Coming out as transgender

So just a regular drive out then. You couldn’t make it up really.

The traffic accident was not quite as he described then:

"A Conservative MP was wearing a black leather mini-skirt, tights and high heels when he was involved in a car crash in November, a court has heard.

Jamie Wallis, who has represented Bridgend since 2019, is on trial accused of failing to stop, failing to report a road traffic collision, driving without due care and attention and leaving a vehicle in a dangerous position.

Wallis, who came out as transgender in March this year, denies the charges.

They relate to a collision on 28 November last year in which the Mercedes he is said to have been driving hit a lamppost and telegraph pole on Church Road in Llanblethian, South Wales.

Carina Hughes, prosecuting, said residents Adrian Watson and Natalie Webb were having a gathering when just after 1am they heard a "very loud bang, significantly louder than a domestic firework"

Mr Watson said he looked inside a Mercedes E-Class saloon which had crashed into the lamppost."

He saw "a white male wearing a white long-sleeve top which was tight to the body, a black leather PVC mini-skirt, tights, dark shoes with a high heel and a pearl necklace".

news.sky.com/story/tory-mp-wearing-mini-skirt-and-high-heels-in-road-crash-court-told-12649926

Iam64

What is it with some people and the need to stress their working class credentials? To dismiss ‘middle class’ activists

I suspect that here, it’s a way for some people to add a deviation to coming out as transgender.
If some people regard supporters of a cause as ‘*not genuine supporters*’ unless they match class or party of the ‘*some people*’, that’s their problem. It doesn’t make it true.

Iam64

What is it with some people and the need to stress their working class credentials? To dismiss ‘middle class’ activists

God knows....I don't think it matters really, with this issue.

I was born in the East End of London - a proper cockney lol ?

I still want to keep my biological female spaces, despite my "lowly beginnings", and would support anyone pushing for that..?

What is it with some people and the need to stress their working class credentials? To dismiss ‘middle class’ activists

Plenty of female Labour politicians have been born into wealth/middle class. Others weren't.

Rosie Duffield, Labour, (working class), has come out in support of this group.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10678117/Labour-MP-Rosie-Duffield-backs-campaign-protect-sex-based-rights-local-election.html

Are they all uncaring about women? Were and are they "privileged"?

Some politicians, of all parties, are so called "working class born" -some weren't..

Some politicians have had the guts to say what they think, either way. Voters can agree or disagree.

Well if you choose not to recognise privilege that's up to you, but one of the women is an ex Tory councillor am I now supposed to believe that she has abandoned her Tory beliefs and suddenly cares about alll women? Is it OK to spend part of your life supporting policies which damage women and then suddenly insist you are non-partisan because you've found a single issue, or is it possible you are just using the single issue to damage the opposition?

I didn't say privilege or anything else should be ignored. I said that it is the message that should be focused on! Either one agrees with a specific message or one doesn't! One may have perceived motivations about the person giving the message, which may or may not be correct! But the message is the message, regardless. Agree with it or don't! But agreeing or disagreeing with it because of the class of the messenger is ridiculous!

Good to know your place Doodledog perhaps you need to learn how to tug your forelock in the presence of your betters
Amazing how the suffragettes are now middle class women interested primarily in middle class women getting the vote. I'm sure in the past they've been appropriated as 'they'd have absolutely been totally TWAW'. Now they're almost 'persona non grata'.

Ok. That'll be it. I'm so pleased you some people are here to tell me what I think and why I think it.

I honestly give up. There is no point in even trying to discuss with you some people.

I couldn't agree more, Madgran. I can't believe that social class is being used against women in this day and age
No recognition of privilege there.
It's amazing how some people will twist and turn trying to avoid something which is obvious because it conflicts with, and tears holes in, something they want to believe.

People can have unpleasant beliefs about some things but be sensible about others, though. And who decides which beliefs are harmful? I suspect that you and I would agree about Tory beliefs, but disagree about beliefs surrounding trans issues.

It's not a case of people being all good or all bad, and even that is open to interpretation.

And I don't see anyone choosing not to recognise privilege - not in the sense you are insinuating, anyway. Acknowledging that someone is from a privileged background is not the same as understanding that their views are coloured by it.

Oprah Winfrey uses her privilege to benefit the lives of black Americans (and others). Marie Antoinette's privilege meant that she couldn't understand that if peasants had no bread they couldn't simply have cake (brioche) instead. It's different.

Doodledog

Madgran77

Whatever class any woman is does not diminish a message that they choose to give! Either one agrees with the message or one doesn't! But choosing to agree or not agree based on the class of the proponent (or even considering their class as a criteria for possible agreement/disagreement) would be a dangerous road to go down!!

I am not suggesting anyone here is or is not doing that, the conversation just got me thinking!

I couldn't agree more, Madgran. I can't believe that social class is being used against women in this day and age.

Well if you choose not to recognise privilege that's up to you, but one of the women is an ex Tory councillor am I now supposed to believe that she has abandoned her Tory beliefs and suddenly cares about alll women? Is it OK to spend part of your life supporting policies which damage women and then suddenly insist you are non-partisan because you've found a single issue, or is it possible you are just using the single issue to damage the opposition?

We’d be here on GN saying why don’t these young ones do something about the unfairness!

Would it have been better if no class of women had taken a stand against the unfairness of rule by patriarchy?

Well if no woman had then where would all be today eh?

Nor really against women in the past. Would it have been better if no class of women had taken a stand against the unfairness of rule by patriarchy?

Madgran77

Whatever class any woman is does not diminish a message that they choose to give! Either one agrees with the message or one doesn't! But choosing to agree or not agree based on the class of the proponent (or even considering their class as a criteria for possible agreement/disagreement) would be a dangerous road to go down!!

I am not suggesting anyone here is or is not doing that, the conversation just got me thinking!

I couldn't agree more, Madgran. I can't believe that social class is being used against women in this day and age.

Whatever class any woman is does not diminish a message that they choose to give! Either one agrees with the message or one doesn't! But choosing to agree or not agree based on the class of the proponent (or even considering their class as a criteria for possible agreement/disagreement) would be a dangerous road to go down!!

I am not suggesting anyone here is or is not doing that, the conversation just got me thinking!

Yes, that sums it up nicely Ilovecheese.

Oh I will call it exactly as I want trisher. Have a good weekend, I'm off for Pimm's. Cheerybye.

It is indeed irritating that the Tories seem to have positioned themselves as the party that supports women's rights, but they are clever at that sort of thing.
Labour need to up their game here, Starmer has set his stall out to attract Conservative voters, so he needs to look as if he too cares about women.

What the devil has the social class of the women got to do with it? That really is clutching at straws.

Who cares if the people doing the articulating and the debating, and leading the discussion are middle class? It's often the case that the people in those roles are middle class, if only because they are more likely to have the confidence to make their case, and may, as Nannee points out, have less to lose than others.

Should middle class women be silenced, not just for being women, not just for having the wrong sort of views, but because of having the wrong sort of family background, now?

As for the argument that if someone cares about trans issues it means that they don't care about other issues, frankly that is bollocks. If I said that I wouldn't vote for a party that doesn't condemn slavery (as an example of something that nobody could seriously want to see legalised), would that mean that I didn't care about the good things that it did support? Of course I would, but it could just be that I felt strongly enough about slavery to prioritise that over the rest and withdraw my vote. assume that most others would do the same?

We are in a mess, politically, just now. None of the parties is covering itself in glory, as far as I can see. None of them appears to have policies that are what I would hope for, but we'll find out more nearer the election. The bottom line, though, is that voters will have to sort out their own priorities, and if women's rights is at the top they might have to sacrifice other things in order to protect them. Equally, depending on what else the parties come up with, it may be that they have to put them further back on the priority list to fight off even more pernicious evils.

I don't think it's the same as 'only caring about one issue', but if a lot of people (on either 'side' of the debate - this doesn't just apply to the so-called 'gender critical') see it as an important issue it could sway the result. This is exactly why Johnson is playing it for all he's worth, and why Keir and the shadow cabinet are tripping over themselves not to say anything that might come back to bite them. The fact that what they are saying makes them sound ridiculous is because what they feel they have to say is ridiculous.

This must be a difficult post for some contributors.
This Conservative MP has ‘come out’ as transgender. I have no problem with not voting for him as Tory and neither do I have any support for him deciding to be a transwoman.
Originally, I thought ‘it takes a bit of nerve to come out when you’re a public person’ when you could face a lot of backlash.’
After all the feedback I’ve been reading on here about his lifestyle and businesses, it’s beginning to sound more like a convenient evasive tactic.
If he contributes to the loss of Tory voters, because of all that information, he’ll have done a good job. The risk is that all the TRA voters will support him just because he has been brave enough to come out.

Shall we hope he loses his seat? Will all the TRA claim discrimination or transphobia even if it makes them look like Tory supporters?

Nanee49 well call it what you want, if you believe that two upperclass women one of whom is obviously Tory and one who has tried very hard to conceal her actual background by abandoning her company director roles before she entered into this venture are really non-political that's up to you.I can't help feeling it is manipulation especially when it's launch makes Daily mail headlines.
As for the suffragettes I wouldn't condemn any woman whatever her background who chose to go through the pain and suffering of forced feeding particularly when for some of them like the very posh Lady Constance Lytton it led to an early death.
None the less it was a middle class movement and the organisations which focussed on universal suffrage and were mainly working class like the Women's Labour League are largely forgotten.
But these women have alligned them selves to the middle class movement funny isn't it?

Trisher, do not tell me I've fallen for anything...I've had to stop myself short of adding you cheeky cow. Though it might suit your POV to cast me as an idiot supporter of the utter sh*tshower that is the Tory party, past and present, I most certainly am not.

And do not tell me to look at their appalling track record when I've lived through their heinous policies from the vomitous Thatcher through to the equally despicable current incumbent of no.10. "Respect my sex if you want my X" isn't Tory policy or part of it's manifesto even if the originators of this movement are dyed in the wool, blue rinsers.

If the slogan chimes with my view on this really important topic then it's a disservice to dismiss it as Tory propaganda.

I'll reiterate for possibly the last time as my head is too valuable to me to keep banging it on a hard surface, this is a cross party issue that all should be aware of.

Not the only issue, not more important than the NHS or any other vital moral issues but nevertheless an important issue to many and not to be dismissed as if it's all Tory handmaidenly and a bit rubbish to support it.

And while I'm here, I know middle-class women were subject to the horrors of force feeding but if we're doing top trumps on the consequences of suffering, it's my view that the sacrifice of working class women with the threat of utter penury and starvation was greater.
Those noble women had no comfortable cushion of mummy and daddy and a possibly a private income and a willing little (working class) skivvy to make their food, bed, fire.
I think Selina Cooper, Helen Silcock, Ada Neild Chew and Sarah Reddish mobilising brave women at the factory gates, to name just a handful of the hundreds of thousands of working class women prepared to stand defiant come what may, would take strong offence with your dismissive "it was only a few".

Jamie Wallis’s business history should raise red flags. He’s flakey, unethical, an equal opportunity exploiter. I haven’t seen the fliers he used to suppprt hus election campaign. Bet they didn’t mention Sugar Daddy or multiple complaints to trading standards.