Mick Hartley

A good piece by Jenni Russell in the Times today – Starmer’s first credibility test is women’s rights:

Days before the election, Sir Keir Starmer declared to The Times that “biological women” had the right to single-sex spaces, separate from biological men. He had, he claimed, “always said” that women’s spaces needed to be protected. Women and gender-critical campaigners were hugely relieved. A party that for years had failed to recognise how women’s rights, privacy and safety were being eroded by the self-identification of men into their spaces had at last woken up to what women had been losing. Many of them voted accordingly, giving the party the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps Labour could be trusted with women’s interests after all.

And yet…

Two weeks later, confidence in that commitment has been shaken. Starmer has made key appointments that look startlingly at odds with his promise. The women and equalities minister, Anneliese Dodds, wants to make the process for officially changing sex faster and simpler, with the support of just one sympathetic doctor.

The new education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, responsible for what children will be taught about gender, sexuality and whether people can change their biological sex, has previously said men can use women’s loos as long as they have legally become women — a process her government intends to make easier.

Lisa Nandy, the woman now running arts and culture policy, is another cabinet supporter of the gender faith. Trans women are women, she said in 2020, and yes, she affirmed, that meant rapists should self-identify into women’s jails if they chose.

The ideological slant may be about to become even worse. Harriet Harman is in line to chair the Equality and Human Rights Commission, the body that protects everyone’s interests. Harman is so committed to gender ideology she refuses to see a conflict between trans and women’s rights.

Last month she claimed, alarmingly, to be “baffled” by women who felt abandoned. She is wilfully blind to the evidence of how trans rights have eroded women’s security and opportunity. If men can be women, women no longer exist as an identifiable group. All women’s spaces and categories become, de facto, mixed-sex.

The fundamental truth of the trans rights experiment is that it is not, as its champions claim, only about “protecting a vulnerable minority”. Two very different trends are happening under the trans umbrella. Among teenagers, as the Cass report said, the majority of transitioners are indeed vulnerable: most are same-sex-attracted girls. Many are trying to escape society’s sexual objectification of them.

Longitudinal studies cited by Cass indicate that, left alone, the majority desist and most grow up as gay. Telling them they can solve their problems by changing sex is a cruelty, not a liberation.

Among adults, most are grown men, some genuinely dysphoric. Some claiming to be trans are opportunistic predators. Forcing females to be unwilling subservient supporters of a small group of males is a cruelty to women.

What trans rights mean in practice is male dominance….

Wes Streeting's indication that he may ban puberty blockers at least offers some hope that progress will be made, gender ideology has peaked, and Cass was not in vain – but we'll just have to wait and see.