This is a weird thread. i’m not sure if the jibe being made is against women, feminists, an objection to FWR as a space for women to talk freely where they can’t elsewhere, or if some posters are antsy because they feel there’s some kind hive mind here on FWR (a suspicion that is easily disproven by you know.. pressing post yourself and adding your own opinion to a thread, exactly as all the posters on here have done..
) but whatever-
it’s usually not that bothersome if people have stupid and misinformed prejudices or cliched opinions on MN and want to sound off about it and debate because this discussion is usually confined to an anonymous and therefore relatively safe/ non threatening online debate (a particular issue for women as PP have said). Everyone is free to post and disagree with each other and usually the discussion is richer for it.
We can have more than one thought in our heads at once if we wish to and actually it is fucking depressing watching the clips of pro Brexit thugs calling MPs being interviewed by journalists nazis and chanting scum and trying to interrupt the boradcast. It’s aggressive male entitlement all the way.
Surrounding and jostling Anna Soubry as she is walking and physically blocking her way back in to the Parliament building as if you watch the clip to the end, as one smirking ‘protestor’ man does- is ducking appalling and intimidating.
Also you look at the layout of where she is on the clip that looks like she’s going back in to the House of Lords entrance (ie not MP’s) entrance closest to the TV cameras ie she is minimising her normal route to get away from aggressive men following her and then in this case blocking her path. Most women can relate to that shitty feeling of having to do that. It’s horrible, whoever you are with or not with.
Just as it was horrible and barely reported when masked TRAs did exactly the same to women trying to meet at various meetings in 2018, all well documented here, and proven in court (Speakers corner) and captured on video blocking women in on the stairs (Bristol). They chanted Burn it Down! Burn it Down! outside a building where women were having a meeting because they didn’t like the views women were discussing and wanted to frighten them into not talking.
It is absolutely fucking shameful that the news media pointed out this example with Anna Soubry but has ignored those multiple examples of ordinary women being silenced.
A female MP Jo Cox was shot and stabbed to death in recent years by a far right extremist man. other male and female MPs have had their lives threatened by constituents with greater or lesser IRL follow up, and rape threats are routinely made to female MPs. This will be putting women off joining political public life, undoubtedly, which is to the detriment of everyone. Exactly as the thuggery and fear of being doxxed and outed at work is putting off women who would otherwise be campaigning on their gender critical views openly.
This behaviour with MPs must be clamped down on as far as possible because if MPs start refusing to meet the public or to be in public then democracy is really fucked and it will undermine their awareness of the real world which they need to have for everyone’s sakes.
So it’s not that you have to pick a side on here unless you want to, these are all examples of silencing women and reporting this type of activity to the police every time- despite the lack of immediate police action- is still essential and valuable.
The climate of indifference or complacency about women’s freedom to speak or politically and to assemble to do so needs to be challenged and reported and so it’s good for all of us that media attention and formal complaints to the authorities are being made about Anna Soubry’s apparently rather unprotected right to speak to journalists and to move around Westminster without physical threats and abuse. because Soubry’s recent experience exactly IS what other women (whether as MPs or politically active private citizens) experience too.
Thank fuck we have MN and 100% respect to all the gender critical women out there in public. We’ve all often commented on here that having GC events in Westminster is one of the safest places in the country to have them. 