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Why is Keir Starmer trying to put so many voters off?

(166 Posts)
Wheniwasyourage Mon 04-Jul-22 17:39:27

He's put off a lot of women because he seemed to have some difficulty in say what a woman actually is. Now it seems that he is putting off the increasing number of voters who think that Brexit is a disaster. There is a growing opinion that we should attempt to rejoin the single market and the customs union, but he is reported to be saying that neither will happen. I have a terrible dread that he is going to ensure that we have an eternal Tory government. angry sad

What do others think?

M0nica Mon 04-Jul-22 21:45:51

This is the problem LizzieDrip. We may vote for a party, but it is a party that has a leader, and if the leader is saying all the things Starmer has said, what he is saying is what the party he leads, supports.

More importantly, what he said, I think, was more to do with keeping transgender activists in the Labour Party on board, rather than a considered and thought out response on the subject to the electorate as a whole.

Casdon Mon 04-Jul-22 21:49:37

25Avalon

Blair is waiting to emerge from his lair. He has advised Starmer to drop anything woke.

Starmer is more akin to Brown than Blair, wisely.

Glorianny Mon 04-Jul-22 21:52:40

Doodledog

Very true, LizzieDrip.

The trouble is that none of the Shadow Cabinet has a good record on this issue, which is why I am at a loss as to where to place my vote. I just don't know who to vote for this time round, which has never happened before.

I am not getting into a slanging match by using words like 'banshee'; but I will say that women who feel as I do are not a small group on a small board. This may be true on here, but we are many in number across 'real life' and online. At one time, this was a minority issue, but now that transwomen have started using into female sport and winning medals, and insisting that lesbians have sex with them, as otherwise they must be transphobic, and banks are asking employees to declare pronouns on email and badges, more and more people are becoming aware of the issue and joining us in voicing our dissent.

Well I don't know any women in real life who think like this.
Let's correct a few things
Some transwomen have said lesbians should be open to relationships with them.
Some transwomen are involved in sport.
Some companies encourage people to declare their chosen pronoun, a bank has given employees the option of having their preferred pronoun on their badge.
A few people are getting all het up about it and posting negative and biased views about transwomen.
The very nature of bias and discrimination is that you accuse a whole group of people of behaving in a certain way and don't recognise them as individuals.

LizzieDrip Mon 04-Jul-22 21:53:00

It’s complex isn’t it. I’m a member of the Labour Party and voted for Keir for leader. I’ll be voting Labour in next GE - whoever is the leader. DaisyAnne as so often in life, what ‘should be’ and what ‘actually is’ tend to be poles apart.

Glorianny Mon 04-Jul-22 21:59:21

Bias and discrimination isn't complicated. It simply blames a whole section of people and paints them all as behaving in a certain way. Trans people are as diverse and different in their views as any other group of people.

DaisyAnne Mon 04-Jul-22 22:01:59

25Avalon

Blair is waiting to emerge from his lair. He has advised Starmer to drop anything woke.

Goodness, where you there Avalon. How did you manage that?

Glorianny Mon 04-Jul-22 22:03:43

I believe Blair is busy trying to get the UK back into the EU.

25Avalon Mon 04-Jul-22 22:07:05

DaisyAnne

25Avalon

Blair is waiting to emerge from his lair. He has advised Starmer to drop anything woke.

Goodness, where you there Avalon. How did you manage that?

Enough newspapers have reported it over the last 6 months including The Guardian. If we had to be present at everything to believe it we could discuss nothing. End of.

Mollygo Mon 04-Jul-22 22:11:42

I agree with your use of ‘some’ Glorianny, but my concern is firstly for the females that are affected by the ‘some’.
Maybe if there was greater concern and condemnation of the ‘some’ by those who don’t act in a way that the ‘some’ do, there would be no need to protect females rights against the ‘some’ and their misogynistic supporters.
Instead of which, shouts of transphobia, attacks on females like JKR and others, are acceptable to the ‘some’ and their misogynistic supporters.

M0nica Mon 04-Jul-22 22:22:39

I d not think anyone is writing anything negative about Transwomen. Sex and gender are two separate issues. How ever much you can change gender, you cannot, as yet change sex. Someone who has gone through puberty as a man is physically stronger, faster than a woman. This is why the two sexes compete only against their own sex, where physical qualities count and male record holders, run faster, jump higher than women. yes, there are a few exceptions, but that does not dent the rule.

It is easy to say Some transwomen have said lesbians should be open to relationships with them.
Some transwomen are involved in sport.
Some companies encourage people to declare their chosen pronoun, a bank has given employees the option of having their preferred pronoun on their badge

But life is organised around 'Somes'. Some people feel strongly about something and they act on it. The question to be asked is how many people are 'some' and what should their power be over the many.

In this case those on the trans side of the divide, a relatively small group, are trying to wag the whole body politic and by so doing are trying to bully and force into submission and marginalise a much larger group, who are also disadvantaged - and that is women.

DaisyAnne Mon 04-Jul-22 22:32:36

Glorianny

I believe Blair is busy trying to get the UK back into the EU.

I appeared to be the only one on GN who watched Blair's recent conference; I didn't get any such impression. What he did seem to be saying is we need a plan, a plan for the future.

To any politician with an iota of intelligence, that would mean stopping all the personal and divisive stuff that Johnson's lot spew out and planning farming, technology, medicine, jobs, education and exports, etc. That would include the best deals we could get to export to our nearest neighbours. His speakers were a mixture of left and right or simply highly knowledgable in their subject. Now, if all conferences, including party political ones, were up to the standard of Blair's, I would look forward to watching all of them.

The majority of progressives, be they Labour or not, seem to understand that, to quote, "it's the economy, stupid". Brexit is dead, passed, over. Now it's time to make the best of what has been left to us by those believed just leaving would improve our lives in some magic way.

Glorianny Mon 04-Jul-22 22:34:03

You can try to justify it any way you like and post as much explanation as you choose, but saying a small group of people are responsible and controlling over the majority, or blaming others for not speaking out just shows how bias works.

Some white people are racist, have they power over the many or do their views influence most people?- of course not.

I am not marginalised or forced into submission because someone holds views I disagree with. Nor are most people. It's what free speech is about.

DaisyAnne Mon 04-Jul-22 22:35:18

I'm assuming that is not addressed to me Glorianny. I said no such thing.

Glorianny Mon 04-Jul-22 22:42:32

DaisyAnne

I'm assuming that is not addressed to me Glorianny. I said no such thing.

in that case how can it be addressed to you?

DaisyAnne Mon 04-Jul-22 22:50:01

You seem to be getting frayed at the edges Glorianny.

You hadn't made it clear to who it was addressed. Also, it was immediately after mine. It would not be the first post that addressed points that didn't exist.

Good to hear that wasn't the case.

VioletSky Mon 04-Jul-22 22:58:34

I don't have much of an opinion on him but all the changes in regards to trans people, whether you agree or not, came in under the tories.

So to chastise him for simply trying to stay in line with changes to guidance and legislation seems a bit strange....

I thought we finally wanted a government who respected and were expected to live by the same rules as the rest of us?

Doodledog Mon 04-Jul-22 23:00:55

Well I don't know any women in real life who think like this.
The fact that you don't know anyone who is considering changing their voting habit proves absolutely nothing. The fact that there are people on here who are considering it, however, shows that it is happening.

Let's correct a few things
You may, of course, give an alternative POV, but that is not the same as 'correcting' things smile
It is not necessary to use a qualifier every time you mention a group of people, and unless there is an implication that the behaviour being described is universal there is no bias. Do you say 'flowers are growing in my garden', or do you point out that not every flower is there, but only some?

Some transwomen have said lesbians should be open to relationships with them.
Not all transwomen identify as lesbians (or are autogynephiles), so again, there is no need to qualify what I said - at no point did I imply that all transpeople were doing anything at all. The point, though, is that I wasn't talking about the ones who said that lesbians should be open to having sex with them, which you have shifted to. I was talking about the ones who insist that if a woman enjoys sex with women they should enjoy it with them, despite the fact that they have intact male bodies, and get very unpleasant when they are rejected. 'Suck my girl dick' sort of unpleasant. Not all transwomen do this, but how many have to do it before it is necessary to point out each time that they are a minority?

Some transwomen are involved in sport
And many are not. Is it really necessary to point that out? It is also true that not all transwomen cheat at sport - that goes without saying, too. The point is that those who do are at a huge advantage over women who have trained for years, and this sort of cheating can only be dealt with at a high level. When politicians refuse to recognise that a man saying he is a woman so that he can beat other women at swimming (or whatever) 'some' people find that unconscionable and feel reluctant to vote for them.

Some companies encourage people to declare their chosen pronoun, a bank has given employees the option of having their preferred pronoun on their badge.
More than one company has 'encouraged' people to declare pronouns. Are you really unaware of the trend in universities, local government and other 'captured' organisations? It is widespread in the public sector. Just because the Halifax Bank has made the tabloids doesn't make them the only ones to be doing this, whether on badges or in email.

A few people are getting all het up about it and posting negative and biased views about transwomen. The very nature of bias and discrimination is that you accuse a whole group of people of behaving in a certain way and don't recognise them as individuals.
Bias is shown when terms such as 'all het up' are used to minimise the feelings of those with whom the writer disagrees. That sort of bias is usually used by those who dislike women, as are many of the arguments of the 'allies', such as pretending that it is age that makes critics think as they do, without recognising that people think for themselves and come to their own conclusions by weighing up the arguments in their own way.
Language is important, which is why some people get annoyed when it is mangled - when 'mothers' become 'birth givers' and 'women' become 'people with vaginas' or 'people who menstruate'.

As M0nica says, there is an issue when 'some' (used here to mean a small proportion of the whole) are forcing their views onto 'most' (used here to mean the majority) people, so 'some' people will speak out about it.

MayBee70 Mon 04-Jul-22 23:29:08

It’s a difficult one isn’t it. Vote tactically and get ( hopefully) some kind of Labour/LibDem coalition or have a corrupt Conservative government in perpetuity…..confused

VioletSky Mon 04-Jul-22 23:40:27

Just vote Labour... this seems the only point of contention that is cropping up and realistically, I'd rather he knew what a democracy is than what a woman is..

Baring in mind I started a thread on what a woman is to me and the consensus was that it means thoroughly different things to every individual woman so... Probably no right answer anyway

Doodledog Mon 04-Jul-22 23:43:45

If this issue didn't run so deep I would agree with you, VS. It is not something that is at all easy - I can't not vote, and I have no idea for which party I can vote.

I am putting my fingers in my ears and going 'la la la' in the hope that 'something' will have happened before the election, so that the decision is made easier. Ideally, that will be the LP coming to its senses, but who knows?

VioletSky Mon 04-Jul-22 23:50:47

I think you will get more chance of a sensible discussion under labour dd, or at least a sober one.

Perhaps reassurance that women retain all the same rights and some sensible solutions regarding safe spaces and sports would help.

Has anyone actually read Labour policies?

VioletSky Tue 05-Jul-22 00:11:51

Regardless, before I go to bed, we are basically having a wedge driven through feminism and liberal(ism?) by a gleeful tory government over... genitals.

They must be laughing their socks off at us. They implemented the changes, some I agree with, some I would change, then wound us up and watched us go.

It's a bit gross is it not that a demographic currently facing horrific levels of hate crime, domestic violence and homelessness are being thoroughly demonised throughout the press...

Imagine how that felt when women were trying to establish our rights and faced public backlash.

Really it is a situation we have seen many times with many minority groups yet we soon forget, I guess especially when the minority group (women who fought for equality) becomes an equal share of the majority after a few decades.

Doodledog Tue 05-Jul-22 00:34:19

Sorry, but I think you are misrepresenting what is happening. This idea that transpeople are the most marginalised group in society just doesn't wash. They have huge numbers of employees being trained to follow policies to 'include' them, when they weren't excluded in the first place. They have politicians on the run (as seen on this thread), and so-called 'gender politics' have seeped into every area of life.

There are no obvious parallels that I can see with feminism, which has fought women not having the vote, not having rights to their own children, not having money of their own if married, being paid less legally, not being allowed in pubs and cafes in case they were soliciting, and so on (and on). Transpeople are not being denied any rights that are available to the rest of us. They are asking for extra rights (to access women's spaces, to enter sporting competitions that they are pretty much guaranteed to win, to have healthcare documentation changed so that they are 'included' and women are not, and so on (and on).

It's really not the same as women's fight, and to suggest that trans issues come close to things like racism or homophobia (where rights were different from the majority) is, frankly, offensive to those groups.

VioletSky Tue 05-Jul-22 00:47:23

You wouldn't dd it's intrinsic bias drawn from your personal beliefs...

There are only no parallels between what I actually said and your answer

Doodledog Tue 05-Jul-22 01:27:16

Hmm. I’ve re-read both posts, and think I have responded to what you said. You said that transpeople are going through what women did when we were trying to establish our rights.

I don’t see that - women didn’t have a lot of the rights that men did, but transpeople do. What rights do they not have?

I agree that identify politics is divisive though, and that Johnson et al are exploiting the situation. As I say, I’m hoping that something will happen to make it possible to decide how to vote when the time comes.