To think a sitting Labour MP should operate in line with their manifesto

[HermioneWeasley]

Leeds Labour MP has confirmed he doesn’t think women should have any sex segregated spaces (despite the commitment in the last manifesto), and that anyone who disagrees is a bigot.

If you vote for a party, shouldn’t you be able to rely on your MP abiding by manifesto commitments?

Also, what kind of woman hating psychopath thinks that refuges and prisons should be mixed sex?

Thank you Mary. Your choice of locations was great - hospitals, prisons and refuges are where everyone is likely to be vulnerable and / or broken in some way and most in need of support. And school are full of children.

USUKmom that is really worrying. What party are they? Are they otherwise good and popular and serving the area well, or were they parachuted into a safe seat after being on an all women shortlists?

@USUKmom

I wrote to my MP about this, and she implied that I am a bigot, and suggested I take parent courses at Gendered Intelligence, which is more extreme than Stonewall. She is also working directly with Stonewall on one of the issues she is promoting.

She suggested that you take parenting courses?! Like... We are not fit parents if we believe that biological sex cannot be changed?! It's like if the flat earth society had a political party and "re-educated" any parents who believed that the world was a sphere!

Or is it that you would need parenting classes if your daughter said "I wish I was a boy", and you didn't immediately affirm them, but asked "what is it about the messages she is getting that want her not to be a girl anymore?"

@USUKmom

I wrote to my MP about this, and she implied that I am a bigot, and suggested I take parent courses at Gendered Intelligence, which is more extreme than Stonewall. She is also working directly with Stonewall on one of the issues she is promoting.

See, this is what worries me if I write to this MP. DH and I both work for employers who would probably rather throw us under the bus than upset the wokerati if we are outed as being members of the reality-based community. And we have young DC.

So if we write, he'll know who and where we are.

I'd have that same fear about asking my local labour MP. (Who is not the MP, but it's a close seat). Some members of the local party have form for booting out and shaming people/ contacting employers for making statements as innocuous as "I think that there is a potential rights conflict"

Absolutely nothing would or could convince me to vote Tory. I couldn't countenance throwing all less privileged people under a bus

I don’t understand how this follows - the less privileged women are exactly the people being thrown under the bus by this mp. I think part of the reason that certain high profile women like Emma Watson support the ideology is that they would never have to go near a grotty public toilet or risk being imprisoned for non payment of tv licence (apparently quite a few women are). They can afford posh health clubs with nice changing rooms and can afford private healthcare.

They have the power and money to protect themselves against the sort of people who would abuse a self id system (already being brought in by stealth).

The public services that the rest of us have to access have already been influenced and we need the MPs to listen to us and our concerns, not refuse to represent us - that is surely anti-democratic??

USUKmom
“I wrote to my MP about this, and she implied that I am a bigot, and suggested I take parent courses at Gendered Intelligence, which is more extreme than Stonewall.
She is also working directly with Stonewall on one of the issues she is promoting.”

Who is your our MP? Let’s name and shame them, since she was quite happy to try and shame-silence you.

Email that MP immediately thanking them for their phone call and saying "to confirm in our conversation today you said....." that way you've got a written record, which they have the opportunity to respond to or refute. If they refute it their integrity is on the line and you can follow up with clarification such as "you said..... what did you mean by that if not.....?"
If they don't respond you have written confirmation of their views.

See when the absolutely morally bankrupt Tories are the only ones on your side do you not maybe think that's an indicator of maybe just how regressive your beliefs are? Or is everyone just really that committed to policing a tiny, tiny minority of people that they're happy to throw all the less privileged people in this country under a bus by voting for them?

I wrote to my MP about this, and she implied that I am a bigot, and suggested I take parent courses
I'm sorry but this made me howl. An elected MP thinks someone who knows there are differences between men and women needs to take parent courses? How does she think you managed to become a parent in the first place?

As you were. Also, welcome Mary and thank you for asking the question.

Mary did you consider threatning legal action for slander for that comment calling you a bigot?

Well, if labour want to start showing that they care more about improving poverty than reducing sex-based rights for women (the loss of which will throw the most vulnerable women - eg. Those that are in prisons, refuges etc under the bus), and drop this policy, then I'll go back to voting for them. As it is, they are currently doing a good job of advertising for the Torys as the party of common sense. If my views are truly "the minority" then labour can afford to lose my vote.

the moment men no matter how they identify are allowed into womens spaces, they cease by definition to be womens spaces

no more women only refuges, prisons, sports, changing rooms, programmes to improve womens representation, health support groups, nothing will be only for women.

its not about the tiny minority of TW, its about the 50% of this country who are women

I could never vote Tory and I will not vote for political parties who suddenly find it ooohh just SO hard to know what a woman is when they managed perfectly well to know what women were and are when they were denying us the right to vote, own property, work once we were married and all the hundreds of myriad ways women have been disadvantaged. So like so many GC women Im politically homeless

I think part of the reason that certain high profile women like Emma Watson support the ideology is that they would never have to go near a grotty public toilet or risk being imprisoned for non payment of tv licence (apparently quite a few women are). They can afford posh health clubs with nice changing rooms and can afford private healthcare.

And while they have lovely, liberal, exciting LGBT+ friends so have understanding of and empathy for their feelings, they will not have ever met or spoken to a woman who has fled with her kids from the man who threw her down stairs and tried to strangle her more than once, or a woman who has been in prison. They've never known anyone like the Deptford Women's Project, never mind worked with people such as the project serve. Women like this spend a lot of time making learned speeches about privilege with no idea of the irony or their own unconscious bias, or the harm they do in their naiivety.

I think part of the reason that certain high profile women like Emma Watson support the ideology is that they would never have to go near a grotty public toilet or risk being imprisoned for non payment of tv licence (apparently quite a few women are). They can afford posh health clubs with nice changing rooms and can afford private healthcare

Very much this. Women with money and position can generally use those advantages to avoid the less pleasant side effects of their propaganda.

Just like affluent college educated women in the US voted for Trump and a massive roll back of women's limited reproductive rights, knowing that the financial benefits would accrue to them and they had access to care not availble to less affluent women.

Its easy to give away a safety net which is used by other people.

Yes they should honour the manifesto, and I totally disagree with the stance of this MP. It's nonsense.

What's more striking is the rudeness of his response. A public servant openly labels someone a bigot for raising a perfectly reasonable concern. The money he's getting, only to push garbage policies and hurl insults at the people paying his bloated salary - its staggering that he'd dare. Arrogant tosser.

Mary thank you for asking AS the question. I have been trying to get an answer out of him for years. So now we know. And there are many others who have not supported women. How dare they assume they will get our vote.

See when the absolutely morally bankrupt Tories are the only ones on your side do you not maybe think that's an indicator of maybe just how regressive your beliefs are?

No. Gender ideology is regressive.
Being a woman is not a feeling .
Wanting to retain protections based on biological Sex is not bigoted.

See when the absolutely morally bankrupt Tories are the only ones on your side do you not maybe think that's an indicator of maybe just how regressive your beliefs are?

I like how this sentence encapsulates a lot of the approach to the argument:
"If you vote Tory then you are morally bankrupt"
..."but you are also morally bankrupt and regressive/a bigot for thinking sex-based rights are important"

......so basically I've already been called a bad person for thinking how I do... So I don't have any virtue points to lose by voting for whatever political party I want

I can see how I failed to win around the Brexit voters as I appeared to use a similar argument at the time

YANBU.

Sobel is a disgrace. He’s seen as a bit of a joke by most moderate labour MPs- he’s “soft left” if that means much, and doesn’t have good judgement.

His response though is typical of labour across the board on this issue. They’ve abandoned women and basically see us as a bunch of paranoid middle aged transphobes who can be ignored.

I was a labour cllr, very involved at a central level for some time, and a member for 14 years. I know quite a few MPs and advisors. I left when labour endorsed GRA reform, having been pushed to the brink anyway by Corbyn, antisemitism and Brexit.

I now spoil my ballot at every election and see the party for what it is: an unthinking group of people who think they care about structural poverty, while actually having no new ideas, plans or decent policies to tackle the inequalities in Britain. They’re a busted flush who are completely bought in to women identity politics. They can’t even name what a woman is.

I completely despair. They are most certainly not the party of women’s rights. As a result of publicly saying so many times I have been dropped by quite a few people I used to know. Their loss.

If I were running Tory HQ I’d put that screenshot on a leaflet and put it through the door of every house in the north of England come election time.

*woke identity politics, that should say

If I were running Tory HQ I’d put that screenshot on a leaflet and put it through the door of every house in the north of England come election time

That's the thing Vesta. Apart from everything else, it's a really bloody stupid thing to do. Its student politics! Do Labour really think the public are behind them on the gender woo train? they're really not.

It's also 101 example of how not to influence people over to your side

@letsghostdance

See when the absolutely morally bankrupt Tories are the only ones on your side do you not maybe think that's an indicator of maybe just how regressive your beliefs are? Or is everyone just really that committed to policing a tiny, tiny minority of people that they're happy to throw all the less privileged people in this country under a bus by voting for them?

See, when it comes to protecting the privacy, safety and rights of all girls and women, I have to admit that I place those above the those males who want to remove such rights from all girls and women.

The right not to have males in women's and girls' spaces - including (I cannot believe I'm having to argue this - and with other women) gym changing rooms, hostels, hospital wards, prisons (where women cannot escape if they find males incarcerated with them) and sports is something I value too highly to hand it over blithely because men have persuaded people that they come first - AGAIN.

I totally understand why those of you who feel vulnerable at work are worried about contacting your MPs but my god isn't that a shocking state of affairs? All the more reason to use our votes well.

Exactly. There’s no message discipline amongst the PLP anyway, though as this is the view of most labour mp’s that hardly matters.

Honestly the PLP is full of the most appalling dross- Sam Tarry, Zarah Sultana, Nadia Whitthome etc - they’re just crap and totally bought in to Corbynism and woke nonsense.

Having a Tory Govt is awful and ruinous for the people of Britain, but having a labour govt would - in my view - nowadays be no better. They’re a joke.

I hope the Tories are good at spotting all this and hammering them with it at election time.