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blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/05/meet-the-man-standing-to-be-a-labour-party-womens-officer/
Sometimes it’s hard to be a woman. Except in the Labour Party, when it’s surprisingly easy. Just ask David Lewis. David, 45, is a member of the Labour Party. After several years of supporting the party, he became a full member last year having been “inspired” by Jeremy Corbyn. Tomorrow, David will be a candidate for election as an office-holder in his Constituency Labour Party in Basingstoke. He is standing for election as women’s officer, a post that Labour rules say can only be held by a woman. David is standing for that post because he is a woman. On Wednesdays, at least. When we spoke yesterday, he put it like this:
“I self-identify as a woman on Wednesdays, between 6.50am when my alarm goes off and around midnight when I go to bed.”
What does self-identifying as a woman mean? In what way is David a woman on Wednesdays?
“My womanness is expressed by my saying ‘I self identify as a woman’ now and again on Wednesdays. I make no changes in my behaviour or my appearance. I keep my name, David and my male pronouns. I wear the same sort of clothes I wear the rest of the week. I keep my beard. I enjoy the full womanness of my beard.”
The Basingstoke Labour Party last week accepted the womanness of David and his beard. He is listed as a candidate for election as CLP Women’s Officer, a post that involves encouraging women to join the party and generally speaking for women, their concerns and their experiences. But who is a woman? In the Labour Party, among other places, the answer to that question is not always as simple as some people might expect.
Labour operates a policy of self-definition: if someone defines themselves as a woman, the party recognises that person as a woman, with no question, verification or scrutiny of that definition. This approach is intended to make the party inclusive and supportive of transwomen, people who were born male and later say they wish to change their gender and be recognised as female. Many advocates of greater legal rights for trans people say that accepting such self-identification is right and fair because “gatekeeping” checks, where trans people are required to “prove” their gender identity to another person or authority, are discriminatory and intrusive. “Transwomen are women,” they say, as if those three words are all that’s needs to settle this matter. More on this later.
The Labour approach on self-defining women also extends to the all-women shortlists used to select the party’s candidate in some parliamentary seats. Some Labour members have doubts about the policy of self-definition. Some are feminists who worry that a policy that allows male-born people (who might have enjoyed the social and economic advantages that are often associated with being male) to compete for and hold women-only posts is unfair to people who were born female (and thus prone to social and economic disadvantage.)
Some raise legal questions. Generally, equalities law doesn’t allow organisations such as Labour to reserve jobs or services for any particular group, but the Equality Act 2010 includes some exemptions for single-sex services, because Parliament wanted to ensure that women could be guaranteed that there are some roles and places where men cannot enter.
Some Labour members have sought to bring a legal challenge against the party for opening up women’s roles to “self-defined” women. They argue that where transwomen are not legally recognised as women (i.e. they do not hold a gender recognition certificate) they cannot be entitled to posts that the law reserves for women. Some women have resigned from Labour over this issue.
Labour’s NEC, meanwhile, has insisted that the policy of treating self-defined women as women will stand. Which brings us back to David Lewis, candidate to be Basingstoke Labour’s women’s officer:
“After I looked at the NEC position and what it really meant, I thought, I’ll put my name forward for women’s officer. After all, what’s the worst that could happen? I expected them to say, ‘don’t be silly’ and politely decline my application. But they didn’t. They accepted my candidacy as valid.”
So he’s standing for a woman’s post. Why?
“My priority here is to inform the CLP, and maybe some other people, about what this policy means, about what happens when you say that someone’s gender depends only on what they say and nothing else.”
How would David respond to those who might say he is being offensive or bigoted, that he is trivialising the issues that transgender women face?
“I’d say those people don’t have any right to criticise my gender-identity. If I say I am a woman on Wednesdays, then all they can do is accept that. After all, there are other people who only identify as women on some days of the week and not others, and they are accepted, not criticised.”
David adds:
“In any case, anyone else’s criticism or questions about my gender identity are just not relevant to the Labour Party at the moment, given the current policy. If I say I’m a woman, I’m a woman.”
Now, if you’re new to this topic, you may by this point have come to appreciate that yes, in today’s Labour Party, anyone can be a woman if they say they are a woman, even David with his beard and his complete lack of any outward effort to live or pass as a woman. And maybe you might think “Yes, well, that’s the loony lefty SJW Labour Party, and nothing to do with the rest of us who aren’t part of it.”
If so, you’d be wrong, because that policy of “self-identification” could become the law for everyone. The Government will shortly bring forward a consultation on amending the law on gender recognition, where some groups will argue that people should be able to define themselves as a woman or a man (and thus obtain the associated legal rights and entitlements) without external check or verification.
Some people think that’s a good idea, because they say the current system institutionalises unfairness to trans people. Some people have doubts, because they worry that such rules could be (ab)used to erode the legal status of women, opening up their roles, jobs and places (for instance, domestic violence shelters, all-women colleges, hospital wards) to people with male socialisation and anatomy.
Many (but not all) of the people who raise questions about self-identified gender rules are women, women who are struggling to make their voices heard in what passes for the public debate about gender, because those who speak out are at risk of abuse and accusations of transphobic bigotry. Or even being assaulted.
Which is why what David Lewis is doing strikes me as important and worthy of attention beyond the lovely town of Basingstoke. David Lewis is a man standing for a post that the rules say should be open only to women. He can do so purely because he has said the words “I am a woman” and rigid adherence to the orthodoxy of “transwomen are women” means no one can question his claim. And if anyone who says “I am a woman” must be treated as a woman and granted the status and rights of a woman, does the word “woman” still have any meaning? You do not, I submit, need to a radical feminist to see that the logic of complete self-identification raises some quite profound questions.
Although I worry he’ll get his share of abuse for it, I think David Lewis deserves praise for what he is doing. He is standing for a woman’s job to make a point about what can happen to women when rules that affect them and their rights are made and enforced on the basis of blind dogma, not balanced debate. “We need to be able to debate this, we need to be able to talk about this without being told we are transphobic and to shut up,” David says, before adding:
“I completely understand the problems that trans people face and I can see the case for reforming a system that some people find difficult and undignified. But I think we have to have a proper debate where both sides are heard and there are people who raising valid questions who are not being heard. In the end, we need to have a compromise. And a good compromise is one where both sides are equally unhappy.”
Does he think there is any chance he might actually win his election and end up being elected as women’s officer? “I am hoping that my local party will be sensible.”
I see I got an email from the petition website, to tell me about the response, at 01:00 on Wed 6 June.
So it must have just appeared on the site on the 5th.
All I could find on the petition was the finish date (12 September) but underneath it said all petitions run for 6 months so extrapolating from that it must have stated on 12 March?
I couldn't see a date, either. Weird. Anyway, thank you again!
I think it has only just been published today, as far as I know.
I don't see any date given on it.
The petition needs many more signatures to reach 100,000, when it would be considered for debate in Parliament.
Its closing date is 12 September 2018.
Thanks for that link, Farnorth. Do you know when it was published?
The government has responded to the petition, linked earlier in this thread, asking the Government to
"Consult with women on proposals to enshrine 'gender identity' in law"
In brief, they say - "The Government has not yet decided whether or not to introduce a self-declaration model, and will not change the Equality Act 2010 provisions which support organisations to run single sex services."
The full response can be read on the petition site here :
petition.parliament.uk/petitions/214118
Here's a link to the Man Friday website :
manfridayuk.org
'Rape threats and saying things like "punch a terf" is so clearly male behaviour if you engage in it you are "misgendering" yourself.'
We agree on that trisher. That's the point I was attempting to make when I talked about my family member and about Jack Munro.
But that depression does not have to be linked to the decision about gender. Indeed being able to state preferances and having that listened to and treated sympathetically may be a step on the way to good health. A way of dealing with a long term problem.
trisher, we won't agree on this issue of course. I regret mentioning my much loved young relative, I usually try and avoid personal information like that.\
I stand by my comment that I don't believe Jack Munro is well. Jack has chronicled her difficulties with depression, anxiety and panic attacks and did so in the link posted earlier. Someone who becomes so anxious they vomit and cancel work is not well. I haven't made a diagnosis. I haven't met Jack. I have simply agreed with a previous poster who expressed her belief Jack isn't well.
Of course there are, trisher. Adding male-born people to that can only make the situation worse.
In the excerpt you quoted, I took it that Andrea Albutt was referring to a male-born transwoman.
"Ten years before moving to Bronzefield, Winfield [previously mentioned in the report] was already identifying as a woman, telling a prison newspaper she was having ‘a hard time because of my sexuality’.
Reportedly, she has had surgery, though it is not clear how extensive this has been: only 20 per cent of born-male transsexuals have either hormone or surgical treatment, of which only a small minority will have their male genitals removed.
But even those who do can pose problems.
Prison Governors Association president Andrea Albutt said: ‘In one prison we had a transgender prisoner who had gone through the full process.
'Sometimes she was very feminine. At other times, she was aggressive, masculine, very destabilising; very macho, and she had to be put in segregation.’ "
An example of women's violence in prison.
^De-Crutching or De-Bagging as it is referred to
in prison jargon is a regular practice carried out within the drug using women’s prison community. A woman receiving a visit where it is known or suspected that she will be receiving drugs from the visitor (a sweet visit) as it is known, is targeted on her return to the wing and held down by one or more other women in order that they can retrieve the drugs from either orifice within which she has secreted the ‘parcel’ during the visit. For this purpose the rubber gloves used to clean the wing bathrooms and toilets are often used. This act is commonplace in the closed female estate and is a violent and often painful sexual attack and absolute violation of the victim^.
^The physical trauma of this act is something that many women are prepared to accept in their
quest to ‘score’ and block out once again their stark reality, but it is this very reality that is often perpetuated by the violent attacks as they can all too often be horrific replicas of previous encounters of sexual abuse that these women have suffered in the past^.
There are violent women in prison as well FarNorth.
As far as prisoners go-^^Prison Governors Association president Andrea Albutt said: ‘In one prison we had a transgender prisoner who had gone through the full process.^
'Sometimes she was very feminine. At other times, she was aggressive, masculine, very destabilising; very macho, and she had to be put in segregation
If it is true that transwomen offenders would be kept completely separate from women inmates, I'd have no problem with that, trisher.
Not only sexual offenders but all transwomen prisoners.
That does not seem to have happened so far, going by the accounts from visitors to prison, given in that Daily Mail report.
Iam64 of course your statement about Jack is on the same basis as the ones condemning women.
Of course there are people with mental health issues who need care and consideration. But unless you are qualified as a medical specialist and have met and spoken to Jack before making a diagnosis you have no right to make such a judgement. And bringing your autistic relative into the deabate is just side tracking. I don't know your relative so I would never give diagnosis for them. You don't know Jack so you have no right to give such a diagnosis either.
I thought the woman speaking on The Big Questions yesterday dealt with the prison issue rather well. The Trans women are now held in sexual offenders wings for their own safety. The safety of prisoners is of prime importance in organising prisons, so should the trans-women be transferred to a woman's prison as they request, they would still be held in secure units.
Hear hear, Falmer! We won't be silenced!
Thankyou for those articles FarNorth. Makes it even more clear that our thoughts on this particular issue are absolutely right. There are of course, many other issues and that fight will always continue. Posters who continually seek to divert us from this issue have one agenda in my opinion, and that is to Silence Women. Ain't gonna happen!!
"Forget Calling Me ‘Trans’ Or ‘Gender Non-Conforming’ Male. Just Call Me male.
I urge other men to do the same as being a man in a skirt or dress is safe. No one bothers me. Not even in the male bathrooms. Stand up and be what you are! A man who prefers women’s clothing! If all men in dresses did this it would be so helpful to women protecting their biological sex and spaces."
smashinggenderchange.wordpress.com/2018/04/06/dropping-the-id-of-trans-to-protect-women-their-biological-identity/
"Prison governors warned last night that transferring sex offenders who are born male but believe they are female into women’s jails could lead to vulnerable inmates being attacked."
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5798945/Trans-women-convicted-men-attack-vulnerable-inmates.html
There is a lot of very worrying factual information in this article.
trisher, your suggestion that my comment that ' I don't believe Jack is well' is in the same league as those who labelled women 'unbalanced for being outspoken' is both inaccurate and rather rude.
Mental health problems affect at least 1 in 10 of us, I suspect the figure is higher. There is no shame in being 'unwell', that is depressed, anxious, suffering from panic attacks. Jack as talked about experiencing all these debilitating health issues and more.
My badly written post above, referred to a member of my family who has lived with "issues" since the age of 2, was diagnosed at age 8 as on the autistic spectrum disorder and is currently 'struggling with my sexuality' . My point remains. To suggest that the difficulties our loved one has are solely related to their concerns about their sexuality are far from accurate. If only that was the only "issue"
My opposition has everything to do with protecting women.
If there was no apparent threat to women from changes that are already happening, as well as future ones, I would have no interest in what gender anyone wanted to call themselves.
I also believe that some people, especially young people and children, are being encouraged into gender change without really understanding the implications.
There are numerous YouTube videos of children who say that they want 'medicine and surgery'. Adults must have told them that this is possible and the children are unaware of possible long term effects on their bodies.
Well you could start with a deep belief in equality for a start, experience in activism could help and a prominent public profile would contribute.
Ah so at last we have the truth your opposition has nothing to do with protecting women it is simply bias and discrimination that fuels your opinion.
Iam64 I don't believe Jack is well There was a time when women who were outspoken were deemed to be unbalanced, it seems people who wish to change their gender are now regarded as such.
You seem to be confusing sex and gender, trisher.
It is not medically possible to change sex, only to become more like the other sex by using medication or surgery.
It is perfectly possible to change gender by adapting appearance, behaviour, mannerisms etc. so as not to follow stereotypes of the natal sex.
trisher, what reasons would you suggest were acceptable to Jack for Jack's headlining of a conference on women's equality?
Well put Elegran.
Maryeliza, I found it a relief to read your post. I'd started, then deleted a response to the link to Jack Munro's recent blog/article. I agree, I don't believe Jack is well.
I have a grandson who has various developmental issues and has recently, age 25 started t wear makeup and skirts. None of his family have any issue with this, other than to support him. To deny his "confusion about my sexuality" as he puts it, is the only psychological/psychiatric/emotional/developmental issue he's trying to manage would be to suggest that the difficulties he's experienced throughout his life are all because of 'confusion about my sexuality'. Jack Munro has experienced many similar difficulties.
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