International Women's Day Mass Cancelling of Labour Memberships Action

[leyat]

I am passing on an action started by @mayday4women on Twitter; they aren't on Mumsnet so they said I could post here for them.

Basically they are getting a lot of women contacting them saying they are cancelling their Labour memberships due to the decision by Labour's NEC to essentially take on self ID as party policy in every area, including re AWS. And they think it'd be a more powerful statement if women did it en masse together on International Women's Day, which is the 8th March (Thursday).

The idea is to let Labour see how important this is to women, and how badly they are letting women down. Everyone can always reinstate their memberships down the line, but this is a way to be seen and heard, and to make a statement. I'm not a member of any political party myself right now, but as I say I am passing this on and doing all I can to support my sisters in the Labour Party.

Mayday for women are drawing up a statement, and you can get in touch with them directly if you want to let them know you are taking part in the action: mayday4women@gmail

Cheers!

I now call OJ Mr1984.

So my understanding is that if you want to remain anonymous you can still let Mayday4Women know you are cancelling but that you don't want your details given, and they will add you to the list of anonymous cancellations, basically the list they have just now seems to be 50:50 anonymous and name cancellations. And the email address is correct, it's just that it's one person managing all this in between work and other commitments so they might not be able to get back right away but they will eventually. And do get in touch if you have already cancelled for this reason, they will add you too.

ShotsFired I can’t see any comments on the resignation story. Am I doing something wrong or are they not permitting comments?

The comments on the Bergdorf story were brilliant. I’m not seeing too many defending him.

People who really believe they are a member of the group don't tell that group 'you lost'.
Or say that a panel made up entirely of members of that group make them feel sad. If they felt they belonged to that group it would make them feel happy and included.

leyat while I completely understand why women are too frightened to be named, unfortunately we’re going to see lots off “I bet there wasn’t 100 women and that’s why there only 50% names”. Mind you they’ll always find some way of abusing us.

I wonder how many of those women have male members of their family resigning? It would be brilliant if we could get 100 Male resignations over this. I hate to say it, but a 100 male resignations would be seen as a huge statement, as it would be a lot harder for news outlets to treat us as ‘hysterical trans hating’ women.

It would still be, in my opinion, in keeping with the 100yr anniversary.

Owen Jones is calculatedly hypocritical.
He hates women so much he goes back on his own beliefs to use them as an attack.

Owen Jones:
"Of course I'd never sleep with a transman, they're not men. That's erasing gay people"

Women:
"Transwomen are not women, that's erasing women "

Owen Jones
"You hateful bigot"

Fuck. Off. OJ.

That is why I call him Mr1984, it's even referenced in his Twitter name.

The excellent Hadley Freeman, clearly in response to Owen Jones, has tweeted:

"Love the idea of Labour punishing women for speaking out about an issue that affects them. What a great tactic to win votes among women!"

Apparently Owen Jones was against AWS in the first place. Anyone know?

The Uk Labour Party: for the men...

Assigned

This was Owen in 2011. Sneers about ‘university educated women’ and doesn’t think AWS are representative of modern Britain. Clearly having more men who say they are women will fix that.

labourlist.org/2011/02/the-trouble-with-all-women-shortlists/

MAYDAY 4 WOMEN @mayday4women
Only 10% of MPs since women got the vote 100 years ago have been women.

Owen Jones is actually against All Women Shortlists. He said so in 2011.

Allowing men to self-define into AWS is just a way for men who oppose them, like OJ, to destroy them.

Mr1984 is also part of the movement which believes that women (particularly middle class white women) have taken white working class men's jobs (note men's jobs not women's jobs), so therefore have more privilege and white working class men are the real victims.

He wrote a book about the demonization of the working class as chavs and how the working class has been marginalized within political rhetoric and had its problems ignored. He pin points it as being related to deindustrialisation in the 1970s and 1980s. (Hey what happened then?).

Just to repeat: He wrote a book about how much he thought stereotypes damaged society and lead to discrimination and how this has helped to keep those people out of politics and marginalised in society.

So he KNOWS exactly what this is about and what he's doing. He's doing the exact thing he hates about what has happened to white working class (men) and he's turned it against women, aiming his attacks most squarely against white middle class women. He understands the power of stereotypes and how they affect society better than most people.

He is far from the inclusive progressive he claims to be for that reason. He is only working to suit his agenda.

He is part of the mindset that immigrants and women took the jobs of working class men. One that harks back to the golden years of the 1970s where women and immigrants largely knew their place.

We tend to blame that type of thinking on alt-right, but this is most definitely alt-left and very close to the ideology of alt-right, just presented in a different way.

PERF yes that is a good point.
When men are angry, that is definitely important.

On OJ, I thought he agreed that lesbains who won't accept penetration with a penis as bigoted, but he recoiled at the idea of getting busy with cunt.

Here you go, Assigned:

www.leftfutures.org/2011/02/the-trouble-with-all-women-shortlists/

His position isn't clear-cut, though:

"But the tragedy is that we have ended in a situation where it is not working-class women who have benefited. Instead, the All-Women Shortlist has been most successful at expanding the career options of a tiny elite of professional, university-educated women.

"Of course I’m not saying we should scrap the All-Women Shortlist, which would clearly make the situation a whole lot worse. But it is clearly far from enough, on its own, to secure genuine women’s representation in Parliament."

Sorry, I didn't see Lifelong had already posted that.

The point is, though, that it's only women who get attacked for being middle-class. He doesn't say, "Let's replace all those middle-class male MPs with working-class male MPs". It's all about the women. Because men like him - ie right-on, lefty bros - feel a particular revulsion towards middle-class women. Actually, I think they feel revulsion towards all women, but they think framing it as a class issue makes it OK.

Jones thinks that bullying women into submission is an excellent political strategy because it's mostly worked for him so far.

Is he ever in for a surprise!

Oh so it's not the right sort ofwomen.

What people like that never get is that any women are generally better than no women, when it comes to women's concerns even being on the radar.

And the women who aren't better than no women (the Nadine Dorrie's of the world) are not worse than the men of a similar ilk.

The idea that women will be allowed but only the right sort, is again pushing us into roles. Women come in all different sorts, of all political colours, we are half the population. To say we want women but only a very very partiular type of women and oh dear look there aren't any coming along missed the point.

There are plenty of non working class university education men in various high profile posiitons in Labour for fucks sake.

oh xpost sorry

If it wasn't all so awful it really would be comedy genius.

He doesn't even say 'middle-class'. His objection is to women who are 'university-educated professionals'. Although apparently the fact that Owen is a university-educated professional journalist* is no barrier to him being able to advocate for 'ordinary people'

*usual disclaimers apply

That's exactly it, isn't it, Lifelong? Why isn't Owen standing aside to allow a non-university-educated person to write his column at the Guardian? Why is suddenly a bad thing for MPs to be women with university educations? These days about a third of 18 year olds go to university - it doesn't exactly make you part of an elite.

What if I'm university educated AND working class? I'm guessing that if we put the early lives of my parents and Owen's parents side by side in a class-off mine would win the "who's the most genuinely working class" competition by a mile.

Why isn't Owen standing aside to allow a non-university-educated person to write his column at the Guardian?

Yes why doesn't Mr1984 stand aside? How much was he estimated to be worth, was it £500,000 income last year?

The mentality that if you are working class woman and are educated you sold out and betrayed your class by forgetting your place.