Conservative landslide - how are we feeling as feminists?

[Cwenthryth]

I feel very mixed this morning. So worried about what this means for public services, policing, NHS, social care, mental health services, housing, in-work poverty... all of which disproportionately affects women, either as those needing these services or picking up the pieces when dependents cannot access what they need. We now have an openly misogynist prime minister (we did before, but now he has a secure mandate), who won’t even acknowledge all of his children whilst slagging off single mothers, and has had the police called out due to neighbours fearing for the safety of his partner from what they could hear through the wall.

But there’s a tiny silver lining of it seeming that it seems very unlikely that self-ID would be brought in under this government, at least in the form the Lib Dems were touting for, so we are probably more secure on retaining sex-based rights than we would have been with any other result.

To be honest it’s not really much comfort to me right now.

GMB debate, just watch it illustrates completely what the problem is

Grace doesn't have a clue does she. Oh well with age and experience comes wisdom (I would hope).

God, Imnobody4, that discussion is a shitshow. There are few things that frustrate me more than "debaters" who shout over each other the whole time.

I love both Lang and Lisa Muggeridge.

Does anyone know if Lisa wants support of any kind (e.g. moral, financial) right now? Does she use the same paypal she had under her old surname?

Wow! Not a clue!

And what they need is to look for a salesman for their policies!

That was for the GMB debate, btw

We have a misogynistic, domestic abuser as a prime minister. I am fucking devasted.

We have a racist, xenophobe as a prime minister. As a racialised women, I am doubly devasted.

We have a prime minister who despises single women and their children. I am triply devasted.

And that's before I start thinking about how women are affected by social inequality, etc.

Gutted. Utterly gutted. And terrified for my children.

I cannot understand how any woman could be pleased to have the Tories elected and Johnson as Prime Minister. But women voted for his good friend Trump too.

• devastated

The Labour manifesto spent 4x the cash on cancelling tuition fees for middle class kids than it did on fixing UC for working class mothers.

This, in a nutshell, was the problem. I wish I had confidence there would be a new conservatism which was interested in solving the problems of poverty and lack of jobs / low paid, non-living wage jobs but I have a very nasty suspicion that the Eton types in charge see Brexit as a convenient way to increase their profit margin by doing things like increasingly privatising bits of the NHS (though let's not forget Labour did PFI). Increasingly I just think those with money on the right and left (from your Eton lot to your champagne socialists) don't see normal people as fully human, obviously particularly women, even though they're the ones doing all the critical work to keep things going.

I also love Lang and frankly, wish she was Prime Minister. I think everything would be much better all round. Maybe if I identify hard enough as a person living in Lang's UK that would work?

Good grief, Grace Blakeley must surely be up for some sort of award for "political activist most utterly detached from reality, common sense and any sense of their own failings." Not sure if it would be for this year, this decade or even the whole of the last century.

And yet I fear that thanks to pushing moderate Labour party members out through a combination of bullying, anti-semitism and misogyny, the Graces of this world are now in a majority in the Labour party membership, and there's no way moderate voices can rescue the situation. Which unfortunately means either the moderates in the PLP have to bite the bullet and launch a new Labour Party, and see if they can rebuild in time for the next election, or Labour voters have to watch helplessly as the Tories get in yet again at the next election.

I cannot understand how any woman could be pleased to have the Tories elected and Johnson as Prime Minister. But women voted for his good friend Trump too.

I honestly think there's a lot in the whole idea that the right believe that women are the property of one man, the left believe women are the property of all men. Look at Owen Jones - if women live with decent men who treat them well who are conservative then look at the rank misogyny in Labour and their desire to remove all single sex spaces.... well, when you're between a rock and a hard place you choose the least worst option FOR YOU and then hope that gives you enough breathing space to work and help other women who aren't as lucky. Just my take on it.

well, when you're between a rock and a hard place you choose the least worst option FOR YOU and then hope that gives you enough breathing space to work and help other women who aren't as lucky.

I think that's many people's take on it, Ineed. Much as we would like politics to be about choosing the best option, most of the time it's about choosing the least bad, and this election was a particularly awful set of choices. Really came down to whether you wanted a hard smelly turd or a sloppy smelly turd.

Indeed Owens treatment of women or Boris' treatment of women, what's the difference.

Dear Lord, that GMB debate. We need a strong opposition, particularly when the governing party holds such a majority, but I don’t see it happening any time soon.

I’m not happy, I really thought we would put people over politics in this election. But it appears Brexit has dominated, nonetheless I respect the will of the people and hope that despite my huge reservations that the Tory’s don’t let down their WC voters who have put faith in them.

I care as much about housing and hungry children as most people do, I just don't think that excessive centralised spending is the best route to address these issues.

Can I ask what you do think the best route is?

Same deluded denial syndrome evident here:

blogs.spectator.co.uk/2019/12/corbyns-labour-was-backed-by-10m-voters-were-defeated-but-not-finished/

I think Margaret Thatcher understood the working classes a lot better than Labour do now

Lol there’s probably some truth in that.

There is a large section of today’s left, socialist even, who are ‘middle management’ or ‘administration’ in public services. Millions.

Local authorities, nhs community and acute trusts, CCGs, NHSE, NHSI, PHE, the civil service, etc. who are mostly ‘very left’. But they sure ain’t working class.

I have absolutely no idea what Grace’s views actually are because it was impossible to hear her due to her inability to wait for a gap in conversation to speak.

A bit like conversing with a toddler, but louder.

Someone posted an absolute belter of a Terry Pratchett quote on one of the other threads which seems pertinent to the discussion here re: the Labour identity crisis and Momentum:

“People on the side of The People always ended up disappointed, in any case. They found that The People tended not to be grateful or appreciative or forward-thinking or obedient. The People tended to be small-minded and conservative and not very clever and were even distrustful of cleverness. And so the children of the revolution were faced with the age-old problem: it wasn't that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people.”

I cannot understand how any woman could be pleased to have the Tories elected and Johnson as Prime Minister.

Oh, RTFT. There are about half a dozen women of a large number of women pleased to have a Tory government on this thread and they've all explained why - none of the reasons are eating children for breakfast.

Explain why a Labour government would be better for women. Explain why it thought middle class students were worth four times the cash injection that working class mothers on UC were worth. Explain why women should trust a Labour Party in thrall to its bourgeois activist base going full throttle (pun fucking intended) for porn and prostitution. Ask the women trying to bring up their kids in and around Holbeck what they think about that. Or the working class women in prison being harassed by male sex offenders and Labour's best policy on that is "let's have a discussion". Or the women who can't access refuge because again, the best Labour can offer is a fucking discussion.

Most of us are absolutely gutted that the Labour party is so shit that we didn't feel able to vote for it.

Here, have a bloody blog. Read it and get back to me.

littlegirlblue.blog/2018/05/25/living-in-the-red-light-district/

I wish I had seen that blog last week before I ventured on the prostitution thread. Lots of people saying well who wouldn't do it if they had to. Ignore the haters raising concerns.
Whether the thread itself was real or not, the cheerleading was ridiculous and a lie.

Thank you LangCleg. That’s it to a tee.

hope that despite my huge reservations that the Tory’s don’t let down their WC voters who have put faith in them.

Only so long can the can be kicked down the road, by either party, before things get seriously unpleasant for us all.

People need jam today. Type of jar irrelevant.

But they sure ain’t working class

I'm really not sure what 'working class' means these days; nor 'middle class' come to think of it. Back in the day the phrase 'working class' conjured up images of hard working, skilled, male manual workers ( engineers; mechanics; electricians; miners and so on ) certainly in my imagination. Honourable labour. Sort of thing.

But even then the 'working class' was never a uniform group. Usually determined by for how long, and how highly, you were educate. Being educated implied a middle management office job, or a profession such as accountancy, law or medicine and so on.

So many people have degrees nowadays....it does not imply or mean as much; and there are no longer so many skilled apprenticeships as there used to be. For many old school socialists the 'working class' is automatically male.