James Kirkup defends Laura Pidcock

Pidcock is still involved in the party, thankfully.

Thanks nettie, I thought I'd seen or heard something about her but couldn't remember where.

I love coming across a Kirkup article. Always so concisely and thoughtfully written.

Yes - GC - spans left and right.

AND the TRA narrative is a bedfellow for Iranian theocracy. Lovely...

Yes I think we do, Bovary although I might be doing her a disservice as I have a vague memory of her speaking up for women before. Can anyone remember?

Floisme My memory is that she was on the Today programme during the election supporting Labour policy on separate spaces for women and girls. It was very anodyne and, as some posters pointed out, did not clarify how trans women with a GRC would be treated but to some activists it would clearly count as previous form.

I think the point made by James Kirkup that she spoils the narrative of the Christian right is spot on. I know she was a mental health support worker at one point before she became an MP. I wonder if that experience had any influence on her views. I think women with mental health problems who are receiving in patient care can feel very unsafe in some hospital settings.

Why was there no seat at the table.

No debate is surely part of this, but it points directly to the question of why that was accepted. I think there was first of all a widely help assumption that an organisation that was dedicated to protecting the rights of LBG persons would also of course be dedicated to protecting women.

But maybe more than that, so many people seem to accept, intuitively if not explicitly, the idea that "rights are not a pie". They assume that fighting for rights is always right, that what we identify as rights really always are rights, and that pursuing these cannot contradict other rights. It all fits together very neatly and there is no possibility of erroneous identification of "rights".
People are also extremely naive, at least on the left, about the possibility of members of marginalised groups seeking personal advantage or power by trading on attempts to rectify improper treatment and oppression, including at a macro level.

All these limitations have meant that there was no immediate push back or analysis of claims by groups like Stonewall.

Great article!

"This impact should be debated and considered. The women who worry about the impact should be able to raise their concerns without fear of abuse or worse, and they should be listened to by their representatives.

The position I’ve just set out should not be controversial or even require a description since it is just the normal functioning of democratic politics and governance in Britain. That is not left-wing. It is not liberal. It is not conservative and it is not right-wing. And Laura Pidcock proves it."

Shame that Pidcock lost her seat, she's worth a hundred Butlers, Thornberries and Long-Baileys.

Ruth Hunt is now Baroness Hunt, and her tune hasn't changed. She advocated for the removal of the spousal exit clause in her maiden speech in the House of Lords.

Thanks to Laura and James.
Your voices matter so much, during these times of #nodebate and culture of fear and McCarthyism.

Goosefoot, few policies are now made without consultation with "stakeholders" (a word that always makes me think of forks in a Berni Inn).

However women are clearly stakeholders when considering policies, such as the withdrawal of single sex spaces, that affect women. Why was there no seat at the table. Presumably because Stonewall pushed the #nodebate. TWAW were women, this is what their equalities and diversities training was teaching policy makers. So it was fine to only to consult transwomen.

Now she is not longer with Stonewall it would be great to have Ruth Hunt here for a webchat. I wonder how she sees her legacy? I wonder if she has any feminist friends, and how she explains it all to them.

There is a puritanical zeal at the heart of #no debate.

Indeed. I often wonder whether identity politics is affluent white mens solution to the modern capitalist world, where traditional sources of meaning have gone.

I am thinking of Anthony Giddens’ arguments that in previous times, people more or less knew what their occupations would be, the institutions of marriage and family were not questioned, and religious communities provided for any needs for spirituality.

With those institutions holding less significance, ‘identity’ is imbued with new meaning. And since affluent white men have fewer axes of oppression to deal with, they jump on make-believe ‘identities’.

This refocuses conceptualisations of where identities are constructed from understanding them as socially constructed, to something deep and mystical and internal.

This then gives meaning to mediocre white men, while simultaneously pushing back at the gains women have made over the years.

It’s a combination of the no-longer hidden desire to put women back in their place, and the desire for some virtuous meaning of their own existence. The religious fervour is no doubt heartfelt for a lot of these men.

These girls aren’t being subjected to a crappy limerick...

Who knows, they haven't defined street harassment, it could include crappy limericks.

I can't say I think adding misogyny or street harrassment laws as these girls are envisioning seems like a good idea to me. They could try and convince me, saying something more about laws in other places might be a start. Though frankly I have my doubts that French women are making many complaints about catcalls.

But my general feeling is that these laws are a waste of time and don't really change things, no matter what the "phobia involved is.

In fact if TRAs had 'warned about her before' it may not be her first time in the stocks.

There has to be a conflict when a lobbying organisation is also providing policy makers with advice and training.

This has happend with a lot of organisations and I think it probably needs to be adressed at a policy level. I remember when the calls were in the other direction, and that was well-meant. People thought that policy makers needed to involve people who would be directly affected, "stakeholders". There was a feeling that these groups contained expertise the policy makers didn't have, and lived experience, and that they represented, at least to some extent, grassroots sentiment.

The NRA is an interesting example in the US, they used to be a hobbyist group, and gave a lot of good advice on safety policy, were involved in training etc. Right up until they essentially became a lobby wing of gun manufacturers.

But in many cases now the agenda is more about keeping the organisation going because it is a job for many people who see themselves as activists. (I wonder if these are the same kind of people who in previous times might have joined the clergy with ambitions? Could someone today write a sj version of Barchester Towers?)

And I think we know the answer....
Yes I think we do, Bovary although I might be doing her a disservice as I have a vague memory of her speaking up for women before. Can anyone remember?

Thank you Laura and James for reporting on it

"We warned you about..."
It has a very strong witch-hunt vibe about it.

Yes. And apparently talking about women's rights is 'dogwhistle'.

The public sector needs to look closely at their relationship with Stonewall and allied organisations. They were the architects of #nodebate and should be considered at least partially responsible for the current toxicity.

There has to be a conflict when a lobbying organisation is also providing policy makers with advice and training. And interlaid it is preventing women’s concerns from being voiced and heard.

Thanks for the link and thank you again James Kirkup.

And of course, thank you Laura Pidcock.

I wonder if she would have dared express herself thus if she were still a Labour MP - or even standing for party leader?