Labour are in trouble again.
Why on earth is it that The Labour Party's leader Sir Keir Starmer, Yvette Cooper, and shadow Minister for Equality Anneliese Dodds, are all unable to define what is a 'Woman'?
One might have thought this was a simple enough question; one that most school children studying basic Biology could answer without even thinking.
They would inform Starmer, Dodds, Cooper, and Co, that a woman is someone born with XX Chromosomes, as opposed to men who are born with XY Chromosomes. It's as simple as that. There are incredibly rare cases where this becomes confused, but they are far too rare to even become a statistic.
Ms Dodds, as you will have seen above (if you could've been bothered), is even prepared to be 'misleading' in parliament, to avoid giving an answer. I wonder why?
Wouldn't it be better for all involved if, like J K Rowling, we all simply told the TRUTH about such things.
Why is it that the Woke Brigade find it so difficult to tell the basic TRUTH.
Only when they understand that dressing-up in the attire of another sex is fine by us all, and doesn't have to be seen as having 'changed gender' (which is impossible); then, and only then, can we advance on this very simple subject.
I could dress as a woman tomorrow, and go around calling myself Mrs or Miss, and people would generally accept it. What they would NOT accept is if I claimed to be a 'genuine' woman.
It's all well and good for Labour 'lovies' to cow-tow to the Woke Brigade, but they would be far wiser to respect the rights of genuine women, who are understandably beginning to feel extremely angry.
Perhaps it is ironic that The Labour Party has done more for women's rights and progress to equality under the law than any other political party. Many great Labour women have played crucial roles in all of this including Barbara Castle, Jennie Lee, Alice Bacon,Ellen Wilkinson, Harriet Harman and Tessa Jowell. Nowadays a fine crop of capable and often feisty Labour women walk in the shoes of those giants - including Rachel Reeves, Annaliese Dodds, Rosena Allin-Khan and my personal favourite - Jess Phillips from Birmingham who I hope might one day become the first woman leader of The Labour Party.
ReplyDeleteYou're right, and yet those at the top are now trying to degrade women by fawning to the Woke Folk. Very bizarre.
Deletep.s. My preferred leader is Angela Rayner, but probably not for the same reasons as yours for Ms Phillips.
Rayner and Patel, surely the most terrifying women in the Commons.
DeletePatel is probably over enthusiastic in her approach to the economy, whereas Rayner is simply a 'red flag' hooligan.
DeleteI have just read up on the subject, very complicated. I was instructed by my daughter, who works in the student Northern district of Manchester, that you referred to people unsure of their gender to call them 'they'. Did just wonder though if Jenkins was diverting a more important debate through the silliness of his question Cro. I think we need a third philosophical house in parliament.
ReplyDeleteWhat I think we really need is a bit more common sense. Live and let live, and let's not impose Wokery on the rest of society.
DeleteIt's 'The King's New Clothes'. Everyone can see it but no one dares say anything.
ReplyDeleteI've just been reading The Sunday Times editorial (which I should have read yesterday) where John Witherow says "Biological sex is a fact, not a feeling". Wokery will never change that.
DeleteThis failure on the part of senior Labour MPs to articulate what is biological fact is but the latest incarnation of the domination of public discourse in the UK (and the US) by the "Twitterati" - an incestuous collection collection of mainly left-wing nonentities with only remote connection to the real world that most of us inhabit.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I think that the god-like attention that the media pay to ramblings on Twitter shows a profound lack of any remaining journalistic integrity.
Sorry - rant over!
However I do believe that the widespread use of social media has been behind many of the recent failings of Western civil life.
Luckily, I'm not a 'twitter' person. I do have a Facebook account, but they prefer to avoid such political comment.
DeleteAs I see it, XX/XY works as a genetic definition, but there are others - physical, psychological, social (at least) by which 'woman' may define non-XX women. To describe a hormone-insensitive XY person as not a woman, when neither they nor anyone else knew it until their late teens, is offensive. In some ways it might be a bit like "doctor" or "chartered accountant" - how much of a reserved word should it be? Actually I do take issue with some of the more extreme stuff, but then I get peed off that the rapper Professor Green isn't really a professor. I'm not sure this is only a Labour thing; it reflects a difficult subject.
ReplyDeleteThe XX/XY definitions are the groundwork of gender assignment, and have nothing to do with how individuals feel. I had a good friend when I was very young who KNEW he was in the wrong body, and wanted to become a girl. Sadly, whatever efforts he had made (and I don't know if he did), he would still have remained genetically male. However one saw him as a woman would never change that, but should not affect his wanting to be seen as female.
DeleteAgreed, genetics is genetics and scientific, and tough to anyone who doesn't like it. But I think this is about the wider construct of man/woman male/female and what rights, privileges and inclusivities it gives. We might all draw our lines in different places, but for most of us they exist.
DeleteYes,TD, when you consider that it isn't simply XX/XY and hormone balance isn't 100% one way or the other...I think you could describe it as a sliding scale.
DeletePeople are trying to classify others in very simple terms when the subject is far from simple
I tend to agree.
DeleteThere have to be limits though. Children should be allowed to be children no matter what Harriet Harman, Priests, teachers or Muslims think. Children must not be there for the sexual gratification of adults. It's beyond disgusting and perpetrators should be hung drawn and quartered.
On a less serious note men should not be competing against women in sport. It is as daft as me identifying as a tortoise in the vicarage garden party tortoise race.
I was raised in a matriarchal system. If my mum said make sure your sister comes home with you or it's raining I did as I was told. In the former case I lifted amorous suitors off her and in the latter pulled my hood up and looked a twat in blazing sunshine.
I agree, keep it simple XX/XY for the basic definition. After that, it's live and let live.
ReplyDeleteWhat could be simpler; they try to complicate matters so much that it becomes ridiculous.
DeleteReading through the debate in Hansard your statement here is very true Cro.
DeleteI don't understand why they wish to make such a simple subject so bloody complicated. Their big-wigs are now really afraid to answer a simple question. I expect they now think the same.
Delete