WEP statement from Sophie Walker

I sincerely hope any gc mners attending the conference will be packing 100s of stickers......

I’ve never met any extreme porn (or any kind of porn) advocates at any of the WEP events, campaigns etc I’ve been to. Quite the opposite. Who are these extreme porn advocates you’re meaning please?

Nice name, jeebus.

apologised to Heather Brunskell Evans for their behaviour.

Yeah, that public apology is a long time coming.

Given where all the other parties are atm... what if we all joined and took it over? Presumably SW isn’t Leader For Life.

(I’m joking. But only just.)

I'd join them in a heartbeat if they reined in the extreme porn advocates and apologised to Heather Brunskell Evans for their behaviour. Some of their policies are great and the debates are really interesting.

But they are going to have to be brave and start standing up for the needs of women rather than quivering in the face of those working to remove rights from women and children.

I think people are bemused that the gov't allowed the legal fiction of a trans woman, to be able to be called a woman. It is totally non sensical. We have to be able to honestly differentiate between the two. I don't understand why trans people 'celebrate' being trans yet don't want to be known as trans? Honesty is the only way out of this mess.

Just been catching up on Twitter and see Lily Madigan complaining about this. The usual no debate stuff. Very pleased to see the official WEP Twitter roundly shutting the accusations down and standing by democracy.

They really managed to fuck up the possibility of a women's political Party, just at the moment we really, really could use one, didn't they?

Sophie Walker will be effective in her coterie of privileged women and develop a fabulous speaking career from this.

It may cross her mind that she's achieved little for non-privileged women and, at some point in the future, she might be troubled that it seems as if she's thrown women's rights under the bus she might comfort herself that she will prove to have been on the right side of history.

I doubt any consequences for women will turn her from her chosen career trajectory.

Should I be warming to Sophie? Is she finally starting to stand up for women? Or is she just politically astute enough to realise we’re now fast approaching a tipping point and that women who have supported this are about to be thrown under a bus by right wing men to enable them to seize power?

Meanwhile, on Twitter:

Sophie has just replied to a tweet from Lily Madigan.

Lily accuses Sophie of 'debating' the rights of full representation for Trans-Women, as women, and over-asserting the rights of cis-women.

Sophie has sub-tweeted Lily's tweet, and replied that the debate is not to silence the reality of Trans-women but to discuss and represent women's reality in all it's rich diversity.

Women are replying to Sophie that they can't see Lily's tweet because - of course - they're blocked.

Honestly.

What a mess.

And meanwhile, the Green Party looks like an illegal dog fight.

I would love for WEP to sort the problem out but I think they lost the battle before they even knew it existed.

It is a mark of the dire state of politics for women today that I'm even willing to hear Sophie out on this.

I'm that desperate.

Thought that was really interesting, BoF.

"Sartre observed that whatever we perceive, including other people, is rendered as an ‘object’ to our gaze and is defined by us. De Beauvoir takes up this idea and applies it to men’s perception of women. The very concept of ‘woman’, de Beauvoir argues, is a male concept: woman is always ‘other’ because the male is the ‘seer’: he is the subject and she the object – the meaning of what it is to be a woman is given by men".

...

"De Beauvoir argues that as a girl’s bodily development occurs, each new stage is experienced as traumatic and demarcates her more and more sharply from the opposite sex. As the girl ’s body matures, society reacts in an increasingly hostile and threatening manner. De Beauvoir talks about the process of ‘becoming flesh’, which is the process whereby one comes to experience oneself as a sexual, bodily being exposed to another ’s gaze. This does not have to be a bad thing; but unfortunately, young girls are often forced to become flesh against their will".

Particularly in the light of the news this week that 1 out of 5 14 year-olds self harm.

There's a good summary of the Simone de Beauvoir quotation and its implications here. It strikes me that trying to retrofit it into equivalence with the trans experience is a gross misinterpretation of de Beauvoir's actual intention.

Love that Lurkacus

Link to the Fawcett Society recent event including video discussed in article by Jo Bartosch above:

www.fawcettsociety.org.uk/Event/courage-calls-ask-her-to-stand

Sophie Walker was panelist. final question raised possibility of th 50/50 being men / trans woman.

Threads:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3310443-Fawcett-Society-Live-stream-from-5-30pm-Courage-Calls-Ask-her-to-stand

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3311428-Why-are-Fawcett-staying-so-silent-Are-they-afraid

My favourite twitter comment so far. I assume you’re on here

we're middle class, pretty affluent, but it's a combination of helpful parents, luck and work that's got us here. and actually it's a worryingly precarious position. as long as

• neither of us gets ill
• we stay married
• we don't have a disabled child

we'll probably be OK. But if something like that happens our lives (well let's be honest here, mostly my life, explain that Sophie) will change dramatically.

it's why, despite everything I'm still a member of the labour party. they're the only party who are at least supposed to get it.

i remember Andrew Marr saying 'the NHS delivered the british people from worry'. and it did. but not having a faberge egg to sell means there's always other worries.

If you tried to explain why austerity is a women's issue they'd probably look at you blankly, like you were speaking an alien language.

Yep.

Middle class shitshow masquerading as a serious political party about sums up this farce.

I honestly think Rees-Mogg is less of a danger to women and children than Sophie and the handmaidens. And I cannot believe I just typed that.

Their men on maternity wards stance has always enraged me, it’s like ‘we’re pregnant’ makes my fucking teeth itch.

Great post arranfan

Reluctant Camper - re: Francis Maude.

My version of that is that I have a very clear memory of reading an interview with an aristocrat (?) and opinion-former during which she was asked about the plight of families during the Miners Strike. Her reply was along the lines of, "It's very upsetting but there are times when families must reconcile themselves to selling the Fabergé Egg".

I can see the photograph in my mind so clearly - well, you do recall the time when your jaw drops to the point of dislocation just because you're reading something. But, I've never been able to find it - it must be buried in a newspaper archive.

Same planet. Different universes.