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

This thread is so interesting.

So, right from the start the WEP knew this was an issue - and carried on regardless. Incredible.

I had no idea about any of this stuff five years ago.

Love the poem.

Fab poem. 💐

@Catmaiden does this work for you? need to go to page 2 to see what WE were saying. pretty dire replies.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/mumsnet_live_events/2890099-Webchat-with-Catherine-Mayer-author-and-co-founder-of-the-Womens-Equality-Party-Thursday-30-March-1-2pm

And so we have reached an impasse for today
I’ll leave you with this small footnote
The party that lets me define my own needs
Is the one who’ll be getting my vote.

And mine.

Poem on a WEP/mumsnet thread, shortly after Sophie had called us 'vicious'.
April 2016

The women’s Equality Party
Came skipping to Mumsnet one day
Politically, not very smarty
Expecting the ladies to play

Do these politicking people not know us?
Have they never encountered our like?
Do they think they can canvass our votes and
Not leave with their heads on a spike?

“Tell me your issues!” trilled Sophie
“We’re all about women, you see!
Our policies should win a trophy
I’m sure you will all vote for WE!”

How lovely said Mumsnet, but tell us
As women we’d just like to know
The way that you want to define us
Dictates how this webchat will go

“I see.” said our heroine “let’s see;
It’s nothing to do with your birth
Becoming a woman is messy
And different across the whole earth”

Erm replied Mumsnet, just hang on
We cannot get equality
As long as you don’t hear us bang on
It’s all about biology

It’s nothing to do with ‘becoming’
It’s not about identity
Our bodies have different plumbing
And not just the way that we wee

We bleed, and we birth and we breastfeed
We’re cut and we’re raped and oppressed
Abducted, enslaved and molested
And not because how we are dressed

Nothing to do with identity
Not because of ladybrain
When we are denied our autonomy
Our wombs are the public domain

Employers when they interview us
Ask “Is your family complete?”
They’re finding a way to then screw us
Offended that we dare compete

Jobs for the boys means biology
Votes for the boys meant just men
Changing the damn terminology
Still means it’s all about them

“Woman is anyone says so”
Bollocking tautology
And meanwhile the actual women
Are still fucked by biology

Don’t tell me my gender identity
Is the essence of what makes me ‘she’
That I share this with Johnny-come-lately
That we’re really the same, can’t I see?

My sex is what everyone notices
My sex is what used against me
My sex, and the women who share it
Are the ones who need equality

So Sophie, I hope that you heard us
For gender is purely fictitious
Sexism’s live and still kicking
Increasingly vile and pernicious

A party to fight for our sex
Now that would be something ambitious
But now what the fuck do we call it?
Since fighting for women is “vicious”?

I’m thinking of starting a party
To fight for the women like me
Who are angry, and cheated, and silenced
Who really just want to be free
Free from the shitstorm of gender
Free from denials of facts
Free from appeasing the bullies
Free from unworkable pacts
Free to say “This has defined me”
Free to say “You’re not the same”
Free to convene with my sisters
Free to reclaim my own name
Women means women means women
The people the world treats like scum
You’re born and you live and you die one
It isn’t a thing you become

It’s not that I’m lacking compassion
For the trans folk who have their own fights
I see that they have their own struggle
I support that they need their own rights

My needs and my life and my fight is not theirs
But they need me to say we’re the same
I need to define that I’m different from men
And it’s nothing to do with my brain

And so we have reached an impasse for today
I’ll leave you with this small footnote
The party that lets me define my own needs
Is the one who’ll be getting my vote.

[quote Catmaiden]@FindTheTruth, that webchat link doesn't go anywhere, now. [/quote]
You need to remove the page number from the end of the link.

@FindTheTruth, that webchat link doesn't go anywhere, now.

OMG this web chat with Catherine Mayer is chilling

'without heat'.... is this where Nandy et al 'less heat more light' came from?

I suppose it might make more sense that you were unable to define 'women' if you weren't in the leadership of an organisation that literally has that word in its name. Or, y'know, if you were a toddler?

A chapter of her book devoted to this topic. What does it say I wonder? 🤔

How many bloody lines does she need to say um, no.

I was reading that thinking go on, go on...but your conclusion at the end is perfect.

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.

Before the webchats there was www.mumsnet.com/Talk/guest_posts/2502963-Guest-post-Sandi-Toksvig-The-time-is-right-for-the-Womens-Equality-Party?pg=1.

WEP had just tweeted their support for Tara Hudson’s bid to be moved to a female prison. MNers, who were just starting to get worried about all this, replied to Sandi Toksvig’s plug for the WEP with questions that were ignored.

Eventually Sophie Walker appeared on the thread, pledged WEP’s support for gender over sex & went away again. And the WEP-MN relationship went downhill from there....

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 (and frankly these issues would easily fill whole books). One of the things I've tried to do with my book is to try to find a path through some of the most divisive issues in feminism in a way that I hope fosters understanding and ways to debate without heat. It's easier for me to do this on some issues than others because I've had to pick my way through and where the answers remain unclear to me, I say so.

So, no. Talk about talking yourself out of a job.

What a terrible betrayal.

The portrayal of feminism as a fluffy cool 'club' that everyone can join seems to me to be a deliberate attempt to dilute it's power and misdirect the focus away from women, by persuading them that everyone is more oppressed than they are.

This. Fuck your cool club and the get-your tits-out-for-the-lads 'feminism'.

And yes Datun

How do they bloody get out of bed in the morning??

How do they live with themselves?

I briefly looked at WEP about a year ago as they allow you to be a member with them and another mainstream party as they recognise the reality of the WEP never really being a threat to the two party system. At least that's what I took it to mean.

We need WEP v2. The Woman Party. Adult Human Female Rights party that Recognises Sex and Reality. Somebody do this please? Rosie Duffield? Someone? Anyone?!

I run out of words to use for this crap. "Sex doesn't exist, but women are oppressed because of it"

spot on quickness

It is such a let down. I think IIRC Sophie Walker has been more able to speak since she stepped down from.the leadership and has said a couple of GC things on Twitter? The irony of which is severely impeding my ability to type.

One fucking job Sophie, just one.

In their manifesto they say they accept the right of all to define their sex.

And not three lines below claim that women are the biggest single group subject to disadvantage, discrimination and oppression!

I run out of words to use for this crap. "Sex doesn't exist, but women are oppressed because of it".

How do they bloody get out of bed in the morning??

I should've dug into it more before paying membership. I'm very irritated by it though; I live in an area where they fielded candidates in an election!