Women's Equality Party

[EmpressOfTheVulvaCupcakes]

Just wondering really.... do they genuinely not give a fuck that an increasing proportion of Mumsnetters think they're pretty useless?

First they support Tara Hudson & when we express concern we get Sophie Walker's vague platitudes about anyone being able to be a woman. Now there's the question of their dads on maternity wards policy, which is apparently badly thought through and doesn't take the needs of women into account (again).

Do they really think that a post from Sandi Toksvig and a few straplines and platitudes are enough to get MNers on side? If so, they apparently have no respect for women at all.

I'd really, really love to be proved wrong on this.

[VestalVirgin]

Just wondering really.... do they genuinely not give a fuck that an increasing proportion of Mumsnetters think they're pretty useless?

We are just women. We don't count.

[PassiveAgressiveQueen]

i have seen many threads where women were begging for their partners to be able to stay on the ward with them. I would have loved mine to be able to stay.
When you are feeling very delicate and alone and wanting your rock person you aren't really thinking "oh but that person over there, behind the curtain, that i can't see might be upset"

They are onto a loser with that one which everway they go.

[ladyblablah]

I helped start one of the local groups.

I've politely stepped back. It just all seemed to be a bit shit really.

[FreshwaterSelkie]

Well, I got my membership card today and I was pretty pleased. Do mumsnetters think they're shit? I haven't picked up on that. What is it that is making them shit?

They just did a massive fundraiser for funding to be able to field candidates in the next elections, and I believe they got to target in less than a week. I donated. Isn't that a good sign of a groundswell of support?

I don't have a dog in the post-natal care/partners on wards fight, I'm agnostic on that, and it seems like a small part of the whole from my perspective.

On the downside I have volunteered for whatever they need me for and I haven't heard back. I've chosen to believe it's because they're popular beyond their wildest dreams and are overwhelmed with support...

[Wickedlittlehigh]

I would have loved my DP to have stayed with me in the maternity wards...he was looking after my other children at the time so no can do!

And you know what? I coped! The midwives were brilliant (I got a very special hug afterwards from them that I will never forget) and my son and I lived.

Now that I have read these threads...I am SO glad he didn't get to stay. Having men on natal wards is a SHITE idea. Soon many men are disgusting and rotten to the absolute core, so for women who have just given birth to be expected to be exposed to them is a JOKE!!! An absolute JOKE!!t

[almondpudding]

I actually don't understand how a party called the women's equality party can have a policy on dad's rights but have no policy on any aspect of women's reproductive health.

Why have they got no policy on care during childbirth, or on miscarriage?

[almondpudding]

'you are feeling very delicate and alone and wanting your rock person you aren't really thinking "oh but that person over there, behind the curtain, that i can't see might be upset"'

And that is kind of the problem with partners on the ward isn't it. They will be thinking, oh my partner is feeling very delicate and I must get the attention of the midwives for my partner, because I am their rock, and I'm not really thinking about if the woman alone on the other side of the curtain is really unwell and should be prioritised over my wife/girlfriend.

If it were my DD who had just given birth, and I were the birthing partner, I could not be trusted not to go to all manner of lengths to get the best possible care for dd, at the expense of other women on a shared ward.

And I'm not a violent person with a history of DV.

[ArcheryAnnie]

I was on a nightingale ward with 20 beds. The nurses were absolutely useless and I was effectively alone. I had to wash DS's bum using the water from my water jug as my legs weren't working after a difficult C-section and I couldn't get to any other supplies. I would have loved someone with me to help as it was awful. However, since it would have meant being at my most vulnerable and sharing a room with 19 other men as well as DS's dad, I am glad I wasn't given the opportunity.

[ArcheryAnnie]

I do wonder, though, if a lot of the difficulties about WEP that have been raised on MN, but which don't seem to be taken seriously by WEP, are ones of class? WEP seem very ....naice. They aren't ever going to go to prison themselves, so they can afford to be all generous about male-bodied people going into women's prisons, and if they are on a ward with 20 beds, then can get their doula to arrange for a private side room, and so on.

I might be wrong but it's one possible explanation.

[almondpudding]

I've wondered that Annie.

With a few people talking about the prison issue, their response to how they'd feel about sharing a cell with a male is that they're not going to end up in prison.

The same with refuges. Wealthier women often have other options.

[Shutthatdoor]

Just wondering really.... do they genuinely not give a fuck that an increasing proportion of Mumsnetters think they're pretty useless?

Mumsnetters aren't all women in the country

[QueenLaBeefah]

I think the naice thing is their biggest problem. That and naivety.

[HamaTime]

We are just women. We don't count.

'Scuse me, Vestal, but I am not 'just' a woman . I also identify as a woman

The worst thing about the maternity policy is not the horror of making women share hospital bays with men at the most vulnerable time in their lives (ok, it is) but that their entire maternity policy is based around the rights of men.

The maternity thread was tweeted to them. They ignored it.

[HamaTime]

And they don't even say 'Maternity care is so inadequate that women should be allowed to have a DP to help'. It's all about prioritising men over postpartum women. That's their maternity policy

[OneMoreCasualty]

Me three, Annie.

[ShortcutButton]

It would be awful to have maternity wards full of other people's men

Where did they get that idea???

[LauraMipsum]

I think part of the problem is that people are too quick, and too willing, to jettison an entire body of women's rights workers because the party / the group / the conference / the Facebook group / whatever isn't EXACTLY to their specifications.

You want a women's party run to your spec, you start one. I have a huge amount of respect and time for those who are working (for free!) for the WEP. And I predicted at the outset that the first people to ditch them would be feminists, for failing to meet an impossible standard or failing to play the exact tune of the invisible conductors of the internet.

I don't agree with WEP on everything, but I'm bloody glad they exist and I'd rather vote for them than anyone else. (I don't agree with any other party on everything else either - but it's only WEP who are apparently expected to perform all things to all women.)

There is no way in hell that I'm going to turn my nose up at the ONLY party who are actively campaigning for an end to violence against women on the basis that I'm not in 100% agreement with one of their other policies.

[almondpudding]

It is not an impossible standard to have a set of policies on women's reproductive health if you are a women's equality party.

It is the core rights for women.

They do not have policies on these issues.

I find it hard to believe.

[almondpudding]

I'm also sick of people treating women's boundaries like they are no big deal.

It is a massive deal to me that some bunch of, quite frankly, idiots think I should have to be vulnerable, in positions of partial nudity and dealing with gynaecological issues a couple of feet from some random guy who does not need to be there.

[almondpudding]

I am also not glad they exist. There's no chance of them getting in to power, but they have said they want other parties to steal their policies.

So effectively they are a pressure group, but a spectacularly badly informed one.

If parties need a policy on VAW or indeed anything else, they should go directly to charities and organisations that are experts in that area, not WEP.

[TheXxed]

I gave birth at Kings college hospital and they did allow men on the ward and it was horrific. A man opened my curtain to ask the midwife to see his girlfriend. I was bleeding not wearing any underwear and bfing my DS. They kept clogging the toilets, they ate all the breakfast food meant for the mothers and I felt to humiliated to get up and move around.

[PunkrockerGirl]

Well said, almond
The fact that they think that men being allowed to stay overnight on maternity wards is acceptable, or what the majority of women want, just goes to show how spectacularly ill-informed and naive they are.

[ShortcutButton]

theXxed

[HamaTime]

I'm not glad they exist either. I don't think it's an impossibly high standard for a party with 'Womens' in the title to have a maternity policy that focuses on women rather than men, to not campaign to open up women's safe spaces to anyone who 'lives as a woman' without being able to define what 'lives as a woman' actually means and to not deny women the right to be defined by our own biology.