Mumsnet Webchat about women/mums in politics with Stella Creasy and Caroline Nokes - 1st February

Late to the party but caught up with the sc and cn thread and was impressed with the relentless intelligent questions.

The 'wall of reality' is a really good way of phrase it.

They don't want to change the policy. So they don't want to see the evidence, so are trying to supress the evidence.

Sadly, this pattern is not restricted to this subject. Its rife in politics atm, which is ideologically led rather than lead by evidence which is gathered to solve problems.

The public want the latter, ideologically driven (and educated) politicians want the former.

And THAT is source of the biggest point of conflicts and dissatisfaction / mistrust for the public.

Helen Saxby is spot on.

Brexit is actually another good example (I actually think that 'remain' was guilty of a certain amount of this too before anyone says different, but if you are making change its particularly pertinant to offer solutions to existing problems) where there is no practical consideration of reality.

twitter.com/helensaxby11/status/1489520337612165123?s=20&t=7Rf8iOLPJwQlZcM4VN0j6w

'A pattern is emerging amongst Labour MPs in particular, regarding the debate on women's rights:
1 Ignore ALL the light shed on the issue by women with evidence.
2 Generate heat by bad faith responses.
3 Complain there is 'more heat than light'.
It's beginning to sound scripted.'

• Helen Saxby

Was this the intention, all along?

Not sure how to start a new thread but thought I’d post it here for traffic and also in case someone can put it on its own thread.
British cycling are having a poll on transgender women competing in the women’s category docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSezRzWDlsNk9tURYI9nt_zkaRxDpQpU0Tsi1nG7VGKO0U2Mag/viewform?mc_cid=d4660459ef&mc_eid=c9a6e3510e

I guess Labour will continue not to elarn lessons, and to lose more elections. They are already losing points in their lead against the Conservatives, which is incredible really given the current shitshow.

www.newstatesman.com/politics/polling/2022/02/why-is-labours-poll-lead-over-the-tories-falling

At least Gordon Brown was embarrassed when he was caught calling members of the electorate 'bigoted'. Stella Creasy thinks it's perfectly acceptable to shout insults at women she disagrees with on Twitter.

And with no comment at all from 'where's your cervix' Starmer

Indeed.

It is interestingly that CN was very far from kind when interrogating the knowledgeable academic women and allowing other MPs to dismiss the evidence in the committee hearing fawning over the trans people giving evidence on gender recognition act reform...almost like they had all made up their minds already

I'm appalled by Stella, frankly. I thought better of her before her various car crash forays into this issue.

As I said earlier in the thread, she appears to have a fundamental misunderstanding of what people are talking about when they say "transwomen" which she indicated that she thought meant they have a GRC, and that "self identified" people who identify as women were somehow a different group.

Yes, which is just a position held by about nobody, so I don't understand why both women and trans people haven't put her right, or whether they've tried to and she's not understood.

I’m horrified by the whole thing. I’m really upset by the whole “mumsnet are filthy transphobes” by people that have never ever been here. I’m upset because there is so much love and support for women struggling in terrible relationships, women who have gone through appalling situations. Stella has basically gone on Twitter to sob about being bullied by us narrow minded bitches. She wasn’t prepared. She patronised women with her wriggling baby, it sounded like trying to get in with the silly baby brains without having a single second of empathy for us. What’s a woman? Won’t answer. Just be kind nasty transphobes.

it was that her statements just didn't seem relevant or to follow on from any of the issues raised. Total non sequiturs, to an almost bizarre degree.

As I said earlier in the thread, she appears to have a fundamental misunderstanding of what people are talking about when they say "transwomen" which she indicated that she thought meant they have a GRC, and that "self identified" people who identify as women were somehow a different group.

And I'll tell you what, the day that female only spaces- respected by all as the decent, kind, tolerant, inclusive thing to do to ensure equality of access for all - are cobwebbed and unused by choice by anyone at all,

Then you can get rid of them.

Not before.

[quote Alekto]This whole debacle has at least caused Glosswitch to write another Mumsnet article thecritic.co.uk/much-ado-about-mothers/[/quote]
This is brilliant.

Victoria Smith is so bloody smart. I have been struggling to articulate why this has pissed me off so much and she has laid it all out so clearly.

Creasy is an incredibly privilege woman, in a very fortunate, and fairly protected, position. Rather than recognise this and understand that her job as an MP is to help those less fortunate than herself, she instead wants to bank her 80k+ salary while trying to implement men-friendly faux-feminist policies which benefit herself and a few other very fortunate women, while expecting unpaid, overworked women (like us) to do the hard, dangerous and risk work of making sure the structure that gives women & girls a modicum of protection - a structure that she depends on to support her fripperies - remains. But we have to do it for free, and get actual abuse and threats and financial penalties, while she takes a salary to serve herself.

And she can't even be arsed to use her massive salary to pay for childcare, like every other woman would have to do. The child is about 8 months old, loads of women are already back at work then, or at least juggling KIT days and not being allowed to bring their baby to work.

And whoever said upthread that she wouldn't have brought a baby to a meeting with a load of bankers, nor told them to Be Kind when they pointed out her poor preparation and nonsensical policy - absolutely.

This will continue on Mumsnet until the first woman not born female conceives and gives birth naturally. That time is a long way off, but it's coming. At that point their whole nonsense belief system will be blown wide apart.'

Oh for fucks sake.

Look. Go believe whatever you like. Go live in your brave new world. Have fun. Enjoy yourself. I wish you nothing but joy of it all. But can you just fucking respect for two seconds that the entire world does not revolve around you, that other people do not share this belief, that they are not going to jettison their entire belief system on the spot because you say so and you've got some new world order about five minutes old that you say is better than theirs?

The tolerant thing to do, the kind thing to do, the diverse thing to do - and the only bloody thing that will ever end in peace and harmony instead of long, drawn out, never ending battles with increasing anger, resentment and refusal to co operate -

is to accept that people are different .

Many females continue to need female only spaces, services, resources.

if the issue is you want a new world order and all the cool kids are up for it - great. Create new spaces. Call them whatever you like. Add all the new stuff. The new resources. They can be mixed gender, mixed sex, neowhatever today's buzz word is, go nuts. Gold plate them. Whoopee for the new world.

But alongside all this female only spaces must be retained, provided and respected by all, including all male born people for the females who need them for their inclusion, beliefs, access .

Provide an inclusive, accessible society for all. Not just you.

And that ends the problem. Today. It's over.

Except this is where the lobby will kick off and show: there's a lot more to this than wittering about some people are so old fashioned and won't live in my personal moment on command.... some of this is absolute intolerance of females and a desire to stamp out females as a group. To ensure that those females comply with subordination to male born people and surrender their rights, or are stamped out of all spaces, all inclusion, all access, all provision.

And the answer to that part is No. Get over it. Because there is nothing morally ok with that.

I think people coming for webchats always have the same aim - to use MN for publicity and credibility.

I could easily believe that SC and CN thought the campaign name has 'mum' in it so the obvious place to go to publicise it is MN. There may even have been a layer of cynicism that because the name included mum we'd all see that as a nod that they know what a mum is and would be fooled into thinking they know what a woman is too. Then they could have talked about their campaign and picked up some pithy quotes showing how the MN demographic supports them.

They may even have thought they could throw in TWAW and we'd all know they didn't really think that because after all they're talking about sex and birth and mums. So we'd all turn a blind eye to the inconsistency happy in the mum's campaign crumbs being thrown our way.

Their aides probably pointed out that if it didn't go to plan and the pesky MNers got caught up on women, then there was the opportunity to frame CS and CN as woke warriors standing up against 'reactionaries'. From their pov, a win/win ... except when it comes to being credible to female voters but nobody cares about them anyway.

My biggest problem is who were they trying to target?

The key here is how MN is seen by most voters, isn't it? Is it still seen mostly as 'mums' aka the average woman in the street? Outside of Twitter, that's probably the case.

And I was staggered reading the WESC report at how Nokes had apparently done somehow less than zero research. Either she'd really really not done her homework and breenges into situations not giving two fucks that she comes across unprepared, ill informed and ignorant, or she is just not capable of grasping what are fairly straightforward arguments.

I'm not criticising her viewpoints, at all. It wasn't that I disagreed with her (although I did) - it was that her statements just didn't seem relevant or to follow on from any of the issues raised. Total non sequiturs, to an almost bizarre degree.

My biggest problem is who were they trying to target?

It could be 'lurkers' I suppose. Big audience on MN. Most of whom probably are voters. On the face of it, it's a good site to aim for when looking to demonstrate how 'down with the mums' you are.

Or it could be an audience outwith MN, with MN women being used as an illustration to contribute to the 'both sides' argument.

Stella's follow up twittering is unbelievable.

Yesterday I thought she was being a bit disingenuous about the whole thing; this morning I'm almost convinced she's secretly GC and educating the lurkers