The Party of Women

[ThinWomansBrain]

If you have a representative of "The Party of Women" standing in your constituency, give them a wide birth.
I had the misfortune to encounter a representative at the local hustings this afternoon. I'm about to put in a complaint to the police - several were present, but did nothing to intervene and stop the transphobic hate speech.
I's outrageous that they should be allowed to call themselves "The Party of Women" (presumably hoping to pick up votes by misleading people unto thinking they're The Women's Equality Party") they certainly don't speak for me.

This is the first thing in ages that I've seen as a potential red flag against PR.

You mean like when someone makes the provably false statement that “such and such political party hates and excludes women” to harm that party’s reputation?

It's fortunate I didn't say that then. Whereas OP did 'quote' someone completely erroneously.

Are you sure that's the reason? I'm pretty sure it was not for that and was indeed for something much more tedious than you suggest?

It was for talking back to Stella Creasy in an MN webchat where she avoided the issues people asked her about.

Well she is already in favour of removing a right that lesbians presently have in law, that of being named as a parent on their child's birth certificate alongside their partner, the birth mother, isn't she?

Casual homophobia slips easily from her lips in public speeches, calling out 'he doesn't even look gay' to people in front of her, or saying there isn't a “single normal heterosexual man in the crowd".

She's said she's going to 'annihilate' each and every woman who stands in her way, isn't she?

There's a lot of lesbians who are very supportive of trans people, in fact large scale study has shown lesbians are the demographic that is most likely to have high levels of support towards trans people:

https://www.justlikeus.org/blog/2023/03/31/trans-day-of-visibility-ally-lesbian/

Presumably she wants to annihilate us all as we stand in the way of her objectives?

She makes hostile generalisations about entire groupings of people, it is an approach she feels quite happy with.

Why should lesbians not be next in the line of sight? I sincerely believe she will find an angle, a statistic, a study, and use it to encourage prejudice against lesbians and gay people in the same way that she is doing against trans people at the present time. Transphobia acts as a gateway to homophobia.

There was a long history of deletions, suspensions and refusal to follow the site’s posting guidelines, but that one was pretty much the final straw, and a permanent ban followed.

No, it wasn't.

You mean like when someone makes the provably false statement that “such and such political party hates and excludes women” to harm that party’s reputation?

If it’s in writing, that’s a libellous defamatory statement.

Sadface for Labour, or the Greens or whoever.

@suggestionsplease1 The idea that transphobia is a gateway to homophobia is laughable.

Trans ideology is intrinsically homophobic because it replaces same sex attraction with same gender attraction.

I know many lesbians who are pissed off with losing their women only spaces (eg lesbian clubs) because they are being colonised by men in dresses. They don't want men in dresses on their lesbian dating apps.

Some have told me that the lesbian scene is going underground. That is so regressive.

The working class are not protected in laws. An employer actually could say, ‘I am not giving you this job because you are working class’ and that would be legal.

This has to be one of the most unedifying threads I have ever seen on MN and that is saying something.

What KJK said in that clip ( assuming there is not some massive clipped out context) is indefensible and should be called out. Trying to destroy people economically by preventing them from having jobs or housing (or bank accounts) is beyond unacceptable.

Watching people on this thread be outraged at KJKs comments whilst being part of a movement that actually has actually and successfully targeted women and men for their belief in sex-based rights and destroyed them economically, targeted and caused them to lose jobs whether through being sacked making remaining in their jobs untenable, is so outrageously hypocritical that it is utterly contemptible. Watching @suggestionsplease1 try to justify why her form of employment discrimination was somehow better than other people’s employment discrimination was a particularly low moment.

Please can you quote directly from my posts - what employment discrimination have I tried to justify please?

The misrepresentation that goes on on Mumsnet is ridiculous.

Watching @suggestionsplease1 try to justify why her form of employment discrimination was somehow better than other people’s employment discrimination was a particularly low moment.

I think you’ve confused her with another poster. An apology might be in order.

Haha, now that is truly laughable, that the lesbian scene might be going underground! It is bigger than it has ever been.

You need to get out more if you think it is going underground!

I have been on the scene for decades now, and attended many Prides - I was at Edinburgh Pride yesterday, and like the year before, it has been incredible to see the number of women attending - that is a high for me over the years. I would go to gay bars and clubs in the late 1990s and the ratio of women to men was maybe 1:10, now we make up at least 50% of people present on an average night out.

There's a lot of tropes doing the round, and 'lesbians the concept' has been harnessed by those trying to promote prejudice against trans people, and some weird ideas that we are all being coerced into sex with trans people, and that trans people seem uniquely unable to understand the concept of consent.

FFS. Let's see that for what it really is, a prejudice, not borne out in reality. Lesbians in the real world know this, but we are being used and exploited by others in fraudulent online narratives to try to promote broader hatred against trans people.

This is a 'divide and conquer' process, opportunistically attempting to pick off minorities one by one as the climate of the day suits, and to pit minorities against each other, but the over-arching agenda is against us all.

LGB Alliance are seeing this presently. For a long time they have been the 'useful idiot' of the more generally prejudiced, as they pitched their narrative against trans people. For as long as this was their sole agenda they were protected and encouraged, but now they are trying to be more proactively supportive of gay people by setting their sights on a helpline for gay and lesbian young people, and they are feeling the sharp end of the migrating prejudice now, online and over their telephones. They were naïve to think the prejudice would start and end with transphobia and never migrate to homophobia, but they are recognising the reality now.

That's a good point, although they are recognised to be structurally be disadvantaged.

Yep. I remember her posting one of the very few transphobic posts I saw on here at the time. She was laughing about humiliating a TW in the supermarket with their teen son. Fair enough to have views on TW but maybe don't air them in front of children who don't get to choose what their parents do.
She also takes money from very right wing American groups, backs restricting contraception to teenagers and seems unusually attractive to neo nazis and fascists.

I tend to think people who are voting for her haven't done their research. JK Rowling is even recommending the communist party for a protest vote rather than PoW, which shows how much she thinks they are female friendly.

I started a thread about this on FWR (the fact there is cross party support to make misogyny a hate crime) and it does not appear popular over there

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5100186-cross-party-support-to-make-misogyny-a-hate-crime

Nope, just checked it was her. No apology needed.

@suggestionsplease1 quoted another poster who also pointed out the hypocrisy of those on the side who have actually forced women out of jobs, being outraged at what KJK said. @suggestionsplease1 then said that KJK said what she said just because people are trans, not because of what they said. It’s very hard to understand that as anything other than a claim that what KJK has done is worse, whereas there was justification for forcing GC women out of jobs as their words were bad. why draw the contrast otherwise?

There is no justification for either side to force others out of earning a living and any attempt to minimize this is pretty disgraceful, no matter who is doing this.

You appear to be very confused over what I have been saying.

You are aware that although gender critical beliefs have some protection in law, the expression of some beliefs is not protected.

So you will be aware of the Grainger criteria for protected beliefs, and the 5th one: "It must be worthy of respect in a democratic society, be not incompatible with human dignity and not conflict with the fundamental rights of others"

So imagine Kellie-Jay Keen was in a workplace situation with a trans person, and she spent her time harassing the trans person with her beliefs that it is reasonable to prevent trans people from accessing employment because they are lazy, and reasonable to not give them access to rental accommodation because they are unlikely to pay rent, and the trans person in the meantime says nothing and just quietly tries to get on with their work.

She can and should be taken down the disciplinary procedure for this; her bullying expression of this sentiment is not on an equal par deserving of employment protection with the trans person's trans status. The way she has chosen to manifest her beliefs is not compatible with the human dignity and fundamental rights of the trans person.

@suggestionsplease1
So imagine Kellie-Jay Keen was in a workplace situation with a trans person...

Yes the problem here is that you have imagined a situation, and imagined the discrimination she might engage in. I could equally imagine many of the TRAs who were furious when gender critical beliefs became protected by law would discriminate against GC women. But my imagination here doesn't really count for much. But oh wait I don't need to imagine because there have been multiple employment tribunals already.

That's as may be.

But you appear to be trying to make the case that expression of beliefs is always on an equal par with trans status. In some instances they may be, depending on context and manner of expression. But not always - the form of manifestation of beliefs will determine whether they should have some protection or not. And of course that goes for any sentiment from anyone on any subject.

And of course there have been employment tribunals that have been lost on this basis.

@suggestionsplease1 The mixed scene (ie lesbians plus straight men in dresses who want lesbians to fuck their girl dick) might be busy.

When I talked about the lesbian scene going underground, I was referring to the old fashioned kind of lesbian ie same sex attracted women.

I have lost count of the number of flyers I have seen for lesbian only events, with a message to forward them to "trusted groups/wonen only"

I have had many lesbian friends lamenting the loss of their spaces.

Jenny (forgot her last name) was vilified for setting up lesbian only speed dating nights that were for females only.

Surely you must have read about the cotton ceiling (if not, Google and read the BBC article)

I’m not confused in the slightest @suggestionsplease1 . You, on the other hand. seem to be confusing things you have imagined with reality, whereas conveniently ignoring things that have happened, such as women being subjected to targeted campaigns to punish them through loss of the ability to earn a living. You had quite an impassioned post up thread about how this was no trivial matter. But you only seem to care about it happening to some groups, yet no others. I cannot respect the apparent bias, and hence lack of principle, in your position.

I appreciate that you do not understand the difference between the status of a person, eg trans, gay, mother, and discrimination / prejudicial treatment against them based on that status as a member of that group, and what you perceive as discrimination on the grounds of belief (Which most people apart from you will appreciate is not a simple static status but is articulated and manifested in complex ways, some of which should be protected, and others of which may transition into harassment, hate speech etc and at that point are no longer protected under law).

I am confident most people reading this thread are capable of grasping that distinction.

Belief is no less protected because in your eyes it could transition into harassment. The belief is protected, harassment isn't.

I could be wrong because my memory is pretty bad, but I seem to remember reading once that campaigning to add or remove protected characteristics (as KJK does in that video) was in itself protected. Because to not have that ability would be to have a law that could never be amended by democratic process.

'Belief' purely on it's own is not even covered by legislation, how could it be, as it exists in minds and is unknown to others until that point it is expressed - the manifestation of belief.

You can have any belief you want and it is protected by virtue of it being a mental state of your own, unknowable to others. What is not inherently protected is the manifestation / articulation of beliefs. "I believe in only 2 sexes and nobody can transition from one sex to another" - very likely to be protected. "I believe trans people are all lazy and employers should have the right to refuse employment simply because they are trans" - very unlikely to be protected.

In the employment scenario I gave previously.

"What is not inherently protected is the manifestation / articulation of beliefs. "I believe in only 2 sexes and nobody can transition from one sex to another" - very likely to be protected. "I believe trans people are all lazy and employers should have the right to refuse employment simply because they are trans" - very unlikely to be protected."

The former is already protected as a belief.

The latter is an opinion, and outwith the bounds of the EA2010.

People are allowed to have opinions, even if you might find them distasteful.

Opinions =/= actions