Transphobia in the Green Party leadership election is harming the party’s reputation
The Green Party of England and Wales is midway through its leadership elections. Currently two of the eight candidates are making a very clear pitch for the “gender critical” vote. Both Shahrar Ali and Andrea Carey Fuller have embraced definitions of women that exclude trans women from womanhood.
On Twitter there’s an eager audience of transphobes ready to encourage these comments. It’s been an unedifying spectacle. Both candidates have dipped their toe in the sea of transphobia – only to receive rapturous encouragement from some dark corners of Twitter.
The eager audience whip up even more extreme statements. We reached a peak where Carey Fuller retweeted a comment saying “transwomen are free to mimic any sexualised social stereotype of their liking.” Grossly offensive. Meanwhile Shahrar Ali has embraced a definition of women that excludes both trans women and intersex women from womanhood.
Both candidates do have some Green Party fans. Ironically some claim that both Carey Fuller and Ali will empower the party to move past “identity politics” and “trans rights activists”. Such claims are naive beyond belief. If we voted in Ali and Carey Fuller then the matter of trans rights would dominate the party in a manner never seen before.
If Ali and Carey Fuller were elected they would be the first party leaders outside the UKIP-Brexit Party bubble to embrace “Gender Critical” rhetoric. Such a position would have consequences.
The Green Party, as the party who has consistently stood against austerity and for migrants rights, is often a welcome feature on progressive platforms. Amelia Womack is a co-founder of Another Europe is Possible. Siân Berry has served on Compass’s management committee. The Green Party has been a welcome part of movements like the People’s Assembly Against Austerity. Embracing transphobia puts all of this at risk.
It is foolish not to realise that there would be a sharp backlash. There would be efforts to deplatform the party from positions it has. Activists from other parties would mercilessly exploit our new leader’s positions. Whilst some would pretend this would be more than offset by a surge of “politically homeless” people joining the party, there is little evidence for this. There has been no surge of members to join to vote for Ali or Carey Fuller.
Indeed many backers of Ali and Carey Fuller have griped about the eight pledges the LGBTIQA+ Greens have put together. They’ve been deemed “divisive” or “dirty tricks”. The polite scrutiny will be nothing compared to the level of media challenge if we elect Ali and Carey Fuller. The party should be ready to see our leaders having to spend a lot of time debating their views on gender instead of the Climate Emergency.
Throughout the election the energy and the enthusiasm of the Climate Strikers has been invoked repeatedly. These young people are incredibly inspiring. But would Ali and Carey Fuller’s leadership factor in that this generation is the most inclusive generation yet? Are we ready to embrace a trans rights position that would drive most Climate Strikers away?
The most frustrating thing is that this leadership election has damaged many people’s faith in our party. Many members, supporters and LGBTIQA+ people have been alarmed to see transphobia so openly platformed. And this is by candidates who have repeatedly lost election to responsibility in the party. At the last leadership election Shahrar received only 17.5% of the vote against Jonathan Bartley and Siân Berry. At the London Assembly list selection Carey Fuller finished 15th out of 21 candidates.
Is it time that the Green Party realised that the bar to run for leadership is too low?
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Image credit: Torbakhopper – Creative Commons
Grey,
Have search on Twitter for Andy Healey & Aimee Challenor. That should fill in the gaps.
If saying “transwomen are free to mimic any sexualised social stereotype of their liking.” is “grossly offensive”, as opposed, say, being something some people find offensive to a degree, I wonder what language you would use to describe something said which was really grossly offensive? Diluting the language by hyperbole doesn’t help any debate. Is this a deliberate device for building a straw-man hate figure out of people who do no more than hold a different opinion?
Good article, Benali. I despair at the state of the ‘Gender Critical’ bubble. There’s some really good people in there who have been sucked in by the politics of fear.
I listen to things like this amazing interview with Lola Olufemi and my reaction is “I want to be on the same side as this women, helping her reach her goals — with a younger generation like this coming through, we might win one day.” I despair that there’s _anyone_ in my party (let alone an organised faction) who _doesn’t_ react like that, but instead has contorted themselves into the position of framing her as the enemy. Lola is not the enemy.
https://soundcloud.com/user-622675754/e094-the-surviving-society-alternative-to-womans-hour-lola-olufemi
If members of the GPEW think that supporting one of the most discriminated groups in our communities, people who are increasingly the targets of bigoted rhetoric and hate crimes is a ‘diversion’ from social justice and inequalities issues, I’m not sure what went wrong with their political education.
Hopefully, in the wake of this election the GPEW can follow the lead of the Scottish Green Party and leave the transphobia to UKIP.
It’s not exactly a shock. Transphobia has been a Green Party undercurrent and the reason that I left as no attempt was being made to curtail it. People’s rights to exist and have equality to others isn’t a debate and bigotry is still bigotry even if you hide behind “legitimate concerns’ or “think of the children’ or whatever look over there while I treat this minority like sh*t tactics are being used.
Even though I believe in the Party’s aims I shall not be rejoining until this is expunged. In order to do that, the Party needs to acknowledge and address it which it has singularly failed to do so far.
Thanks Benali. It needed to be said.
I happen to be a trans woman but I joined the party not to promote some imagined ‘trans ideology’ but because I care about climate action and social justice. I took it as read that I would be treated with respect in the party. And overwhelmingly I have been.
Sadly over the past year or two a small but obsessive ‘gender critical’ clique has been putting more effort into dehumanising trans people and making us feel unwelcome in the party than campaigning on actual Green policies. This is not the “nuanced debate” they claim to want. It is openly transphobic commentary in Green Party linked platforms and on social media. Every day. Just imagine if your identity, your self worth, your right to be part of the Green Party was constantly called into question?
And there is a cynical and calculated dishonesty to these tactics. Every attack on trans people’s identities or rights seems to be accompanied by claims (pace Liz Truss) that the author supports trans people’s inclusion.
Another example being a conference motion just been submitted, entitled
“Strengthening the rights of transgender, non-binary and agender people”.
Sounds really progressive and inclusive doesn’t it? What if I told you this was a motion to water down existing party policy recognising trans people’s identities? Do we agree that it’s OK that a motion, negatively impacting on a minority, can be submitted without any consultation with the relevant liberation group?
So please don’t allow the party to get hijacked by the zealots. That is the road to political oblivion. Don’t allow us to forget our values and lose our soul.
Trans people are just ordinary people trying to get on with our lives. We threaten no-one and we do not ask for special treatment. We have as much right as everyone else to be part of the Green Party.
Time for people to decide what sort of party they really want.
First sensible, more nuanced and constructive response I have read yet to this deliberately divisive article.
II am a deep green because I am passionate about the environment and global environmental justice. Why this consumerist identity politics is even an issue for people who are interested in green politics is beyond me. Many seem only loosely interested in the climate crisis and ecological extinction, the whole identity thing is their bag.
Wasting valuable energy and an ideally opportunity to promote the only environmental party we have in England.
Cover up ? The question is…why?
Brief apology as I do not seem to be able to amend my posting above.
The sentence on paragraph 6 should read:
Will the vast majority of our members pay attention to this rather pathetic ideological warfare? Probably not; but many women activists have been deeply hurt by the antics of the “Transgender Women as Women ” activists or TWAW – as referred to themselves amongst themselves – and are not about to go away now.
Well said! I have been a Green Party member for nearly 10 years, and am also in the LGBTQ+ community. I have always felt the party has the interest of lGBTQ+ folk more at their heart than any other party. From Caroline Lucus talking at Trans Pride in Brighton, to the comforting presence of the LGBTQI+ Greens at Pride. I have often looked on at Labour in smugness when transphobia and the so called ‘GC’ movement have caused tensions. I have shuddered at the Tories and other right-wing parties for their open transphobia. But to me The Greens, we are above that. we are the most inclusive, diverse, welcoming party.
So this year I have been dismayed at the rhetoric of Carey Fuller and Ali. I have had run in with both of them on Twitter and it is clear they have no intention to listening to other women, and LGBTQ+ women on the matter. I hope the elections put an end to this threat of transphobia in the party. Other candidates, but especially Rosi Sexton and Amelia Womack, are vocal allies. I am going to put my energy into that.
I know people will hurl abuse at me for even writing this, I am used to it. I get it every day, so please don’t waste your energy.
Well said Nicole.
Identity politics, gender ideology does not benefit girls and women, whose rights and needs seem to be considered expendable.
Many trans people do not support identity politics either, but some in the Green Party do not want to listen to them. ‘wrong sort of trans’
This article is spiteful inaccurate and misguided.
Unbelievable the Green Party has come to this.
This was very helpful at solidifying some ideas I’d been having, as well as being able to let me show some of my friends who had concerns around some of these behaviours being allowed to run so high up in the party.
From what I understand transphobia just isn’t allowed at all in Scottish Greens so it’s weird to see that it is still an issue up for debate in GPEW
anyway, thank you for the article I’ve shared!
Nicole, your comments nail the argument very well, for me. But, hey ho, you will doubtless be ridiculed for having made those comments by a noisy faction within the party, which faction most people fear criticising or making any observation about for fear they themselves branded, negatively.
Thank you Benali for this article.
In my experience as a transwoman living in rural Devon (not normally considered one of the most socially progressive parts of the country), I would say that the numbers of people I encounter in my day to day life who challenge the basic proposition that transwomen are women and transmen are men is minimal. It is therefore shocking to see from the responses to this article that the Green Party seems to have more than its fair share of transphobes.
I shall now be watching the leadership election with avid interest. I voted for a Green Party candidate in the 2018 council elections; whether I would do the same again may well be affected by the outcome.
I’m trans.
I’m also green, since the 80s.
However I cannot face joining the party due to the way Transphobia is openly tolerated.
So yes trans people are excluded.
So I keep outside of party politics and only do it when it might suit the green social democratic agenda then run.
Extinction rebellion has few terf. So that is where I’m putting my energy.
Doug hasn’t commented on this article Nicole so you should remove your reference to him. There a comment that says Douglas but that is not Doug Rouxel. Thanks
I’m struggling to see the point of this. Don’t human rights cover everybody? All these arguments over who hates who are just spreading more hate. Why prioritise labelling arguments over climate change and economic reform, etc?
Thank you for this article. Just watching this ‘debate’ in the party is exhausting. I can’t imagine what it is like for the trans community who have to experience this on a daily basis and to have people question who they are. The obsessive need to define gender ultimately serves no real purpose, except if it is being done to then deny the tran community their rights. I joined the GP because I thought it was the most progressive party in the country, and because wrapped up within that was the idea that we fought to give voice to the disenfranchised and discriminated, not to simply pile on further.
Fantastic article by Benali – the abuse he has received so far is sickening. We are a left wing , progressive and modern party.
I know a good handful of people externally who support/vote for us due to having the ‘best’ LGBTIQA+ policies and actions. We ridicule other parties for their islamophobia and anti-Semitism etc yet have rife transphobia within our own party. This is not an external country wide big issue or debate. Some want to derail the party, you will lose.
Emma. How would you like to be called a ” fucking shit biscuit”, “an incipient identinarian fascist “, “a heart man-haters and yet strangely obsessed with the penis “, and the obligatory TERF or trans-exclusionary radical feminist?
And all that vile abuse for what?
Because of a simple posting on my local party facebook where I put forward the proposition that the transgender ideology may not do anything to challenge our patriachal and socially constructed notion of feminity. In other words, I was asking the question: is the transgender movement as ” progressive” or ” radical” as it makes itself out to be?
The chain of abuse sparked off by my posting led and abaited by the then TWAW”s puppet master and party ” champion” Owain Sutton resulted in his submitting a formal complaint against me on the ground of breaches of the National Code of Conduct and bringing the party into disrepute. He has since been suspended from the party for 12 months, although it is not clear as yet if GPRC Appeal’s Committee has lifted his suspension…
Fortunately, Owain Sutton#s complaint form did not go to GPRC as I insisted that it be deal with where it had to be dealt with in the first place. And that was not by the Region, nor the DC or anywhere else. That was by my local party officers who were perfectly capable of carrying out their own investigation and running a proper and fair hearing. They carried out the investigation, interviewed me for 2 hours and dismissed accusations of transphobia and that I had not breached the National Code of Conduct.
I did get suspended as our local party facebook administrator for 3 months for not clearing the posting with the other administrator – which would have been a first in 10 years ! – and that was fair enough. The matter did not go any further, but something did break inside me.
Although no-one would ever have it guessed then may be – this was in early 2017- that this was the start of the dark ages invading our green space. The only reason I chose not to leave the GP then was because I was determined to see my mandate as elected Convenor to the Reform Conference Voting Working Group delivered.
Will we ever know how many green female activists have endured such horrible abuse and have kept quiet for fear of being dragged through our disciplinary procedure and sanctioned ?
Will we ever know how many women activists have chosen to leave the party quietly for fear of being see as disloyal to their sisters in Green Women’s Group or their local party?
Why has the Green Women’s Group kept all this stuff under wrap? What pressure have members of the committee been put under? or have they too succumb to intimidation from the TWAW’s trolls?
Have we learnt any lessons from the Veritas investigation into the Trans related Challenor pedophile family scandal with all its ramifications within GPEX governance and party finance ?
Probably not. So, where do we go from here?
I am doing all I can to get the vote out for Shahrar to become leader of the party with Andrea as his Deputy and someone with a solid pair of hands as GPEX chair. And if any one of the dozen of pro TWAW members who have gone for a full slate of candidates get elected, they’ve better do their jobs and not use their positions to keep on promoting their own agenda as they have already done in the course of the last 13 hustings !
Hopefully, we willthen be able to make a new start.
What about you? There are still 3 weeks to go to clean up our act. The climate crisis in upon us. There is no time for more internal wrangles about gender or sex issues. Labour in meltdown.It is not clear if Keir Starmer will get it back together again. With a strong leadership, focussing on our priorities and values of respect for each other and respect for freedom of speech the Green Party can become the new opposition to the Tories.
With two lovely grandchildren aged 8 and 5, I can’t wait.
Nicole I’m with you 100%
And Emmo, I can introduce you to a very great many left wing, progressive and modern gender critical people if you like. Although you might like to characterise them as “transphobes”, none of them are.
This horrendous issue is tearing apart progressive politics for one simple reason – the conduct of trans rights activists and allies is abominable. It is not “phobic” to have a different opinion. It is not “denying someone’s humanity” to defend a group’s rights, groups like women and lesbians. The assertion of trans rights on the basis that TWAW creates moral conflicts. That’s fine – moral conflicts can be resolved through negotiation and respect. But Trans activism treats all complexities as evidence of bigotry. This is the same mentality as the Inquisition.
But it seems to be the case now that straw men are men….
Agree 110% with this article. I am a fairly outspoken non binary person who felt bullied out of the party by enormous amounts of negativity around LGBTIQA rights, and constant social media trolling and pressure by feminism-appropriating radical transphobes. The party became enormously toxic about a year ago and has felt violently unsafe since due to a small group of very, very vocal bigots.
I have rejoined the party to vote for candidates who will support and protect our policy on trans/non binary people. I hope that the current situation where we have not one, but SEVERAL “gender critical” transphobes running for leadership is never repeated again.
For what it is worth, I am deeply, deeply disappointed in the direction that Shahrar Ali seems to be going in and I hope with all my heart that he is denied a position in the party leadership. I used to support him ardently but his current tack is horrifying.
This really needed saying. Anti-trans agitators and entryists threaten to divide our party. They make us look like regressive social conservatives in the eyes of our target voters.
The spectacle of Shahrar Ali lecturing Sian, Rosi and Amelia on “women’s rights”, and others calling them “handmaidens”, has appalled so many members and outside observers of this leadership contest.
“trans exclusionary”. Are some of the candidates in favour of excluding trans people from the party? Do any of them deny that there are trans people and that they should have human rights?
If not then we’d all do best to avoid the terms “trans exclusionary” and TERF.
Same with ‘trabsphobia’. Phobia is fear. Are some of us afraid of trans people?
Let’s discuss issues and avoid labelling.
> “trans exclusionary”. Are some of the candidates in favour of excluding trans people from the party?
Perhaps indirectly: if we have policies that make trans people (or indeed any other group) feel unwelcome, we’ll be indirectly excluding them from the party.
> Same with ‘trabsphobia’. Phobia is fear. Are some of us afraid of trans people?
My understanding (which may be mistaken) is that the words “transphobia” and “homophobia” originated from the “trans panic defence” and the “gay panic defence”. Someone was accused of attacking a gay person, and their defence was that they panicked because the person was gay.
I agree they’re not good descriptive terms. I think the terms “heteronormativity” and “cisnormativity” are more descriptive — the ideas that being straight or non-trans is “normal” and that everybody is or should be straight or non-trans; the idea that non-straight or trans people are lesser.
> Let’s discuss issues and avoid labelling.
I think labelling ideas and behaviours can be helpful when discussing them. I agree that labelling other people rarely achieves anything.
The problem David is that “there is no debate” to be be had. No discussing the issues. ” Is a transgender woman a woman? “Yes” or “NO” and one word reply allowed. That was the question asked to all the candidates at practically all 12 hustings.
Every one of them replied ” Yes”, except for Shahrar Ali , leadership candidate and Andrea Carey Fuller, candidate for the Deputy leader ‘s job who answered :” Yes, if gender “.
And for daring use two words, instead of one only, they got reprimanded by at least one of the hustings host that I happen to follow. So, we now have a situation where at least two candidates to the party’s leadership team are deemed to be transphobes.
Benali is right on the money. You can’t fight for climate justice without also fighting for social justice; both are bound together.
Have you not been suspended from the party because of the vile stuff you posted on mumset ? You and your mate Owain Sutton.
Not at all. I used to post on Mumsnet but have been banned for ages due to my trans inclusive views.
Why are you on mumsnet Richard/Rich/Dick/Dickie? Do you think mums have Dicks too which is why you joined? Or did you just want to abuse women?
This is a brutally honest article. We shouldn’t shy away from calling out transphobia when we see it. Transgender people should not have their gender identity or who they are questioned.
Thanks for this, Benali. Solid analysis with a thought-provoking suggestion to conclude. I am really worried about the view of womanhood being propagated by the trans exclusionary crowd. It would set women and LGBTQIA people back decades if widely accepted; all of feminism has been predicated on rejecting the proposal that our biology is our destiny (so go back to the kitchen and make babies, little lady). And if our party was seen as institutionally transphobic, yes, we would be a laughing stock. We need to do with the Scottish Greens have done on this. Take a firm stance in favour of trans rights and the reform of the GRA, and move on.
Rather the reverse actually. The current trans debate seems entirely predicated on the very, very stereotypical, sexist and reductionist notion that wanting to wear makeup and a dress and do ‘girl’ things is the thing that makes one a woman.
Unfortunately a small but very active group of WPUK members and other anti trans rights groups have made the Green party an unpleasant place to be for trans & intersex people.
It seems these anti human rights campaigners are trying to increase their dominance.
I suspect in the long run the majority of the membership will tire of this hateful rhetoric. Most will be more concerned about the environment than the contents of other people’s knickers. Just hope it turns around before the party reputation is damaged.
“anti human rights campaigners’!
Just the kind of sloppy and I’ll informed reasoning that we need to guard against if we are to be a credible political force.
Disagree with someone or oppose a group or organisation, but keep politics real, please.
Feminism means equality for all.
I’m so ashamed of the fraction of the party that care more about their divisive inability to include than the rights of their fellow persons.
Thank you for writing this piece.
That is your defintion of feminism. Here is a different one: the advocacy of women’s rights on the ground of the equality of the sexes. Put like that then the question becomes do transwomen belong to the biological sex group ‘women’ and therefore on a self-identity basis have access to women’s spaces that are currently protected by law. The TWAW argument attempts to sidestep this debate rather than allow women to debate. Women who question being called ‘cervix owners’ rather than women because it is supposedly trans exclusionary are not being allowed to speak without being called out as transphobic. Yet the agenda is misogynistic. 49% of women do not know they have a cervix. If cervix owners are told they need a smear rather than women being told they need a sphere then women – people with english as a second language, people with learning difficulties – may not get a timely smear. Why is this so difficult to understand. It is this craziness that is making many women question what is going on in the name of transrights. Many transgender people are also upset about this but as another contributer said they are not the right trans – they also get accused of transphobia. Hilarious if it wasn’t so sad – and such a mad distraction from the important issues of our time. Unfortunately the currently left has developed an authoritarian streak.
@Feminism means equality for all.”
Nope.
The more I read in these response the sillier it gets.
Can no-one in the party make a decent argument any more, or a well thought though rebuttal?
Name calling, ad hominens and slogans abound. Sharpen your intellect people for the climate and extinction debates ahead, don’t dumb the party down.
Thanks for this piece Benali. I’m really worried about how the LGBTIQA+ community is affected by these “debates” and how this is often being done almost in my name as a woman.
Churlish and lightweight article.
It persistently staggers me when, articles like this, fail to grasp that the issues are not mutually exclusive.
There is an entitled simplicity to this article. No nuance, all petulance.
Commenter has repeatedly put forward motions at conference for the purpose of removing trans people’s human rights.
How odd that, when a person takes a transphobe at face value, said transphobe shows absolutely no interest in prisons, swimming pool showers or other issues they claimed were of great concern.
Your lot are great at initially feigning concern, but the lack of sincerity soon reveals itself.
Mr Hamdache is correct in one aspect of his analysis: there *is* a raging fight on within GPEW between Trans Ideologists, including him and the current Trans Rights Trio of leaders, Sian, Jonathan and Amelia, versus the gender critical activists, who, thank God, are mounting a fightback against the takeover of GPEW by trans ideology, starting with the ghastly David and Aimee Challenor about five years ago that has led to this mess.
Let us look at some facts. Here is the londongreenleft blog of 22 July 2020 by Dee Searle, as great a stalwart as Beatrix Campbell until she too resigned over the trans ideology problem: https://londongreenleft.blogspot.com/2020/07/can-green-party-be-saved-from-its.html
Here is a quick edit of what she says.
“At an internal review of the 2019 snap General Election manifesto, it was revealed that genuinely radical climate mitigation policies developed by the party’s Climate Change Policy Working Group had been removed by a small group around the leadership team and Caroline Lucas’s office because they weren’t vote winners. … The [GE2019] manifesto was finalised by the group that had removed the climate policies. … and favoured commitments (such as transgender people being able to change their legal gender based on self-identification, which is not Green Party policy) and weaken inconvenient ones.
“The party has not published a full internal review of its 2019 General Election campaign, despite the fact that it spent far more than on any previous election (£409,475, according to the Electoral Commission) but was still way behind its best showing (2.7 per cent of the vote, compared with 3.6 per cent in 2015) and didn’t achieve its stated aim of winning a second seat.” Read more at https://londongreenleft.blogspot.com/2020/07/can-green-party-be-saved-from-its.html
All of the above can be laid at the door of the Trans Rights Trio of Jonathan and Sian and Amelia.
I wish to support leadership candidates based on their views on the climate crisis (and how as individuals they would represent the party on the political stage). Shahrar is standing up for women (better than Sian and Amelia) Andrea Carey Fuller is the only deputy candidate who answered my York hustings question, What is a woman (answer: adult human female).
I hope all readers on here will vote for http://www.electshahrar.co.uk as leader and vote for Andrea Carey Fuller as deputy.
Mr Spence is a raging hypocrite, who (under the name “Robbie S”, which he probably thought made him sound cooler) pretended to be interested in reconciling the interests of “gender critical” people and those who believe in human rights for everyone.
It turned out that, like the other terfs, he was not interested in genuine dialogue or understanding at all.
The dictionary definition of a “sister” is: “a girl or woman who has the same parents as another person”.
My sister doesn’t have the same parents as me. But I call her my sister and society accepts that she’s my sister. However no additional definition is provided by the Cambridge Dictionary that specifically details exactly what makes her my sister.
So Robbie, would you say that she isn’t my sister?
Aimee Challenor’s anti democratic shadow still weighs heavily in the quality of our discourse.
We need to expunge her low and antagonistic debating tactics from the way we interact.
Too many retorts on here just seek to attack the messenger and not engage with the message. Almost every interaction I had with Aimee Challenor and many with trans allies went that way too.
I support trans rights, who in the party wouldn’t. But not at the expense of the rights of other groups, how could anyone take a different stance?
You know you are a transphobe when you speak like Duda, President of Poland. “Trans ideologists” as if defending that trans people are people was a choice to make!
Really, you need to think about this:
– One side is defending what they think to be their opinions.
– The other side is defending their existence.
Do you really think this is a balanced debate to have?
Thank you for this. Such an important issue. I cannot believe how much of a stranglehold the trans-exclusionary lot have on the party.
There is no liberation until we are all free.
We need to stop regurgitating bogeyman lies about trans people (specifically trans women – nobody seems to have a problem with trans men) and move to a better future.
I think some transphobes deny trans men’s existence, and call them confused lesbians. Of course, this ignores the fact that trans people can be gay, straight, bi, pan, asexual, etc, just like cis folks. When this is pointed out, transphobes generally move on to a more “nuanced” view that they are confused non-gender conforming women. Cf JKR implying in her article she would have been “transed” because she was a tomboy.
“There is no liberation until we are all free.”
Eh? You are in the Green Party I hope, not some kind of existential guerrilla army. Let’s attack destructive global capital systems, not each other. There is work to be done, and not in the sandpit of identity politics.
One of the problems for Greens is that it is giving up science when it comes so saying trans women are women? What is the definition of woman? Whatever anyone wants it to be is the only logical answer if TWAW.
That does mean that climate science, and any policy that is based on it, can be rejected. If there is no definition of woman then how can there be a definition of climate? If the science of two sexes is to be rejected, the science of climate change is also to be rejected (dont bring intersex into it, they are one of the two sexes as they keep telling people who will actually listen).
If feelings are all that matter, then how can the greens argue against someone who says that their feelings about exploiting resources and people are valid because they want to make money.
Plus, and you might want to think about this, if you are seriously in the business of telling teenagers that their desire for same sex spaces is bigotry, I am not sure you are going to want votes at 16.
Well put. For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple and wrong. Both sides would do well to reflect on that. I empathise with women who I see endure a lifetime of challenges due to their gender. I also empathise with anyone who does not fit into the binary model. But it doesn’t make them something they are not. We should be committed to opposing discrimination and supporting people to be different. I don’t plan to become an expert on gender. I do recall how biologically complex the plight of the S African athlete was.
> One of the problems for Greens is that it is giving up science when it comes so saying trans women are women
I’ve heard this argument before — that saying trans women are women is anti-scientific — but I don’t understand it.
Science is the process of observing the world as it is, making models and hypotheses that describe the world, and testing the models’ accuracy against observations of the world. If a model doesn’t account for an unusual case, it’s a flawed model and can be improved.
“Trans women are women” is a statement about language, which implies certain definitions for the phrase “trans women” and the word “women”.
If we assume a definition of “women” that says all women have a womb (for example), then trans women indeed don’t fall into that category. So the statement “trans women are women” asserts that this definition of “women” is flawed.
We could say that women should define what “women” means. That seems appealing, but doesn’t work in practice: we’d need a definition of “women” in order to decide who *makes* the definition of “women”. (And if we *had* a definition of “women”, we wouldn’t need to make one!)
How could we observe a definition of a word or phrase scientifically? We could survey what people say they mean when they use these words. We could observe people’s usage of these words in daily life, and form a model for what makes them apply these words to certain people but not others.
If there is scientific research about this, it could show the most common definitions for these words. I’d be interested to read it.
> What is the definition of woman? Whatever anyone wants it to be is the only logical answer if TWAW.
There’s another logical answer: a person’s own gender is whatever they sincerely believe it is. Just like a person’s name — it’s a personal identity.
I’ve heard “woman” defined as “adult human female”, as an objectively-observable way to define “woman”. I haven’t heard an accompanying definition for “female”.
I genuinely haven’t heard a definition of biological sex that acknowledges the scientifically-observable variety in human bodies *and* arrives at 2 groups that we can meaningfully observe in the real world:
If we’re going by chromosomes, some people have neither XX nor XY, so there are more than 2 groups. If we’re going by gametes (sperm and eggs), some people produce neither type; so even though there are only 2 types of gametes, there are more than 2 types of people.
If a scientific model omits uncommon cases, it’s incomplete and can be improved upon.
By contrast, the definition of gender above (a person’s own gender is whatever they sincerely believe it is) is an accurate model of how I observe people behaving in the real world. There may be data I’m missing, but for now it’s the most accurate model I have to describe the world as it really is.
> That does mean that climate science, and any policy that is based on it, can be rejected.
I don’t see how that follows logically from self-definition of a person’s own identity. Climate science isn’t a personal identity; it’s an objectively observable phenomenon.
> If feelings are all that matter, then how can the greens argue against someone who says that their feelings about exploiting resources and people are valid because they want to make money.
I think that “If feelings are all that matter” is broader than the assertion I’m making. A person’s feelings are all that matter *about their own identity* specifically.
Another aspect to the discussion is that I don’t believe that measurements about people’s bodies should be important in how we treat people in society. Similarly, you can objectively measure a person’s eye colour and height, and assign categories, but I don’t believe those things are a fundamental part of who a person is, or that we should organise society around those things.
> if you are seriously in the business of telling teenagers that their desire for same sex spaces is bigotry
I think this is where sloppy language in the past has come back to bite us. As a society we haven’t always drawn a clear distinction between sex and gender, so these two things have been conflated.
When someone says that trans women should be excluded from a women-only space, people who are thinking of gender will hear that as denying trans women’s identity, which they’d call bigotry. Whereas the person making that suggestion was probably talking about sex.
Should we categorise people by sex or gender (or both or neither)? I’m not opposed to single-sex spaces in principle; but I think we should also have spaces restricted by gender not sex, for people who prefer to categorise themselves that way.
Are we sure teenagers want single-sex spaces, or do they want single-gender spaces?
Out of interest Douglas, my sister doesn’t match the dictionary definition of a sister. We don’t have the same parents. Is it therefore anti-scientific of me to call her my sister?
Very well put. This is exactly why this is a critical issue for the Green Party. Transwomen are transwomen. If you tell me that TWAW – even without medical intervention or with a beard and penis – and should have full access to womens sports, prisons, hospital wards and scholarships, then I will find it hard to believe that you are telling the truth on other issues. Or that you are serious about human rights. There is a conflict between some areas of trans rights and women’s rights. There was no conflict between gay rights and other groups. The conflict is what is different about this issue and why it should not be dismissed with lazy insults like ‘transphobia’.
The more I see of Ben the more I Shake my head. So many straw men here that he can build a straw house. By ignoring concerns of women he is being a misogynist. By claiming Andrea or Ali are against rights of trans people he is a truth twister. But keep on mansplaining.
But he’s correct. Signed, a cis woman.
How do you define a cis woman Kathy?
Are you talking to me? Or to someone named Kathy?
You’ve got one chance to reclaim tha party’s reputation – Ali and Fuller are about your only hope. https://www.coventrytelegraph.net/news/coventry-news/green-party-aimee-david-challenor-15677155
Oooh, guilt by association. Real classy, Katie. Why don’t you just join the Tories already?
Can someone explain this Challenor case to me?
I understand that David Challenor was convicted of horrific crimes, that he’s Aimee’s father, that he was her agent when she stood for election, and that Aimee is trans.
Clearly he should have been vetted more thoroughly, but I don’t understand how that relates to this article.
Is someone alleging that Aimee’s agent wasn’t vetted properly *because* she’s trans?
Hi Grey,
The Aimee issue is quite complex. It was not dealt with well at the time and not put to bed properly either. A lot of us are bitter (me plus) about how our concerns about the way she propagated and managed an anti democratic culture we had not encountered before in the party we sidelined.
Many elements of that, and its legacy are still with us today unfortunately. Happy to discuss further, including the anti trust ‘turf blocker’ and how she used that to control access to senior members of the party. Find me on Twitter if you want to follow-up.