International Women’s Day Q&A with Penny Mordaunt MP, Secretary of State for International Development NOW CLOSED TO NEW QUESTIONS

[JustineMumsnet]

[EDITED BY MNHQ: Questions have now been collated and sent over - new questions may not be answered]

Hello all,

We’re very pleased to announce a Q&A with Penny Mordaunt MP, Secretary of State for International Development and Minister for Women and Equalities.

Please post your questions on this thread by lunchtime on Wednesday March 6. We’ll send on a selection to the Minister and we will post up written answers from Penny on this thread this coming Friday (March 8), International Women’s Day.

In her role as Secretary of State for International Development, Penny Mordaunt oversees DFID’s work ending extreme poverty overseas, including programmes focused on girls’ education and women’s health. DFID has been in the news recently, facing calls for its budget to be spent partly on encouraging projects that would aid British business overseas, and for it to be folded into the Foreign Office instead of being a standalone department.

In her role as Minister for Women and Equalities, Penny is also responsible for work including gender pay gap reporting and possible changes to the law concerning gender recognition.

Penny campaigned for Brexit in the run-up to the 2016 EU referendum and is a Royal Naval Reservist. She has previously been Minister of State for Disabled People and Minister of State for the Armed Forces.

Please add your questions for Penny here by Wednesday lunchtime. And although it’s not a live webchat please stick to the spirit of our webchat guidelines and keep it civil.

If one topic is overwhelmingly dominating responses we might request that people don't continue to post what's effectively the same question or point. Rest assured we will ALWAYS make the recipient aware that it's an area of concern to multiple users and will encourage them to engage with those questions.

Thanks
Justine

Nb existing members will be able to post on this thread. Thanks.

Surely someone would have briefed her that organisations are acting in direct contravention of the current Equality Act by allowing people to self ID with zero evidence? What about a briefing about how children are not being carefully given individualised cautious treatment programmes in conjunction with their families, but are instead being actively encouraged to keep things from their parents and begin untested medications and treatments at the first sign of displaying behaviours even remotely outside of their sex/gender stereotype?

Nope. The GEO civil servants leading this are basically in line with TRA thinking. PM has been fed propaganda not balanced summaries and actual facts.

14 March 2019
The Minister for Women and Equalities (Penny Mordaunt)
This is LBT women’s health week. We know that lesbian, bisexual and transgender women are less likely to participate in services such as cancer screening, which means that they face a wide range of health inequalities.

Where to start with this?

Perhaps a Venn Diagram of cancer screenings which Lesbian and Bisexual women, female trans people and male transpeople might be referred to?

(Ive included females who are trans despite the fact that the Minister For Women's & Equalities seems to have ignored their significant cancer screening needs. Made especially difficult as NHS systems conflate gender identity and sex thus automatic calls for routine cervical smears & breast screens are not sent to females who identify as transmen.)

Perhaps some sort of discussion with the cancer charities who might be useful partners.... these might include The Eve Appeal, Jo's Trust, Ovarian Cancer Action, Coppa Feel, Breast Cancer Now....

and Prostate Cancer UK?

Utterly clueless.

Its Ovarian Cancer Awareness month by the way Penny.
Most women diagnosed with Ovarian Cancer need to have hysterectomies. Some are young women who also have to come to terms with infertility.
Still women, adult human females, of course!

Well, that's a car crash and a half. I didn't expect much but jesus actual christ. How on earth do you get to the level of Minister and still have absolutely no idea about the job you're supposed to be doing or even the basics of key issues, never mind the nuanced complexities? She didn't even do a good job of pretending to know what she's on about. I'm partly incensed because she also didn't even do a good job of giving us vague politician-speak. What a load of feeble rubbish.

It's actually insulting.

Well I expected bad. It was worse.

This.

She never wrote any of this shite. Did she ?

If she did well
She shouldnt take her wages and just resign from her post as so not fit for job and not showing any spark of intelligence or integrity

What a slap in the face to Karen White's victims. I truly hope they never have the misfortune to read this.

Trans activists won't save you at the ballot box, Penny. I wonder what the women of Portsmouth would make of this. I hope their bullshit detectors are in full working order.

It's so bad that, comparatively speaking, I actually now have some respect for Maria Miller. And that makes me feel unwell.

True if the minister can’t define what a woman is then she has to resign

Because that is her job and if she doesn’t know her own job description is then there we go

Jog on penny
so disappointing that you actually get paid for not knowing what a woman is

Amongst the questions she didn't answer (I mean didn't answer at all, not just didn't answer in the form of bland under-researched non-answer) was this one:

You announced an enquiry into the numbers of young girls experiencing gender dysphoria, after the huge and concerning rise (4000%) was revealed in the press.
Could you tell us more about this research and when the findings are likely to be released?

Nothing.

I think we can come conclude from the rest of her non-answers on the questions about transing children that there has been no enquiry, no meaningful inquiring, just, la-la-la fingers in ears about the situation at the Tavistock.

trans people must, in order to legally be recognised in the gender they live their life in, change the sex marker on their birth certificate.

^
How can you write a sentence like that?

How can you decide that people want to identify as a different gender (socially constructed roles and expectations),
and then immediately say it means they've changed sex?

How does wearing women's clothes mean you're entitled to women's rights?

And it's '... in which they live their life'.

Your SPAD is crap at SPAG.

This one:

You announced an enquiry into the numbers of young girls experiencing gender dysphoria, after the huge and concerning rise (4000%) was revealed in the press.Could you tell us more about this research and when the findings are likely to be released?

The Karen White case is horrific. Agreed. So why was Karen White in a women's prison in the first place? Could it possibly have something to do with housing prisoners according to their self-identified gender instead of their biological sex?

eleanorscottarchaeology.com/els-blog/2019/3/14/the-day-that-mumsnet-took-down-penny-mordaunt-mp

An excellent and accurate account of the web chat that never was.

Also known as how to lose votes.

TWELVE MILLION UNIQUE USERS PER MONTH, PENNY

That's an election won or lost, right there.

Thank you RepealtheGRA and others for caring. Also thank you Cismyfatarse for making me laugh with your comment earlier. I am quite upset, not that my particular question wasn't acknowledged or answered, but that none of the questions were answered that related to the very real impact that the loss of single sex spaces will be having on vulnerable girls and women. I am becoming quite used to my concerns on this being ignored. Today, in yet another reminder of how little these girls matter to some people, I have seen that my MP has signed a letter in support of transgender people which states that they are "The most vulnerable people in our society are marginalised, scared and endangered". This is despite me meeting with my MP to discuss the impact of trans-inclusive policies in schools on vulnerable girls and my attempts to explain how traumatised these girls would be and how they often had no voice at all to discuss their fears and assert their needs and boundaries. Despite me clearly shaking through the meeting, in which I regularly agreed that trans children were also very vulnerable, he repeatedly minimised the impact that abuse would have on a girl's mental health and wellbeing, choosing instead to argue that priority should in effect be given to the needs of trans children and adults. A few weeks later he is tweeting about his concern regarding period poverty!
Penny if you are still reading, then please listen and realise that there will be girls who have been sexually abused suffering now because of inappropriate trans-inclusive policies in their schools, or sports clubs or Girlguiding group. Policies which tells them that they are wrong to see and fear a male as a male and which tells them that they must break their fragile boundaries, in order to be kind and inclusive. This is dangerous to their safety and wellbeing both now and in the future. Please listen to me and to the other women because these girls cannot speak up for themselves. I absolutely do not want to be doing this, but I will not let these girls down. Please Penny don't let them down either.

@Cismyfatarse
Q. If The House of Commons was 50% men and 50% transwomen is that equality?

Answer:
When the chamber of the House of Commons looks like the country it serves then I think we’ll know we are getting there.

What a mealy-mouthed pile of meaningless politician-speak. Says nothing, doesn't answer the question, and manages to be patronising about it.

When the chamber of the House of Commons looks like the country it serves then I think we’ll know we are getting there.

So all men in power is fine then as long as some identify as "women"? Because that's how I read your answer to that specific question. You're a disgrace.

Wow epic crosspost!

PennyMordantMP (Minister for Women & Equalities) wrote:

The Equality Act exists to guard against discrimination on the grounds of a number of protected characteristics, including sex. There are many women who do not menstruate, who do not bear children, who do not produce eggs, for whatever reason. They are still covered by the protected characteristic of sex. The Gender Recognition Act allows someone to change their legal gender by altering the sex marker on their birth certificate.

Penny, I am one of those women who do not menstruate and cannot bear children. This is because I was diagnosed with gynaecological cancer and needed to have a total hysterectomy (so no egg production). I was quite young at the time and it was identified during fertility treatments.

I do hope to goodness that you are not using the TRA argument that as some women no longer have a uterus and they are still women, so males who identify as women and who dont have a uterus (because they're male and could never have had a uterus) are similarly women.

Its quite a common 'argument' made by male transactivists. It is of course utterly disrespectful, demonstrates no empathy and is frustratingly illogical.

Gosh, that made more a toe-curling read. The questions themselves were far more knowledgeable than the 'answers' she gave

Oh and Penny if, by any chance you are reading, then please read CharlieParleys post from the 06/03/19 at 11:15 for more information that you could follow up.

^ R0 I think that is precisely what PM is doing

DpWm yes, maybe she or her SPAD has spent a lot of time with male transactivists?

Its a commonly made 'argument'. Rebecca Root made it on BBC Victoria Derbyshire Show & Munroe Bergdorf used it on Channel 4's GenderQuake Debate last year.
The interviewers, Cathey Newman and Victoria Derbyshire didn't challenge it either.

This is LBT women’s health week. We know that lesbian, bisexual and transgender women are less likely to participate in services such as cancer screening

Sorry I am being a bit dim here. Do we really know that lesbian women are less likely to participate in services such as screening.? Less likely than whom? And if so what makes them less likely.

For example I can see that poverty might make you less likely, as in you cant afford the bus fare to go to the clinic, or having kids to look after, or a disability, or illiteracy, or poor English...all of which factors will affect lesbian and heterosexual women alike. But being homosexual per se?

(BTW I am quite happy to be corrected. Its just that Penny is asserting something without any evidential justification.)

Transwomen are a whole different ball game as their XX chromosomes open up a different medical risk profile. Plus long term use of hormones, possible surgeries plus potentially sealed medical histories. But if they need special scrutiny, why not transmen. It is as if Penny just wants to say the right things in order to stay on the side of woke.

Has anyone sent this to newspapers/ journalists who may be interested?