<waves at politicians seeking to understand women's rights>

[vivariumvivariumsvivaria]

Nice to see you on here, we know you are lurking and learning. There is a wealth of excellent resources on here, wisdom and insight which has been quashed everywhere else. Have a read!

Maybe mull over why this stuff that was missing from your inclusion training where you were taught TWAW and #nodebate?

And then consider whether you are personally comfortable being part of a process which is removing womens rights by stealth?

If your party says you will discuss the issues, by Thursday, which affect 51% of the population WITH 51% of the population - then I'll vote for you.

If your party chooses not engage with the huge number of floating voters on this forum because of the threat to their sex based rights, then, to quote someone who helped clarify things in my head...

...enjoy your (political) erasure.

Good idea for a thread.

Lurking politicians, please find time to read the existing legislation, in particular the GRA and the Equalities Act. Pay particular attention to the parts of the Equalities Act which give examples of situations where organisations can, in defence of the legally protected characteristic of sex, quite lawfully exempt individuals undergoing gender reassignment or with a GRC.

These provisions explicitly cover cases like that of Clare Dymon, who requested a female HCP for her mammogram, then found her request being used as a case study of bigotry by Brighton hospitals. The law as it stands is on Clare's side, and rightly so.

Also please note how many organisations now incorrectly put in their equalities statements that the protected characteristic is "gender" when in fact it should read "sex and gender reassignment."

Also please read some reputable science written by geneticists and developmental biologists (not incoherent rantings about clownfish by self-styled "biology teachers" on twitter) and do remember - human beings are not, in fact, clownfish.

...enjoy your (political) erasure

LOL! I like that.

Exactly. Look at how many people on these threads are saying they will have to spoil their ballot, in despair. All those votes that would have been given to a party that respected the rights of women-- rights that already exist, they just need to be acknowledged.

Give me a bearded party leader who is not so very woke that he has to announce his pronouns...a female party leader who does not fall back on "but lesbian relationships can be abusive too" and "there is no hierarchy of equalities but transwomen are the most oppressed"...

And damn, just don't give me a smug tossled-haired leader who refuses to do interviews because he is sure to fuck it up. Especially after what he and his cronies have done to this country...

Could be shortened to "Dear politicians, you are aware that women can vote, yes? And that if your party tells them to go fuck themselves they probably won't want to vote for you?"

Hello politicians

Most of you have BADLY underestimated how your incredible willingness to trample over women’s rights goes down with the general population. You’re in a small echo chamber of people vigorously agreeing with each other that you’re right and it is just some nasty TERFs who don’t want to be nice to poor oppressed trans people. But Face facts. The vast majority of voters will feel some sympathy for individuals with dysphoria but those VOTERS:

• do not believe there is such a thing as a female penis
• do not want their teenage daughter sleeping at Guide camp in a tent with undisclosed male bodied persons
• do not think giving untested puberty blockers to young children is ok
• do not want male bodied people changing next to women at the swimming pool or at M&S
• do not believe you can change your biological sex but power of thought and belief
• do not think male bodied people belong in women’s refuges or women’s prisons
• don’t want their young boys labelled trans because they happen to like pink, glitter and trying on Disney princess dresses
• don’t much appreciate being labelled as a bigot because of the above

And then consider whether you are personally comfortable being part of a process which is removing womens rights by stealth?

This

You misogynistic fuckers

Excellent idea vivariumvivariumsvivaria.

For anyone wanting to understand the issues, this thread is a great place to start: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3145470-Break-it-down-for-me

Hello politicians. Before you continue to virtue signal about abolishing the spousal "veto", please consider the effect of this on women.

Here's a handy summary:

makemorenoisemanc.wixsite.com/mysite/post/trans-widows-and-the-spousal-veto-a-modern-fable-of-male-entitlement

As a woman who grew up in a school that encouraged girls to follow their dreams and aspirations, sporting or academic, as a woman who grew up being able to use safe female spaces, but experienced assault and harassment outside of them, as a woman who now works with women who have not been able to access secondary or tertiary level education due to their sex, who have not had choice in their marriage to a man and who are not allowed to work, as a woman who has been able to work and also have some employment protection against the sex-based disadvantages of pregnancy and childbirth, as a woman with young daughters this is the most important issue for me to consider from the political party representing me. Overriding everything else. I would actually rather be poor and be in a society where the sex-based protections for women and girls are acknowledged and discussed than in a society that does a fantastic job of brexit, welfare etc and women and girls are at risk of male violence, or losing employment, etc due to intolerance of any debate about this.

And I will be voting because I know it’s still a privilege as a woman to be able to do this.

Please MPs hear us.

I will not vote for anyone who does not know what a woman is. My sitting MP - who I have voted for for a long time - has lost my vote. Open to offers!

Because I realise politicians are busy people, here's what, for me, is the central part of the excellent article Tinsel linked to on the so-called "spousal veto." (Apologies to the transwidows for bowdlerising the wording slightly to stay within MN's ridiculously onerous talk guidelines; the original article uses correct pronouns throughout).

Would the Lib Dems think it acceptable in any other contract for one party to entirely change the terms, yet the other party still be bound by it? It seems unlikely.

The arguments around this issue boil down to this: Which is the greater evil, a heterosexual woman being trapped in a same sex marriage against her will, or her [spouse] having h* Gender Recognition Certificate delayed while h* wife leaves the marriage.

And please, politicians, read this aloud to yourselves correctly filling in the blanks - because as someone once said "if you can't see sex, you can't see sexism." This would not be happening were it not women's rights under attack - note the careful exclusions in the original GRA surrounding male primogeniture. To adapt one of the excellent Rules of Misogyny, "Women are whatever men say they are, and men are whatever men say they are (except when inheritance rights are up for grabs)."

Hi politicians

What are you going to do with the female people who are no longer able to access smear tests, stay on hospital wards, use public toilets, use public facilities like swimming, or access refuges when they and their children's lives are in danger, because due to their faith, culture, disability or trauma, are unable to be undressed or sleep in a space with stranger males regardless of how those males choose to identify themselves?

While it's lovely that those males have more choice - by all provision having been taken away from females to give to males as extra alternatives to their existing provisions - what are you going to do with the females now wholly excluded from basic access to essential services?

And why is it that female people are actually having to ask you this in the 21st century, as if they still have to point out that females are human too and should have some semblance of equality of human rights to those gifted to male people?

Dear politicians,

Have you ever stopped to ask yourself why we have sex segregated spaces?

Is it an arbitrary piece of discrimination, just like the "color bar" in the 1950s southern USA?

Or is it because statistics show us that some men (sadly a not insignificant minority) pose a physical risk to women, so we keep them out of spaces where women are vulnerable (changing rooms, sleeping accommodation, etc)?

Reminder of those stats again: in the UK, 90% of people incarcerated for violence against the person, and 98% plus of people incarcerated for sexual crimes are male.

There are more men in prison for sexual offences alone (13,535 as of June 2018) than there are women in prison in total (3, 831 as of July this year).

Supplementary follow up question: do you actually believe it's possible for people to change sex?

Dear Politicians
A female body is what makes a woman. Nothing more, nothing less. It is quite literally what I have in common with all other women.

It is the basis of all the oppression women are, and ever have been subjected to, and it is the reason we need women’s rights and women-only spaces.

Hi politicians

Until your party acknowledges women as an oppressed class by means of their reproductive sex and has a manifesto with policy created on this basis, I won't be voting for you.

Otherwise, you're just white noise.

HTH

Lang

Dear politicians;

Explain how your policy to remove women's sex based rights from the Equality Act will be better for women than UKIPs plan to remove women's rights by abolishing the Equality Act.

Use plain English and give examples; e.g. why you think mixed sex prisons, psychiatric units, hospital wards, domestic violence refuges - are better for natal women.

Dear politicians,
Explain, using nice simple language, how removing sex-based exemptions from the Equalities Act can leave the legal wriggle room necessary to keep convicted (and still be-penised) rapist Karen White out of women's prisons?

Or, conversely, explain to us why you think it would be such a brilliant, inclusive move to put Karen White into a women's prison (given that last time we tried that, he sexually assaulted two women inmates while on remand)?

enjoy your (political) erasure.🤣

Hi there politicians,

TW are men. To say otherwise is to reveal yourself as a foolish ideologue, tremendously dim, cowardly or cynical.

Labour, I’ve voted for you at every GE, but I don’t think I can this time; you’re saying a lot of the things I want to hear, but I fear that identity politics will undermine what you set out to achieve.

It’s quite a thing when a vote for the cynical feels like the least bad option.

Regards.

Oh, hello Canvassers. Oh look, one of you is male and one is female (in old money)! Tell you what, nip into my dining room and get naked together, then we’ll have a chat about my vote. That shouldn’t feel awkward at all.

No? Really?

Well what if Mr Canvasser here kindly identifies as a woman for a bit?

Still no?

WELL BUGGER OFF AND THINK ABOUT WHY THAT IS

Hi
Here is my election poster. It hasn't stopped any of you pouring junk mail through my door, but I live in hope. Until you meet this criteria you can expect my spoilt ballot on Thursday.

Dear Politicians
The definition of a woman is:
adult human female
No one else has the right to identify into that category. No one.

Dear politicians,

If you make the legal definition of ‘woman’ into anyone who signs a piece of paper to say they are then you make ‘woman’ a meaningless term.

If it’s a term that holds no legal meaning then all our sex based protections are gone, if you can’t define sex you can’t protect those of us who are mariginalised because of it.

If it’s a term that holds no meaning you have taken away woman’s vote. You can’t measure what natal women vote for if the catagory ‘women’ includes men. You can’t assess how women feel about issues that effect our lives if you can measure who women vote for. Women can’t come together as a group to use our democratic rights to influence positive change for women if the group ‘women’ includes men. Women can’t use media and social discussions to raise awareness of issues that effect us when a significant number of ‘women’s’ voices come from men.

There’s no way to measure the gender pay gap if ‘women’ includes men. There’s no way to assess how many women are in senior positions in employment if some of those ‘women’ are men. There’s no way for any woman who is unfairly passed over for promotions on the basis of her sex to complain when her employer can claim that 50% of the male managment are women. There’s no way to assess how many women are in STEM subjects when ‘women’ contains men.

There’s no way for any single sex prison, hospital, mental health facility, dv refuge or any other single sex facility can turn away a man when ‘woman’ now includes any man who signs a form.

Making the legal definition woman something any man can opt into, without any ‘transition’ of any sort makes the term women meaningless. Doing so wiped out all our sex based protections and all our rights in one go. You maybe a woman yourself, but if your not you were certainly birthed by one. You may also be married to one, or have sisters, daughters or other women you care about. They are the people whose rights you are erasing.

This will decide my vote now (most likely spoiled ballot) and will do in every election following. I will endeavour to vote in every single local election as well, and any candidate who is willing to stand up and vote against party line on self ID bill will get my support. More over I will explain this to every other woman I know, to my family, friends, school mothers, teachers, hcp and so on. I know a lot of women, I suspect that’s true of other women on this board do also. At some point one party will release what a large % of votes that is, as more and more women are aware of this. Will it be your party or will it be the reason you loose? Females make up 51% of the population, and our erasure of rights effects us all. That’s a lot of votes for whoever is smart enough to figure that out.

Mumsnut that is fabulous