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The Labour of Political Irrelevance

Great Britain has been called TERF Island by Trans Rights Activists (TRAs) for a number of years now. TERF means Trans Exclusionary Reactionary Feminist. It's used to refer to women who recognize that sex in humans is binary and immutable. They are accused of excluding males from being women, when it's reality that excludes males from being women. The word 'woman' means nothing if it's applied to both people born female and male. That's the nature of words. Few words continue to have meaning while simultaneously holding a concept and its opposite. British feminists were among the first to recognize the conflict between the rights of women and the desire of males to be considered women expressed as a right.

As someone only waking to the madness behind gender ideology in the last few years it's due to the constancy of British women and a growing number of men fighting gender ideology. Reading the incredibly 'bigoted' open letter from "Queen TERF" JK Rowling crystalized for me the reality of the conflict. Rowling wrote a long letter in which she took great pains to note her personal relationships with people who have transitioned. She was attempting to make clear that she was not unsympathetic to trans people, but that her concern was the impact on women and women's safety. There is this dynamic in this discourse in which women feel they must share their past trauma with male violence to highlight the danger men may pose to women. This trauma is always dismissed by TRAs who insist that transwomen are women and belong in women's spaces. The potential danger of placing males in women's single sex spaces like domestic violence shelters and women's prisons are dismissed even in the face of examples of the prediction being fulfilled. The British women called TERFs have been resolute in proving the conflict between trans and women's rights they're told doesn't exist.

This year's Labour Conference has made clear that their years of challenging the entrenchment of gender ideology has had an impact. Labour MP Rosie Duffield received condemnation and threats for saying, "only women have a cervix." She was advised not to attend the Labour Conference over fears for her safety. This struck a number of people who have not thought through the conflict as incredibly absurd. A female member of the party appeared to be endangered for stating a fact. Facts about women are considered transphobic or bigoted against trans people. Rather than push back against the threat to a member of their party a number of Labour officials seemed to double down on the idea that stating facts about women is anti-trans. 

Starting with party leader Keir Starmer, journalists repeatedly asked some version of, "Is it transphobic to say that only women have a cervix?" His answer assured that the question would be asked repeatedly. His answer also highlighted the way in which people accept 'transwomen are women' as fact without considering what that means.














Depending on how Labour deals with this issue going forward, in the next election we may have an idea of which commitments engender the most votes in this conflict: the health and safety of over half of voters or the desire of people to be considered the opposite sex. I'm taking bets now if you're interested.


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