Gender Criticals - how are you going to vote in the election?

I'll be spoiling my ballot again. I have a full on TWAW Labour MP in a safe Labour seat. She was inserted by the Momentum wing of the party after Louise Ellman ( my former Jewish MP) was bullied out. I cannot stand her. She has the Mermaids logo at the top of her twitter account.

Going forward i'll be voting for an MP not a party. I need to know I can trust and have respect for the candidate I vote for - whatever their political colour.

I'll probably take a sticker saying:
If you don't respect my sex
Then don't expect my X
With a big arrow aimed at the LibDem candidate's name.

I live in a swing seat constituency and was a card carrying member of the labour party for 15 years, but finally resigned from the party just over 2 years ago because of this issue and because of how Rosie Duffield was being treated at the time. It just seems even worse now. I was a door knocker and many of the other women who knocked with me also resigned. We brought this up at local meetings and were treated appallingly for it at the time and had sharp words from our MP’s office. I received radio silence from Labour HQ when I left and the others were told that they hadn’t received any feedback that this was an issue that mattered. What a lie to repeat to us again and again.

I honestly don’t know how I’ll vote. I’m centre left but it will take many years and a lot of work for me to ever trust labour again. They’re misogynists. I’m at a stage of my life now where I’m very focused on family life and my previously much more competitive career is on the back burner, so the misogyny of the left just seems more obvious every day. I don’t like our local conservative candidate very much but at least he seems intent on not gaslighting 50% of the local population about sex vs “gender”.

Nice!

I have in the past written ‘Women’s Rights are for Female People’ and been acutely aware of my pencil scratching sounds in the silent hall 😆

might take a nice, quiet felt tip this time!

Spoiled ballot paper with the words ADULT HUMAN FEMALE scrawled over it (not that anyone will truly take note of the reasons why people register a protest vote). This will be the first general election since I turned eighteen that I've felt compelled to do this.

And yes, there are many more bases on which to vote. This is still one of the most serious political battles I've witnessed in my lifetime, women being the ones with the most to lose. And oddly enough, right now the UK represents one of the best hopes of avoiding the fullscale rollback of women's rights seen in Canada and elsewhere.

Once those rights are rescinded they are not coming back.

I'll be voting Labour, best chance to get the Conservative Party out, and no matter what they say this month and in the run up to the election, I can't forget that most of the current mess with regard language and affirmation and encroachment into female spaces has happened under the Conservative government.

I don't like Starmer, I disagree with a lot of what he and his MPs are saying but running this country is about more than just their stance on Transgender issues and I align more to Labour policies outside of this issue.

Just wanted to say these are really interesting and good points. Made me reflect. Thanks.

I live in an ultra safe Labour seat (one of the NW ‘supermajority’ seats)

I’ll probably spoil my ballot unless a sensible alternative (eg SDP) or a fun protest candidate (Monster Raving Looney) stands.

I grew up somewhere that is usually Tory but has on occasion gone Labour or Libdem. If I still lived there I would do whatever it takes to keep
the LibDems out (a Labour Libdem coalition would likely be the worst scenario for women’s sex based rights - look at how much influence the Greens have had over the SNP! Labour alone would at least be simpler to influence internally but I can imagine sex v gender being a bargaining chip in a lablib government, and KS rolling over on self ID to get parliamentary votes on something else)

For the party and candidate that knows what a woman is. The Tories have said publicly where they stand but I have a feeling that is posturing because they know the election will be soon and they want to show a distinction from Labour. I don't think Labour knows who they really are, they're trying to be all things to all people except women but there are GC people within their ranks, but are there enough to persuade me? Probably not . So I'm not sure yet.

Labour. I have a good candidate who knows what a woman is and knows why it matters - though whether he'd speak up in the party & in parliament if elected remains to be seen. I know of plenty current Labour MPs who are in-principle on side but don't say anything, which is of no use at all (and a disgrace for people elected to public office IMO). No doubt whoever stands for the Conservatives in my constituency will also know what a woman is, but given the party's record in government that's where it ends: there's no point knowing what a woman is if your policies aren't going to make things better for women, especially those living in poverty and facing multiple disadvantage.

Labour are in with a shout in my constituency which was formerly safe Labour but is now SNP. With the SNP in freefall I don't want to contribute to letting in a Conservative. But you can bet I'll be having lots of conversations with my Labour candidate (he's open to that) and attending hustings etc when the time comes. Labour are beginning to move, but they're still a long way from where they need to be. An election in the offing makes this a very good time to put some pressure on them to come up with some sensible policies which they've so far failed to do.

I don't trust either Labour or the Tories. At the moment I feel like the Labour Party will do the least harm overall but that could change before the election.

I don't think that the Tories care about women's rights any more than Labour do.

That's because she said it on my thread last week too. The implication being that we're being awkward not just voting Labour for "the greater good" (which is a flawed concept which JKR explored in depth in Deathly Hallows).

A vote is a chess move not a Valentine.
I've seen this quoted before. Free tip: I'm not sure if it's meant to impress me but the more I see it, the more vacuous it sounds.
You're welcome.

I used to think it was best to vote for a major party to get another party out but then I realised that the elected party isn't the only one sitting in the Commons, and as we saw with Theresa May's many attempts to get a deal voted through, if there were enough candidates from smaller parties representing things that actually matter to their constituents instead of a massive group toeing the party line, they get to disrupt things quite considerably, get issues out into the open, and stop the majority party from riding roughshod over everyone (obviously this can be a good or bad thing). The DUP was a small party and the conservatives were forced to form a coalition with them and give them concessions.

So I will not vote Labour just to get the tories out and I don't think it's my civic duty to do so or that I'm being awkward or expecting too much.

There is a lot of value to voting in smaller parties with niche policies. Every party has to start somewhere.
After all, go back 150 years and the majority party were Whigs and it was all Whigs vs Tories. The Whigs don't exist any more.

Voting for a smaller party shows the bigger parties where they are losing votes and what matters to the people who are most likely to vote for them and is a good way to either change which parties are the ruling parties or change the ruling parties' policies. UKIP were a small party. The conservatives are doing so well by emulating UKIP and hoovering up their voters while still appealing to their core base of voters.

I just need a decent smaller party to vote for and this approach would be perfect.

@oviedo "Women's rights are not a single issue."

I agree. However, I am as sure as I can be that a Labour government is not going to curtail women's reproductive rights. I can't say the same about the Tories.

Why would that apply, unless you're going for a "Once a Tory voter, always a Tory voter in the end" angle?

As it happens I have voted Tory before, but I've also voted Lib Dem in the past and I've been a Labour voter for years. I vote for whichever party I feel is the best at the time, not along tribal or ideological lines.

No idea. I am totally politically homeless as well. I can't vote Labour- my mp equates trans rights with gay rights and will engage no further as "we obviously don't agree".

I'm a corbyn socialist.

I have no one to vote for so I'm not voting. There are no lesser evils at this point.

Bare in mind that in 2017 and 2019 I was on the streets, door knocking and on the phones volunteering my time. I never thought I'd be politically homeless but here we are.

I'll vote Conservative. They wont win because here in East London it's always Labour. Having said that, we have a very large Muslim population and that's good in terms of keeping the schools gender ideology free - we all talk about it at the school gates and on wattsapp.

I will never vote tory
Ever
So I'm politically homeless
Labour are obviously relying on the votes of old Red wall racists and students ans that ain't gonna win you a GE
I've said it before...it'll be a repeat of 92

That smacks of "It's not important enough to choose your vote over, women, think of the bigger things".

Well this is one of the most important things to me and I will vote accordingly. And if that means Tory then it means Tory.

This. Voting is not a political statement. It’s a civic responsibility. Elections don’t change things overnight either. Change is a slow burn that take years. Especially in times of global unrest like this.

If Labour win they better win with a big majority that leads to a second and third term, if we are to see positive change.

Democracy is a slow steady burn not a dramatic turnaround. Got to think big picture and long term.

I was heading towards Labour but the latest Rosie Duffield bullying has scuppered that.

I genuinely don't know how I'm going to vote this time. I keep getting anxiety when I think about the fact that there's going to be an election because I don't know what to do. Even if we leave out the "knows what a woman is" aspect they're all unelectable as far as I am concerned.

I don't want to not vote because women died for my right to do so and it would be spitting in their faces to stay home.

I don't want to vote Labour for a billion reasons and "for the greater good" is a shit argument when they threaten our family's stability in several big ways with their proposed policies.

I don't want to vote Conservative, the constant cuts to services, backdoor privatisation of the NHS, and trying to push people with long term MH into work from home jobs is all pure evil.

I can't vote Lib Dem, I will never EVER forgive them for the racist anti-traveller rhetoric they used to dine out on in the 2000s (ditto Labour, but Labour has done much worse lately).

I can't vote Green, they're not a viable party and I don't agree with most of their policies beyond the environmental stuff. I don't get how a seemingly nature-oriented party can be TWAW when a surgical transition is one of the most unnatural things a human can do to themselves.

I can't vote SDP or whatever they're called as we don't have a candidate afaik.

I want to vote for Jeremy Corbyn but Labour did everything to stop their own grassroots supporters from supporting him including redefining who was/wasn't a member of the Labour party, it was a watershed moment when younger people engaged in politics en-masse, then when Labour failed to block his leadership bid they forced him out, and we're supposed to vote for that bunch of nasty bullies on principle? Fuck that. What they've done to other party members shows it's not an isolated incident, it's who they are.

@SidewaysOtter if you think the Tories are better on the economy then presumably you must have voted Tory before the trans issue arose? Less of a problem for you perhaps.