Mick Hartley

Joan Smith on the Labour manifesto:

It’s Stonewall lite: the Labour manifesto, which was the party’s chance to win back disillusioned women, has brazenly confirmed the influence of trans activists instead. Unveiled with great fanfare, it contains a series of pledges that will delight zealots who peddle fantasies about the oppression of transgender people. What Labour hasn’t done is take notice of feminist lawyers and the Equality and Human Rights Commission, who all say that the Equality Act urgently needs clarification to protect single-sex spaces.

The party isn’t even honest about its proposals on sex and gender, adding a nervous gloss to make them sound more reasonable than they are. Using the language of gender theory, it describes “conversion therapy” as abuse and promises “a full trans-inclusive ban on conversion practices”. Labour frontbenchers, including the Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting, must be aware that Dr Hilary Cass has warned against any such ban, suggesting it might “make professional fearfulness worse than it already is”. So Labour has added a line about “protecting the freedom for people to explore their sexual orientation and gender identity”, directly contradicting the first half of the pledge….

Starmer’s Labour party believes that human beings can change sex. It insists they should be helped to do so in law, regardless of the impact on women. It supports “the implementation of…single-sex exceptions” in the Equality Act, but won’t make a simple change that would prevent malicious challenges to organisations running rape shelters and refuges.

In a bad week for women, the Lib Dems and Greens have embraced self-ID, while Labour is well on the way. If this general election has done nothing else, it has confirmed how few politicians are listening to women. Across the centre-left, these demands are in the ascendant, and that leaves a lot of us with nowhere to go — and no one to vote for.

And Kate Barker at Spiked:

The Labour Party’s manifesto, unveiled earlier this week, promises to bring forward legislation for a ‘trans inclusive’ ban on conversion therapy. This will send a chill through the consulting rooms of therapists around the UK….

There’s no doubt that gender dysphoria is real. Girls, in particular, are expert at turning their adolescent distress inwards. Anorexia, bulimia and cutting are all expressions of self-hatred and fear. These should be met with empathy and counselling. The lobbyists for a conversion-practices ban urge an affirmation-only approach that would assist in the self-harm of girls by handing them control of the scalpel.

Therapists who demure will face challenges from furious lobbyists and may find themselves disbarred, or even criminalised. Those therapists who don’t believe in magical genders, and recognise that trans is a social contagion now primarily affecting young girls, will simply avoid this area of practice altogether. That means reduced provision at a time when child mental-health services are already so stretched that they are failing the most vulnerable.

The timing is terrible on Labour’s part. Its manifesto commitment arrives just as the scientific facts and evidence begin to intrude upon the fantasy of ‘trans joy’. A recently released study, based on outpatient-billing data for all legally insured persons in Germany, shows that the majority of young people outgrow their struggles with their gender identity. It notes that 73 per cent of 15- to 19-year-old females with a gender-identity-related diagnosis desist after five years. Yet Labour, in hock to an old promise, has decided that a conversion-practices ban is the least-worst bone to throw to activists.

It's like demanding that anorexic teens be immediately confirmed in their belief that they're really too fat and should go on a starvation diet – and anyone suggesting otherwise must be punished.