General Election 2019

[phart]

2 minutes ago, Orraloon said:

It's a dirty job but somebody's  got to do it.

Anyway, I don't have time to sit around discussing pronouns. Somebody has got to help get the vote out. I've got a couple of hundred postal votes to fill out before I can go to the pub. 

Vote early, vote often, folks. 

Vote Green

[ThistleWhistle]

19 minutes ago, phart said:

Exactly it's all pathos. A lot of woman see this culture as another way for men to enslave women. As i said Lesbians are being pushed into having relationships with people who identify as female but have had no surgery whatsoever or they are "terfs". Go onto reddit or other sites where they have female gay communities read their stories.

This issue is going to blow up. I guess it'll just be another thread that has to be bumped as a told you so.

He tweeted a few weeks back that his social circle was lesbians and that the reason he feels so strongly about it is they're being vilified for not accepting lesbian dick.  Bizarre times that I write that sentence and it makes sense.  

[Orraloon]

5 minutes ago, phart said:

Vote Green

Couldn't even if I wanted to.

[Orraloon]

1 minute ago, ThistleWhistle said:

He tweeted a few weeks back that his social circle was lesbians and that the reason he feels so strongly about it is they're being vilified for not accepting lesbian dick.  Bizarre times that I write that sentence and it makes sense.  

Once upon a time you could have made a funny story out of that.

[aaid]

11 minutes ago, phart said:

Vote Green

I just did

[phart]

5 minutes ago, ThistleWhistle said:

He tweeted a few weeks back that his social circle was lesbians and that the reason he feels so strongly about it is they're being vilified for not accepting lesbian dick.  Bizarre times that I write that sentence and it makes sense.  

Who is "he" in the story? Wings?

I was browing reddit a month back and eventually i got to a thread all about this problem and it had hundreds of replies with gay woman basically going, thank fuck someone has written this, I was thinking i was going mad or being a horrible person for not doing this. Straight up being gaslit into doing it.

That prompted a deep dive and it was a fucking eye opener i tell you.

[ThistleWhistle]

3 minutes ago, phart said:

Who is "he" in the story? Wings?

I was browing reddit a month back and eventually i got to a thread all about this problem and it had hundreds of replies with gay woman basically going, thank fuck someone has written this, I was thinking i was going mad or being a horrible person for not doing this. Straight up being gaslit into doing it.

That prompted a deep dive and it was a fucking eye opener i tell you.

 

Yeah by 'him' I mean Wings.  There was a big 26/27 long Tweet thread he did about it one weekend on why it was so important to him.  

I'm the same mate - I honestly couldn't have given much of a toss about it up to a month ago and now it has got me a bit freaked to be honest.

 

[phart]

Man Alyn Smith's partner has made enough tweets about "Jews" in the perjorative that you could translate them into German and pass them off as Himmlers diaries. No wonder he made it private. He'll wish he made it private sooner.

So great here comes a huge culture war that's been bubbling under the surface running simultaenously as a General Election.

It's mad i think the worst thing that could come out of my writings would be me wishing vioence on Tony Blair. Which isn't a great look of course and the other thing when i was younger blaming the doctrine of the catholic church for the rate of AIDS spreading in Africa, cause of their theological stance on protected sex.

[phart]

3 minutes ago, ThistleWhistle said:

 

Yeah by 'him' I mean Wings.  There was a big 26/27 long Tweet thread he did about it one weekend on why it was so important to him.  

I'm the same mate - I honestly couldn't have given much of a toss about it up to a month ago and now it has got me a bit freaked to be honest.

 

Without the net no one would be hearing about this, would be just something someone would write a book about 30 years later.

That's why i'm saying some woman view the movement as just abusive men encroaching in their space and trying to control them, like they've always experienced.

The folk who clearly have Alyn Smith's ear judging by their tweets are nasty nasty individuals.

[Alibi]

This GRA issue seems to be causing major ructions in the SNP, (and I think also in other parties).  From what I have gleaned from posts that appear on twitter, a lot of these folk (someone dubbed them Woko Haram) are a bunch of extremely nasty self-obsessed weirdos who have endeavoured to get themselves appointed to various positions & committees within the SNP, including the conduct committee.  The targetting of MPs or MSPs who object to their trans doctrine seems to be behind the summary deselection of Neil Hanvey for some pretty inconsequential re-tweeting - not even as serious as the sort of thing that the Tories would deal with by pretending to have sent someone on a diversity course.  Joan Mcalpine and Joanna Cherry appear to be targets too with threats to have them ousted - and on that one I may actually be able to have my say as Joan is an MSP in my area.

The question to be asked is "why now"?  Who are these people and why have they suddenly become active within the SNP?  I suspect the answer will turn out to be, as so often, "Follow the money", but who knows?  They clearly don't have independence as their primary aim, and for the tweets they have been posting, it is obvious they should be expelled from the SNP (those who are actually members that is).  Alyn Smyth's partner comes across as a particularly nasty wee nyaff, and you have to ask why Smyth doesn't see a problem with that.

I have said for many years that we are in a war of independence, and it won't be fought cleanly.  I reckon the Woke squad are frauds put in place to harm the SNP and that is the real reason why they are eating away at the party from the inside.  At the moment, I don't think that big a percentage of the public or the membership are even aware they exist, but they need to be dealt with asap. Doesn't help when some at the top of the SNP are fully supportive of them.

[phart]

Aye but this is actually all pish and folk are making more of it than it actually is.....

 

Woman getting gaslit into sexual encounters they don't want to be in. Racists getting inside scoops on government based on who they're shagging.

 

Ack just a bit of horseplay...

 

EDIT: Sorry that's me being patronising again.

 

Brush Brush don't you know their is an election...

 

Edited December 6, 2019 by phart

[ParisInAKilt]

11 minutes ago, Alibi said:

This GRA issue seems to be causing major ructions in the SNP, (and I think also in other parties).  From what I have gleaned from posts that appear on twitter, a lot of these folk (someone dubbed them Woko Haram) are a bunch of extremely nasty self-obsessed weirdos who have endeavoured to get themselves appointed to various positions & committees within the SNP, including the conduct committee.  The targetting of MPs or MSPs who object to their trans doctrine seems to be behind the summary deselection of Neil Hanvey for some pretty inconsequential re-tweeting - not even as serious as the sort of thing that the Tories would deal with by pretending to have sent someone on a diversity course.  Joan Mcalpine and Joanna Cherry appear to be targets too with threats to have them ousted - and on that one I may actually be able to have my say as Joan is an MSP in my area.

The question to be asked is "why now"?  Who are these people and why have they suddenly become active within the SNP?  I suspect the answer will turn out to be, as so often, "Follow the money", but who knows?  They clearly don't have independence as their primary aim, and for the tweets they have been posting, it is obvious they should be expelled from the SNP (those who are actually members that is).  Alyn Smyth's partner comes across as a particularly nasty wee nyaff, and you have to ask why Smyth doesn't see a problem with that.

I have said for many years that we are in a war of independence, and it won't be fought cleanly.  I reckon the Woke squad are frauds put in place to harm the SNP and that is the real reason why they are eating away at the party from the inside.  At the moment, I don't think that big a percentage of the public or the membership are even aware they exist, but they need to be dealt with asap. Doesn't help when some at the top of the SNP are fully supportive of them.

I think it’s simply the SNP allowing folk within the party who value “social justice” higher than independence to have greater influence than what’s necessary. 
Sturgeon is either naive or complicit. 

[weekevie04]

3 hours ago, hampden_loon2878 said:

Take 2-3% away from the tories as 

the brexit party nor ukip have been polled, 

How's things looking up your way, Loon?

I know 4 people in Angus who are voting/voted SNP. 2 are Yes/SNP voters but for whatever reason didn't vote in 2017 ; one was a Labour voter and the last one recently moved from Monifieth to outside Arbroath.

If the SNP can GOTV and even poll 45% on the day (some tactical voting from Labour, Libs, Greens) and apathy with Tories drops them down to 25% or so ; I think most of those former SNP heartland seats would go back.

The Labour vote now SNP - didn't have much interest in politics, and I think he's a soft Yes for indy - but he never really noticed how bad Labour poll in Angus that he's decided to vote SNP to keep the Tories out.

Not long now, and we'll see soon.

 

[ThistleWhistle]

51 minutes ago, phart said:

Without the net no one would be hearing about this, would be just something someone would write a book about 30 years later.

That's why i'm saying some woman view the movement as just abusive men encroaching in their space and trying to control them, like they've always experienced.

The folk who clearly have Alyn Smith's ear judging by their tweets are nasty nasty individuals.

One of them appears to be his boyfriend who has tweeted racist, misogynist and anti-Semite content (either his pubes or haircut is referenced to being like a Jews in 1943)  but he remains unscathed thus far.  

[aaid]

There's a fundamental conundrum at the heart of the proposed GRA reform.

Unless you have some sort of problem with transgender people, I doubt you feel that they shouldn't have the right to live in their transitioned identity free from discrimination and with the protection of the law.

 At the heart of this is the process of acquiring a gender reassignment certificate and there's good reasons why that should be simplified, the process in itself could be considered discriminatory.

However, Self-ID with no checks, enables certain men to abuse that process in order to gain access to women in ways that they would not normally have and seemingly with the protection of the law.  The Yaniv case in Canada is a perfect example of this and it should be noted that she lost that case.

If you start to put checks into the GR process then are you making the process too onorous for genuine cases in order to stop fraudulent ones?

To be clear, this isn't about trans-women being a threat to women, it's about predatory men being a threat to women.

The problem with the way this debate has become polarised then if you put come down on the "there should be checks to protect women" side of that argument, then you're a transphobic bigot who wants to roll back people's rights.   On the contrary if you come down on the side of "what someone says they are should be respected regardless" then you're someone who wants to see women raped and murdered.   No doubt there are people on either side of that argument to whom those descriptions could accurately be applied but I doubt that's true for the majority.

Even pointing out the conundrum is probably enough to get you shot down in flames by both sides.

I've no idea what the answer is but in this climate it's impossible to have a reasoned debate and to come to get to that answer. 

[ThistleWhistle]

1 hour ago, aaid said:

There's a fundamental conundrum at the heart of the proposed GRA reform.

Unless you have some sort of problem with transgender people, I doubt you feel that they shouldn't have the right to live in their transitioned identity free from discrimination and with the protection of the law.

 At the heart of this is the process of acquiring a gender reassignment certificate and there's good reasons why that should be simplified, the process in itself could be considered discriminatory.

However, Self-ID with no checks, enables certain men to abuse that process in order to gain access to women in ways that they would not normally have and seemingly with the protection of the law.  The Yaniv case in Canada is a perfect example of this and it should be noted that she lost that case.

If you start to put checks into the GR process then are you making the process too onorous for genuine cases in order to stop fraudulent ones?

To be clear, this isn't about trans-women being a threat to women, it's about predatory men being a threat to women.

The problem with the way this debate has become polarised then if you put come down on the "there should be checks to protect women" side of that argument, then you're a transphobic bigot who wants to roll back people's rights.   On the contrary if you come down on the side of "what someone says they are should be respected regardless" then you're someone who wants to see women raped and murdered.   No doubt there are people on either side of that argument to whom those descriptions could accurately be applied but I doubt that's true for the majority.

Even pointing out the conundrum is probably enough to get you shot down in flames by both sides.

I've no idea what the answer is but in this climate it's impossible to have a reasoned debate and to come to get to that answer. 

Genuinely interested - could you expand on this please?  

[ParisInAKilt]

Yaniv is a bloke, to pretend otherwise isn’t helping anyone 

[ThistleWhistle]

Appreciate some folk don’t think this should be on the politics thread but Jo Swinson is all for self-id which is unsurprising as apparently the owners of Spire Health, along with Ferring Pharmaceuticals, have donated £280k and £100k respectively as disclosed on the electoral commission.  The former has 330 consultants offering feminine features reconstruction and the later supplies puberty blockers. 

 

Woolly estimates are only 0.6% of the population, c.200,000 – c.500,000 are trans so seems a heady investment to be pushing for better access to such a niche market via a niche party.  Within this estimate 50,000 are certified as having changed gender with the remaining self-id’ing.   The bit I struggle with is sexuality when considering there is a study of US self-identifying women where over 70% are attracted to women, with the majority purely attracted to women, whilst less than 20% liked purely the boaby.  Genuine question – is there any reason why the number of men who see themselves as female have a sexual preference way out of kilter with rest of the population given 6% of the population being homosexual?  Interestingly women who identify as men are predominantly attracted to women with less than the 6% attracted purely to men.

 

The self-id’ing thing is creating a can of worms in the prison system as there are c.120 men identifying as female in the female prison system with half of those in for sexual crimes.  However, the women inside can at least take some comfort in that only half of those might be interested in them because unfortunately the other half were committed against kids.     

 

The self-id’ing thing creates a massive can of worms in terms of kids too.  Have a look on Youtube for the Aimee Challenor case – the daughter, previously son, of a convicted paedophile who abused a 10 year old locked in their loft for weeks in a two up two down terrace house was a prominent activist in the Greens, and then Lib Dems, with seemingly little look into their background.  It seems from the video she was barely in a fit state mentally to look after herself but was only chucked out eventually when her boyfriend’s tweets of unspeakable acts he wanted to commit on kids were dug out.  However, the worst part of this story is that she was involved in a group setting up child protection guidelines that not only ended up allowing self-id’ing boys to join girl only trips, and not only allowed self-id’ing males as females to join these trips as guardians, but it also forbid organisers of notifying parents of any of this.   I mean some serious red fucking flags should be flying about the place here but only came to light when someone quit in order to blow the whistle. 

 

However, this is potentially a single case the failing of corporate governance rather than something to be wholly concerned about as particularly widespread.  It was also in England so I am not sure how this would work out here but on the noises coming out from women’s groups it doesn’t sound like they’re concerns have been taken on-board for what we’re looking to implement.  We’ll all see when the paper is published between the general election and the new year so sure the populace will be keeping their eyes peeled for this over Christmas! 

 

Interestingly, there is an interview with this lovely Leeze Lawrence person discussing trans issues in schools with Michael Russell I think whilst he was education secretary (just Google both names).  Now I have no issue at all with the principal, I found it easy to explain to a 4 year old why our neighbour had two mums as an example, but the concern stems when you start seeing what charities like Mermaid have been accused of along with Stonewall seeming to have quite a powerful voice.  From emails leaked earlier this year Mermaids were accused of cult like behaviour and seemingly actively trying to identify potential trans kids so they can get them eventually transitioning before suffering depression during their teens.  As such, kids are too young and immature to stain their body with a tattoo or damage it by smoking or drinking but could potentially be identified for puberty blocking if they ironically show reversed gender stereotype.  If this happens then that niche market just got a whole lot bigger. 

 

I have no issue with genuine cases whatsoever, or my daughter being taught about it, but how can there be controls in place to avoid self-id’ing taking the piss or worse?   Potentially we’re looking at legislation in place that if my wife and daughter find themselves in a public toilet face to face with someone with bollocks, beard and ballerina dress they’ll likely be in the wrong if they complain.  It does seem a bit batshit mental that we're risking the safe spaces set up to protect 50% of the population to avoid hurting the feelings of those self id'ing.   

 

[aaid]

57 minutes ago, ThistleWhistle said:

Genuinely interested - could you expand on this please?  

The process is that you have to apply to a panel and provide evidence that supports the following:

• a diagnosis of gender dysphoria and/or gender reassignment surgery
• proof that you've lived in the acquired tender for at least two years
• a declaration that you intend to live in that acquired gender for the rest of your life

i think the proposal for self-ID is to get rid of the first one and to reduce the time required on the second one.  

The argument for dispensing with the first one is that you have to submit to a process of psychiatric evaluation in order to get that diagnosis and feedback from people who've gone through that is that they've found that to be intrusive, from others that it's put them off even applying. 

The discriminatory aspect might seem trite but essentially my birth certificate says male on it, no-one asks to see my birth certificate when I go to the toilet and I don't have to have a psychiatrist prove I'm a male. 

 

[ThistleWhistle]

22 minutes ago, aaid said:

The process is that you have to apply to a panel and provide evidence that supports the following:

• a diagnosis of gender dysphoria and/or gender reassignment surgery
• proof that you've lived in the acquired tender for at least two years
• a declaration that you intend to live in that acquired gender for the rest of your life

i think the proposal for self-ID is to get rid of the first one and to reduce the time required on the second one.  

The argument for dispensing with the first one is that you have to submit to a process of psychiatric evaluation in order to get that diagnosis and feedback from people who've gone through that is that they've found that to be intrusive, from others that it's put them off even applying. 

The discriminatory aspect might seem trite but essentially my birth certificate says male on it, no-one asks to see my birth certificate when I go to the toilet and I don't have to have a psychiatrist prove I'm a male. 

 

Cheers for that and got be honest on the face of it that looks a really terrible idea but if you could direct me in the direction of anything that explains further would be obliged.  I get what you’re saying around your birth certificate but you are not trying to get in somewhere that societally has been deemed off limits. 

 

Appreciate it may be difficult and upsetting for someone to have to go through that process in order to gain access to somewhere they naturally believe they should have access to automatically but for a twist of fate although surely there needs to be some sort of diagnosis within that before its confirmed acceptable. 

 

If they remove stage one is it going to be enough to have lived as a woman for a year and promise to live as a women for the rest of your life to be certified as one?  That seems susceptible to all sorts of misuse - does there have to be a commitment to have gender altering treatment or could they even just stay in a male body?

 

This is an absolute minefield and as you say is difficult to see a middle ground at all at the moment.   

[aaid]

12 minutes ago, ThistleWhistle said:

Cheers for that and got be honest on the face of it that looks a really terrible idea but if you could direct me in the direction of anything that explains further would be obliged.  I get what you’re saying around your birth certificate but you are not trying to get in somewhere that societally has been deemed off limits. 

Appreciate it may be difficult and upsetting for someone to have to go through that process in order to gain access to somewhere they naturally believe they should have access to automatically but for a twist of fate although surely there needs to be some sort of diagnosis within that before its confirmed acceptable. 

If they remove stage one is it going to be enough to have lived as a woman for a year and promise to live as a women for the rest of your life to be certified as one?  That seems susceptible to all sorts of misuse - does there have to be a commitment to have gender altering treatment or could they even just stay in a male body?

This is an absolute minefield and as you say is difficult to see a middle ground at all at the moment.   

There's a lot of stuff online, probably best to do your own research rather than to be pointed by anyone on this.

[Orraloon]

The world is turning into a right weird place right enough. Most folk that I know (women and men) are quite happy to go for a pish at the back of a bush. Going for a shyte at the back of a bush isn't quite so appealing but if needs must, you've just got to go for it.

[thplinth]

It is obviously a real wedge issue. Which begs the question why wade into it while putting things like say... independence on the backest of back burners. Again it all comes back to the garbage strategy the snp are these days. They are not interested in winning it. They have become like labor were. Careerist cowards.

[dipped flake]

On 12/5/2019 at 11:33 AM, aaid said:

That's not what it says.   What is says is this, which is a different thing altogether.
 

So 

"Israel's treatment of the Palestinians is inhumane" is an acceptable criticism, "The Jews treatment of the Palestinians is inhumane" is unacceptable.
 

Thanks. So how is saying Israel is acting like Nazis anti semitic??

[aaid]

2 minutes ago, dipped flake said:

Thanks. So how is saying Israel is acting like Nazis anti semitic??

Because that's what the definition of antisemitism says.