Time to homeschool the GVMT?!

OP, we all have full and busy lives in which we juggle a multitude of different responsibilities and still manage to put women front and centre of our feminism. So your life is no different from ours in that respect.

You directing people to the website of the very organisation that believes men can be women, and refusing to answer any questions about what exactly it is you do for actual women reminds me of Matt Hancock turning himself inside out in an effort to avoid answering a simple yes or no question from Piers Morgan. Woeful.

CJA37.

It was not me who organised anything. I was just a participant like the many on this forum who do this. I guess we are self-organising.

If the WEP campaigns aren’t right for you, where will you start your own or take actions large or small to make things better?

What I have discovered is that women are incredibly resourceful. And many of us are happy to look critically at other campaign groups that some call 'hateful' and see what they are up to. We can then choose to join in, or not.

So, you cannot tell me what actions your party took to support women in the GRA consultation? And not about what the WEP did about the content that was being used for sex and relationships educations and other topics at school?

Please don't take my questions as a channeling of disappointment about your party at you as a representative. I am truly interested in what you have to say so that I can make my decision. As I have said.

And I am sure that many others here are interested in what the party has been doing.

The Big Lie - how the WEP was always about gender rather than sex www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4058470-the-big-lie-how-the-wep-was-always-about-gender-rather-than-sex

I don't believe your party should be campaigning on a platform of making things better for women when they are more interested in appeasing transactivists.

I hope one day there will be an actual party for women which is not afraid to stand for them and say no to males.

It’s hard to feel they’re doing something genuinely positive when they’re bent on undermining the very foundations of women’s rights.

Like if you had a partner who was cheerleading for you to get a pay rise at work, but emotionally abusing you at home.

Mindfuck.

So much this. Perfect analogy.

Well, I shall wait for Cheryl to answer some of my previous questions because I would like to think that maybe I have judged too harshly.

That maybe this party has been working behind the scenes to support the progress of women (not redefined to meet the needs of males) on a wider scale and the needs of children. The more the merrier, if that is the case.

Agreed Winesalot It’s treating us like children and WEP has agreed to be akin to a pupils council in a school, supervised by the adults aka the men and told what they can and can’t discuss.

I agree northernfeminist. If a Women’s Equality Party isn’t focused on preventing the bigger picture from changing dramatically, smaller issues are absolutely pointless to defend.

• sports
• education
• employment
• health
• legal system
• emergency services such as refuges
• safeguarding for children and women.

All these are impacted by the inclusion of males. Making the world a better place for all? Does this mean that women will never achieve equality because our resources and our progress is then shared by males who do not have the same needs but feel they should still have access to those resources ?

So, while males are setting the policy for women in their roles as women’s officers and on the panels discussing our needs, that’s equality for women? Or equality for everyone but women again?

@CJA37 opportunities like this are small ways to use our voice for good

I don’t want a Woman’s Equality Party to be seeking out the small opportunities. I want them to be tackling the major threats to women’s equality. And right now in this country it’s the push, by males, to change the definition of the word woman from the definition that has served for as long as we’ve had a formal definition to one where any male can say they are a woman.

*an

You need to change your name from the WEP, as the way you're using it, it's and oxymoron.

I will not take part in your play.

Yup, I think the WEP are actually harmful, hugely sad.

If the WEP can't define us how do they expect to be able to ensure our current legal protections are upheld? How can they work to dismantle the systemic misogyny women need legal protection from, if they believe the term 'woman' encompasses some men? They can't.

I believe the WEP are actively harmful to women's interests.

While the current government continues to make decisions that widen inequality, disrespect children and generally fck things up, then I'm looking for any small thing I can do to stand against that.*

That is interesting Cheryl. So far, this government has also done some things that I cannot imagine Labour doing and things I saw no support from WEP for.

Just one of those things was in at least making an effort to make education around the issue of gender and sex age appropriate and at least staying the whole ‘wrong body’ idea should never be uttered. Where was the WEP placed on supporting the government on that issue? I and many others here on MN were directly writing letters and contacting schools. What action did the WEP take or was the WEP fully in support of groups such as stonewall and mermaids setting the education direction of our children?

We did not do a virtue signaling social media campaign as someone quite rightly points out is good publicity for a membership drive. We actually worked behind the scenes en masse to improve the life of our’s and everyone’s children to let them express themselves how they wish and to never be told by a teacher they might be the opposite sex and ‘in the wrong body’.

And what was the WEP submission to the government in regards to self ID please? Even though you cannot inform us what the WEP definition of the group you seek equality for is, I would like to know what the party did to support women of the female sex during that consultation.

Because really, that is the crux of the situation.

Here is a poll running at the moment about allowing access for males into toilets and showers.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4148800-AIBU-to-think-women-should-not-be-banned-from-Social-media-for-asking-the-question-Thread-2

And the first thread that filled up

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4148030-AIBU-to-think-women-should-not-be-banned-from-Social-media-for-asking-the-question

If your party is a gender based equality party, working to progress women’s hard fought rights to anyone who says they are a woman. You are directly working against the women who need those rights to remain as they were, for females. And we need them still because we had not achieved equality. And now we have males in women’s policy roles proclaiming to be women but with no focus on the issues that are important to us.

Frankly, we don’t need another party telling us that we are transphobic for working to see our needs are met by working to make sure that conflicts of the trans rights don’t reduce our protections. They need their own rights that suit their specific needs but do not dilute the legal protections for us.

I agree this government has made some disastrous decisions. Absolutely disastrous. They should definitely have the home schooling situation highlighted.

However, while you say you feel getting active in the ‘small things’ can help, I feel that you need to make those small things actually count. I don’t feel a social media campaign is anywhere near enough. I assume the party is doing something else, please tell us what else are you doing to enact real change?

Oh they will be able to define us Northern, after the men and women have had a debate they can decide if we deserve to be defined separately men from. Shhh, wait quietly and they will get back to us.

One thing WEP, if you decide women are not adult human females, if you decide women are male and female, then tell us why. We will need your definition of women.

Every right you fight for makes no sense if you deny that group so much as a name.

Hi Cheryl/ @CJA37
I don’t understand why you think a party purportedly for women that can’t define the word woman would have any credibility trying to raise issues that affect women with the government

The so-called Women's Equality Party having a consultation to decide what it thinks a woman is really does sound like something out of Monty Python.

(Of course, if it were, it would be funnier and less depressing.)

I agree whole heartedly with this point: If we're not all united on every point, so be it. But can you not see that by on the one hand trying to support women by pointing out burdens that fall unequally heavily upon women, while on the other hand undermining women by saying that men can be women if they say they are, you are doing exactly what you accuse the government of?
... make decisions that widen inequality, disrespect children and generally fck things up*

a Party which had set out to be revolutionary for women has highlighted the very weakness of its own approach. The result of aligning itself with transgender identity politics is to obfuscate, drown out and suppress the very voices the WEP set out to listen to and to promote, namely the voices of women.

How true. How sadly, disappointingly, bitterly true.

If we're not all united on every point, so be it.

How can a party supposedly for women not be united on the definition of a woman? Do you seriously think it’s ok to have some people in a party for women who think the sex class of women includes men?

That isn’t not being united on every point. That is an outright denial of science, biology and fact, not to mention a complete shafting of women and girls and their rights. Your party is a joke.

That letter! What a horrendous way she was treated. If this is the action that WEP wants to represent them it's clearly not representing women at all!

Op I agree that we should be doing what we can and I’ll have a look at your links but again, it’s disheartening to feel anything we do for women (money raised, awareness raised, laws sought, medical research etc) is all undermined if we don’t know what a woman is (and if we’re called bigoted for simply doing things for women)

Heather's open letter after she was kicked out, really worth a read.