That Starmer fella...

Just to say - I did read a lot of it and didn't feel particularly enlightened. Don't really want to write a longer response to it now, but the blog post/email that says "Don't worry transpeople, I'm perfectly nice to you in person! It's just the structural stuff I'm against." is illustrative. Quite a lot is responding to personal attacks or professional/academic issues, which makes it feel self-referential, but fair enough on a personal blog.

I realise I didn't respond to this. I think her take on it has, at least for me, clarified just how extensive and impactful some of the "structural stuff" is. Her contribution to this Guardian podcast (part 1 here) is interesting inasmuch as it lays out that legal recognition of gender reassignment is not the issue, but the subsequent emphasis on the primacy of (by-definition-personal and untestable) gender identity potentially restructures our concepts of categories and rights across the whole of society. That can't really be hand-waved away as some people do in this debate. She's also very forthright on what she thinks it means for the safeguarding of women. I, like many here, don't feel comfortable espousing or opposing any particular view on that aspect though. She's also just released a book that, predictably, is reviewed in all the wrong places, but here's an overview from the ES. I'll be looking out for a rebuttal (since I'm unlikely to bother to go and read the book itself).