Conservatives For Women launch today

I am not UK based but after Amnesty Ireland signing a letter to say they wanted political reaper station removed from gender critical women I support anyone in politics standing up for women’s sex based rights. The more noise in UK politics the more likely it is to be heard across the Irish Sea.

I think working within the CWO is also important.

Most of what we do, and have been doing (our group sprang from the Conservative Women's Pledge petition, started over a year ago) does NOT take place on social media, it takes place in private conversations with our own MPs

So what are your positions on abortion, lone parent's benefits, gender pay gap reporting and same sex marriage?

It seems only fair that people who sign up know what you are lobbying these MPs about in the name of women's rights.

Thank you for the info, ConservativesforWomen and GingerJonesy. I’m curious - will your group stay focused on Westminster or do you or any affiliate groups have plans to tackle the devolved administrations and parliaments/assemblies as well?

conservativesforwomen.org/ the website contains template letters for sex declaration on the 2021 Census and for keeping prisons single sex.

I'm disturbed to say I approve. I agree with Conservatives. Good grief.

OP could you say any more about the position on GRA with this group?

Thank you, OP. Not to add to your workload but at some point when you have time, perhaps in a newsletter, it'd be interesting to hear about any other groups you work or have contacts with, in Parliament or outside, including media, print or broadcast. APPGs and Select Committees seem to be key inside but also problematic, even the one(s) dedicated to Women.

And media similarly. Have you any toeholds or routes into influence there? Do they have some sort of collective agreement or stance on the trans topic and how they will write about it? They seem to have adopted certain uses of language conforming to an agenda and use terms such as 'trans children' as if you can categorise them as such, rather than just children; and 'born in the wrong body', as if that is a fact and a reality rather than a notion or a feeling or an expression whose meaning is elusive.

So much that becomes muddled and goes wrong, ending up with absurd complications, contradictions and impossibilities, starts with language and its misuse, which is taken up and perpetuated without ever being questioned; it needs to be challenged.

More power to your elbow OP

Thanks Perking I will read and digest!

Oh, and now at the bottom of the CfW homepage is an option so you can make choices about some Twitter tracking and some Facebook tracking. Good, this is better practice.

I don't know if that was always there (I was looking at other pages), or whether that's just appeared.

It's nice to have such responsive readers if the latter.

I think the Baroness' group will be cross-party and specifically for women's issues/rights

Very much looking forward to hearing more from the Baroness about her plans.

Oh, you asked specifically where CfW are asking for money.

There's a Donate button on their website, and they're selling postcards.

Actually I've just re-read that page: sorry, I misread it as I was trying to get through all the material.

I thought they were selling the cards and flowers as a "we'll send it for you" service, but in reality they're posting you a pack of cards.

So that's your postal address required, then, which can be cross-referenced with the electoral roll.

Not RTFT since last posting on it but important to note that the Conservative women’s and the Labour women’s petitions are not mirror images of each other, having just checked back in on the Lab one.

I’m a lefty with nobody to vote for in good conscience and feel very let down by Labour as a voter (I wasn’t a member). I signed the Labour one though because it was about women’s political freedom and right to talk about sex-based issues and women had been expelled from the Labour Party over that. Still staggering to write that but that is exactly what happened. The Tory declaration here has broader and different aims. For example it includes:

Children should be able to access safe spaces and by removing single sex spaces and the ability to ask someone’s sex, that this reduces the ability to safeguard young people.

Absolutely agree. Also:

We believe that any individual should be able to dress and express themselves as they wish. However we believe that important distinctions must be made between women and girls, and those who 'identify' as such. If any person can legally be considered the opposite sex then our rights as women and girls can no longer be defended.

I agree with the position that I think they are setting out here... which would be that the current GRA is unworkable and should be reviewed with a view to scrapping it. Yes? is that what they’re not quite spelling out?

I’d absolutely agree that anyone can present as they wish or call themselves what they want with the protections of the Equality Act already in place for them and that’s all fine.

However Parliament put in GRA in a historical context of no same sex marriage and no equal pension age which amounted to discrimination. GRA was the workaround in that context. So I think Parliament should now have the opportunity to debate whether a change of legal sex for what are now purely validatory reasons via GRA, is the business of the state at all. In any case the current GRA must be reviewed because it’s impacting negatively on various groups in a way the lawmakers back then certainly did not intend.

Given that the Government position has been to avid adding in self ID to the GRA (rightly) but to leave the current GRA as it is (wrong) and effectively kick it into the long grass, that leaves detransitioned people with GRCs stuck in their legal sex paperwork which doesn’t match their birth sex, FOR LIFE.. because GRA takes no account of consent (red flag!) This affects Keira Bell among others.

Also the GRA takes no account of GRC holders having biological women’s issues to consider like pregnancy and birth (red flag again!- see Freddy McConnell’s case) AND GRA undermines trust in itself as a legal entity because it is not revocable even if GRC-holders behave outwith the requirements of the GRC. We should all have freedom not to follow sex stereotypes, but GRA is built on those.It’s also unreasonable for GRA to expect of anyone that they adhere for life to something as idiosyncratic to the individual as gender identity feelings.

The big legal changes of status in life like marriage or civil partnership, for example, have a built in reversal process. That is a basic requirement. GRA is just very poorly thought through. There was never an internal logic to it and it’s become anachronistic now we rightly have marriage and civil partnership for everyone including same sex couples.

Anyway so if Conservative women are going to object in principle to the GRA and call for it to be reviewed, then that’s great but this should be campaigned for front and centre- ideally as a joint campaign with other women’s groups.

Is that part of the campaigning plan? I’d support it.

The issue of data collection is just more prominent even than usual in my mind because of the ongoing shenanigans by the Trump campaign, which is very effective at milking contact data via websites and then using it for targeted marketing.

I was having a quick look for a ref to back that up, and fell across this Daily Fail article from 18 Nov. The Fail's not known for accuracy, but some people here like it so I've linked. I haven't corroborated this story, so take it with a pinch of salt. But a lot of it is feasible.

Trump's 2020 election campaign was powered by cellphone app that tracked location of his 2.8million supporters and could access their contacts
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8960385/Trumps-2020-reelection-campaign-powered-cellphone-app-collected-data-2-8million-fans.html

Sorry, that's a mega derail. But you asked about data.

Like some others I came to this thread thinking it was the Baroness' group. It wasn't at all obvious.

I can't help wondering at the timing, as the OP must surely have known that was in the pipeline. I wonder how many would join both.

I think the Baroness' group will be cross-party and specifically for women's issues/rights. Please correct me if I am wrong.
I think I'll continue to wait for that.

If we click on the Conservatives for Women Facebook page, it will become part of Facebook tracking of us – probably even if we don't have a Facebook account.

I can't remember the current state of play on this, but AFAIK Facebook creates "shadow identities" (what Line of Duty would call nominals) where it tracks people across the web via cookies on every site which has the Facebook link – so, most sites inc MN – even if Facebook doesn't know the person's actual name. Device Identification is also carried out by many websites: you'll often see it mentioned in the same warning as cookies. Can't remember details just now, but basically IIRC our actual smartphone or home router's short-lived link from the exchange is identified. (Don't shoot me if that bit's wrong, I'm tired and can't remember stuff today. I'm sure someone can do a better rundown of all aspects of tracking)

I've just looked, and the Conservatives for Women website states: "We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website" and does not appear to give any way to opt out of cookies as many other websites do. It would be better practice for them to allow us the choice to opt out.

Donations and sales of postcards are via PayPal. The site says that the service may collect data about the buyer. I don't know how much data this sort of vendor can get about PayPal buyers, although I think I get email addresses when I sell stuff and do money transfers.

Typically the value of this data comes from aggregating and cross-referencing data sets. So the same buyer of flowers also buys a Ravelry magazine, has used their email address to join a website about motor-racing and on the same device has watched a YouTube clip about chasing Donald Trump round his golf course with a tuba. This allows anyone doing marketing to have a fuller picture and thus isolate a target audience, which they can microtarget with a message not necessarily meant for general consumption.

Facebook sells marketers "universes" of accounts they've identified as likely to respond to the same sort of issues or style of marketing. So once we're in a universe from one site we've visited, we may be nudged towards another.

Eg one of the Leave campaigns harvested data from disengaged potential voters via a football prize competition. It then used this data to bombard people with specially tailored political ads. Vote Leave didn't need to know people's actual names, just how to reach them and what would press their buttons.
Vote Leave's targeted Brexit ads released by Facebook
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-44966969

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_advertising

I only mention Vote Leave and Facebook because it's a well-studied example: anyone who wants to pay for it can do this and can use various platforms. During the run-up to the 2016 US election, I kept finding Breitbart cookies on my machine. I hadn't been on the Breitbart website and the most likely culprit was actually adverts or some other content on MN, although I had an ad blocker at the time.

So yes, it's excellent practice to use throwaway email addresses, but that's not enough to prevent us being tracked and fed tailored content.

Sorry, that was a long diversion on non-obvious data collection and uses.

It does not follow that WfC are going to use our data (mine too, because I clicked) like this! But like everyone else they could if they wanted to.

No probs Perking and no rush. I'm interested in your point of view.

Sorry, Floisme, not ignoring you but writing a long post!

"Working with people who you may not agree with is the only way to actually get things done in politics."

Yes indeed - I agree.

But it shouldn't be necessary to join a group in order to work with them. I thought this new group was supposed to be working with other interested parties so, in theory, there should be no need.

I do see your point Perking but where are they asking for personal information (beyond a name and email which can be anonymised) and for money?

I'm very happy to work with political opponents to achieve common goals, Floisme.

In fact it annoys me no end when people get into purity spirals and start cutting off other groups left right and centre. I'd be shocked and actually horrified if everyone I worked with had exactly the same views as me.

There are some lines I'm less keen to cross though: it would have to be a heck of a unifying issue to get me making common cause with (say) paedophiles.

So lack of transparency becomes a real problem.

If I don't know who you are, and what you'll be claiming I support, I could end up marching down my street with a lot of other very well-intentioned, very genuinely concerned people carrying a QAnon banner saying "Save Our Children". That's the internet for you.

So I'm a bit cautious about campaigns with no obvious real-world touchpoint and which aren't transparent. This is why I'm so annoyed at the OP having been deceitful with her first few posts. Where on earth was the gain in that?