Conservative Party Manifesto - for women and girls

[UltraLineHolder]

Absolutely fantastic. The cynical me asks "why haven't they done this before?" And yea, they've just brought it out now. But it has been over 2 years in the making and the result of some very hard work behind the scenes.

@MNHQ please don't move this to the Feminist Board, it's very relevant here as it forms a part of the Conservative Party manifesto

I'm not saying it makes no difference, I'm saying it won't make enough difference.

And for crimes like voyeurism, prosecution rate is irrelevant if any determined male can earn the right to hang out in women's changing rooms all day.

And for crimes like voyeurism, prosecution rate is irrelevant if any determined male can earn the right to hang out in women's changing rooms all day."

The Tories have let women down outrageously with regards to supporting the process to convict men of rape.

But the Labour Govt will record rape (which in British Law requires a penis, as opposed to sexual assault which describes an object) as caused by a female.

So that means a female can rape a female.
So how can you measure MVAGW stats when some of those are hidden because they call themselves women

"But the Labour Govt will record rape (which in British Law requires a penis, as opposed to sexual assault which describes an object) as caused by a female."

To be clear I meant rape as by a man (only men can rape).

as others have mentioned upthread, I also find that the maternity stuff is a massive issue, having had one baby pre austerity and one in 2016, the difference was huge and negative. My sister nearly died from cuts to maternity care (closure of a maternity ward).

Maternity care has gone way down in the last few years, mortality during maternity has gone back to 2004 levels.

This is more of a tangible issue than the trans-panic. And something that affects women and families every day. Tories have done eff all to help this

https://www.bmj.com/content/384/bmj.q62

Saying men can become women isn't a "trans-panic", it's across the western world a real existential threat to women and our children.

When you redefine women to include men, as Starmer does, then you and your daughters lose every hard won right specially made for women.

How is that not important?

Changing the Equality Act and/or other relevant legislation will not be easy - it’s a process that would likely take at least a year or two and the revised legislation may well be subject to various legal challenges (so may not be cheap).

One of the complicating issues, legally, is the ECHR. We only have the Gender Recognition Act because the ECHR determined that transgender people have the right to have their chosen sex markers on their government ID documents.

It is possible that a wholesale change to the equality act (replacing sex with biological sex in all instances) may be deemed contrary to the human rights of trans people. That’s seemingly why the UK’s Equality and Human Rights Commission recommended to Badenoch that changes be focussed to only those sections of the Equality Act that are justifiable for public policy reasons. The more wholesale the changes, the greater the likelihood of expensive litigation and the revised law being found to violate to European Convention on Human Rights, taking us back to the drawing board. I do wonder how the Tories particular pledge re “one legal sex” would survive given the right for transgender people to have their chosen sex markers on legal docs, although the Tories are yet to explain what they actually mean.

It will be interesting to see what Labour’s manifesto says but they have also been promising to clarify the law to protect single sex spaces, and Starmer has indicated that he supports prisons and healthcare wards being able to operate as single-sex.

we should not leave the ECHR. If we do and Mogg and his ilk get back in the effect on all of our human rights would be huge.
Most people aren't bothered about trans people at the moment because they really don't understand why it's suddenly an issue when we have been sharing single sex spaces with trans women for decades.
The 'we can always tell' people end up attacking gender non-conforming women - we've seen that on this site where repercussions are low but also in the real world where consequences are much higher in stakes.
This isn't new. There was a trans woman on the BEd course at my uni who graduated in 2000. The woman who worked on the original Dr Who soundtrack? Also trans.
Therefore when it comes down to it there are far bigger concerns for most people.
The conservatives have never been a friend of women's rights for good reasons, supporting enfranchisement only when it became inevitable for example. And many of the women in the party have not been supportive of others (not all women are feminist after all). There are conservatives (male and female) who want to reduce our access to abortion. There are female conservatives who have expressed their opinion that we should be doing our duty and having more babies (whilst also having a voting record that doesn't support caring for children).
The current Conservative Party is no friend to women.

No parent of a daughter has wanted this for the past 14 years.

Yet they've allowed it to happen.

So why now the sudden change of heart.

This. Easy votes.

Well it does not here but it will with Labour.

Easy votes is the private VAT school policy.

I've misunderstood you, because I thought you were saying that this woman's rape is irrelevant. I apologise for my reaction, it's a difficult topic and I didn't read you carefully, it wasn't right for me to assume you were saying something so awful rather than think perhaps I've misunderstood you.
Higher rates of conviction may be a deterrent that prevents some rapes, but also not having men on the same hospital ward as vulnerable women is going to prevent rapes, too. So this woman's rape isn't irrelevant in that sense either: it teaches us what a society can do to prevent rape - to keep women safe.

There's a lot of things the government have allowed to happen including this.

They think they are losing and suddenly all these things that they didn't do over the last 14 years are promised. Ummm 🙄 tax cuts, women and girls, nhs, etc all the promises being made over the last week or so. Why not before

The hospital ward thing is a distractor. There are very few single sex wards. There may be single sex bays within those wards but not always. The U.K. has a massive bed per capita shortage compared to similar economies partly due to Conservative policies over the past 14 years.
You will not get what you want in hospitals by voting for more of the same.
Preventing any violence in hospitals is surely a goal we all agree on. That needs better NHS funding and staffing. The Conservatives will make that worse (they already damaged it hugely with caps on medic courses at uni - now at the stage where it will take a long time to turn around due to lack of people available to train on training placements!).

I agree we should not leave the ECHR. I’m just pointing out that changing the law in this area (in a way that is compliant with the convention) is not as straightforward as people think and I doubt that, even if they were actually sufficiently motivated to change the Act in the manner set out in their manifesto, the Tories would be able to deliver.

They’re only promising these changes now because they know they won’t have to follow through. It’s a bit like how Liz Truss said she had no interest in revising the Equalities Act when she was Minister for Women or Equalities
and had no interest when she was PM. It’s only once she was back in the backbenches that she started (performatively) pushing the issue - proposing a bill that the Government acknowledged was legally unworkable.

Similarly, now that the Tories are all but certain to lose the election, they’re making promises that they probably couldn’t deliver if re-elected, because they know they won’t be held to account.

And I agree with you on “we can always tell”, too. It’s one of the reasons that, while I think you could legislate for single sex spaces in some areas (particularly things like hospitals and prisons), it isn’t going to work in changing rooms, toilets and other spaces.

@AmpleFatball And I agree with you on “we can always tell”, too. It’s one of the reasons that, while I think you could legislate for single sex spaces in some areas (particularly things like hospitals and prisons), it isn’t going to work in changing rooms, toilets and other spaces.

People make this argument all the time but it doesn't stand up to the smallest scrutiny.
The implication is that you can't make a rule or law unless you're sure you can enforce it 100% of the time - but clearly no laws meets that threshold. The idea that a tiny number of people may be able to break a rule undetected, doesn't invalidate having the rule.

It's not 'may' though in those spaces. Trans women have been sharing our spaces for decades.
The issue is around how do you police the law? That's what makes it impossible in those situations. Policing on looks will not work. How else will you do it? And how will it solve the situation as if trans men have to use the women's toilets then any man can still come in? So how will it work. Unenforceable law is bad law.

@GrammarTeacher How do you police people murdering strangers in the woods? You can't stop it 100% of the time so probably best to just legalise murder right? As you say, unenforceable law is bad law.

Oh no wait that's ridiculous. We set the rules on what we think is the right way for people to conduct themselves, knowing that some people will break rules, and our enforcement will be imperfect and proportionate to the harm caused by breaking that rule.

There are places where single sex spaces are easier to maintain than others, in schools or workplaces for example, the sex of users is generally known. At the other extreme are public toilets where there are no staff. But by normalising people using spaces according to sex in the places we can control, people will get used to the idea of using sex based spaces and sharing them with GNC members of their own sex.

We already do share those spaces.

Right. Some masculine presenting women use women's spaces, and some feminine presenting men use mens spaces. So all the arguments that a TW can't possibly use the men's toilets because they'll look out of place or get beaten up are invalid.

Women and girls are far more likely to be the victim of violence in the home than they are by some stranger be they trans or not that they do not know.

Could someone outline to me what steps the Tories have put in their manifesto to try and tackle domestic violence?

That argument "TW have been using our spaces for decades so what's the problem now" is 💯 gaslighting.

Yes, we used to be kind and accept the happy local transsexual - effeminate gay men mostly.

But we aren't stuck in the 90s anymore. According to the 2021 census stats there are now approximately 350,000 males who identify as women in Britain. Possibly some of these "pass" (although voice, Adam's Apple, the male gait, how men smell can give this away at close-up).

But for 99.999% it's bloomin obvious. Some don't even bother to shave off their beards.
So we do need blanket rules and legislation to cover this now to say to ALL of these men to stay out of women's spaces.

When men stop killing us then maybe that law could be revoked?

Looking briefly at their manifesto...

A new domestic violence act with new powers for police and courts, tougher sentences for murder by partners, a new category of aggravating offence for deaths via "rough sex".

But really your argument, women are more likely to be harmed by X so you shouldn't worry about us making it more likely to be harmed by Y is pretty bad, regardless of what the Tories are doing on DV.

@UltraLineHolder agree but minor correction the census said 48000 I think, although many people on either side of the debate agree that figure is inaccurate. The ONS estimates roughly double if I remember correctly.

@Underthinker could you show me where in the post you quote of mine I say anything about not worrying about Y?