Any remaining WEP members - leadership elections

[Cwenthryth]

I am a founder member of WEP, and was very excited by the promise of a feminist party. Along with many others I stopped my membership due to WEP’s dreadful interactions on here, and the fact that they were fast becoming the laughing stock of feminism due to their inability to define a woman and their support for a violent trans offender (with their ‘7 inch surprise’) being transferred to the women’s estate. I have since renewed my membership, feeling that pushing change from the inside may be a more productive strategy.

If anyone else is still a WEP member, the leadership elections provide an opportunity to get the issues around self-identification and safeguarding sex-segregated spaces openly debated within the party. So I thought it might be good to have a thread on here to discuss how we may be able to do this.

So far I have responded to the email about leadership debates by submitting a question for the candidates - what is a woman?. Unfortunately I’m not able to attend the debate - they always announce these things with frustratingly short notice for those of us who work long hours to get time off to attend!

Am I the only WEP member left on here? I know there a lot of ex members!

I briefly considered joining WEP. Then discovered their stance on self-id and promptly binned the idea.

Same here. I simply cannot believe that a party that claims it centres women will not define what a woman is. Its unbelievable really. If the WEP won't acknowledge that adult human females are a real fucking thing and that we are disadvantaged due to our biology and not our gender feelz..then who on earth will. Its so depressing. For the first time in my adult life, I am actually politically homeless.

It’s a shame. I would love it if they really acted for women and were prepared to be bold and controversial. The problem is that it was started by media people and so it’s very much nice gestures but no ideology.

I haven't been a member and don't know any history of the party but have a bit of experience of navigating lobbying into conference style meetings. Starting factual often helps. Could you lead with a qu about membership and resignations numbers over time - ie if there was a flurry when they supported TH? And ask if they're aware of the 5000 leaving LP over AWS. Then follow up with the qu of what the strategy and thinking is to be a party to represent all these women (y'know a role for the W part of the WEP!) who are politically engaged but homeless...

Absolutely agree Wiggy, that’s why I rejoined. How do you feel about the party’s approach so far to self-ID?

So far it's been underwhelming but I understand why they've swerved the issue. In fairness if I'd been on their steering committee at the time they began I'd have voted to swerve it too. (I'm not on it now and have never been BTW!)

I wonder if their approach will develop as they get more confident.