Thank you again to those of you who have supported us and wished us well, particularly to @KeepPrisonsSingleSex who has confirmed that we worked with them, and we will continue to support their campaign.
As LeftyWoman said, we are indeed “just a bunch of Conservative women members trying to do some good by holding the government's feet to the fire.”
I will say once more, nobody is forcing any single one of you to support us, sign up for our newsletter, follow us on Twitter or Facebook or even to look at our website. Mumsnet has been so valuable to many of us in our group, as it has to women all across the political spectrum, and I thought some of you would like to know we exist. We have asked for nobody's personal details or money. Anyone is free to sign up to our newsletter under any name and email address you choose to use, and the idea that we will be cross checking you and following you across social media is risible, given we all have jobs and families and are doing this in what little spare time we have and the fact we wouldn't have a clue how to do this. We have set this up in our own time and with our own money because we think it's important enough to deserve that.
Those of you who are not interested, feel free to scroll on by. I will also repeat, we are FOR women and children's rights, as are ALL the other political groups we work with.
Most of what we do, and have been doing (our group sprang from the Conservative Women's Pledge petition, started over a year ago) does NOT take place on social media, it takes place in private conversations with our own MPs; one of our aims is to help people be more confident about engaging with their MPs, because we know many people just don't know where to start.
Many Conservative party members don't use social media, so we want to find ways to reach out to them to let them know what is happening to women (and children).
Those of you who are politically active know that party officials SHOULD be listening to their members, and we intend to make our voices heard within the party, so the more of us the better, which is why we set up the website to give people somewhere to engage with us; as of today none of us have been expelled from the party so we feel there is hope, and the atmosphere has certainly changed in the last year. What we are doing is not something we expect every women in the world to agree with, heaven knows we are used to that, as women we have been constantly told we are 'womaning' wrong, or 'feministing' wrong. But it is what WE are doing, and those who want to criticise, why not share what YOU are doing?
So what 'real world touchpoint' are we supposed to provide? Our photos? Our names and addresses? None of that would prove anything, and people who want to find fault with us will continue to do so. Facebook are already making our page difficult to find and no doubt Twitter will get around to shadowbanning us for weeks, which is what they did to CUPWomensPledge's account. The fact anyone thinks we have any control over these social media giants is mind-boggling.
P.S. If anyone has found a way to send postcards out to people without having their address we are all ears.
P.P.S. Thanks from the bottom of our heart to those who have sent supportive messages and supported us on this thread; we are all exhausted from getting this set up and your messages and posts have really helped.