Theresa May has usefully reminded us that gender self-identification would have become the law in England during her Premiership if she had not been dependent on the DUP, although that party regards England as a lost cause morally and might well have abstained if the cash tap to its own supporters had been kept on at full blast. The ultimate Thatcherite measure, literally a self-made woman or a self-made man, would now breeze through, and no doubt it very soon will.
Neither in Iran, nor even in Afghanistan, would a mother who took her small daughter into the women's showers or changing rooms be confronted, at the little girl's eye level, with postpubescent male genitalia. That may not be the worst form of sexual assault, but it is a form. As is being made to imagine other people's genitals, a mental image that transgender activists insist on inflicting upon the rest of us.
Only the DUP prevented the Conservatives from legislating for this half a decade ago. Despite Keir Starmer's promise when he stood for Leader, Labour is now signed up to it. As are the Liberal Democrats, the Greens, Plaid Cymru, and of course the SNP. Thankfully, we are heading for a hung Parliament. To strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty, we need to hold the balance of power. Owing nothing to either main party, we must be open to the better offer. There does, however, need to be a better offer. Not a lesser evil, which in any case the Labour Party is not.
Theresa May was the most leftwing Prime Minister we'd ever had since at least Gordon Brown until the Tory Right (thank God) got rid of her over her attempted Soft Brexit. Boris Johnson, installed by the Right, immediately scrapped her proposal for gender self-ID, which had had Jeremy Corbyn's support. Some Thatcherite Corbyn is.
ReplyDeleteYour "self-made man/woman" metaphor is a good joke, but it is of course nonsense-Margaret Thatcher's belief in an aspirational society had absolutely nothing to do with denial of biological sex.
The gender critical philosophers who are making the Thatcher point are not the joking kind. I suggest that you read a book. It would change your life.
DeleteThe Tories had been all ready to do this. Only the DUP stopped them. Johnson was dependent on the DUP for the first 18 months, practically half, of his Premiership, and it was during those months that he dropped this. He would not otherwise have done so, and neither it nor he has gone away.
Johnson scrapped this after winning a Parliamentary majority in December 2019-and Jeremy Corbyn (that known Thatcherite) had supported Gender Recognition Act reform, as has Keir Starmer since. Every Tory leadership candidate in the summer also emphasised their opposition to gender self ID. While the Scottish Conservatives were the only party to vote against it in Scotland.
ReplyDeleteIf it’s a Thatcherite position, why do only parties of the Left support it?
I know it doesn’t suit your weird politics, but the facts give the lie to the nonsense you write above.
And meritocracy-which is what Thatcher was referring to regarding self-made people-has absolutely nothing to do with denial of biological sex. You know you’re just talking tripe.
What she might have meant in her own very limited mind is neither here nor there. I suggest you read the rather better comment below, and my reply to it.
DeleteIt’s such a “Thatcherite” position that every party of the Left in the country supports gender self ID as did that well-known Thatcherite Jeremy Corbyn, while only the Conservatives opposite it-both here and in Scotland (where they were also the only party to vote against this).
ReplyDeleteMeritocracy, of course, has absolutely nothing to do with denying biological sex.
They had a free vote in Scotland. The party, as such, did not oppose this.
DeleteI suggest you read the rather better comment below, and my reply to it.
Even Unherd and the Critic have published highbrow articles making this point about Thatcherism. Their articles against self-ID are by old guard feminists as you describe, very left-wing by any measure. The other consistent opposition comes from Spiked (Trotskyist roots, very pro-strikes), Counterfire (still Trotskyist, very close to Corbyn), the Morning Star (old Tankies and still Tankies, even closer to Corbyn), Alba, Joanna Cherry, the circle around J.K. Rowling, George Galloway and Rod Liddle. Liddle is in the SDP which is economically well to the left of Starmer. Nobody on the right is really fighting for this, their rising media star is Tom Harwood who supports it. Because it is Thatcherism.
ReplyDeleteQuite. Arthur Scargill's party is also sound on this, while veterans of the Miners' Strike are leaving things like Class War and the Industrial Workers of the World because they have signed up to gender self-identification.
DeleteMeanwhile, the Conservatives are led by the man who refused to give an equivocal answer on this rather than by the woman who did, although like those of them who agreed with her she does not know why she thinks that. That is for Marxists, Anarcho-Syndicalists, and orthodox Catholics.
Apart from Tim Stanley, who falls into the last category having been in at least one of the others, and Peter Hitchens, who is sui generis, the columnists who guide right-wing opinion in this country are either publicly signed up to this most Thatcherite of projects, or very soon will be.
Suzanne Moore, the feminist forced out by the Guardian for opposing gender self-ID, had to join a rightwing paper to write this.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.telegraph.co.uk/columnists/2022/12/13/jk-rowling-right-safe-spaces-women-must-protected/
It could not find anyone on its own side to write this. Articles like this appear in The Observer most weeks, and, to stick only to the print media, in the Morning Star all the time. The right-wing papers are preparing to shift on this. The Tory Party doesn't have to.
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