Labour’s betrayal of women, children and homosexuals.

What do you do if you abhor Tory politics but there’s nobody else to vote for?

Illustration by Ailin Rojas Bondarczuk

What do you do if you are appalled by the imposition of austerity on the poorest and most vulnerable alongside tax breaks, perks and freebies for the rich, inherited wealth and big business? If you are sickened by the scapegoating of immigrants, the demonisation of foreigners, the denigration of the poor, the criminalisation of black people, the cronyism, the profit motive as god over all other considerations etc — but the only opposition party with any hope of ever beating the Tories at the polls has signed up to a misogynistic, homophobic cult?

That is the Hobson’s choice facing women, and those who support child safeguarding, women’s sex-based rights, and the sex-based rights of homosexual people.

It is also the choice facing anyone who believes in freedom of speech and freedom of expression as fundamental democratic rights.

Labour Campaign for Trans Rights last week issued a contentious series of pledges — contentious for a number of reasons:

1. They define “transphobia” as dissent with ‘gender identity ideology’.

2. They slander Womans Place UK — a grassroots group campaigning for female sex-based rights, and LGB Alliance — who campaign for homosexual/bisexual rights, as “transphobic hate groups”.

3. They call for the expulsion from the Labour Party of all dissenters.

Incredibly, although Labour Campaign for Trans Rights is an unofficial fringe Labour group, Labour leadership contenders Rebecca Long-Bailey, Lisa Nandy and Emily Thornberry, alongside deputy leadership candidates Angela Rayner and Dawn Butler Brent, signed these pledges.

Nandy defended her position with further denunciations of Womans Place UK and accusations of transphobia against one of its founders — Labour activist and trade unionist Ruth Serwotka — on BBC Radio 4.

Thornberry qualified her support by saying she didn’t like the use of the term “hate groups” — but she signed it anyway!

Keir Starmer signed a different set of pledges, shared by the Labour Campaign for LGBT+ rights. These didn’t mention Womans Place UK or Alliance LGB, or “expulsion” of dissenters, but supported the reform of the Gender Recognition Act to allow males to be legally recognised as women without medical or psychiatric approval, with only a three month period of “living as a woman” (whatever that means), and demanded adherence to the belief that “trans women are women, and trans men are men”.

Both sets of pledges clearly demand total acquiescence with gender identity ideology.

Dissent with gender identity ideology is cast as “transphobia”.

So - what is gender identity ideology?

Gender identity ideology = the set of beliefs and principles on which trans activist policy is based.

Gender identity ideology claims (amongst other things) that:

1. Biological sex is not a material fact, but is “assigned”.

2. Sex is not binary — male or female — but is a “spectrum”.

3. Males who ‘identify’ as women are actually women, irrespective of biological sex.

4. Heterosexual males who ‘identify as women’ = “lesbians”.

5. Male rapists, domestic abusers and murderers who ‘identify as women’ should have their crimes recorded as “by women” and be housed in women’s prisons.*

5. Humans can change biological sex — from male to female and vice versa.

6. Children who don’t “fit” the socially constructed gender norms/codes associated with their biological sex may be/are likely to be “born in the wrong body”.

7. Sex-based rights/protections for female people are redundant, because males who ‘identify’ as female experience exactly the same misogyny and patriarchal oppression as females.

8. Female-only single-sex spaces, services and provision = “transphobic”.

9. Expressing concern about current protocols for supporting gender non-conforming/trans-identifying children = “transphobic”.

10. Dissent with any of the above = “transphobia”.

Dissenters with this ideology, many of whom describe themselves as ‘gender critics’, reject its demonisation of the belief that biological sex exists, is immutable, and is politically significant.

Many gender critics are survivors, or advocates for survivors, of male abuse and violence, feminists, lesbians, and/or parents of gender nonconforming, lesbian or gay children — concerned that the sex-based rights of vulnerable groups are under threat, and that child safeguarding is being jettisoned, under pressure from ideological lobbyists acting with the full support of the state apparatus.

The tweet below, posted by the treasurer of Labour Campaign for Trans Rights, is evidence that these concerns are justified.

Many others who dissent with gender identity ideology are just ordinary people, of both sexes, who believe in biological reality.

The Labour Party is not an oligarchy, but a democratic political party.

Nevertheless, the Party’s leadership contenders seem happy to go along with this authoritarian silencing of dissent and the vilification and even criminalisation of dissenters, not to mention the vitriolic attacks and assaults on (mostly) women who speak out.

Despite the fact that dissent is so stigmatised, and dissenters so threatened and intimidated, that few feel able to voice their concerns or opposition to this anti-science, anti-materialist faith-based ideology, there is little evidence that the mass of Labour members and voters actually believe any of it.

So should the party be signing up to pledges that are at variance with its own core beliefs and principles, and which so contentiously go against the views of the majority of its members and voters?

Unlike the slew of heavily sponsored and state-funded trans rights organisations, most women fighting to have their concerns heard, and being shouted down, vilified and silenced, are volunteers. We are busy people with work and family commitments, with limited time, energy and resources.

Our campaigning and activism is squeezed in between day jobs, childcare, and housework. All of it is self funded or crowd funded.

Many of us are survivors of male violence and abuse. Every one of us has been raised under the prevailing, enduring, hierarchical social system that subjugates and grooms females to play second place to our male counterparts.

Yet — we are somehow cast as the oppressors of corporate sponsored, multi- -million net worth organisations like Stonewall and Pride, and told to check our privilege against the (largely) heterosexual white men that dominate the gender identity ideology lobby.

How dare Labour treat us with this sneering disrespect?

How dare they discount and disregard our views, and silence and ignore our concerns?

It is unconscionable that Labour has capitulated to what amounts to a victim-blaming, gaslighting, men’s rights movement — dressed up in the rainbow clothes of liberal “tolerance and progressivism”.

It is shameful that not one Labour leadership candidate has found the courage to speak out against this undemocratic totalitarianism.

It is appalling that many Labour cabinet members, MPs and councillors are actually cheerleading this denial of class-based oppression, material fact and biological reality,

And why have so very few (if any) signed the Labour Women’s Declaration?

So — what should women do when Labour has betrayed us, betrayed its own party principles, opposed democratic freedom of expression and the right to dissent, and abandoned some of the most vulnerable groups in society — women, children, and homosexual people?

We must do what we can.

We keep on fighting. We keep on speaking out. We refuse to lie down and give in. We keep shouting out against this appalling injustice, and make sure that everyone gets to hear about it.

Little by little, we are having an impact. The blanket silencing of gender critical voices is crumbling, and even the identitarian Guardian has started — very belatedly — to report at least some of our views without automatically branding us all “hateful transphobes”.

Only 100 years ago women won the right to vote. Only a few years ago we won the right to have a bank account, a mortgage, to refuse rape in marriage.

Women continue to face endemic, entrenched sex-based discrimination and epidemic levels of sex-based violence.

Our few rights are precious, recent and hard won.

We won’t give up without a fight.

Meanwhile, Labour, you have lost our support.

You no longer deserve it.

………………………………………………….

*Postscript:

Shortly after I wrote the above, this shocking video was posted on Youtube.

In which Labour leadership contender Lisa Nandy says male child rapists who “identify as women” should have their offences recorded as perpetrated by women, and be housed in women’s prisons:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=oUon9j1zJ_E&feature=emb_logo