December 6, 2023 - 7:00am
Vote Labour, get Stonewall. That’s the fear of many women who’d like to vote Labour at the next election. On the face of it, recent announcements suggest that the party is less in thrall to gender ideology than it once was. Keir Starmer has backed away from a policy of introducing full self-ID for people who want to change their legal sex, encouraging some women to think that the party has seen sense at last.
But a problem remains, and it’s all the more important to recognise it at a moment when Stonewall has succeeded in getting a UN body to launch a review of the UK’s Equality and Human Rights Commission. It’s as much about culture as policy, evident in the fact that so many of Labour’s grassroots organisations have normalised the demands of trans activists. The Labour Women’s Network, set up to campaign for equality and train future leaders, is open to anyone who “self-defines” as a woman — men, in other words.
LGBT+ Labour, which is affiliated to the party, has been at the forefront of attacks on the Labour MP Rosie Duffield. More than 20 MPs are patrons, including some of the noisiest critics of women who believe in biological sex. Two of them, Lloyd Russell-Moyle and Sir Ben Bradshaw, shouted at female MPs who expressed safeguarding concerns during a debate about self-ID in the House of Commons in January.
Women with gender-critical views still feel unwelcome in some local parties, fearing accusations of “transphobia” if they express support for single-sex spaces, for instance. Leading figures in the party regularly post on social media, advocating key Stonewall demands such as a total ban on “conversion therapy”. Calling for a ban has become detached from reality, a means of signalling the party’s continuing commitment to a discredited but popular ideology. The party’s Chair and Shadow Secretary for Women and Equalities, Anneliese Dodds, has promised to implement another Stonewall policy, making every alleged hate crime against trans people an aggravated offence.
Indeed, there appears to be an open door between the two organisations, illustrated by the fact that the party sent three leading figures — Starmer, Dodds and Deputy Leader Angela Rayner — to a Stonewall business breakfast earlier this year. Labour was thrilled to welcome PR guru Iain Anderson when he defected from the Conservatives, even inviting him to carry out a review of small business when he stepped down as chair of Stonewall’s trustees.
None of this would be happening if Labour really intended to make a break with the past and shake off Stonewall’s disproportionate influence. One easy step would be to ensure that its Women and Equalities team is clear and unambiguous about who is a woman. Yet Ashley Dalton, who has only been a Labour MP since February, has just joined Dodds as Shadow Minister for Women and Equalities — and she’s on record as tweeting that “trans women are women.”
There’s a striking disconnect between what I hear from Labour activists who insist the party has seen the light and the number of councillors, MPs and parliamentary candidates who are fully on board with the ideology pushed by Stonewall. If the price of getting a Labour government is accepting the premise that men can magically become women, it’s too high for me — and for many other women, I suspect.
Joan Smith is a novelist and columnist. She has been Chair of the Mayor of London’s Violence Against Women and Girls Board since 2013. Her book Homegrown: How Domestic Violence Turns Men Into Terrorists was published in 2019.
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SubscribeThis present furor around so called trans rights is the first time in my life where championing one minority group means diminishing the right of another.
Having grown up when “No Blacks, Irish, or Dogs” was deemed acceptable through de-criminalising homosexuality (and joining pro gay rights marches 40 plus years ago) I grew up trying (and mainly succeeding) in viewing people as individuals, some good, some not so.
None of these earlier changes in both law and what was socially acceptable diminished the rights of any other group. Having gay friends did not reduce my freedoms or safety. Friends (particularly at Uni) from all over the place and all sorts of looks enhanced my life, mind you Sikh from Glasgow was a bit of a funny one with a broad Scottish accent in southern England.
Pushing one minority to have such power to diminish the freedom and rights of another group is just plain wrong.
That is true – but only because until now all the minorities could pass the bill to the majority. As long as the rich uncle pays, you can convince yourself that everything is for free. In reality changing society to fit some groups better unavoidably makes other groups less comfortable. Replacing registered partnership with gay marriage, for instance, meant that society promoted gay couples to be no less than heterosexual ones. But at the same time it also meant that heterosexual couples were no more than gay ones – just one among many sexual tastes where before they had been a unique core component of society.
It’s part of the ‘flattening’ of Western society. Under postmodern thinking, no one way of life has more perceived value than another. Our traditional (outdated and obstinate) identities get replaced by placid synthetic ones more susceptible to media manipulation and sexual subversion. It’s why concepts such as Christianity and masculinity are under attack. They stubbornly resist this machine-like process and will cause problems later on.
Just to clarify – it’s ‘same-sex’ marriage, not ‘gay marriage’. You don’t have to be gay to marry someone of the same sex.
You mean – like you do not have to be deaf to wear a hearing aid?
It’s hardly surprising that the third (or is it fourth?) wave feminism stuff that was so enthusiastically used to take it to men, would be repurposed for other groups & would eventually be used to target women themselves.
It was the lowest-rent argumentation imaginable.
You could probably train a pigeon to do it.
Yes – if a strategy works why not use it. Coming out with crazy, hateful, bizarre stuff never did the feminist movement any harm.
I think you are referring to third wave feminism, or the “LibFems” who see no problem with acceding to transactivist demands for abolition of women’s sex-based rights: eg to safe spaces, single sex prisons and women’s sports.
Fourth wave feminism (4W) is a reaction against the so-called “third wave” or “Liberal” feminism: which is hard to see as “feminism” at all, given it centres men as its focus of concern. 4W is a continuation of 1970s second wave feminism, in strongly rejecting the superior claims of patriarchy in frocks.
Have you not seen LGBT rights vs Muslim debate.
Women standing at the back of meetings in mosques.
Various riots in areas where one section of diverse population feels another equally diverse group gets preferential treatment.
This is end result of pandering for years.
Yes, this is far from new. And even where it’s not been a rights issue, there are constant clashes of interest and internecine strive.
The problem is not labour, but the Tory party. They have the numbers to sort this mess out, but they have done NOTHING (and that applies across the board), so what you say in the article shouldn’t come as a surprise.
For example, has anyone seen the mythical “guidance for schools”?
Totally agree. I know women in their 20s who have friends who are ‘trans’ – they say that these friends are ‘lovely’ or ‘wonderful’ and they don’t see anything wrong regarding their relationships. They don’t feel threatened in any way.
So somebody is wrong here. Is the trans-women phenomenon threatening to women or not? The writer of the article clearly thinks that women are threatened and so do I.
The point is that not every woman is a women’s libber. They might not see that men are accessing women’s quotas in the world. If they did see this, the no woman would vote for Labour.
So, you are correct in that the problem is the Tory party being so wishy-washy and afraid of upsetting minorities and afraid of getting bad press in the USA that it does not present itself as a party worthy of a vote. Who should people vote for? If each thinking person abstains, Labour will win. And abstain they will.
Wait until they are impacted and then ask them again.
And anyway, the question is whether men should have access to women’s spaces. If I had a trans friend I am sure I wouldn’t feel threatened either, but unless he looked REALLY like a woman I don’t think I would encourage him to use a ladies toilet. (And no, when you see a butch woman, you still know it is a woman).
I think you miss the point. Trans people are not always seen as a group or a solid wedge of people. They are individuals and have to be treated as such. If you were involved in some way you would understand.
But it is a point of principle. May a man access women’s spaces on his say so? The fact that Mary or Julie or whoever and fine with it doesn’t mean it is good for society and should be allowed.
And perhaps right there is the reason that trans women insist so vehemently that they are women! Because on your own logic, if they were simply considered men (regardless of their appearance) they would have no right to use the ladies loo.
They are considered men because they are men, no mammal has ever changed sex. And also men from upbringing as males, the entitlement and lack of empathy is pretty strong in most of them.
The problem with trans (and the rest of the LGBQT ideology) is that it has become heavily politicized. I don’t think many people had a problem with it when it was part of ‘going out’ culture, but now it insists on making in-roads into spaces traditionally reserved for children and mothers. Personally, I view it the same way I do cigarettes, alcohol, and recreational drugs. Fine if you want to do it, but don’t push it on others.
Yes, quite. I am sure everything would have been reasonably OK if the likes of Stonewall hadn’t demanded to redefine what a woman is, etc.
I actually doubt that, because it doesn’t get to the heart of what makes some of the older generation of feminists so anti trans. Or more specifically anti men who become trans.
Where I think you are right is that the “trans women are women” stuff has alienated people like me who would otherwise be more sympathetic.
I don’t think that 5 years ago if, for sake of argument, Debbie Hayton had tried to use the ladies toilet anyone would have batted an eyelid, even if the people in the same toilet know who Debbie is.
Now instead we have, say, Eddie izzard wanting to use the ladies, and so the idea has become taboo.
If the person with Male Genitalia wants to go into the ladies showers yes it is a problem.
And on Unherd it’s pretty difficult to know who – because there are no other voices. We are fed a constant TERF diet. More balance please.
It’s not a coincidence that the majority of us terfs are older women, we fought the battles back in the 70s and 80s and see younger women totally taking it for granted that women are equal to men. Older women have mostly been through pregnancy, childbirth, childrearing, failing bodies and observed the world through less and less rose-tinted glasses. And our struggles as women are mocked by these woman-face actors who think that womanhood is a performance of femininity and say theyre better women than us because they have perfectly manicured nails on their big man hands!!!
“…If the price of getting a Labour government is accepting the premise that men can magically become women, it’s too high for me — and for many other women, I suspect…”
Yes, but if you are open-eyed enough to see this, then you surely equally cannot run to the Lib “Leyla Moran” Dems, who are at least as deluded. And it is clear plenty of Tories are into the very same social self-delusions, for example Penny Mordaunt, who could easily end up leader after the Conservatives get pasted at the next election.
It looks to me, you have little choice but to join those of us who will sit the next one out.
If enough amazing women like Kellie-Jay Keen can be heard on the mainstream media defending women’s rights, then they will be a very powerful and persuasive voice in exposing this claptrap. The problem is that the BBC, and all the other mainstream media outlets, have no forum for a reasonable debate. If they did, this ludicrous ideology would never have got off the ground in the first place.
I believe Kellie is standing against Keir Starmer in the next general election. If she had a debate with him, she will wipe the floor with him. He knows that he is defending the indefensible but he is too spineless to confront the zealots in his own party, so he meekly plays along with them. The worst thing about all this is that he is patronising the electorate. I wouldn’t be surprised if this came back to bite Labour.
On what? The economy? The NHS? The housing crisis? Rising inequality?
On defending women’s hard fought rights for safe spaces. Women’s toilets, changing rooms, rape crisis centres, women’s refuges, women’s prisons, lesbian only meetings. Need I go on?!!
I got in a lift this morning (07:45) and a man entered dressed like a woman. He was dressed to attract the most attention that he could in order to satisfy his cross-dressing fetish. I felt uncomfortable that he was in a lift with me, and I’m a strong bloke. Imagine if he strolled into a woman’s toilet and thought he had the right to be there!
Do it at home lads and stop violating women’s spaces!!!
She would probably give him a run his money on those issues as well!
There’s alway the Social Democratic Party whose motto is “Family, Community, Nation” and, I think, are gender-critical in that they do not support gender self-id.
Are they putting up a candidate everywhere?
As opposed to…? A vote for the Conservatives who have let gender ideology run riot through pretty much every British institution?
Or a vote for the Lib Dems who pocket half a million pounds every year from the manufacturer of puberty blockers?
What the Conservatives are very good at is creating the impression that they’re strongly opposed to gender ideology. Rishi Sunak will do an interview for the Daily Express proudly declaring that he “knows what a woman is” but in reality, they’re only slightly less pathetic on this issue than Labour would be.
Where Labour might actually be better is that they’d be less subtle and more upfront about their obedience to the Church Of Gender Woo and therefore – as is happening in Canada – it might result in more people protesting and being upfront about their belief in scientific rationalism and child safeguarding.
Because they think culture wars issues can win them votes – or at least lose Labour votes.
Exactly. They’ve mistaken it for a ‘culture wars’ issue when in reality it’s a ‘child-safeguarding’ issue, a ‘female rights’ issue and a ‘democratic freedom of expression’ issue.
If they realised that, they might actually win those votes.
Canada is more extreme than most. They are in the process of repealing indecency laws so that trans people don’t get done for waving their penises about in women’s changing facilities.
Why would any woman vote Labour? Surely they could just buy their own burka and cut out the middle man.
Explain please.
As long as a political party is too timid or too stupid to define a woman, how can they be trusted to run a country?
Starmer is clearly determined to ensure that he and by extension Labour are seen as Mr Normal with pretty middle of the road views to nail down a thumping majority to enable a further Blairite transformation of the UK – something Johnson failed to effect with his massive majority.
Beneath the veneer the ugly face of a Labour Party in thrall to all the most pernicious ideological fashions of the day – particularly Stonewall can be seen. Let us hope that enough uncaptured women can see this in the way the author does. I fear that the message a defeat of the conservatives will bring is that they need to be more Stonewall and intersectional friendly to succeed rather than that they need to return to common sense conservative values and reject divisive ideologies.
The only way Labor (and the Democrats in America) can somehow possibly salvage their parties is to openly reject identity politics and embrace working class family values. Unfortunately, it won’t happen as there aren’t many working class families donating large sums of money to further progressive causes.
The real problem is that there are hardly any working class people IN the Labour Party.
And they let the party get taken over by student politics types. We need a party on the left for adults that focuses on the big issues. This terf trans cat fight could frankly be pushed to one side while serious issues get addressed.
Freedom of speech – the foundation of democracy – and the primacy of evidence-based knowledge are serious issues. Both are being attacked by extreme trans activists. You’re too busy gloating that feminists have got a ‘taste of their own medicine’ to see it.
Trans ideology is based on a lie but one with serious financial backing:
https://xn--mujeresencampaa-crb.com.ar/inauthentic-selves-the-modern-lgbtq-movement-is-run-by-philanthropic-astroturf-and-based-on-junk-science/
Men can’t be women. It’s an irrefutable fact. The problem that most people have is not that individual men are putting on dresses and play-acting as a woman, but that gender ideology is being interwoven into the very fabric of official government language and policy. This is dangerous because it is based on an outright lie. It affects everything from child development, sex education, crime statistics, personal safety, science, and medicine.
Most important of all, it could potentially affect who gets to be parents or not:
https://www.jesp.org/index.php/jesp/article/view/2109
This is a much more serious issue than simply ‘men wearing dresses’. It’s a lie that is increasingly becoming enshrined in law. Many trans people are simply deluded. Instead of affirming their delusion, institutions should be doing all that they can to cure people of them. Unfortunately we live in a time where stifling sexual expression, no matter how benighted or degrading it is, is seen as bigotry.
Lastly, many trans activists don’t appear to be very nice people. Do we really want people like this hanging around women and girls?
https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/jk-rowling-trans-culture-war/
Voltaire (1694-1778)
I put that quote up on the noticeboard in the staffroom where I work. Guess what; it was taken down. The people who are supposed to be safeguarding children are complicit in doing exactly the opposite by inviting outside pressure groups into schools to indoctrinate them.
Jimmy Saville was given the keys to go and do as he pleased. This is no different.
Excellent. So let us get gender self-ID off the table, remove gender orientation from the list of protected characteristics, and make it official that ‘man’ and ‘woman’ refer only to biology. Then we can get on with addressing the serious issues.
Ahh!? You meant that the issue was so unimportant that your enemies should give up on their goals, while you had to get everything you wanted?
It’s the adults that are pushing these issues! Denying reality is a BIG issue.
Well my political philosophy is summed up in 3 words.
Labour are worse.
This applies to any issue you care to mention. People here have castigated the Tories for letting this stuff happen and they deserve all the criticism they get. However…
Oh dear, what a pickle! There is nothing more cringeworthy than seeing politicians of any party disappearing up their own backsides when asked what a woman is. The fact that they cannot state what any rational person knows to be true is a litmus test of their credibility to govern us.
For the Labour Party to be repeating the mantras of pressure groups such as Stonewall shows how far they have moved from being the party whose sole purpose is to try to provide equal opportunities for less advantaged people.
I am a socialist but I won’t be voting Labour unless they unequivocally denounce the rubbish which is being spouted. Women are being betrayed by the Labour Party in order to accommodate a bunch of narcissistic, deluded men (along with the activists who support them) who believe they should be treated the same as women.
I really hope that they get what they deserve in the next election.
Stonewall has already been concreted into the public realm by the Conservative Party over the past 13 years. Stonewall has been embraced by ‘Call-me-Dave’ Cameron and successive Tory PMs who’ve presided over Stonewall’s egregious lubrication of public policy at every level, including entry level at primary schools.
No need to resort to Labour to embed the LGBTQ++ (or whatever the current hieroglyphics) in the body politic!
Russell-Moyle is up there on my love to loathe list along with Owen Jones. I’m building a mini-Gulag for the pair of uber-creeps in my back garden .
Russell-Moyle’s brief appearance as “Lloyd Kruger-Dunning” is one of the highlights of Simon Edge’s novel “In the Beginning.”
My Trade Union Dad brought me up to stand up for women’s’ rights and it’s never been more critical to do so than right now, in the face of Stonewall’s fanaticism, which at times teeters on derangement. In the sixties my work colleague in a large engineering company was (with hindsight) trans. He would sashay in, proudly wearing a self- knitted jump suit and makeup and brighten the place with his personality. He did a good job and everyone, including the grafters on the foundry floor just accepted him as what he was – a really friendly and helpful member of the team who wouldn’t have dreamt of getting his Willy out in the loo – and, yes, he used the ladies cubicles because he earned our trust and respect – and, crucially, our permission – no bully tactics or forced entry required.
Bigger than votes for women and equal pay? Of course not. Frankly this is a storm in a teacup.
Do you have daughters David ?
Do you?
Yes I do. Both play rugby. If the gender lunatics have their way, there’ll be every chance they’ll both be playing against biological males.
You didn’t answer the question.
If you had daughters, you may well think differently. The possibility is that paedophiles are allowed free access to women’s spaces.
Let’s let it all blow away, shall we. Children are being sterilized and men are raping women in prisons. We should all just move on and ‘get over it’, should we.
Did he go to the local school and tell the little children all about gender/unicorns/assigned at birth etc etc etc? It is not the nice individual that we fear but the ideology that has become the new public religion.
An actual woman doesn’t need to identify as a woman. It’s that simple.
Three things drive queer theory; misogyny (by both sexes), male sexual arousal (autogynophilia) & access to children (paedophilia). The last two are, thankfully, fairly small categories but the men are powerful & extraordinarily motivated. Misogyny is depressingly common.
Whoever knighted that horrid man Ben Bradshaw ?
UK is done anyway, who cares. Conservatives and Labour are exactly the same party: children sterilization, antisemitysm, open borders.
Stonewall have been in power for the last 20+ years.
The Unherd anti-gay, anti-trans fanatics are out in force to support this ridiculous article.
“anti-gay, anti-trans” implies that gay and trans belong together. They do not. In fact they are in opposition. One contradicst the other. Gay people accept that there are two immutable sexes. Trans do not. Trans believe you can transform yourself into the other sex, or live as though sex did not exist, taking on any sex-typed roles (i.e. gender) that you wish.
Each time you throw epithets, you have lost the debate. Why don’t you chuck in ‘racist, sexist, homophobic’, etc., etc, etc.
Why don’t you try to have a rational discussion instead of taking the vacuous option of using the same, tired, lazy slurs?
Who ‘IS’ Unherd? Identity politics at it’s very worst.
I never had myself down as a ‘fanatic’, merely because I believe in biological reality. It would be nice if you could add weight to that statement.
No its not. The trans rage has passed, we’ve all got more important things to worry about.
Spot on. Hence all the downvotes.
The main danger to Labour is that this silly nonsense proves a distraction when it has frankly got more important things to deal with.
Absolutely agree, but I think the tide has turned.
Why do you purport to speak for all ? If a politician can maintain that a man can become a woman, how on earth can their judgement in other matters be trusted.
I’m not speaking for all. No logic in your comment
You said ‘We’ve all got more important things to think about’.
Absolutely. Speak for yourself and no-one else.
You are so out of touch if you think this is ‘done and dusted’.
“Anyone who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” Voltaire
This is literally denying reality and if that’s not important, then we are doomed!
Indeed. I would like to add this quote too:
Theodore Dalrymple
That’s where we are at the moment. Kids study ‘Animal Farm’ for their GCSE English. Replace ‘Four legs good, two legs bad’ with ‘Trans women are women’ and that’s it in a nutshell. I’m lucky in that I’m at the arse end of my career and can afford to say what I think. The silence is deafening from people worried about their career progression.