The Big Lie - how the WEP was always about gender rather than sex

We could call it POW. Power of Women.

I have always loved HairyGiantGibbousFlaps' work.

I think you have to be strongly egotistical to start a political party in your own image. The party has more or less rejected people who aren't clones in terms of their opinions.

Isn't the point of a political party to group people who all agree with each other on most things?

Do Fair Play for Women / WPUK have any ambitions in that direction?

I personally think that their success so far, especially Fair Play For Women, is precisely because they are not a political party. They can reach out to the general public and appeal to people of all political persuasions because there is no underlying current of 'in it for the votes'.

It is annoying. Any chance of a Women's Rights Party, anyone?

Do Fair Play for Women / WPUK have any ambitions in that direction?

I think you have to be strongly egotistical to start a political party in your own image. The party has more or less rejected people who aren't clones in terms of their opinions. The sad fact is their policies are poorly reseached and badly set out.

The equal pay policy motion at Conferences cites a Guardian article as the only policy justification. The article by a male journalist quotes figures that are easy to trace back to the source and are nonsense.

Embarrassing. The Women's Equality Party Equal Pay spokesperson quotes a Guardian bloke journalist's dodgy data without any sense checking and expects to be taken seriously?.

Just awful.

I think that far from voting for them I would actively campaign against the WEP now.

Particularly disappointed in Sandi Toksvig. Always hoped she had a bit more about her, but she was obviously up to her eyeballs in the whole con from the get go too.

It has always annoyed me that they have taken the spot of "women's party" that could have been filled by an actual party for women.

It is annoying. Any chance of a Women's Rights Party, anyone?

I've read the webchat threads now. With hindsight, it's blatantly clear, and Mumsnetters were onto it. In the March 2017 chat, Catherine Mayer CM actually says I don't believe secondary sex characteristics are a reliable determinant. .... We are all on a series of spectrums. ... What is absolutely clear is that people who identify as female are a huge structural disadvantage to people who identify as men

I'm still baffled as to why two women, one a lesbian and one who is feminist on at least some issues, should set up a women's party that would always prioritise men's wishes above women's needs.

Very sobering article, thanks for sharing Eresh.

This stood out for me - obvs I know this was fiction, but it seems to say a lot about Mayer’s ideology:

In Mayer’s brave new world, Equalia “elected a trans woman as Federal Prime Minister” which has “shed reductive notions of what it is to be female”.

So in a world where biologically male people dominate and have always dominated
in positions of power, one of the women who founded the WEP, which some might have thought would seek to redress that imbalance of power, actually thought it would be desirable in an imagined ideal world for the leader to be a biologically male person?

Unbelievable.

That poem is amazing!

well = we’ll

I see that in answer to 'can we define what a woman is' Catherine said -

There's a lot of confusion around definitions -- which is one reason I devote a whole chapter of the book to sex and gender

I don’t know why she wrote a whole chapter? All she had to say was, women are what men say they are, and well agree with them because we want them to like us. Simper simper.

Weren't they supposed to be having a consultation recently on who should be classified as a woman?

@FindTheTruth, thank you!

Actually I'm not disappointed, I'm livid. To found a party for women on that basis and then to conceal it, or at the very least to not be open about it!

That poem was written by

Ahem
"HairyGiantGibbousFlaps"

It's so monumentally stupid. I don't know how these people have got the nerve to put pen to paper to express this crushing irrationality.

So often it seems to boil down to them having a friend or family member who's fallen for gender ideology hook line and sinker, so they tie themselves in knots attempting to explain how it all makes sense. It's always so blinkered, personal and ultimately selfish and so unfair to other women. I'm so disappointed.

Barracker did you write that poem? It's fab