The terribly controversial statement says:
1. Women and girls are subject to discrimination and oppression on the basis of their sex.
2. Women have the right to freedom of belief, freedom of expression and freedom of assembly (Articles 18, 19 and 20 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights).
3. Women have the right to discuss policies which affect them, without being abused, harassed or intimidated.
4. Women have the right to maintain their sex-based protections, as set out in the Equality Act 2010. These include female-only spaces such as changing rooms, hospital wards, sanitary and sleeping accommodation, refuges, hostels and prisons.
5. Women have the right to participate in single-sex sports, to ensure fairness and safety at all levels of competition.
6. Women have the right to organise themselves, as a sex, across a range of cultural, leisure, educational and political activities.
7. We condemn all attempts to undermine or limit the rights of women to self-organise and call on the Labour Party and the trades union movement to actively support these essential freedoms.
Labour regards this as hate speech. Saying that women are human, and have rights, including the right to a voice, is deemed hate speech. Their leadership candidates were asked to sign a statement terming it that, and further committing to expelling anyone who expresses these views from the party.
I genuinely don't understand how any woman can vote for them, looking at this, and seeing their reaction and what they did and are doing to Rosie Duffield, just for asserting that women are human beings. Her courage is extraordinary - and what a dystopia we now inhabit, that basic feminism is seen as shocking, and expressing it gets women kicked off and out of most online spaces, and a major political party?
Karen Ingala Smith has dedicated her life to women's provision and recovery from male violence. Yet for writing this piece and presenting it to Parliament, she has been banned from Labour party membership.
It's entrenching male supremacy as a moral crusade. How women stand for this, far less cheerlead it it on as some do, is simply beyond me.