For left-leaning women like us, this isn’t, and never has been, about trans people enjoying the rights of every other citizen, and being free to present and identify however they wish. This is about the right of women and girls to assert their boundaries. It’s about freedom of speech and observable truth. It’s about waiting, with dwindling hope, for the Left to wake up to the fact that its lazy embrace of a quasi-religious ideology is having calamitous consequences.
Two hours before I watched Starmer fail, yet again, to get off the fence he’s so reluctant to stop straddling, I met the woman who wrote what I think all contributors would agree is the most important chapter in The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht. It’s called A Hashtag is Born. The writer coined the phrase “women won’t wheesht”, which has now been taken up as a feminist battle cry in Scotland and beyond.
Labour Party leader Keir Starmer didn’t take kindly to Rowling’s legitimate criticisms, saying he’s ‘proud of’ Labour’s record on women’s rights. More from The Guardian:Keir Starmer has said he is proud of Labour’s history on women’s rights after JK Rowling said she would struggle to support the party because of its stance on transgender rights.
Starmer told reporters on Saturday that he was “very proud of the progress” of past Labour governments, which made a “material difference” to women’s lives. Writing in the Times on Saturday, Rowling, a former Labour member and donor, said she would struggle to vote for the party “as long as Labour remains dismissive and often offensive towards women fighting to retain their rights”. She said she had a “poor opinion” of Starmer’s character and claimed he was “dismissive and often offensive” of women’s concerns about sex-based rights.
Anyone who has followed or paid any attention to women’s rights knows Rowling is correct. Rowling wasted no time in taking Starmer apart:Labour giving the same energy as a man who’s been shagging a woman from work but thinks his wife should be cool about it because he’s always put the bins out.— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) June 23, 2024
BOOM. How can I be laughing when I’m so angry?— A Trip Up My Sleeve (@ATripUpMySleeve) June 23, 2024 Because it was brutally funny.
The bar for politics has seem to been set on that level well, everywhere to be honest.— Oscar Von Reuenthal (@OscarVReuenthal) June 23, 2024 No lies detected. Labour will not protect women; they are captured by ideology still. You can bet your last quid on that— Richard (@RedWallPleb) June 23, 2024 We agree. They’ve made it very obvious.
There ain’t a politician or political party out there that doesn’t want to be loved and admired for their good deeds.— Gordon K (@GordonKNews) June 23, 2024
We don’t hate journos enough: New York Magazine celebrates Aaron Bushnell as ‘Antiwar Martyr’— Grateful Calvin (@GratefulCalvin) June 23, 2024