.

He cannot keep saying he will protect women's spaces and in the same fucking sentence tell us that he's going to provide men with a simple means to access them.

Set Jane loose on Angela Rayner
https://x.com/FFS_WhatNow/status/1806623661702426757

In other news, the rumble in the jungle showed us how dire the choices are across the pond. As if we didn't already know.