Labour work out the demographic they need to win

Thank you, Floisme and MissLucy, this all makes a lot of sense.

Excellent thought provoking post. Thank you.

Labour are hopeless. They could have worked out how to be better a while ago.

And yes many of us probably did vote for Blair. What a shame they’ve made such a mess of Labour today.

Well the menopause made me put on weight, killed my sex drive, made a whole night's sleep a thing of the past and also made me more bolshy.

Thing is I'm through it now but still have the same symptoms, especially the bolshy bit (in fact I think that seems to be increasing). I am dying to be canvassed by Labour but sadly in my constituency you could put a blue rosette on a lamp post and it would get in. Nobody bothers with door to door canvassing here. I suppose that might make it a bit easier for me to spoil my vote but it makes me very cross that I should even have to think of doing this.

Oh and probably most of the WI round here are farmers or farmers wives so I think they have a pretty firm grasp on the reality of biology.

@MissLucyEyelesbarrow

Thank you for pushing back

The menopause policy is an example of how women's health is treated, compared to men's, with women lumped into a special interest group - we are all the same - while simultaneously being othered. We are never the norm - that's men, obviously. And we aren't individuals, who may have different experience and needs. You see this throughout healthcare.

Screening is another good example. You often hear men complain that screening programmes exist for women, not men, and that that is evidence of sexism. As a doctor, I'd say that's true, but the sexism is aimed at women. The evidence for screening saving lives over all is thin (NB I am not saying don't have screening or that some individuals aren't saved by it - I'm talking on a population level). Until a few years ago, when female doctors finally managed to push back successfully, screening information aimed at women was very misleading. It coerced women into being screened by quoting data that were incomplete and that over-stated the benefits, while downplaying the risks. Women were not treated as capable of marking an informed decision on the basis of all the facts. I think women should have breast screening - I always have it. But I also think that they should be treated as adults and presented with a truthful picture of the risks, as well as the benefits.

The reason that there are not many screening programmes aimed at men is that no one would ever treat men like this. Men are not coerced or infantilised. Men are not treated as a group, but as individuals. That's why you will never see political parties come up with a male equivalent of the menopause policy. Men would bristle, because men do not expect to be treated as a group - they are the norm (in their eyes).

I know a lot of women who've had really bad periods, and a few who've had really bad pregnancies. I don't think I've known any who've had really bad menopauses, although I know some women do, and I suspect my mother did.

But if that anecdotal ratio of issues is actually reflected in the population as a whole (if) maybe this is the cheapest way of appealing to women?

I'm not sure it's just clumsy, 'Shit what can we give them' thinking though. I'm wondering if it's very deliberately playing on our instinct to be nice. I've been through the menopause and, while it wasn't the best time of my life, it was far from being the worst. But I'm very aware that some women do have a horrendous experience, so right up until reading this thread, it had never occurred to me to question any of this stuff, because I didn't want to be a nob.

They won't get me back.

I can see why people become conservative as they as they age, I want to conserve old fashion ways, like single sex spaces, I realise I am not as liberal and as progressive as I was, as I know it's not good.

I suspect what has happened is that Labour have realised they've alienated huge number of middle-aged women through gender ideology (because we have the experience to know that every dodgy bloke in Britain will take advantage of self-id legislation and unisex facilities), and they've said: "Shit, how can we get them back?"

Then they've thought: "We've got to give them something."

And, as a poster up thread said, one Labour SpAd in the back of a taxi has gone "The menopause! We'll use the menopause!"

It's so fucking obvious.

I think you’re right, Floisme. Without intending any disrespect to women seriously impacted by the menopause, one has to wonder where all this sudden interest in the form of policies, media stories, ‘activism’ is coming from. It’s not as if women were not going through the menopause ten years ago.

Banging on about menopause as the No.1 women’s issue has the added benefit of further separating younger from older women, thereby making female-led activism less effective.

The other thing that makes me suspicious is the lack of data, your typical menopause story is some human interest narrative where one woman’s life breaks down (ugly! crazy! alienating friends and family!) because of the menopause and then the solution is a cocktail of drugs.

Just because you’re paranoid does not mean they are not out to get you …

You know, I had never thought about this, I'd just assumed the push was coming from women. If it's not then I have to say, albeit through gritted teeth, that it's quite a clever tactic: Offer us something we hadn't asked for and we all assume other women must have asked for it so we don't question it. Breathtakingly cynical but clever. If only they were also clever enough to work out that men aren't women.

Just had the displeasure of hearing Dodds on LBC banging on about women aged 45-65 impacted by the menopause. She SHOULD have been pulled up short by Andrew Castle who should have asked what the Labour definition of 'woman' is.
Will any interviewer have the bollocks to do this in the next few days?

I have voted Labour for most of my life, by the way. I can’t while they continue to disrespect women and push self-ID.

Sharing this because there are so many killer lines that I cackled all the way through reading it:

Starmer may regret hiring Sue Gray — she’s good at her job.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/bb3f7ea4-b9e3-11ed-89e2-a4c715f4739d?shareToken=87a7620a06d4706f36fb8b522a577256

My favourites so far:

He wants her to carry out an investigation to see if there is any evidence of a party left in Labour.

What a CV though. The daughter of a furniture salesman, she will be tasked with trying to sell a shonky wooden cabinet. Her career break spent running a pub in Northern Ireland in no-man’s land between the British Army and the IRA will have been good training for dealing with the tensions between the offices of Starmer and Rayner. Those years making friends with people in the wilderness will come in handy if she has to negotiate a coalition with the Lib Dems.

🤣🤣🤣

Not just middle-aged women, but poorly educated too according to the article - cos there were no women at university in the ‘80’s 🙄
Of course, going to uni then meant learning critical thinking skills, how to develop a robust argument, considering different people’s positions and accepting that other people could question your argument without it being a personal attack. The sort of thing apparently lacking in the Labour Party just now

I wonder if someone has finally twigged that today's menopausal women are the ones who voted in Tony Blair. Who may be derided by the party but he's the only one who got Labour into power.
Personally I would have been a dead cert vote for them until this issue. I feel Labour have badly let women down.

Exactly this.

I recognise that some women have awful menopauses, just like some have awful periods, and some have awful pregnancies - I suspect that almost every woman falls into at least one of those categories. But most of us manage to live life putting the awfulness in a box and getting on with life.

I feel it's doing women a disservice to focus on the menopause - we deserve our sex-based rights being enforced and proper protection being given to us, not photo-friendly virtue signalling b#ll#cks, especially when Labour can't even tell us what a women is.

Sorry Anneliese. We see through it. Get over it.

The menopause pound is being recognised with TV advertising aimed at ladies of a certain age.

Cynical me wonders how long before menopause advertising is being promoted to not-women.

www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/mar/03/i-want-to-give-mid-life-women-a-voice-labours-anneliese-dodds-on-menopause-careers-and-the-wi

A while back I looked at middle aged women in the England and Wales Census 2023.
I used 40 to 54 years old, nearly 6 million women, 10% of the population. Yes I think they have done the sums.

Can you imagine the conversations trying to ensure the right sort of women voters are there for the photo shoot. I bet no one is daft enough to put anything on paper!

Well that's the leadership team, but where I live they are old and Conservative in the main.

I expect Anneliese will have photo ops with the younger sort of member of course, but like with most matters in this area, Labour will be all over the right-on squirrels, and ignore the many dinosaurs that think they are cr*p.

Tories are hated up here too. Just cos Sunak says what you want to hear doesn't
mean people have forgotten the tory lies and will start to trust them again.
Reform party is very popular. Brexit party UKIP mark 2. Now that will be fun for the country if they win a few seats.