Lily Madigan, TIM, elected Labour women's officer

[jMillicentFawcett]

Lily is 19. Lily was instrumental in the hate campaign against Anne Ruzylo which resulted in her standing down.

You have to be a woman to be women’s officer but ‘The Labour councillor said that “lived experience as a woman” should be considered an advantage — but not a prerequisite — for the role of women’s officer.’

Lily could also have gone for the LGBT officer role but they didn’t want that. No, they wanted to show women that they can shit all over them and we will applaud them for doing it.

I’m absolutely furious about this ( as you can probably tell)

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/trans-teenager-lily-madigan-voted-in-as-a-labour-women-s-officer-mwchkhzq8?shareToken=472df23aa6315582a4f6558d7a1be5ba

AnachronisticCorpse

I agree with every single word you wrote this morning.

I, too, am wracked with anxiety for the female half of this country.

I'm not in the least worried about the tiny number of violent trans activists. They will grow up and move on.

What worries me is "the tide of support for these arseholes", from women, from leading political parties, from people with power and influence.

This isn't about a few transgender people (they have always been around in my lifetime and I've never had the lease problem with them).

This is about an attack on all women, to take away anything we have that men can't. This is a backlash against women.

Owen Jones and Roz Kaveney are ganging up on the Times journalist Lucy Bannerman on Twitter - very unpleasant. But interesting to see that Lucy has replied that it was Lily who contacted her - first with the story about her election as women's officer and then again to let her (Lucy) know about the Jo Cox application.

Exactly long

It's seriously irresponsible to be saying he is 'potentially vulnerable'. That sound like feeding an idea to me. Are trans all vulnerable? Do we have to do everything they ask because they might kill themselves?

Just read this and the Paris Lees comment, and I think the message we are all being fed is exactly this: "do as we say, otherwise a vulnerable teenager might indeed kill themselves, and since we are targetting vulnerable teenagers, feeding them bullshit, and pushing them into the public eye, we know we've got vulnerable teenagers aplenty on hand". It's so fucking cynical, and I think the Samaritans ought to start stepping in at this point. Lees et all are breaking the responsible discussion and reporting of suicide guidelines at every opportunity.

PISACAKE

Yes, you are right.

2 days ago he called The Times a "joke" saying he had not applied for the Jo Cox award.

Just 17 hours ago, he tweeted that he still had not applied.

This morning he says he HAS aplied.

I believe he intends to kill feminists by giving us all heart attacks and strokes. Not for the outrageous flip-flapping and lying, but because we know Labour and thousands of women support him no matter what he says, what he does etc.

The women who are tweeting him support are TURKEYS VOTING FOR CHRISTMAS.

Lily is a liar, liar, pants on fire

This women's toilet thing is literally shit anyway. You always have to wait ages in a queue. Take 100 people, 50 men and 50 women. Say 10 men now want to use the ladies, that is 60 users of the ladies and 40 of the mens. So now it will be even more busy and for what reason? To piss in a bowl when they could have pissed in a urinal 15 minutes ago and got out of the way of the actual women who need to sit down and have a bit of privacy to change sanitary protection?

Literally boiling my piss.

How is he even getting away with any of This?

How much has to come to light befire they fire his lying twatty arse.

These lies are at least in lilys name so theres no dead naming conflict here.

Who else would get away any of this.

Oh I know. It's the usual "boys will be boys" crap where he and immaturity excuses everything when women's behaviour standards are held much higher.

Not benefiting from male privilege my arse.

Excellent article just published.

notthenewsinbriefs.wordpress.com/2017/11/26/when-womens-rights-are-notadebate/

@Whatsitallabout70 I do understand that you will be doing your best to support your child, and I also think you genuinely believe you are standing up for what's right here. I also understand that you will have been fed a load of tripe from the likes of Mermaids, activists on tumblr, et all, but I think you need to consider the possibility that you are wrong about quite a lot of the assumptions you have made about women here.

For example:

as presumably you are predominantly heterosexual women with children on this site?

Er, no. I'm bisexual, there's a lot of bi and lesbian women here. Lots of bi and lesbian women have children, which you'd know if you knew anything at all about the LGBT+ community. Many of us have been active in the LGBT+ community for decades. This isn't new to us.

As a parent of a trans child I find your loathing of trans women and the total denigration of their experience upsetting

Nobody here "loathes trans women" in general (though I am pretty down on some transwomen in particular, including Lily Madigan, because of the way they've treated women). However, some (too many) trans activists do in fact loathe women, and are being amazingly successful in trying to take women's rights away. That's what we are fighting against.

However, statistically, a small handful of mothers on here willl have to deal with their child coming out as trans and only then can you begin to understand the reality of this existence. I realise I am opening myself up now for plenty of vitriol but I think we can all agree that you can’t really know what something is like until you have experienced it yourself.

Whatsit some of us were gender nonconforming children, who if we'd been children now, would have been whisked off to be diagnosed as trans. Many of us (all of us? I don't know) are still gender nonconforming. A non-trivial number of us have actually spent considerable time (before we came to the conclusion gender was a prison, and there's nothing wrong with us the way we are) wondering if we were trans.

This thread, and the other threads, aren't some kneejerk conservative reaction to gender nonconformity that we don't understand. It's quite the opposite - we want everyone, including every gender nonconforming child, to be free to live and present however they wish without being harrassed. But at the moment it's trans activists who are doing the harrassing, telling lesbians they are "suspect" for being lesbian, and harrassing your lesbians to sleep with male-bodied people.

Gileswithachainsaw

He is getting away with it because he looks cute and pathetic like a lost little boy, and this gets him the support of HUNDREDS of women.

Even when he outed himself today as a liar, by admitting that he has applied for the Jo Cox award he got nearly 500 "likes" and dozens of messages of support and congratulation -- from WOMEN.

Yes, women, the very people who he is stealing from.

some of us were gender nonconforming children

I certainly was. I'm also a GNC adult. Many feminists are. I'm assertive. I don't perform any aspect of femininity - don't wear make up, don't own a pair of shoes with heels, mostly wear men's clothes (they have pockets!). But I am straight and I am a mother.

Nobody here "loathes trans women" in general

I certainly don't. I have trans friends but they see themselves as transsexuals, not women. And like women, they are furious at being erased by gender identity dogma.

Neither side is a monolith. Both sides want to uncouple gendered behaviour and expectation from sexed bodies. There are just different opinions on how to go about that. Generally speaking, feminists wish to abolish gender altogether, while transactivists want to keep the concept and reify it as an inner essence.

But I am straight and I am a mother.

Fair point, LangCleg! And I agree entirely that you don't need to be lesbian or bi to be horrified by what trans activists are doing! I just wanted to challenge Whatsit's characterisation of us as all inevitably both straight and homophobic, because I think she doesn't understand that some of us aren't straight, and none of us are homophobic - quite the reverse.

But if, as a society, we accepted that there was no shame in being trans and it was acceptable a way of expressing your humanity as any other, would that be so bad?

Most women on here and feminists have no problem with people expressing their personality however they want. That’s not the same as being made to go along with false beliefs that having a particular personality makes you a woman or a man or that measures introduced to alleviate sex-based oppression of women should be dismantled to accommodate the false belief.

I do think it’s bad if we tell young people that expressing their personality means they could become life long medical patients requiring serious surgery and medication that will likely leave them sterile and lacking in sexual function and with vaginal atrophy and associated health problems or a wound which needs to be constantly prevented from healing itself. In fact I think it is awful that this is being presented as kindness and acceptance when it is in fact the polar opposite.

I think, though, that a discussion board consisting mostly of feminists can underestimate the sheer weight and pressure to conform.

There is a boy at my son's sixth form who identifies as 'gender fluid'. When I asked DS about it, he shrugged and said that meant he didn't get picked on for sometimes wearing make up and a skirt. In other words, it was easier in a fairly right-on, middle-class area to be accepted as gender fluid than accepted as a boy in unconventional garb.

I don’t have any problem with ‘gender fluidity’.

As long as it expresses the definition of the word gender. Societal imposed roles in presentation. Go for it.

It’s where gender magically turns into sex. That’s the problem.

Lancelottie I dunno, most of us have lives which are not spent entirely amongst other feminists (alas). I understand entirely why young lesbians - indeed any young woman - might prefer to identify as nonbinary or trans in the current climate, because there's a small chance you will no longer be at the bottom of the pecking order. I don't blame them at all.

Sorry, Annie, if that came across as picking you up on something - I was agreeing with you. Apologies if it came out wrong!

Lancelottie - I agree with you that it's a tough old world out there for GNC kids. Nothing like the 80s, when I grew up and felt no pressure at all to express myself in a feminine way and when plenty of boys wore make up. If the kids today want to call themselves gender fluid so that they aren't bullied for being GNC, I'm fine with that. Like most on here, I'm very concerned about pathologising and medicalising GNC, but never, ever, ever expressing GNC.

No worries, Lang - I thought you made a good point!

There is a boy at my son's sixth form who identifies as 'gender fluid'. When I asked DS about it, he shrugged and said that meant he didn't get picked on for sometimes wearing make up and a skirt. In other words, it was easier in a fairly right-on, middle-class area to be accepted as gender fluid than accepted as a boy in unconventional garb.

this with bells on has been the situation in my very upper middle class very liberal right on area for pushing 15 years now. While the misogyny breeds completely unchallenged and even celebrated. This board is the only place where I've found educated people who see this shit for what it is, totally emperors new clothes. I'm pretty sure most bottom of the pike woman recognise it but as no one gives a shot what they think what does it matter?

Will all Mumsnetters please, I beg you, tweet some support for Lucy Bannerman, the Times journo who Liam Madigan has framed and set up in an attempt to discredit her.

This is really serious now.

Teenage boy with a mobile, tweeting all kinds of wind-up shite, and with the full support of the Labour Party and hundreds of turkey-woman supporters who are tweeting their love and adoration for this boy who is trying to erase women.

Well, I guess it's up to the LP if they want to humour this child and let him be women's officer and steal the Jo Cox award from a real woman.

BUT when he goes outside and launches a vile and unfair attack on a Times journalist, that is another matter. Lucy is being targetted as a transphobe after LiamLily contacted her, got her to write an article about him, then denied everything.

She deserves our support.

Lucy Bannerman
@TimesLucy

I deleted my twitter years ago, if I set up now with no followers I'll look like a bot account. I have sent an email in support to [email protected] though.

Lucy B is being amazing. (Props to Amanda at the end, too.)

Roz Kaveney is being - as usual - a twit. Why would a journalist have a "duty of care" towards an adult in a responsible position (in this case women's officer in a mainstream political party) who contacts them with a story?

The hypocrisy of Owen Jones retweeting about how two women a week are killed by their partners and EVERY DAY around 155 women are turned away from refuges because there is no space for them....whilst also advocating that women shuffle along the bench to make space for TIM to use these scant resources and allow TIM into what shoudl be female safe spaces....

Does Roz Caveney think 'a teenager unschooled in media' is what women need by way of a representative?

What ARE this teenager's key qualifications for this post?