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Labour Women Voices
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Labour Women Voices is an informal group of women, all members of the UK Labour Party, who want to explore and better understand the issues and challenges around sex, gender and identity in our modern world. Our aim here is to share and examine as much evidence as possible with you, our readers.
Our overall position is that we respect the right of everyone, regardless of gender or other self-identification, to live their lives without fear or discrimination, provided only that they don’t thereby harm others. To that end we insist that biological women and girls have safe spaces in particular personally vulnerable at-risk situations, as discussed on this website…..
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What are the implications of the June 2022 Roe vs Wade US Supreme Court judgement?
The June 2022 US Supreme Court judgement on abortion (‘termination’) is thought to have set back women’s rights by half a century,
How should feminists outside America view this judgement and what, if anything, can they do about it?
How might this judgement impact on other areas of feminist concern?
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Fawcett, July 2022: Should companies be in charge of abortion access?
BPAS: Take Action Now
June 2022: Stella Creasy moves to make abortion a human right in British Bill of Rights
Back Off Scotland: Let’s end abortion clinic harassment.
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Must trans issues be contentious? Can they be discussed without angst?
Why does this sometimes occur, and how does it happen?
What can be done to lower the temperature if / when things get heated?
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I’m not sure how to best handle this. An experience I keep having is someone shoehorns trans rights into left wing causes like Black Lives Matter (BLM) or Extinction Rebellion. I use my specialist knowledge of Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) to try to gently challenge around thinking about women survivors of abuse. Then I get shouted down with ‘trans women are women’ (TWAW), unevidenced claims that transwomen are more vulnerable than other women (the data I’m aware of contradicts this) and people linking me to Christian Fundamentalists and the right.Others, some friends, ignore or privately message me with support and applause for being “brave”.. The net result is that left causes get inextricably linked with trans ideology, and left wing gender critical (GC) people leave them or shut up. If you’re a journalist, you end up writing for the Mail. And the people I’ve argued with declare that only the right are GC and point to their evidence that people who argue for GC views were never genuinely leftwing as they’ve left the group and the GC journalists and academics write for the right wing press.I’m an lifelong union activist (current branch secretary) and Labour Party member and I’m left feeling politically homeless – I’m feel both unwelcome and despairing at the self righteous zealotry and failure to argue coherently of my “side”. I know many would be glad to see the back of me, so maybe I should just leave and confirm their allegations.The problem is, if I told most of my friends and colleagues that I’m supposedly rightwing and bigoted, most would fall about laughing in disbelief (I’m usually the resident lefty). So what hope has the party got of ever winning power if people like me are left feeling disillusioned, not listened to and alienated? All I’ve ever done is ask for people to give as much consideration to non-trans women as transwomen and I won’t apologise for that.Hadley Freeman says this much better than me! https://unherd.com/2022/02/why-i-stopped-being-a-good-girl/
I’m so grateful to her and other journalists who won’t be beaten downJust read Hadley Freeman.
Really thorough explanation of how she has arrived at her present stance.
It would be very useful if Hadley herself could precis the article so that it’s main points were easily and quickly digestible for use in everyday situations, post meeting chats, sat in the pub, at the extended family dinner table, etc.
Mainly because at the minute, it’s really hard to discuss it without becoming emotional.**
Scottish civil servants warned of ‘farts’ in the workplace*
*FARTS = an acronym for “feminism appropriating ridiculous transphobe (people)” who oppose inclusivity measures (and are) part of a “trans hate group”.
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More in Common has produced a helpful report (June 2022) which seeks to lower the temperature of the ‘trans debate’, demonstrating the areas in which there is generally concern by UK citizens to be fair and kind; but whilst positive and level-headed it does not much recognise that some women – and maybe some trans women – are traumatised and / or vulnerable and would benefit from more specific understanding, compassion and (in various senses) accommodation.:
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Public perceptions of sex, gender and trans-ID
This survey was undertaken in 2020, and the findings in the second set of questions follow from the conditions ‘established’ in the first set of responses. Do these views still stand? What can be the political messages gleaned from them?
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From the (UK) NHS:
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What is a man? What specifically ‘male’ experiences may shape men’s lives?
We have already asked, ‘What is a woman?‘
A parallel question must be asked, ‘What is a man?’
One answer which focuses on masculinity is provided by this recently published article in the Washington Post: The reinvention of a ‘real man’
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What is a woman? How does our lived experience of bodily functions shape our lives?
The May 2022 Prospect Magazine has an article asking What is a Woman?
https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/what-is-a-woman-biology-identityAnd an earlier one by Angela Santini also asked What is a Woman? (Prospect Magazine, Summer 2021). https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/what-is-a-woman
Andy Lewis suggests that the proliferation of articles about this question is a deliberate attempt to eliminate the concept of woman in objective terms
https://www.quackometer.net/blog/2021/07/on-the-sex-deracination-gambit.html Also, this article from Helen Lewis in the removal of the word woman in the abortion debate in the US. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/abortion-rights-debate-women-gender-neutral-language/629863/
Here Anneliese Dodds explains her position on whether a woman can have a penis (No):
Anneliese Dodds: Stella Creasy is wrong – a woman can’t have a penis Labour continues to flounder on simple issue of defining womanhood, with two prominent figures at odds.
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Is sex (as a category) really necessary?
A recent report has suggested that we ask whether the concept of ‘sex’ as a way to categorise people is really necessary. Pink News‘ headlines for 11 May 2022 are that ‘Abolishing legal sex and gender comes with many, many pros, radical new report finds‘.
The Pink News report tell us that
‘… (UK) law is inconsistent. The Equality Act offers discrimination protections on the basis of sex, which it defines as simply being a man or a woman. But sex-based discrimination can also be on the basis of ‘perceived’ sex (in the same way that discrimination can be based on ‘perceived’ race or sexuality). Trans folk are protected by the Equality Act regardless of whether they have changed their “legal sex” on their birth certificate.
Other laws use sex and gender interchangeably. In short, for all the debate around legal sex, it’s pretty much impossible to define.
The concept of “decertification”, the abolition of legal sex, has been explored by researchers at the Future of Legal Gender project, led by law and political theory research professor Davina Cooper, of The Dickson Poon School of Law and King’s College London.‘
The research is not, we are told, designed to argue for or against decertification, but to ‘spark questions and debate about how our society is structured.‘
Who agrees that such ‘decertification’ would resolve these thorny issues?
[Read and discuss more about Nature vs nurture, Single sex spaces and Psychology.]
LWV is an informal safe network for women in the UK Labour Party to exchange thoughts and ideas about politics, sex and gender.
Labour Women Voices 