WEP debating GRA. What do you think?

[RadicalStitch]

A friend received this. My sense is that it sounds like a lot of waffle:

At our last Party conference, members brought a motion on proposed changes to the Gender Recognition Act 2004. The motion was debated by members and referred back to committees for further consideration. The Policy and Steering Committees have since then been discussing the best way to take this work forward, and we wanted to keep you up to date with those plans.

Together we have agreed a framework for engaging as many members as possible in a constructive discussion. The aim is to create a space in which members can work towards agreement on both the challenges and solutions. We want to set the standard for other political parties and organisations and show that this can be done in a way that unites rather than divides.

The Policy Committee has undertaken considerable research into the most appropriate methods of achieving agreement on difficult and potentially polarising subjects. It found that the most inclusive and effective method of reaching such agreement is by employing a form of assembly as was done in Ireland to enable the discussion of subjects that divide the community. Find out more about the citizen's assembly in Ireland.

In our case, this assembly will consist of Party members and experts in sex- and gender-based protections because we want to ensure that we hear from the broadest possible range of expertise and lived experience, balanced with time and resources available.

There will be four key stages to our consultation and members will be involved at every stage:

1. SCOPING EXERCISE

This will look at the focus of the members' assembly and its design. WE aim for a gold standard in this. Ireland’s citizen’s assembly consisted of 99 members, drawn randomly from across the whole population. WE have to find a model that ensures we hear from the broadest possible range of expertise and lived experience.

1. MEMBERS' ASSEMBLY

Its constitution will be recommended by the scoping exercise and is likely to include people randomly selected from our membership and together with additional panellists and witnesses.

1. MEMBER CONSULTATION

This will be an online consultation, which all members can participate in to make their voices heard.

1. REVIEW BY POLICY COMMITTEE

This will review the outcome of the consultation and recommend next steps for the Party, which could include proposed changes to Party policy.

WE will begin work on the scoping exercise this autumn and the time-frame for the assembly and consultation will be agreed by the Steering Committee based on operational and strategic priorities. This work is vital, but as a small party we also have to balance our limited resources against a number of competing priorities - in particular any snap General Election. Our priority is to deliver an effective consultation rather than a rushed one.

We very much hope that you will participate in the consultation and in the meantime you can contact us with any questions about the framework we have set out here by replying to this email.

Best wishes,

Steering and Policy Committee members
Women's Equality Party
www.womensequality.org.uk/

If WEP don't know what a woman is then they are a complete waste of time.

Did you look at the Change Party's stance on this? As they are new and fledgling I can't decide if the TRAs aren't interested in a take over as they don't have any power or if they will be getting in early before they are 'fully formed'.

Change UK (or whatever it's called now if it's even still going) will never be GC. It's liberal progressive - centre right economics, individualist progressive/pro IDPol. It's as far from a potentially GC party as it could possibly get.

I agree with Lang it is unlikely the change party will ever be GC. The closest I've seen to GC from any party is the SDP,

"It is mistaken to view every departure from ethnic, class or gender proportionality as prima facie evidence of discrimination. Some group differences merely reflect free choices and preferences in a open society. We hold that civilised toleration of such differences is necessary if we are to avoid descent into bitterness and conflict. We believe the shared ‘identity politics’ of both the far right and far left to be inherently divisive and self-defeating. For many years the liberal-left has abandoned the politics of solidarity for those of individual emancipation, without realising that putting differences above common bonds can harm mutuality."

Trans ideology is all about the individual and identity politics.

OhHolyJesus As far as I can tell they have no stated position on this, but given what I've seen so far both of their policies and their members I imagine they'll be willing to uncritically adopt whichever stance they believe increases their power (such as it'll ever be). The problem across all parties atm is a complete abandonment of an actual ideological philosophical underpinning. In theory parties should hold a set of beliefs/ values, create policy accordingly, and then people who agree will vote for them. In practice everyone just wants to be in charge, so they start with the premise "what will get me elected?" and then create whatever policy they can think of to achieve that goal. The aim is to appeal to as many different people as possible, even if you undermine your own values/ create contradicting policy in the process.

I think it's good to discuss 'sex and gender based protections', but fundamentally they need to face up to the fact that their existence doesn't make sense if they can't explain what a woman is.

Maybe when the WEP decide whether to centre womenfolk not the Greens can get together and think about protecting the environment.

I notice neither the Remain nor Brexit sides lost track of their primary objectives. If one had decided that their priority was pronouns the other would have won outright.

I’ve no idea why autocorrect came up with ‘womenfolk’...