MPs who believe ‘women have a penis’ will be named and shamed ahead of general election

@AdamRyan I think we’ll all benefit from asking a clear simple question, you seem to be making something simple into the usual “it’s complex”. We don’t want to muddy the waters.
what is a woman ? Should be easy enough to answer. Then follow up with can someone born male ever be a woman.
I look forward to the answers, if they are any longer than two sentences, we can assume they’ve swallowed the genderborg

Yes baldie. I consider each party deserves a great deal of suspicion. I actually don’t quite understand blind adherence to a political party as a voter. But then, political party alignment has never been something I have made integral to my identity.

I think blindly hating tories is as ridiculous as blindly loving Labour.

Both get it terribly, terribly wrong sometimes.

Both get it right sometimes.

As for the SNP.....it'll be a cold day in hell before I ever vote for them, irrespective of how truly lovely and optimistic my local MSP is. I'm sad that I can't vote for them, but I'd be shooting myself in the eye if I did that.

Possibly just someone who thinks nothing is more important than getting the Tories out.

Meh.

The Tories have been in power for 13 years and yes, a lot of things have turned to absolute shit in that time, but society hasn't completely broken down and is still a long way off that point.

I'd rather have them in power for another five years if that's what it will take to make Labour see sense on women's rights.

Yes, it's really quite amazing 🧐

I have a question about why one poster thinks so.

Are they perhaps one of those who will be required to answer?

In terms of elected representatives having to follow the party line, despite whips being issued regarding the GRR bill, 9 SNP and 2 Labour MSP's ignored their party's whip and voted with their own principles.

They've taken a lot of shit for it - Ash Regan in particular. But I'll tell you what- I'm a lot more likely to vote for them, knowing that they won't blindly follow the party line, if they disagree with it.

I think it's remarkable how the idea of asking a question of people aspiring to be our elected representatives can on the one hand be so futile and on the other hand cause such discomfort.

Yes. If a candidate is paying lipservice, just following the tribal line/activist groupthink, it suggests that their other "principles" may also not be genuine.

"It wasn't my fault, I was just following the party line".

How many genocides has this excuse been trotted out after?

All of them.

No.

Their job is NOT to follow the party line. Their job is to represent their constituents.

All of them, not just the 4% of screamers with interesting hair.

Yes. I agree.

It is about both local and national aims for that candidate. I don’t believe a local candidate would have a local manifesto that didn’t fit with the national one, would they?

But I would never vote for a candidate just to get a particular person into the PM role under any government run using the Westminster model. Because leaders change and often that means a faction change.

A mixture, Helle, for me personally. Individual MPs do matter, a lot. So does party policy.

I have to ask, do most people on this thread vote for the ‘leader’ or vote for the candidate who has the best local and national manifesto?

Maybe because I come from a country with compulsory voting, I have never yet voted for the potential ‘leader’ because that has in the past, in my experience, delivered the candidate who is the weakest for my electorate. I don’t have many friends who have voted just for the leader either.

So, who benefits? I agree with others, me! On important issues, a handy reckoner listing opinions in one place such as this is useful.

I have asked several times on the thread though about the question. I do think that merely asking ‘what is a woman?’ is going to deliver some ambiguous answers. But it is a start and it is something. It already has produced results where some candidates/MPs have virtue signaled to unconditional and unquestioning trans support.

However, I also don’t agree that MPs merely ‘toe the line’. Some don’t, some have been elected because they are independent thinkers (and that might be supportive or not) and they are the ones that are good to know about.

The reality is that political parties need to support their candidates. If a group is going to abuse the candidate for holding a legal and reasonable and evidenced opinion, the party needs to address that.

And needs to pull their heads out and stop with the fucked up ‘it is both sides’ and ‘take the heat out’ type narrative they have allocated to the issues. They have done effectively used those platitudes to ignore those issues and been able to do so because they have not been in the position of power.

The job of MPs is not to follow the party line. The job of MPs is to represent their constituents. If an MP is willing to lie to their constituents about something as basic as whether men are women, he or she is not going to be a good MP.

I have an issue with a coordinated campaign to "name and shame" MPs with the "wrong" views. Because I think it opens them up to abuse. For many (especially in Scotland) they are just doing their job and following the party line.

Are there other topics on which we can't ask MPs for their views, lest they provoke extremists?

I appreciate being an MP must be very hard and no doubt they get a lot of attacks. I understand this is worse for women, and I empathise.

The solution just cannot be that MPs avoid offering a position or can't be questioned. That's mad.

Classifying a male person (regardless of how they identify) as female means you no longer have a word that actually means female.

None of this makes women any less women, or indeed trans women any more women. The obvious differences between us, and the obvious common factors between trans women and men, will continue to exist even if all the vocabulary we used to have to describe these things has been redefined and repurposed. It will just be that much harder to communicate who and what we are talking about when we are trying to discuss our lives and our rights.

I have an issue with a coordinated campaign to "name and shame" MPs with the "wrong" views. Because I think it opens them up to abuse. For many (especially in Scotland) they are just doing their job and following the party line.
Thats just not an excuse. I have no one left to vote for because of this - though how can I tell a secretly-pro-woman-but-feart-of-losing-seat politician from a full on believer? I can't, so I won't vote for them.

And classifying a trans-woman as female doesn't make any cis-women less women?

and with just this statement, you have made women "other" and "less"

We are not a sub class, we are just women.

So most of your objections were based on things not happening anyway.

As for who benefits. I do. And others who are interested in hearing answers

Why now - because it’s better before a GE than after we’ve already voted

On how much impact it has well that’s where media headlines come in.

I don't have an issue with people asking politicians to define a woman.

I have an issue with asking if people with penises can be women because its making everything about the Almighty Penis and I'm a feminist. I'd rather ask if people with vaginas can be men.

I also really don't like the idea that men who cut their penis off are women. SRS is brutal and invasive, we shouldn't encourage men to have it to "prove" they are women. Men cannot become women. Penises are irrelevant.

I have an issue with a coordinated campaign to "name and shame" MPs with the "wrong" views. Because I think it opens them up to abuse. For many (especially in Scotland) they are just doing their job and following the party line.

However it appears that despite the title of the thread and headline of the article no "naming and shaming" is going to happen. So that's good.

I still think its going to have very little impact. It will make a difference to hard line TRAs and GC voters. But most voters aren't going to be that swayed by it.

I also think there's a very high likelihood of politicians of all stripes saying "woman = adult human female" (as per Starmer recently) and no-one feeling reassured because maybe female includes people with a GRC, or maybe TRAs are going to colonise womanhood.

So again, who benefits from this? And why now?

I'm being "snippy" because engaging in this thread in the way you have done, having only read the bloody headline, demonstrated an absolute paucity of integrity. I've already made it very clear what I think of liars, the deceitful, the manipulative and the mendacious.

And all you have to say for yourself is cheap nazi comparisons. I'm sure you think minimising the horrors of the third reich is really impressive.

I'm calling it: you're a plant for CCHQ trying to make the Labour party look as deceitful and corrupt as possible. Can I claim my five pounds now?

Hang on a second! 'Things are heading in the right direction' but don't ask MPs, especially female ones, this question because....?

I was specifically referring to that poster asking me to define what a woman was, because they suspected I was a TRA and wanted to tie me in knots. Not people-in-general asking politicians

I can't see what's 'clever' about asking for a definition of a woman. It arises inevitably from TWAW and related assertions that assert circular logic and, ultimately, question the existence of females as a sex class.

While I don't think this initiative will be a solution, it's not a gimmick. It's a question that voters are entitled to ask, in the light of past and present organisational and political policy, and casting it as a trivial and oh-so-clever "shtick" is part of the problem rather than the solution.