Mick Hartley

JK Rowling wasn't too impressed with Starmer's performance at that election debate:

Rowling, 58, says that Starmer has done nothing to allay her concerns about his position, attacking him in particular for failing to defend Duffield, who has suffered death threats.

“Rosie has received literally no support from Starmer over the threats and abuse, some of which has originated from within the Labour Party itself, and has had a severe, measurable impact on her life,” she says.

“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 Tony Blair.”

Rowling says that her campaign is not about denying trans women’s rights but ensuring that these are not at the expense of women and girls.

“For left-leaning women like us, this isn’t, and never has been, about trans people enjoying the rights of every other citizen, and being free to present and identify however they wish,” she says. “This is about the right of women and girls to assert their boundaries. It’s about freedom of speech and observable truth. It’s about waiting, with dwindling hope, for the left to wake up to the fact that its lazy embrace of a quasi- religious ideology is having calamitous consequences.”

From her Times article:

Take Anneliese Dodds, the shadow secretary for women and equalities, who, when asked what a woman is, said, it “depends on what the context is”. Take Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary: “I’m not going to get into rabbit holes on this”; Stella Creasy, Labour candidate for Walthamstow: “Do I think some women were born with penises? Yes … But they are now women and I respect that”; Emily Thornberry, the shadow attorney-general: “Women who are trans deserve to be recognised, and yes — therefore some of them will have penises. Frankly, I’m not looking up their skirts, I don’t care.” Dawn Butler, the former MP for Brent Central, actually announced on TV that “a child is born without sex at the beginning” (I choose to believe she meant the lesser of two insanities here: a sex, not that children really are delivered by stork.)

Some of this is almost funny, but loses its humour when real-world consequences of gender ideology arise. When asked whether violent sex offenders who transition should be rehoused in women’s prisons, Lisa Nandy, the shadow secretary for international development, said: “I think trans women are women, I think trans men are men, so I think they should be in the prison of their choosing.”

Rebecca Long-Bailey, the candidate for Salford, said female victims of male violence shouldn’t use their trauma “as an argument to discriminate against trans people” and vowed to change laws to stop women’s refuges excluding men who identify as women.

David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, called women like me “dinosaurs hoarding rights”. Lammy, too, has form on the vexed question of cervixes: “A cervix, I understand, is something you can have following various procedures and hormone treatments.” It’s very hard not to suspect that some of these men don’t know what a cervix is, but consider it too unimportant to Google.

So, there I was, on the edge of my sofa seat on Thursday night, waiting to hear Starmer clarify his views on an issue that places many left-leaning women on the spectrum between anger and disgust at his party’s embrace of gender identity ideology. Did he still maintain that women and cervixes ought not to be mentioned together?…

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….

Two hours before I watched Starmer fail, yet again, to get off the fence he’s so reluctant to stop straddling, I met the woman who wrote what I think all contributors would agree is the most important chapter in The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht. It’s called A Hashtag is Born. The writer coined the phrase “women won’t wheesht”, which has now been taken up as a feminist battle cry in Scotland and beyond.

She wrote anonymously about being smeared as a bigot and a transphobe for wanting female-only intimate care for her beautiful learning-disabled daughter (I know her daughter’s beautiful, because I met her, too). In part, this mother wrote: “The material reality of a man is not changed by how he perceives himself, and telling vulnerable women and girls to ignore their own discomfort to accommodate a man’s perception of himself, is gaslighting.”

I cannot vote for any politician who takes issue with that mother’s words.

If you choose to prevaricate and patronise rather than address her concerns, if you continue to insist that the most vulnerable must embrace your luxury beliefs, no matter the cost to themselves, I don’t trust your judgment and I have a poor opinion of your character.

An independent candidate is standing in my constituency who’s campaigning to clarify the Equality Act.

Perhaps that’s where my X will have to go on July 4. As long as Labour remains dismissive and often offensive towards women fighting to retain the rights their foremothers thought were won for all time, I’ll struggle to support them. The women who wouldn’t wheesht didn’t leave Labour. Labour abandoned them.