Links - 11th May 2020 (2) (UK Politics and Trans Mania)

The SNP's trans-rights folly - "As former SNP adviser Kevin Pringle pointed out, it is ironic that the discussion of non-binary identity has been so binary... after winning the Scottish Parliament elections in 2007, and then displacing the Labour Party as the dominant party in Scotland at the 2015 General Election, the SNP has been struggling to balance its traditional role opposing Westminster with its contemporary one of governing Scotland. It can no longer simply play the role of the opposition like it used to. It must now also justify its position of power.Moreover, given the UK government has said it has no intention of agreeing to another independence referendum, the SNP’s main cause – Scottish independence – is too distant a prospect at the moment to sustain and cohere support in Scotland. It means that, as the governing party in Scotland, the SNP must take substantive positions on other issues, in this case trans rights, in an effort to be for something beyond national independence. But here we come to the problem the SNP now faces. In an attempt to stake out a position and appear as the progressive force in Scottish politics, by venturing proposed reforms to the Gender Recognition Act, the SNP has ended up embracing a divisive, often incoherent, set of ideas. What’s more, the SNP is now promoting such ideas as if they are true, be it the concept of genderfluidity or the idea that one can be born in the wrong body."

How the Trans Pledge Damaged the Labour Party - Quillette - "Is political correctness just a storm in a campus teacup? Not if its effects ripple through the concrete structures of society, leading to major consequences.Consider PC’s effect on the electoral fortunes of the mainstream Left. Centre-left parties are struggling across the West, and one reason is their “cultural turn” away from economic issues toward the politics of identity. Yet their inability to adapt to electoral realities is not just ideological, but exacerbated by a political correctness which hands radical activists the ability to silence dissent. This stymies efforts to move to the centre on cultural issues, leads to a doubling down on progressive stances, and powers ideological purity spirals. The result, as we shall see, leaves swing voters feeling cold. In the US, centre-left commentator Noah Smith argues that the “woke” Democratic candidates–Beto O’Rourke, Kirsten Gillibrand, Julian Castro, even Kamala Harris–did poorly in the primary, flaming out relatively early... An emerging body of work in political psychology focuses on how blowback against political correctness tends to increase resistance to progressive policies and heighten the popularity of populist right candidates. One study, by Lisa Legault and colleagues, found that asking whether a group of students agreed or disagreed with the following statements led them to become more prejudiced than another group of students who did not see the statements... Research by Duke University’s Ashley Jardina finds that using the phrase “racist” when describing confederate statues or Donald Trump increases support for both among a segment of the electorate... Tellingly, even among those who voted Labour in 2019, 15 of the 33 respondents who opposed or were unsure about the pledge said they would not back Labour next time compared to all 22 respondents who both voted Labour in 2019 and backed the pledge. Meanwhile, among those who didn’t vote Labour in 2019, just 21 percent backed the pledge. And among this small group of 18 pro-pledge Lib Dem, Green or SNP voters, only six people said they would switch to Labour.All told, it seems the trans pledge resulted in Labour losing 2.5 times more people than they gained from other parties: hardly a good trade... Ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair clearly revealed his exasperation with the pledge when he opined: “If you go, ‘Transgender rights are our big thing,’ and the right say, ‘Immigration control is our big thing,’ you are going to lose that war, so you are not going to advance any of the things you want to do.” For Labour to have lost so badly and to have immediately indulged in a politics of progressive virtue-signaling raises the question of whether they are serious about returning to power.It also points to the broader problem of highly-organised progressive networks like the trans rights lobby leveraging taboos around minority sensitivity to amplify their influence. This permits them to advance unpopular platforms that both weaken the Left and contribute to cultural polarisation."

Sticks, stones and lawsuits - "The year 2019 produced many paradoxes. One was that many left-leaning women breathed a secret sigh of relief at the Conservative election victory. The Tories are currently the only mainstream party with no stated ambition to dilute women’s rights by reforming the law to make switching gender a de-medicalised, administrative formality... While the reaction to the Harry Potter author’s intervention from trans activists was furious and predictable, she received more than 200,000 “likes” on Twitter, far more than those of her opponents. Rowling also helped draw public attention to the suppression of speech and thought encountered in public life in Britain (and elsewhere) when it comes to discussing sex and gender. The main protagonist in this war on free speech in the UK is Stonewall, a campaigning charity that was founded to promote the rights of the same-sex attracted, but which in recent years has switched its focus to an unconditional defence of (what it views as) transgender equality. Its website declares that “Trans women are women and trans men are men”, and—somewhat surprisingly to many gay people, given the charity’s original mission... In 2020, several legal cases will challenge Stonewall-sponsored policy within organisations. One is against Oxfordshire County Council for its “Trans Inclusion Toolkit For Schools”; another is against NHS England and the Tavistock NHS Trust, for allegedly pursuing experimental medical treatment on under-18 trans-identifying children (see Helen Joyce, “Speaking up for female eunuchs”); and another against Girlguiding for allegedly expelling a leader for gender-critical beliefs. A further case being explored is against the National Theatre (unlike the other defendants, not a “Diversity Champion”, but currently selling Stonewall merchandise in its bookshop) for refusing to serve women wearing T-shirts bearing the (apparently) provocative words: “Lesbian: a woman who loves other women.”... Theresa May’s government... noted—apparently ignoring average size and strength differentials between biological males and females—that “there are likely to be few occasions in sport where exclusions are justified to ensure fair competition or the safety of competitors”... most British universities are Diversity Champions, and so have been instructed to produce dedicated trans policies. These policies tend not to be confined to personnel matters, but also dictate what acceptably may be taught and said on campus about trans people. Some university policies require that “any materials within relevant courses and modules will positively represent trans people and trans lives”. (No such clause appears in university policy for any other group, to my knowledge.) Training reinforces such messages, during which people with PhDs are shown diagrams such as the “genderbread person”, shaped like a gingerbread man but with sex depicted between the legs and gender identity in the head. A glossy Stonewall document entitled “Delivering LGBT-inclusive Higher Education” tells universities that inviting “anti-LGBT” speakers who deny “that trans people exist as the gender they say they are” causes LGBT people “to feel deeply unsafe”. In this document Stonewall announces: “The most inclusive universities find ways to consistently communicate their support for LGBT equality throughout the year, in digital communications, at university events, and in their buildings and grounds.” One result is the Transgender Day of Remembrance, an event originating in the US, designed to commemorate victims of “anti-transgender bigotry”. It is heavily promoted by LGBT charities including Stonewall. As a consequence, in late November on British campuses, senior managers can be spotted shivering in the freezing dark, huddled around a candle flame with colleagues and students, listening to someone laboriously reading out the names of South and Central American sex workers killed in some of the most violent countries on earth—people whose tragic deaths seem, at the very least, somewhat causally overdetermined. Stonewall is also active in primary and secondary schools... With local variations, a similar-looking story can be told about most major public and third-sector institutions in this country, as well as many big companies... The Diversity Champions scheme now allows Stonewall to exert a chilling grip on free thought and expression about gender identity. While the government consults the public on whether to reform gender laws, it simultaneously pays Stonewall to lobby to change them... Simon Fanshawe, a Stonewall founder and vocal critic of its present incarnation, says that its early strategy was “winning by losing”: perhaps losing cases, but winning hearts and minds along the way. Whether or not future legal battles are won or lost, Stonewall’s sinister absolutism and intolerance of disagreement means that it is, perhaps, already losing the wider war."

The purge of the unwoke - "So now we know. If you believe in biology, Labour isn’t the party for you... Labour really has become an irrational, intolerant party of extreme identity politics. The proposed purge has been given the deceptively liberal-sounding title ‘Labour Campaign for Trans Rights’. This gives it the appearance of being a decent, pro-minority campaign, but it is nothing of the kind. In truth, it is a deeply illiberal attempt to cleanse Labour of any individual or group that believes in biological reality and which thinks that women must have the right to speak freely and to set up their own spaces for association and debate. So the purge demands unquestioning loyalty to one of the key orthodoxies of identitarian extremism: that ‘trans women are women’ and ‘trans men are men’. Fail to bow before this eccentric dogma and you will be branded a ‘transphobe’ and expelled from the party... The Stalinist vindictiveness of the purge is made clear in its demonisation of two perfectly reasonable campaign groups: Woman’s Place UK and the LGB Alliance. The former is an organisation of feminists concerned that gender self-identification could lead to born males entering women-only spaces – such as changing rooms, rape-crisis centres and female prisons – and which campaigns for the preservation of women’s sex-based rights. The latter is a gay-rights group concerned that transgenderism erases the specificity of the homosexual experience – of same-sex attraction – for example by allowing people with actual penises to identify as lesbian. Scandalously, the purge refers to these two organisations as ‘hate groups’. It says Labour members should ‘organise and fight against’ these despicable, hateful outfits. This is deeply sinister. It effectively gives a licence to the use of violence, or certainly harassment, against women and gays and lesbians... Anyone who thought that in the wake of its catastrophic defeat in the December election Labour might rethink its abandonment of class politics in favour of the divisive, destructive cult of identitarianism has now had a rude awakening. Labour is clearly going even further down the road of self-destruction. Strikingly, even Tribune, George Orwell’s old magazine, has endorsed the purge of free-thinking women and critically minded homosexuals. That the magazine which published Orwell should now support such an Orwellian move confirms what a mess the modern left is in. Orwell raged against systems of intolerance that demand unflinching intellectual conformity and the suppression of doubt and dissent – now Tribune endorses such intolerance. In supporting the expulsion from Labour of anyone who questions the idea that ‘trans women are women’, Tribune plays the role of Big Brother demanding that we believe 2 + 2 = 5. This purge suggests Labour is finished. A party that supports trans intolerance and which punishes any questioning of PC orthodoxies is a party that has absolutely nothing important or useful to say to the people of this country. Former Labour voters must be looking at this nonsense and congratulating themselves for abandoning this lost, deluded party."

Before we hurl insults around about ‘transphobes’ let’s be clear about what we mean | Catherine Bennett - "the party has adopted a working definition of Islamophobia advanced by the all-party parliamentary group on British Muslims... The group’s co-chair Wes Streeting dismissed objections that free speech would suffer. “While our definition cannot prevent false-flag accusations of Islamophobia to shut down reasonable debate and discussion, it does not enable such accusations. In fact, it makes it easier to deal with such behaviour,” he said. “Our definition provides a framework for helping organisations to assess, understand and tackle real hatred, prejudice and discrimination.” There could hardly be a better case for another considered definition – after a week in which its meaning has been both stretched and contested – of what should be understood by transphobia. Unless we want to leave that job to the courts. Is it allowed, for instance, to satirise self-ID, as in the case of Harry Miller? Yes, says Mr Justice Knowles. And in a passage that might have been inspired by Labour’s pledges: “Some… are readily willing to label those with different viewpoints as ‘transphobic’ or as displaying ‘hatred’ when they are not.” There are obvious implications for the unprecedented debates prompted by a proposed reform to the Gender Recognition Act, facilitating gender self-identification (ID). Can it be damagingly transphobic – if Miller is not – for people to meet and discuss the possible implications for women-only spaces and safeguarding? Should people be able to meet, without fear of abusive crowds, to share concerns about early gender dysphoria diagnosis/affirmation? Is it actionably bigoted – unlike Miller – to question the fairness of male-bodied athletes competing in women’s elite sport?The clear implication by prominent Labour leadership contenders is that all such debates are transphobic... As with antisemitism, the identification of transphobic behaviour, at its insulting or threatening worst, requires no laboriously agreed or court-won description. For further clarity, the Crown Prosecution Service offers guidance on the kind of behaviour that might make an incident or crime transphobic. Such as: “Was there any use of derogatory language that referred to sexual orientation or transgender identity?”... Without dialogue, opposed groups can only polarise further, with one result being, as Scott Aikin and Robert Talisse argue in their forthcoming book, Political Argument in a Polarized Age, that people become unwilling to regard their opponents as political equals. “Bye”, as unconcerned purists last week taunted the thousands tweeting #expelme in response to Labour’s pledges."