The (literal) end of the Women's Equality Party

Ugh, WH already featured one of them and I complained then. May have to complain again.

Hope your BP is steadily lowering.

As said upthread - privileged women involved in a vanity project that centres men rather than women's rights. I suppose if your political activism ignores women's rights and child safeguarding, you'll never be insightful about your limitations in running a party for women (and your preferred men).

Women's Hour just finished a hand-wringing interview with Catherine Meyer and Sandi Toskvig. Dear god, that's my BP buggered for the day, then ...

I heard it was happening and couldn't bear listen. Ridiculous lying nonsense.

TWAW issue has nothing to do with the demise of the party

So, those of us who left over the lack of due process for HBE, not a TWAW issue?

Sophie Walker's comments since stepping down? The disagreements in the meetings? Walker's letter to Mandu Reid?

I’m writing to ask you please to scrap your proposed motion on self-ID to the Women’s Equality Party conference this weekend. I think you’re making a terrible mistake and wish you would reconsider.

I have no right to ask this of you except as one feminist to another. I am not a member of the Women’s Equality Party and have not been for a while. The leadership and management groups in the party do not make it a comfortable home for women who do not accept the ideology of gender. I left for many reasons but this was one of them. (I am aware of course of the irony of this. I feel responsible for every woman who left WEP when I was Leader on the same grounds, as I struggled to hold the party together around this schism.)

But here we are, and history is repeating itself. Four years ago, a group of WEP members brought a motion to conference to ask members to approve a policy of self-ID: That anyone could be a woman on their own say-so. I was deeply concerned about the implications of this motion and that it could be passed as party policy by the small percentage of party members present in the hall. Working with the members who brought that motion – to whom I am still grateful – we instead held a special debate, and the motion was referred back, with a request that the party undertake a members-wide consultation.

https://www.wepsbr.com/post/sophiewalkerletter

The alignment of the agenda with the main funder?

The re-writing of history happens quickly. I expect that the fantasy history will be forthcoming.

ETA: given how much WH usually uses even-handedness as cover for having different perspectives, why didn't WH take the opportunity to interview Sophie Walker for her views?

Women's Hour just finished a hand-wringing interview with Catherine Meyer and Sandi Toskvig. Dear god, that's my BP buggered for the day, then ...

The GASLIGHTING! The DARVO! The BS! The sheer bloody bald-faced cheek of trying to tell us that the TWAW issue has nothing to do with the demise of the party, yet carefully steering the 'discussion' off that subject every time it's brought up. Nuala brings up a Pink News article, SO pleased that publication is being cited on Women's Hour ...

If I honestly felt that the party really did want to maintain a non-shouty space to continue this debate, as ST just claimed, I'd be a lot more hopeful. But we know damn well that isn't the case.

They got interviewed quite a lot by sympathetic media, raising their individual profiles. I think that’s it.

The exact thing I would have expected WEP to be all over. Yet, they weren't.
Are there any examples of anything they did actually achieve?
I’m mystified as to how they justified their existence at all.

Have they ever pondered the reason why donations dried up.

This is exactly the kind of thing I would have given money too, if they were in fact a party for women. Instead I have donated to more than a few crowdfunders, mainly those where women have had to take their employer to tribunal because they were discriminated against. The exact thing I would have expected WEP to be all over. Yet, they weren't.

Fuckity bye.

It's really the only response.

Glad they have closed, sadly the ‘women’s’ organisations that centre males are going to have to learn that those males aren’t going to contribute to keep you going when the women leave

If WEP had stood up for women, it's possible that women would have had a political force that

• pre-empted the need to go to employment tribunals and that WEP might have attracted that money instead
• argued for affordable childcare
• facilitated the lives of single parents (largely women)
• there would be better treatment of carers (largely women).

Oh, what might have been. Some of the saddest words. I can only hope that there's political space for genuinely women-centred policies to flourish now that WEP has slow motion dripped in obscurity towards its inevitable demise.

If they’d stood up for women they’d be thriving right now.

Kidding themselves that they were instrumental in making changes for the benefit of women.

Shitting on the women who had high hopes for them and gave them their support.

Playing shepherdesses. like a bunch of over-privileged Marie Antoinettes.

I ended my membership in 2021 so couldn't vote, so thanks for the update.

I'm sad to see the end of what could've been something brilliant. I was so excited by the idea of it and was really involved with supporting Harini in the 2017 general election in Lambeth. But like so many others, I quit when they stopped being able to define a woman. So not sad to see what it became being ended.

Fuckity bye.

78% voted to dissolve it, does that mean 3/4-ish of one of them wanted to keep it going? I'm struggling to believe anyone else showed up.

Such a wasted opportunity. Privileged women who abandoned women's rights and child safeguarding in favour of the niche demands of certain men.

Good.

Don't let the door hit you on your way out.

How desperately sad.

As an update, WEP has voted to dissolve.

Founders and leaders are still failing to grasp their own contribution to its demise.

Members of the Women’s Equality party (WE) have voted to dissolve the organisation after nearly a decade of activism, with its leaders blaming challenging finances and a more polarised political landscape.
The move, backed by the WE’s leader, Mandu Reid, and the party co-founders Catherine Mayer and Sandi Toksvig, was supported by 78% of members at the special conference, narrowly above the three-quarters majority needed for it to pass.

In an interview with the Observer in October setting out the idea, Reid said that while its policies and priorities were as relevant as ever, a lack of donations that started during Covid and changes to politics meant the party seemed no longer to be workable.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/nov/17/womens-equality-party-wep-members-vote-dissolve-organisation

There's barely a cigarette paper between leftist men and right wing men, except the right have decided to reject the notion of trans women are women.

It's amazing how many "progressive liberal" men who proudly proclaim their feminist credentials are actually raging misogynists who can't accept women not acting as they're told they should by those who think they know better than them (i.e. men)

I saw that all by myself on you tube the police lack of reaction was startling.

Glinner did a chat with him as well.

Oh yes - that was brilliant. Here he is explaining to Andrew Doyle how he was doing his "job" of monitoring the police when he came upon this group of misogynists and homophobes trying to stop the Lesbian Project's inaugural meeting from happening and how they turned on him to try to stop him recording their aggression and bigotry 😂:

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=620963746031116