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

Sorry, that was to @RedToothBrush - badly worded because I'm still fuming.

Are the majority of female politicians as spoiled as the other big names who refuse to debate on these fundamental issues? They just don't see the needs of women who are not like them, because the women who need our rights to single sex spaces are among the most invisible in our society?

So, is that the issue? Same as what I assume is going on with the female comedians and artists and actors who all repeat Accepted Speech - they go on about privilege but don't see that they all have degrees or been to drama school and have supportive parents and a nice, stable background?

They don't see the scared, poor, traumatised, illiterate, desperate women because who fucking does bother see them?

I usually just lurk but I was dumbfounded by SC saying “What sex based rights do you think are not protected? There is a lot of heat and not a lot of light about what impact changes such as GRC would make etc and so genuinely open to understanding what rights these 'take away' as opposed to extend?"

Is she seriously saying she hasn’t engaged with or understood the arguments AT ALL???

They are Nadine Dorries and Angela Rayner.

And Angela Rayner worked her way through the union system for many years.

Even then Nadine Dorries is well known for her rather unhealthy sycophantic relationship with Boris Johnson.

You have to stroke the palms of the right people for a long time and be highly educated and well supported by family.
Contacts are more important than beig highly educated though. A lot of MPs don't have a particularly high level of education.

Is that anyone? Or just anyone with a degree from Oxford and / or parents who are already very active members of the party?
Quite. I don't mean this in a snide way but Nokes has never actually worked for anywhere else except her dad afaik so I don't think she was probably the best person to ask for advice on how to get selected as an MP.

Too many times I have been told I don't look like an MP. That's because I am not a 45 year old man. We have to be more determined to demonstrate that anyone can be an MP.

Is that anyone? Or just anyone with a degree from Oxford and / or parents who are already very active members of the party?

Anyone can be an MP disappears into a myth when you actually look at the bios of every woman in the cabinet and shadow cabinet. Including Rayner who had support from extended family.

You have to stroke the palms of the right people for a long time and be highly educated and well supported by family.

Theres nothing in there for anyone who falls outside that.

If you are not prepared to tow the line you aren't welcome. The LDs said that explicitly.

If you cant get interships with Daddy, and you aren't available on weekends to go canvassing or leafleting or just generally be available, you cant do it.

If you are a party member standing for a parish council somehow I doubt you are going to get support from the party

And even if you could manage a meeting its all the things you have to do as part of the role which you have to fit around all the other tasks you do as a parent. Like cooking tea, running around taking them to clubs, doing the housework, doing homework with them on top of your daytime job. Men have far more in the way of freetime.

I just get this feeling that this just isn't understood. Or it is, and its thought of as tough shit.

I feel utterly depressed after that

So do I. I can't work them out, whether they are disingenuous, scared about repercussions or genuinely believe that men can become women and that women will lose nothing under self ID.

But any of these options leave them unelectable for me.

Because people with a cervix was all over radio and tv.

🤷‍♀️

I also want to thank you, Justine. You, and this place you built, are our only hope. You're women's Obi Wan Kenobe.
I think it is nuts that an astute businesswoman has that responsibility placed upon her - because our female politicians are not brave enough to try and balance what women need, what we want, and what the law says we are entitled to.

Well said vivariumvivariumsvivaria

I feel utterly depressed after that. They both refused to engage with the question - as if they didn't understand what was being asked. Or rather, refused to understand.

And it's all very well telling people off for asking the same question repeatedly. It's not as if this is just one side issue among many more important topics. It is THE issue. If you can't define what a woman is, how can you develop policies aimed at women? It's that simple. It's a bit like telling the suffragettes off for banging on about the vote all the time.

Still, at least we had the opportunity, I guess. At least Mumsnet is here - as a PP said, without Mumsnet, we wouldn't be able to have this debate and we wouldn't be able to find each other. Mumsnet, as Helen Joyce pointed out, is one of the reasons that gender-critical feminism has been able to organise so much more successfully in this country than in others.

You know I was just reading that the number of young women getting a smear test has gone down in Scotland in the past 5 years

Maybe it’s because of the language now used that’s not understood

Like people with a cervix

Sorry just thinking about what these 2 women politicians don’t recognise what is happening in real world and how it directly affects us

Just watched that parliament thing

Was able to go to the bits to see how Caroline nokes introduced each of the 2 sections and now I remember

She didn’t give the women their titles.

How rude were they not worthy 🤷‍♀️

Well that was a waste of time! As others have pointed out, there's no point in discussing how to increase the number of women in politics if "women" refers to potentially everyone.

We're just going to have some situations where life is harder (again). Women persist, though. We've done it before, we'll do it again. We organise more, we learn, we regroup, we get up again.

Take heart. x

This sounds a little dramatic, but, I mean this sincerely - I will never forgive you for allowing women to be raped in jails. I will never forgive you for dismissing the marginalised women. I will never forgive that women who are escaping male violence and get to a refuge find it is shut because it has lost funding because they refused to accept male people. And I will never forgive that the person in charge of Rape Crisis Edinburgh has none of the skills, qualifications or aptitude for the role, but has one special quality that freshly raped women do not want to be around.

Neither will I.

And how dare they make women responsible for raising the level of debate when they are supporting state sponsored abuse of women.

I also want to thank you, Justine.

You, and this place you built, are our only hope. You're women's Obi Wan Kenobe.

I think it is nuts that an astute businesswoman has that responsibility placed upon her - because our female politicians are not brave enough to try and balance what women need, what we want, and what the law says we are entitled to.

I am furious. Absolutely livid. My disappointment makes me shake with anger.

I NEED those two politicians. I NEED to have women in parliament and I really don't care which party they are in - just that there are women representing the interests of 51% of the population; the interests and needs that the 49% are often totally oblivious to.

I want to vote, I am politically engaged and if either of their parties made a commitment to protect my sex based rights I would vote for them.

As it is, I'm hoping that Rosie Duffield, Johann Lamont, Joanna Cherry, Joan McAlpine, Baroness Nicholson, and Jackie Doyle Price set up a political party for women.

Because without women standing up for women then we are fucked, by anyone who wants to fuck us.

I suspect that civil servants and political staff will be looking at this thread now - well, read this:

I am a floating voter. I am not alone, by refusing to uphold my sex based rights you have created a mess because there are an unknown number of women thinking "they have done WHAT?"

Our tights to privacy, safety and dignity matter a great deal to women - you just aren't bothering to ask us about it because it's Too Hard and worse, you aren't doing any sort of impact assessment on what effect losing our rights to privacy, safety and dignity has us as a group. That is your job. You are letting me down.

This sounds a little dramatic, but, I mean this sincerely - I will never forgive you for allowing women to be raped in jails. I will never forgive you for dismissing the marginalised women. I will never forgive that women who are escaping male violence and get to a refuge find it is shut because it has lost funding because they refused to accept male people. And I will never forgive that the person in charge of Rape Crisis Edinburgh has none of the skills, qualifications or aptitude for the role, but has one special quality that freshly raped women do not want to be around.

You can come on MN and give us mantras and slogans and refuse to engage in the ONE issue which comes up repeatedly - that's unfortunate but it's up to you.

The consequences of your dismissal of us on here, though, are that I will never forgive you and I will never vote for you while you contribute to women being fucked over.

No thank you.

Mea culpa, one of the 'males' to who Caroline and chums gave respect is actually female, but transitioned, and as is the way of these things, makes quite a convincing man: Stephen Whittle.

@JustineMumsnet is right - the two MPs did say what they think 'women' are.

It's potentially every human on earth.

How can we trust politicians to draft usable legislation if words have no meaning?

How can you actually discuss women in politics if we can't agree on what a woman is?

Does anyone think my car insurance would pay out for a broken TV if I said it identified as a Volvo?

We enshrined a lie in law in 2004 and now we are dealing with the consequences. Legislators knew they were passing law based on a lie as evidenced by the primogeniture clause.