[1] Let's talk about: Feminist issue policies

Thank you Spero and apologies for the summons. Thank you also for putting NSPCC on the spot, you're an absolute star

Legal aid is a definite campaign issue and cuts across everything. It doesn't matter what rights we have if we can't afford to enforce them.

Sorry to but in. Got an email saying my name had been mentioned and i have read with a sense of deja vu the posts about adoption and Pause etc.

Similar discussions along these lines prompted me to set up my website with the help and encouragement of many mumsnetters - I say thank you again. Rather than derail the thread, please read this

about forced adoption childprotectionresource.online/forced-adoption/

And why you should be very, very wary of John Hemming.

childprotectionresource.online/why-do-i-worry-about-john-hemming/

I think it would be useful to call political parties to task about many of these issues. With regard to violence in the family courts, the agenda has been hijacked entirely by Woman's Aid leading to the setting up of an utterly useless 3 month 'Inquiry' which has invited 'submissions' from the public with apparently no thought or interest as to how these will be fact checked. This is apparently what counts for 'research' in 2019.

The major problem the courts have in cases involving disputes between parents about their children is of course the removal of legal aid and the lack of court time to have fact finding hearings. By all means, call politicians account for this as it is their responsibility.

The last time I came on mumsnet and voiced such views I was called, iirc a 'rape apologist' so if anyone wonders why I am not on mumsnet as much as I used to be, it is because of things like that.

If youhaven't read it "Invisible Women" by Caroline Criado-Perez is a fantastic examination of teh gender data gap- in medicine, public transport, planning, safety etc.

Great idea.

In terms of childcare/staying at home being a women's issue- the reason often cited is that the man earns more. So it is actually linked to teh gender pay gap. If men and women earned similar amounts, then this would be less of an excuse.

And whilst it shouldn't be thcase, women do a far greater share of the caring and therefore often go part time, give up work.

Also came on to say about Child Maintenance. Definitely a feminist issue. The amount is paltry, it doesn't take account of the childcare costs, men often get "weekends" (or every other weekend) and this is used to reduce the amount of maintenance paid, while the woman is forking out for full-time childcare to enable her to work on "her time". If both parents work full time, then childcare costs should be shared (in a proportion of salary way) regardless of which days each parent has them. It is not OK for men to be able to carry on their career free of all the burden of responsibility of what happens to their children while they are working.

Next, the Child Maintenance Service (is it still called that) has no teeth to enforce it, so we end up with a double (triple, quadruple?) whammy of men getting paid more, not having to share their portion of the actual costs of the child/childcare, and then not even having to pay the paltry amount it is. Then, when they are reported to the CMS, the "sanctions" are noting. My own relative's abusive ex has been playing cat and mouse with the CMS for about 10 years now. She now gets a whopping £60 a month (and has done for 3 months). Their childcare alone is £800. He also doesn't pay for clubs, sports, uniforms, school fees (not private, but still £900 a year for state school). Her ex is so enraged by this £60 he has been made to pay that he will probably quit his job soon.

The sanctions need to be severe. Punitive fines, enforced payment of those fines and backdated payments, then confiscation/revokation of driving licences and passports, then imprisonment.

I have no truck with the "Waaaa, how can I work if I have no car/am in prison" or "I can't see my children if I'm in jail" argument. Absent/ barely-involved fathers need to pay for their children, first and foremost. Maybe if the consequences are more severe men won't fuck about as much and women who are single-parents wouldn't be left high and dry.

I will add child maintenance system to the list, there was a very enlightening thread on this recently.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/divorce_separation/3640724-MNHQ-here-Parliamentary-debate-on-the-Child-Maintenance-Service-an-MP-wants-to-know-your-views

And we know what service providers have to say in public or they'll lose their funding.

Thanks to Karen and the anonymous female service users for speaking out. You tried, but the Govt don't want to listen.

To be fair, with regard to social work practice, vulnerable women and adoption orders, this issue was stemmed somewhat by the 2014 Munby judgement re: B-S.

www.first4adoption.org.uk/news/sir-james-munby-to-step-down/

I draw your attention to section 7 para 190, where the report talks about developing robust guidance based on case studies from service providers. No mention of service users.

Just in, and likely to be relevant: Enforcing the Equality Act: the law and the role of the Equality and Human Rights Commission report from HoC Women and Equalities Committee. Haven't read it yet, will read later today. Also likely to be relevant to the regulatory capture thread.

Porn
Unbridled access to the graphic depiction of sexual abuse of women and girls, the effect this has on children (of both sexes), and the hard evidence that boys don’t understand about consent. The terrifying effect on girls who think that sex is a porno performance and that female bodies should look like Barbie dolls.

Prostitution & “Sex Work”
Men buying women’s bodies, the trafficking of vulnerable women, the women who feel they have no other option other than to prostitute themselves to put food on the table for their kids.

Women’s Healthcare
Woefully inadequate provision. The sweeping aside of women’s conditions, e.g. endometriosis, menopause, coercive childbirth, and the ignorance of differences in symptoms e.g. heart attacks.

Unpaid Work
The unfair burden of care and the impact it has on women’s finances, relationships and mental health.

Parental Leave
Evidence into the (lack of) uptake by fathers and the reasons behind that. They know damn well the impact it will have on their pay and career.

Violence Against Women
Epidemic levels of violence against women and girls with virtually zero redress and utterly pathetic sentences for those rare cases where conviction is achieved. News headlines, every day, that shock women to the core. The message being sent out loud and clear is that women don’t matter.

Institutionalised Misogyny
It’s everywhere, and so entrenched that most people don’t give it a second thought. We see it, meet it, and deal with it every day. The Every Day Sexism project is just one small step in documenting this.

Sexual Harassment
And old-fashioned term for an on-going problem. I defy any woman to say she has never been sexually harassed. The first time it happened to me I was 7.

Equal Pay
Equal Opportunities
Equal Everything
(yeah right)

I was a teenager when I read Scream Quietly or the Neighbours Will Hear by Erin Pizzey. I became a feminist overnight and that book will never leave me. Over 40 years later, Invisible Women by C C Perez shows just how far we have(n't) come.

On a much lighter note, that walk to school day also used to enrage me. Women regularly drop off small people at multiple locations before they go to work. When one of mine was at primary school and one at nursery we lived a bit out of the way, too far for small legs to walk easily, but in addition, they both went to different schools and I had to be at work by 9. If I had tried to do the whole thing walking with one in a pram, then either caught the bus or walked home to fetch the car, the morning round trip would have taken maybe 2 hours. I think we should have a walk/cycle/catch the bus/train to work day for all those people I see everyday blithely clogging up the roads with their single occupancy vehicles. Why is it always women who have to get out of the way?

This is a great thread thanks for starting it.

My first two pennerth:

I’m constantly amazed at how little people know about the phenomenon of male violence against women. The absurdity of people who say “well women do it too” as if the tiny number of women who commit violent sexual crimes is the answer to everything. Misuse of domestic violence stats I find enraging! Yes, domestic abuse is roughly equally gendered but fatal domestic abuse, hospitalisation, family annihilation, these are almost entirely male crimes.

What would happen if we all went on strike and said we’re not doing it any more?

If we all went on #birthstrike, the Govt would outlaw or restrict contraception and abortion within the year. Romania's Decree 770 and the German abortion ban under "Kinder, Küche, Kirche" (for white women only, Jewish and Roma women were forced to abort in the camps) tells us what happens when the Govt decides that women aren't having enough kids.

Under representation (and sometimes zero representation) of women has to be addressed.

As 50% of the population, we should be proportionately represented in every sphere. Yet in public life and public office, women seem to be toeing the party line rather than speaking up for positive change. They’re not even speaking up to protect our existing rights under law. We have to ask ourselves why. Is it because they are pandering to/being bullied or intimidated by men?

I have joined the WEP because I felt politically homeless. We have to start somewhere. All this talk of equality when we clearly do not have equality and are a long way off.

I know it’s ridiculous but I would like to say to women - stop having children. Stop doing the unpaid work. Stop enabling men to trample all over us. What would happen if we all went on strike and said we’re not doing it any more?

Clearly, men don’t give a flying fuck about women. They might pretend to, but they don’t. A lot of them outright hate us. We are “bloody women”. Nobody is going to give us what we want. We’re going to have to fight for it tooth and nail, just like we always have.

On the subject of carer's allowance I would like to point out that the government considers these recipients EMPLOYED therefore reducing the unemployment statistics.

That's mental. There's definitely a whole thread to be had on the twisting of stats to make inequality invisible.

Yup. These (usually female) carers have their rent paid plus, what, £65 per week? Unlikely to be NMW, let alone the Real Living Wage. They work (for the Govt, I suppose, with carer's allowance being a State-issued payment) but have no pension or employment rights, no right to paid holiday etc. Because they don't work for a company, they don't show up in those mandatory gender pay gap reports, making the sex pay gap look smaller than it is.

I would.like to see carers paid the Real Living Wage, have guaranteed four weeks per year of respite cover so they can have a break, and be included in the gender pay gap report for the DWP because it's DWP that pay them to care.

And then the same state that removes babies from mothers at birth is handing kids over to very dangerous fathers in the family courts.

I follow Women Count USA on Facebook which tracks the mothers who lose babies to fathers having been accused of parental alienation syndrome, and the father of course goes on to kill the child. I know parental alienation syndrome is now a "thing" in the UK too.

Do you deny that adoption costs money?

How does the Pause Project fit into this money making scheme?

Looking back at the John Hemming thread it was Ian Josephs who paid for the caravans in France.

That's a very strange interpretation of what I wrote.

No it's not an interpretation of what you wrote, it just what I think.

I just think there is a certain class of women that it's acceptable to do heinous things to. because their lives are so awful and poor and drug addled and seemingly beyond reprieve that it's ok to take their babies, buy their vaginas and so on. Wouldn't happen in a sane society is all I'm saying.

I do also realize we've probably got as much chance of helping these women keep their babies as we have of eliminating prostitution. I just think it's a serious feminist issue.

And I also personally , and this is just my opinion, think that not enough is being done to help them because they are convenient for the adoption industry , which is a big money maker

It's as though there is a certain class of women that it's acceptable to turn into prostitutes, and there's a certain class of women it's acceptable to take their babies from.

That's a very strange interpretation of what I wrote.

John Hemming

See also.

the women who are eligible for help from the pause project have either already had multiple children removed or are already being abused, trafficked or prostituted and are highly likely to become pregnant in extremely bad, chaotic circumstances.

It's as though there is a certain class of women that it's acceptable to turn into prostitutes, and there's a certain class of women it's acceptable to take their babies from.
And it seems that often these things are happening to the same women: young, poor, disenfranchised.