If WEP decided Sex Matters would you join?

[womanhuman]

By which I mean continued protection of women/girl-only spaces (physical spaces, services, organisations, stats, programmes) on a sex-not-gender basis.

I would.

Because nearly everything else follows from maintaining that distinction.

Isn't it funny that whenever anyone talks about the intersection of inequalities and making space for experiences of all, 'all' never means the inequalities or experiences of biological women. It's all very Humpty Dumpty.

Yes - the members views things needs clarification.

The policy authoring process needs to be evidence based, with evidence gathered from expert panels, which can then be voted on by members (thereby providing an element of democracy).

Well. I have no clue what that statement was about.

But I can see I won’t be joining WEP anytime soon.

Let’s try again. If HBE set up a party, would you join ?

I would join Heather’s party! Definitely. I went to a talk and she was one of the speakers, she really is excellent.

Hmm...I'm not very clued up on Twitter but this seems to be showing that the WEP (or at least one of their branches) is supporting the male currently on trial for beating up a woman trying to attend a political meeting on women's rights:

twitter.com/Lfoxx_cdr/status/984519329537560576

In answer to the original question, I would love to support a party that stands up for women's rights. I'm politically homeless right now, women's rights is the top issue for me and I would love to have someone to vote for. WEP should be that party but so much of what I hear about them suggests they are not.

They would have to stop saying that men can be women and make it an exclusively female party

I've changed my mind, going by their latest activity on Twitter. No, they don't care about women.

Right, that's me peaked again. Sorry WEP, count me out.

lady, I don’t think that means they had liked that tweet, it’s twitters suggestion of other twitter accounts you might like to follow if you’re interested in the original tweet/account. (Like amazon saying because you bought a, you might be interested in b.)

No, I've just checked. The like is still there.

I haven't changed my mind, I would join the WEP if they made a stand. But they plainly aren't so I won't.

WEP is not under Sophie Walker's control obviously

I mean if transadvocates think their WEP is about to turn full feminist, and be a strong voice against self ID, what's the next step? Damage, divide and destroy. Entangle it in internal rows.

Way before I had a clue about trans issues affecting women's rights, and despite initially being very excited by what I thought was a party of women for women, I was put off the WEP because they placed a Southern based woman as a candidate in my Northern very safe Tory safe seat risking losing Labour votes. Many feminists in my area resent WEP for their arrogance.

I had a very open heart to WEP, but they present themselves as clueless idiots. Very disappointing.

Anything they do is too little too late. Such a pity.

lady, erish, you’re right of course.

That’s awful.

Looks like there will be a future consultation on this issue, maybe hold onto your membership for now.

.....they support an individual who thumped someone several times, having asked on facebook in advance where the meeting was as they wanted to 'fuck up some Terfs' ? They think the one who did something violent and illegal with intent needs support instead of a woman assaulted who was in a place celebrating free speech, and only there anyway because the group including the individual had threatened and harassed to prevent them having anywhere to meet?

Ok I'm done. I felt neutral and vaguely disappointed in WEP but that is an indefensible moral position they have taken, and one actively harmful to and against women.

We know from past experience that WEP have put silly people in charge of the social media. They banned a lot of women from their Facebook page for transphobia just for expressing fairly mild gender critical opinions. They had to climb down and reinstate them. So this is probably another case of that.

There have been some very serious accusations and slurs made by some WEP members towards women who are asking the question 'what about women & girls?'
At what point will WEP consider their tweets and comments are contrary to the party's values?
Does the right to gender identity protection trump everything else?

The WEP as an organisation are hugely disappointing. As has been said previously about them - they had one job!

No, I wont be supporting WEP. They should have taken a stand on not supporting violence against women from the outset. Putting it to members is not good enough.

Said yes upthread. Obviously spoke too soon.

What a monumental let down.

And I'm out too - I did join at the beginning as I think women's issues are important & often overlooked in politics no matter what the subject. Cancelled membership when they had the web chats but now every other party has drunk the koolaid my options are now to vote for a decent independent or spoil my ballot. Had WEP shown they had grown a spine, I could have been persuaded by reasoned arguments that they genuinely had commitment to women. But it seems they are more interested in continuing to smear HBK & bed in those splinters from fence sitting.

It really shouldn't be the this difficult to develop some reasoned arguments & principle & stick to them, not endlessly contort themselves trying to follow the wind blowing on different opinions.

Agree with Absinthe

Sophie's second tweet after the statement (that was supposed to clarify the party's position) was entitled:

Fed up of 'bloke central' politics? twitter.com/SophieRunning/status/984385589133889537

It did make me laugh. Don't think she quite got the irony.