WEP debating GRA. What do you think?

I’ve no idea why autocorrect came up with ‘womenfolk’...

Maybe when the WEP decide whether to centre womenfolk not the Greens can get together and think about protecting the environment.

I notice neither the Remain nor Brexit sides lost track of their primary objectives. If one had decided that their priority was pronouns the other would have won outright.

I think it's good to discuss 'sex and gender based protections', but fundamentally they need to face up to the fact that their existence doesn't make sense if they can't explain what a woman is.

OhHolyJesus As far as I can tell they have no stated position on this, but given what I've seen so far both of their policies and their members I imagine they'll be willing to uncritically adopt whichever stance they believe increases their power (such as it'll ever be). The problem across all parties atm is a complete abandonment of an actual ideological philosophical underpinning. In theory parties should hold a set of beliefs/ values, create policy accordingly, and then people who agree will vote for them. In practice everyone just wants to be in charge, so they start with the premise "what will get me elected?" and then create whatever policy they can think of to achieve that goal. The aim is to appeal to as many different people as possible, even if you undermine your own values/ create contradicting policy in the process.

I agree with Lang it is unlikely the change party will ever be GC. The closest I've seen to GC from any party is the SDP,

"It is mistaken to view every departure from ethnic, class or gender proportionality as prima facie evidence of discrimination. Some group differences merely reflect free choices and preferences in a open society. We hold that civilised toleration of such differences is necessary if we are to avoid descent into bitterness and conflict. We believe the shared ‘identity politics’ of both the far right and far left to be inherently divisive and self-defeating. For many years the liberal-left has abandoned the politics of solidarity for those of individual emancipation, without realising that putting differences above common bonds can harm mutuality."

Trans ideology is all about the individual and identity politics.

Did you look at the Change Party's stance on this? As they are new and fledgling I can't decide if the TRAs aren't interested in a take over as they don't have any power or if they will be getting in early before they are 'fully formed'.

Change UK (or whatever it's called now if it's even still going) will never be GC. It's liberal progressive - centre right economics, individualist progressive/pro IDPol. It's as far from a potentially GC party as it could possibly get.

If WEP don't know what a woman is then they are a complete waste of time.

And look at how the whole shebang is framed.

"Proposed changes to the Gender Recognition Act".

We don't know that those changes are because the government hasn't mentioned what they are.

So what exactly are the WEP going to consult on exactly? Who decides?

The Members Assembly is fraught with difficulty also. Women meeting up has been targeted by activists determined to intimidate them. How does WEP intend to stop this intimidation happening? Many women would be reluctant to take part due to threats of intimidation and doxing. Ordinary women would self-exclude.

As an aside - they're going with the word 'members' to discuss the inclusion of men in women's rights? Really?

@ByGrabtharsHammarWhatASaving

Tagging to ask a question...

Did you look at the Change Party's stance on this? As they are new and fledgling I can't decide if the TRAs aren't interested in a take over as they don't have any power or if they will be getting in early before they are 'fully formed'.

Interested to know your take on this.

As I always like to repeat on any WEP thread - they had one job, just the one!

My gut feeling reading that was that this is purely a way to mollify women by making it look like they are addressing this, but actually they are going to take so long to get anywhere it will be irrelevant and will just peter out into nothing. It feels cowardly.

I left the WEP over this. And told them why, and got no reply.

What Langcleg said basically

To come up with all this 9 months after the consultation closed and after grassroots groups have sprung up to fill the void left by the silence of official 'women's sector' beggars belief.

If they can't recognise a conflict in this of all things then they don't have a hope of getting to grips with the more intangible forms of structural disadvantage that women face in 2019 in UK.

So, what use are they as a political force?

JeebusWEPt

Yes and their lived experience lead to the formation of the WEP but now women aren't expert enough to talk about sexual inequality. FFS

They referenced Ireland several times in that email, not sure I'm convinced they're aiming for a genuine consultation though part of me it tempted to join just to take part in it.

we want to ensure that we hear from the broadest possible range of expertise and lived experience

Is this where subjective ‘lived experience’ trumps everything?

I still don't understand what discrimination feminist groups who include TW are trying to tackle? The only suggestion I've ever seen is that both women and passing TW get cat called some times (usually phrased like "nobody did a karyotype test before harassing me HAHAHA") That may be true, but apart from that, what discrimination do they actually think is shared by TW and women, that isn't shared by TM and men, that makes the former group in need of special protections, services, awards, and quotas? What threat it is that can only be posed by TM and men, which cannot be posed by TW and women? What vulnerabilities do women and TW have that men and TM don't have? And - more broadly - does anyone in government have 2 brain cells to rub together? Baffling.

Agreed Popchyk The WEP are a complete waste of energy - a classic example of early regulatory capture by those born men determined to remove the rights of women.

But as has been said - the irony (and tragedy) of a party for women unable to define what a woman is without centring men.

Women Equality Party needs to consult on whether allowing males to self-ID as women could have an effect on women's rights. Rrrriiiight

So they intend to start in the autumn 2019.

Scoping exercise first.

Assembly

Member consultation

Committee review

Given how slow the WEP have been with this, I'd expect that to take 10 years. Minimum.

And they won't have a definition of women at the end of it.

But none of that matters because the WEP won't exist by then.

Save your time and energy and put it into something that can effect real change. Small grassroots campaigns have been very effective where political parties and institutions have entirely failed.

I think we're seeing the launch of: 'Here is the answer we HAVE to end up with - now how do we bend the consultation and huge road blocks like women's safety through a process to make sure we get unimpeded to the predecided answer it has to conclude with?'

Yes. It's a project aiming to "manage" the non-compliant women into compliance. Top down bollocks pretending to be a consultation.

I'll say it again: if a women's equality political party has to debate the definition of woman, it's not a women's equality party.

Women should just get the fuck out.

I think we're seeing the launch of: 'Here is the answer we HAVE to end up with - now how do we bend the consultation and huge road blocks like women's safety through a process to make sure we get unimpeded to the predecided answer it has to conclude with?'

See the Engender thread.

We're about to see a lot of very interesting bluff around sex, female and women's sex based protection and statistics/lived experience of privacy and sexual harassment, assault and abuse with the hope of obfusticating it all past women managing to separate themselves in any way from men.

4. REVIEW BY POLICY COMMITTEE

This ^^ just underlines where the intended outcome will be shaped. It sounds v similar to what's going on in Scotland with the NACWG "big & wee circles" where they give the impression they're looking to gather views/comments from a wide range of people/backgrounds to 'inform' policy but curb what people can discuss/what language they're allowed to use & then it gets filtered through the top rung of woke eejits who then don't allow transparency on the gathered feedback & come up with their own skewed take to move forward with their policy ideas. Maybe I'm wrong but this is just another exercise in futility which will end up exactly where the woke eejits intend. And the mind blowing notion of the WEP 'debating' how to define 'woman' just leaves me 😒

Absolutely Lang

I think if a women's equality party is having to have a debate to define woman so that they can create equality-based policies, it's jumped the shark.

Waste of everyone's time.

Not a member but this sounds like they've given thought to forming an opinion on a difficult subject in a way that draws on a wider pool of people.
A cynic could also say, decision making this way defrays it being the fault of a single person or even an executive.