November 17, 2023 - 2:30pm
Who are among the most oppressed people in this country? The answer appears to be men who claim to be women, according to a leading Labour politician. Lisa Nandy, the Shadow International Development Secretary, has said foolish and offensive things about the conflict between women and trans rights activists in the past. Yesterday, however, she hit a new low when she offered her views at a Westminster lunch.
Asked about remarks by the author J.K. Rowling, who has described the MP as “one of the biggest reasons many women on the Left no longer trust Labour”, Nandy doubled down. She claimed she speaks out “because we’re talking about one of the most discriminated-against groups of human beings in our country”.
Nandy said she was currently rereading Harry Potter with an eight-year-old, but hit back at Rowling and other feminists who don’t believe that human beings can change sex. “When I look at the way we reduce that debate to things like bodily parts, I think when we look back in history, we’re going to be utterly ashamed of ourselves,” she went on.
Nandy’s disdain for arguments based on biological sex is famous. In 2020, she supported a policy of housing transwomen in female prisons, even if they had been convicted of sex offences. For many women, especially those who have had to share prison bathrooms with biological male offenders, this falls into the category of luxury beliefs. So does the claim that transgender people are more discriminated against than anyone else in the country.
No one has ever been interviewed under caution for claiming that “transwomen are women”, but a woman who tweeted the opposite was summoned to a police interview in Newcastle last week. The disproportionate influence of trans organisations on this country’s institutions, including the police, is jaw-dropping. Transgender people have the same rights and protections as the rest of us, yet NHS trusts, arts organisations and Government ministries have fallen over themselves in an attempt to show they’re “trans-inclusive”.
The results are obvious and spectacularly undemocratic. Employees find themselves asked to state their pronouns, signalling obedience to an ideology most of us regard as coercive nonsense.
Nandy is one of an influential group of Labour women who keep promoting beliefs that could hardly be more divorced from reality. The party’s Deputy Leader Angela Rayner is another, as is its Chair, Anneliese Dodds, whose robotic support for a ban on “conversion therapy” has been condemned by parents, lesbians and gay men.
These women appear to inhabit a different world from the rest of us, having convinced themselves that one of the most powerful lobby groups in the country is the most marginalised. It’s an extraordinary inversion of reality, where transwomen are taking women’s places on boards, winning medals in women’s sports and receiving the kind of access to politicians most pressure groups can only dream about.
Even worse, they’re trying to impose their skewed vision of the world on the rest of us. Believing in the oppression of transgender people has become akin to holy writ in the Labour Party. When Nandy tells us women can trust Labour, despair at the state of British politics sinks even deeper into my bones.
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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SubscribeThe reason body parts keep coming up in this debate is because body parts are centrally relevant to this debate.
Women all over the world don’t endure pain, danger and often die in childbirth because of lack of gumption. Its because sexual dimorphism has given them the type of human bodies which birth children at great risk to themselves.
Women athletes don’t run slower, jump lower, and lift less than their males peers because they aren’t taking it seriously. Its because evolution has given them bodies which are smaller and weaker on average than males.
Women aren’t subject to sexual harassment, abuse and violence at horrific rates because they have “female gendered souls” its because they have female sexed bodies.
I would by no means describe myself as a feminist. Down the years I have known a few and disagreed (respectfully) with them on many issues. But one thing of which I am certain is that Gender Critical Feminists are correct when they say that women’s bodies are central to such experiences as vulnerability to domestic violence. Therefore protected spaces for women on the basis of biological sex are essential.
It is the likes of Lisa Nandy who should look back with shame on how they have made women struggle all over again for these protected spaces they had to fight so hard to secure in the first place.
Very well put.
It should be clear to any man who has spent years intimately involved with a woman that their physical life is very different. Any man with respect for women must be impressed with their ability to endure menstruation, child birth and menopause. Any man with respect for women understands that this, as well as the points you raise, entitles them to some protections unnecessary for men.
That a tiny number of women many not experience these thing hardly suggests that men who could never ever experience these facts of life can become women.
It is likewise true that women who pretend to be men have no idea but this is far less offensive and far less threatening than men pretending to be women.
Few of us care is people want to present as the sex opposite to their reality, the impact on most of us is slight but I think we should care if those who are likely to become members of the government believe idiotic ideas and worse, expect us to accept them too.
When those at the height of power regurgitate your nonsense as facts, alter policies for your benefit, fly your flags from major institutions, and arrest those who point this out… you’re not marginalized.
The truly marginalized and discriminated against try to hide and avoid notice of the powerful, since the powerful can (and will) hurt them. The truly marginalized do not trumpet their existence through megaphones.
“we’re talking about one of the most discriminated-against groups of human beings in our country”
I honestly can’t think of a more privileged minority group in the west than them.
Strong contender for dumbest comment of the week!
Good to see you back.
And spot on on that one.
Still hiding your identity I see – is that because your intellectual (in)capacity will become widely known ?
No that would be your comment here.
This whole narrative is built in on a house of cards. I tried to find stats on the number of trans people murdered and assaulted in the UK and found nothing. Endless links to hate crimes of course. I found a link stating 13 trans people were murdered in the EU, but no info and how many of these were involved in the sex trade.
Given the adulteration of police stats by misclassifying biological males as women, it might be interesting to see whether there’s a spike in crimes committed by/against ‘women’.
Stats mentioning the ‘trans-status’ wouldn’t likely be captured at risk of ‘dead-naming’
What a crazy world we find ourselves in
The violence victim stats are, ahem, ‘problematic’ for the activists – they are about where you’d expect them to be (no difference between transmen and women, whilst transwomen are more often victims than women, but less often than men); and because they show that violent crime against trans/queer is more often perpetrated by other trans & queer people (e.g. their partners) than by the Dreaded Cis. The high numbers of male-to-female trans in prostitution, a risky business, also plays a significant role. Apparently they are ‘forced’ into this by the high costs of funding their transition – a factor that curiously seems only to apply to m2f, not f2m…..
Woke does not rely on fact and data. There is no objective reality, it is all just a social construct therefore you can just make up any claims you like to support your cause.
The more publicity that views such as those espoused by Lisa Nandy get, the more the voting public might just think twice about voting for Labour. The Tories deserve a damn good beating at the forthcoming election, then at least the UK public can see how useless Labour will be at governing in any way resembling the views of the majority of citizens (not least ethnic minorities). Just as with those demonstrating on our streets in support of a terrorist worldview, they’ll be in plain sight.
How many women will simply abstain though?
The Tories deserve a damn good beating from the electorate; not from idiot Labour politicians like Lisa Nandy.
You bigots are not in the majority – you just make a lot of noise.
You can be safely ignored – and you will be!
We’re too busy laughing at you.
The Tories have let it all happen on their watch. They have kicked issues like reforming the GRA into the long grass, where people like Nandy will then be able to do what they want with it, rather than facing up to the issue. They have not produced the guidance for schools that was promised and look unlikely to before the next election. The only decent thing they did was to protect the Scots from the idiots they had foolishly elected.
Like many I suspect Lisa Nandy is looking at some very vulnerable teen, or even adult, and confusing ‘most marginalised’ with ‘most mentally ill’.
I’m fairly sure trans-identified people are marginalised because they are mentally ill, not because they are trans.
And thus proving Lisa Nandy’s point very clearly.
There was a great article for Debbie Hayton (UnHerd’s resident transwoman) a few weeks ago which contained the like “I have chosen not to identify as marginalised”.
Not even all trans people believe the nonsense of trans dogma. Those like Debs are horrified by what is being said and done in her name.
The story about the boy who points out that the king has no clothes needs to be rewritten to bring it up to date. In the modern version the boy would get arrested for denying the truth that the king was most smartly suited by one of the most marginalised people on the planet: Tailors to the King.
You don’t need to be so specific. This is the story we all should turn to in relation to wokeism. Whether we are being asked to believe that the ugly are beautiful, that the obese are healthy, that women are men, that privately educated elite female high earners are part of an oppressed group etc etc – that honest voice should be telling us that this is simply not the case.
Winston Smith was forced by O’Brien to believe that 2+2=5, We have to believe that Eddie Izzard is a woman!
It is vital to all ideologues that we believe the ideology above scientific fact without at any point engaging the brain, Orwell called it ‘bellyfeel’.
The question that I keep coming back to is “WHY do Rayner, Dodds, and Nandy so slavishly stick to this principle?”
They’re within an ace of winning power, and this is a principle which could jeopardise that, It is likely anyway, to give them all problems if they become a governing party and these three become prominent. It is also a very risky horse to back politically these days, as it is unravelling faster than a beehive hairdo in a gale.
And what are the advantages in it for them? I see only disadvantages. And yet they keep waving the flag, provocatively. I really do wonder why?
Probably they inhabit one of the many information silos that exist today. Whatever your political/religious position, the siloed cultures create a kind of addiction – it feels safe, righteous, satisfying to revisit/stay within ‘the church’ – and dangerous, unnerving, to step out of it.
“WHY do Rayner, Dodds, and Nandy so slavishly stick to this principle?”
It’s an interplay between the ideological triumph of “critical thinking” approaches on the political Left, peer group dynamics, and the political pragmatism required to rise up through the Labour Party or any of the other Progressive Citidels, such as large charities.
Many Trans live quietly and have for many years. This desire goes back millennia. It’s not new. I’ve two good friends who transitioned 30+yrs ago and of course then society much less accepting. It was incredibly difficult for them and they certainly experienced abuse and discrimination without question. Many of their best friends and supporters were and are women.
They generally keep their own counsel on the current debate, but I suspect they feel a little conflicted – repelled by some of the stridency in many younger Trans activist, yet also feeling they do not want others to suffer as they did.
And certainly for myself knowing some friends who are good people and have gone through this does influence one’s thoughts much more than social media exchanges. Quite what the mix of nature/environment that may create the overwhelming need to change, and to what degree for some it is a phase, I do not profess to know. Nor from what one can glean does science yet fully comprehend. But what can be is the instinct to kindness coupled firmness when nonsense spouted by either side.
Great post. And let’s face it that’s how we all feel about fanatical activists – even on issues we broadly agree with.
We shouldn’t let ideological disagreements kill off sympathy. Life for these people cannot be easy.
The problem here is not whether men should wear dresses or not, but being forced to believe or act that a man wearing a dress is a real woman. They’re not and it’s a lie.
When the state incorporates such a huge lie in its official language and government policies, it splits society up between those willing to go along with the lie and those who refuse to.
In effect, what this does, is create two different realities that people are forced to choose from: the state-sanctioned one based on lies, and the other which is accused of being bigoted and phobic.
Many people often mistake propaganda purely as attempts by the state to deceive the populace. While that is true, another more sinister purpose behind propaganda is demoralizing the citizenry into believing that they are powerless and their resistance to lies is futile.
Men who don female garb and believe they are women is one thing, but using the state apparatus to force us to along with their sexual fantasy is another.
Whether it’s as sinister as you suppose, I’m not so sure. Ditto your view that it has its origins in the state.
I would describe an essential part of wokeism as the idea that reality must give way to feelings (or in their terms that there is no reality so we must choose the nicest, kindest interpretation).
Clearly the woke approach to trans fits this pattern. But it didn’t start there. The body positivity movement, for example, fits the same pattern. In reality some people are beautiful, some ugly, and most somewhere in between. But instead we must say that everyone is beautiful, even the morbidly obese, and that we only think otherwise because of “patriarchal, western beauty standards”.
This kind of thinking dates back to Fat is a Feminist Issue (1978) and the Beauty Myth (1990) and was pushed massively by feminists. If it didn’t originate there, it was certainly lodged solidly in our culture by the feminist movement.
Put simply the difference is between what is true, and what we want to be true. To be woke is to choose the latter.
Good post btw – and thank you for engaging in discussion.
Thanks to both you, David, and Julian. I seldom read these comments and find myself in profound agreement with anyone. In this case, it’s because the topic not either intellectual integrity or moral insight but both.
I want most of all, however, to emphasize the importance of distinguishing between thinking and feeling, perhaps because the temptation to avoid any distinction is by now the prevailing one (but not, of course, a novel one). Consider one conflict that has agitated the West since (at least) the Enlightenment: rationalism versus romanticism. For all its flaws, the former has either created or maintained the best of our civilization. For all the beauty of its art and poetry and music, the latter has amounted to a rebellion against rationalism and its replacement with nationalism, racism, postmodernism, wokism, transgenderism and feminism. With all due respect to the egalitarian impulse in early feminism, there can be no doubt that it eventually supported a rebellion against reason as not only a bourgeois or Western “social construction” but a “male” one. Even though some feminists in the last century were content to make room for women in academic circles, including scientific ones, other feminists built on the method that postmodernists call “deconstruction” by arguing that women (or any “subaltern” populations) have “other ways of knowing” that are equal in value to reason and implicitly better. The result has been to undermine even the possibility of logic, for instance, as a universal feature of human existence.
And this focus on feeling instead of thinking has not remained confined to academic halls of learning or even to political corridors of power. It is, not surprisingly, the lingua franca of popular culture. Fans screamed enthusiastically when the Beatles declared that “All you need is love” (as if anyone had taken the trouble to define “love” in a way that accounted for its long history in Western theology and philosophy). At the same time came pop psychology (with its roots in Freudian psychoanalysis) and liberal religion (which turned out to be psychotherapy masquerading as theology). Viewers swooned over Oprah Winfrey (who could easily win a presidential election) and Dr. Phil (and his countless imitators).
By now, it’s very hard to convince anyone that moral philosophy is not synonymous with sentiment, that compassion isn’t necessarily what makes people feel good (much less what makes people feel good about themselves). We’re rapidly losing the ability to distinguish even revenge from justice (which makes no sense without reconciliation).
This is where we are now in public debates over the Hamas war.
At least in terms of feminism, people like Kathleen Stock do seem to be leading the way towards a rapprochement with reason.
“But what can be is the instinct to kindness coupled firmness when nonsense spouted by either side.”
“Be kind” is asked to carry too much weight in this debate.
Of course “kindness” as a sort of general approach to others is commendable. But it doesn’t provide us any answers to questions like “Which act is really the kind one?” Or “How do we balance conflicting claims on our kindness?”
Transwomen (blokes in dresses) used to be a bit of a joke who would get a bit of ribbing, but nothing particularly nasty. Since trans-activists have taken up their cause, ramming their bizarre ideology down peoples throats and telling them they are transphobic fascists if they don’t swallow it, many have said great I will be transphobic then.
The problem has been exacerbated by high profile cases of men raping women in women’s prisons and mediocre men beating women in sporting events and the horror stories going on at GIDS
For the safety of women and the the well being of children, we absolutely must push back against trans-activism / ideology. But we must not fall into the trap of victimising trans people by forgetting that trans people are people. By failing to treat them with appropriate respect (judge them by the contents of their character – it is absolutely ok to point out what foul loathsome creatures the likes of Sarah Jane Baker and Amy George are) we just add fuel to the trans-activist cause.
And that’s where some people on here have gone well beyond what I am comfortable with. Their motives start to look a lot darker.
Has a ban on conversion therapy been condemned by lesbians and gay men? Really?
Quote from Nandy:
Doesn’t sound that fanatical to me. Sounds like she’s trying to see both sides.
The fanatics are the anti trans zealots.
They are driven by the fear that is stoked by the far right media and clowns like Trump. Most of them have never and will never meet a trans person.
These fanatics, like most right wingers, are old and poorly educated and are very vulnerable to media manipulation, particularly on new issues that they can’t understand.
I’m more inclined to think it’s just old feminists continuing to hate on men – except now it’s men in frocks.
On three other scores it must be really unsettling for them.
First men (as they see it) have leap frogged them in terms of claims to oppression.
Second, they are faced with men who actually want to take over the female social role. A role which feminists of that generation saw as a prison.
Third, for some more masculine presenting feminists the whole trans thing is a little too close to home. It is probably opening up uncertainties they thought their feminism had put to rest.
You offer no arguments just insults. Expect no less from narcissistic, neurotic, deeply inadequate individuals who are completely detached from material reality,
…. and hide behind anonymity.
Insults all round then
“old and poorly educated and are very vulnerable” Aha a new victim group! Right wingers and anti-trans zealots should no longer be subjected to insult and contempt by champagne socialists who must henceforth fear the wrath of PC Plod for disseminating hate speech.
I know, as a matter of plain fact, that I cannot change my sex. Does that make me an anti trans zealot?
Can we at least be accurate: between a subset of feminists and trans rights activists.
Seems like a lot of people want to go with their feelings, rather than with the facts you stated!