The Upcoming Election

[TerfTalk]

I guess we will get the manifestos in a few days, which should be interesting...

All I remember from the previous elections was far too much: "I am in the X party. There are tons of people in the X party that are gender critical, but they can't say anything because of A, B, C."

Personally, I am spoiling my ballot unless any of the parties (other than UKIP) take a gender critical stance. I am in a Labour safe seat, so it won't make any difference to my area.

At the moment, none of the major political parties consider women important enough to care that gender critical women are abandoning them.

We have to make them sit up and take notice, when they don’t get women’s votes.

Labour will be assuming that, either the woke vote will more than make up for lost women’s votes, or that lefty women will do as we always do, and vote Labour in the end in spite of them letting women down.

We have to make them realise that there is a line of misogyny that they cannot cross, and still get our votes. And that line is now well and truly crossed.

Labour voter for 40 years.
Will not vote for them again, see fallingirl's post above.
In a very safe Conservative seat so will spoil my paper.

It's so depressing that we don't have a political party that care about women.

I also think every party will just focus on Brexit and not wider issues we all are about.

I'm in Scotland so this will also mean having to listen to yet more SNP/second referendum noise

grapefruit I am thinking similarly to you. I may well petition Lib Dem candidate to see he thinks re women’s rights... we are in a Tory safe seat area but also a remain area so i don’t know how the votes will go...

James Morris (tory) wrote me a lovely 2 page letter about how wonderful it is to hand women’s rights to men.

Unfortunately, the Tories are the only people round here that can be bothered to tell me who they are fielding.

"It won't be Green or LibDem. Their cossetting of Aimee Challenor betrays a huge inability to understand basic, basic decency/safeguarding/due diligence that I simply cannot allow anywhere near power if I have a say.
" @BeMoreMagdalen

Totally agree with this.

I will be voting Conservative (despite their complete fuck up over the GRC consultation) partly because they've now shelved the whole thing and also because I'd rather take puberty blockers rathe than vote for a sexist, racist old white man like Jeremy Corbyn.

To whoever was being sarcastic about "shoehorning" the GC into this one issue, you're missing the bigger picture. How many female Labour leaders has the party ever elected? The answer is none. But they gave a 19 year old boy the role of Women's Officer. They can fuck right off.

I'm in a Tory seat but I think theres a chance that he'll be unseated as he's not that popular and his majority isn't that big. The LibDems have held it before.
For that reason, I'll be voting LibDem although it will through gritted teeth while holding my nose. For me, this is a single issue election: Brexit and that pisses me off thoroughly.
I will however be contacting all candidates to ask their opinions on self ID and making it clear that they need to support womens rights.
Even if I'm not going to vote for them, I think every candidate needs to be aware just how pissed off women are on this and just how many votes they're risking by throwing us under the bus.

No parties are GC but under Tory rule, women are children are terribly off due to cuts in services and support. I would urge people not to vote with a middle class head on and to instead think of those most marginalised. Food bank usage has shot up under the tories with women and children most affected. The NHS is on the brink of collapse. Tories are no less likely than labour to resist GRA reforms. Maria Miller is a Tory and the majority of them just don’t give a crap because it doesn’t really affect them.

I despise the Labour Party as it currently is but it is the only major party that will bring an end to austerity. Resisting GRA reform will never be a major party policy for any party other other than a very right wing one so please, if you want to improve life for women and girls, vote for the party trying to end austerity because otherwise the tories will get back in.

I will be voting Conservative (despite their complete fuck up over the GRC consultation) partly because they've now shelved the whole thing and also because I'd rather take puberty blockers rathe than vote for a sexist, racist old white man like Jeremy Corbyn

As opposed to a sexist, racist middle- aged white man like Boris Johnson? (Tongue in cheek!)

I was going to vote Lib Dem for Brexit issue. I think it would have been better to have a referendum instead - so just on the Brexit issue rather than a general election. In my area Tory’s are in but with a very small majority - wouldn’t take a lot for it to swing to Labour.

There’s not one single ‘morally acceptable’ OR electorally effective approach here that would gain an obviously gender critical result at this particular election because it’s so dominated by Brexit so a lot of people will treat it as a second referendum which will affect their voting behaviour. Most importantly no party is campaigning on a GC platform. We also know that there are some GC people in every party.

So whether GC issues are the sole factor or just a part of how we want to vote at this election, I feel like those factors above free all of us up to vote with our gut feelings, vote tactically, or spoil ballot papers according to what we each feel we have to gain or lose by doing that. It depends whether you think in your own area it’s more effective to be pissing inside the tent, pissing outside the tent, trying to build a new tent, lobbying everyone who builds tents.. and of course what level of individual clear conscience you need to sleep at night and how important that is to you. There isn’t a universal answer to that at the moment.

(What would be interesting is the dilemma if any party who has likely national electoral success does break ranks and adopt GC policies. But likely we won’t be faced with that lovely problem any decade soon unfortunately .)

Personally I very much fear a total economic and social clusterfuck from Brexit for the next decades if it happens and so personally I won’t be spoiling my own vote over women’s rights nor can I bring myself to vote tactically Tory for tribal historical political reasons and because what they have done to us recently and continue to do over Brexit. That is good reason enough for me, personally. I instinctively want to vote for whoever out of Labour or Lib Dem or Green will actually stop Brexit. Even though I am beyond disgusted with how they have all been treating women for years. But I absolutely and totally appreciate and defend others rights to spoil their own papers and vote tactically on a GC basis (and that’s a point well made about the communists, they have been consistently gender critical so far as I am aware).

But regardless of whether or how women choose to act on election day, I hope that everyone will contact all the electoral candidates in their area and tell them about GC issues and demand the candidates take a clear, publicly stated position which supports women’s rights and supports children’s safeguarding.

Lobbying all candidates is the single most individually effective thing I think we can do at this election. Not many electoral results rest on one person’s vote, so whatever we do with our own vote, let’s be emailing and meeting with candidates and raising their awareness so far as we are able to.

Also, I would urge people not to let individual personalities guide the vote. I hate Corbyn too but he may not be leader in 6 months.

Oh and 100% it should have been a second referendum. As Tony Blair said, an election solves nothing wrt Brexit.

i'll vote anyone but the brexiteer/tory sitting mp -arsehole- and i believe my lib dem candidate is gender critical so it will prob be her.

agree with chattylion. do what you like obvs, but be clear that spoiling ballot papers achieves nothing and/or lets the worse ones win.

voting for the least bad option is always preferable to not voting.

The thing is even though no one likes to admit it the Tories are the least worst option for women!

No they aren’t perfect by any means BUT if Labour win then we can say goodbye to women’s sex based rights, and that will negatively affect all women especially poor working class women.

I stuck my head above the parapet on the Brexit thread and said this but no one wanted to listen, they laughed at the idea that a Labour government would be disastrous for women, I directed people to this board in the hope they will read more about this.

Any feelings I still had for Labour died in Brighton when the leadership stayed silent while their members harrassed and threatened women trying to attend a meeting. That's when it moved beyond the gender critical argument for me - even if they really believe TWAW they could still have spoken out about the harrassment. They clearly do not care about women and they can fuck right off. And anyone thinking of coming on here to lecture me can fuck right off as well.

My single issue is not GC but the environment. It's not hyperbole to say we are facing extinction and need to act now. We have had decades of evidence coming in and supporting the higher end of the predictions on global warming and I am sadly too aware of what the higher end of those predictions entails. I do worry about my daughters. I want them to be able to start a family without thinking about whether their children will be able to live a full life.

My actual prediction is that sadly, the Conservatives will be elected and spend another five to ten years in the pockets of ExxonMobil and the like.Then my children, at some point in their life, will end up living in a dystopic totalitarian regime which implements policies similar to the single child policy in China in order to try to salvage any kind of existence at all.

I'm a blast at parties.

Helmet I agree. Spoiling ballot over an issue that none of the parties support nor will support is futile. It will just allow the tories to steam roller us into more austerity, no deal Brexit and misery.

This tool tells you who to vote for to keep the tories out.

tacticalvote.co.uk/

I'm an LD member currently but feeling a bit lost. Might start petitioning and see if I get kicked out. In total naive optimism I'd like all the GC in the main parties to stand firm and push for common sense.

Arabella how can the tories be the least worst option for women? What about universal credit, which has left women suicidal or heavily in debt? What about the fact that women have been turning to food banks to feed themselves and their children? What about the fact that women are unlikely to be able to access support services needed to leave abusive relationships due to cuts. There are mums and kids who are stuck in hostel b&b accommodation long term because of housing shortages and others that are hidden homeless and staying with friends and relatives. I cannot see how anyone can ignore these aspects and solely focus on the GRA issue. The tories were the ones who fucking timetabled the proposed reforms in the first place. They have now shelved them for a bit. Big whoop. That’s hardly sticking up for women’s rights.

Despite being a former member of labour I can not and will not vote for them because of their awful treatment of women and the sneering condescending comments from MP's like Dawn Butler.

Lib Dem's, greens and Tories can get lost too. All parties have acted disgracefully over Brexit. There has been a lot of grandstanding and childish behaviour and no sensible solutions from our MP's. All the major parties will happily give away women's rights without consulting us.

They've made the UK a complete laughing stock internationally. With a few exceptions no on in parliament deserves to represent the people of this country. They are simply not up to standard.

As such I spoil my vote. They can all do one.

Please don't spoil your paper based on societies current ideas about "what is a woman"

Brexit and another 5 years of the Tories is far far more damaging to women than a left wing woke agenda. People have died because of the conservatives policies and I see no reason they will get more accommodating and every reason it will get worse.

The move to the right will exert more pressure for women to shoulder care work, low paid workers (predominantly women) will suffer.

It's the worst time to take a stand by spoiling your vote. Please don't

Pota2 I think your point about voting in solidarity with the least privileged voters is really important (and that is implicit in my personal not feeling able to vote Tory). I just feel like Brexit will fuck us up so monumentally across a swathe of society that the first line of defence has to be if Brexit can be stopped somehow.

It’s political triage voting which is a shit way to have to vote but I feel like we are where we are. I’m nostalgic for those happy days of being able to campaign and vote for a positive preference candidate and party at election time.. even though I was probably quite naïve back then about which pricks I should have been kicking against.

Yes I learnt on here that spoilt ballots are only read by election officials so that puts me off doing it personally but I can see why people do it. I don’t think it’s morally OK to spoilt a ballot AND to not contact candidates on the issues you care about though- that is genuinely not voting and serves nobody. But it’s a free country obviously.

Also worth noting with a mid-December election if you or anyone you know are doing extra work shifts to help pay for Christmas, or you have university age relatives or you are likely to be away visiting family overseas, or for whatever reason might be away from where you are registered to vote, because it is outside of term time/start of holiday season....Or just if you/they live rurally and/or are elderly and or have mobility issues, small kids to consider, or for any reason might be likely to be deterred from voting by horrible mid- December weather...

Please encourage everyone you know to get sorted with a postal vote if they think they might need one.

www.gov.uk/government/publications/apply-for-a-postal-vote

I'm a grown woman and can make up my own mind, thank you. I will be spoiling my vote.

Lobbying all candidatesis the single most individually effective thing I think we can do at this election. Not many electoral results rest on one person’s vote, so whatever we do with our own vote, let’s be emailing and meeting with candidates and raising their awareness so far as we are able to.
I absolutely second this. Whichever way you're voting (or spoiling), let's make sure all candidates know just how strongly women feel on this issue. The tide is turning and the more of us there are and the louder we shout, the faster it'll turn.

Yes, I think if you are spoiling the ballot you need to contact the candidates. The thing is though that it really doesn’t send a message to anyone. The person with the most votes will get their seat. Maybe it works better in countries with proportional representation Or compulsory voting, but here it’s just a wasted vote.

I really am no fan of labour leadership atm and I want Brexit stopped or a second ref. But I know that by refusing to vote for them due to GC concerns that I am just opening up the door for the tories and nobody will give a shit why I abstained from voting.

It is true what pp said- people are dying due to austerity. Women are the worst hit by things like universal credit. It’s a barbaric system. The NHS is on its knees- again affecting women who tend to be the lower paid workers. Tories do not care about women other than middle class affluent women.