A vote for Labour = a vote against women's rights??

[ClaireP20]

I've been giving some thought about who women can vote for if they are concerned about protecting women's rights, and feel confident that the party will support safe spaces, ensure more protection for women prisoners, women's groups, etc etc.

I don't think I could vote, in all good conscience, for Labour again. So many examples of supporting trans activists at the expense of supporting women.

Dawn Butler, attacking what she described as outdated legal measures designed to protect single-sex facilities "Labour will remove outdated language from the Equalities Act. And there is no way these spaces will be permitted to discriminate against trans people".

Rebecca Long-Bailey, Angela Rayner and Dawn Butler backing a trans rights charter that calls on Labour to expel “transphobic” members and describes campaigns including Woman’s Place UK as “trans-exclusionist hate groups”.

Now Eddie Izzard has decided to become a Labour MP, and bringing with his all his hate filled vitriol towards women (in my humble opinion).

I think Tony Blair has it spot on in the interview below, which I'm copying as an interesting read:
www.spectator.co.uk/article/labour-s-trans-rights-problem

I can't find too much information on where Conservatives stand on the issue though (but is this deliberate?)

Who can feminists genuinely vote for?

Really? I don't recall a single mention of the reasons those people spoiled their ballots, except anecdotally on social media.

I've been involved in checking though the ballot summaries around the country. The spoiled ballots are recorded simply as a number. They aren't even split into reasons, just lumped all together.

Do you remember Boris Johnson and the rest proclaiming their win and countering it with "But it's terrible: Lucy spoiled her ballot because she couldn't bring herself to vote for any of us!"
Did anyone get a phone call "We understand you feel politically homeless now. What can we do to help?"

They didn't even care that much about people's reasons for voting the way they did, why would they care any more about spoiled ballots?

You don't have to vote, you can spoil your ballot - but they won't bother about why.

The SDP might get my vote if they put up a candidate where I live —“[trans] rights must be balanced against the need of natal females for safety and sporting fairness.”

Wow, FallenIn, that’s a revelation. I didn’t realise the SDP was still around, but having had a quick look at their site, I would happily vote for them. If neither SDP nor the Communist Party put up a candidate in my area, I’m faced with the dreadful possibility of casting my first-ever Tory vote. Female erasure is more immediate and urgent than any other issue.

you can spoil your ballot - but they won't bother about why.

When they start getting large numbers of spoiled votes, enough for Labour MPs to lose a ‘safe’ seat, it’s going to start worrying them.

Since Labour lost all those northern seats last year, they’ve been making an effort to show concern about ordinary working people and the north-south divide.

Tanith, the Tories in particular spend a lot of money on polls, trying to work out what's popular and what's not. If you participate in something like YouGov you'll be aware that they are taking the temperature on a variety of issues every week. They ask questions about Covid several times a week. They'd be mad if they didn't have a local representative looking at the spoiled ballots to see what had motivated people to do that. Just because you've never heard people talk about it doesn't mean that no one pays any attention.

I'm one of those prepared to vote Tory if necessary. We have a Labour MP with a small majority and I know them and like them and think they do a good job, but I will certainly vote for some bastard Tory (the local candidates have always been vile) if it means keeping Labour out of power till they come to their senses. I have never voted Tory in my life and it will hurt — but it will hurt less than female erasure.

I will certainly vote for some bastard Tory

obviously a true-blue, Shed!

You don't have to vote, you can spoil your ballot - but they won't bother about why
I dont care if no one ever finds out why I spoiled a vote. The fact they are counted is just fine. The number will go up and when enough people spoil their votes, someone will put it together and wonder why.

@persistentwoman

I really appreciate the women trying to effect change from the inside. But why would any sane woman expose themselves to the vitriol and hatred from too many labour activists. They'll try to get you sacked from your job, they'll smear you in the local community and they'll rain hatred, rape and death threats on you. And currently nobody in the labour party will stand up either against them or for you - except other women also in receipt of the same treatment. The labour party have allowed toddler tantrums and criminal threats to replace political debate and until that stops and democratic discourse is returned, they're unfit for purpose. But thank you for trying.

This sums up the futility of trying to change the LP from the inside

I think the current government is the worst we’ve ever had, and I won’t vote for them but I also cannot vote for a party that will do this to female members of their party.

It’ll be spoilt ballots for the foreseeable future

I stopped voting Labour after the Jay Report (Rotherham)

One option is that rather than focus on the Party, look at who your local candidates are and what they say on the issue. It may not transfer into policy action but the more sensible people elected, and in the House, the better, IMO.

In some cases that won't be possible because there is some horrible policy, but when all parties seem screwed up I find that can be the only way to make a choice.

Tanith the friend at the count is a LibDem activist. She very far from being an idiot, she will notice if anyone comments that the LibDems lost a vote due to their stance on trans issues.

Just because data doesn't make it to the summaries doesn't mean that someone hasn't noted it for their own purposes.

@ChestnutStuffing

One option is that rather than focus on the Party, look at who your local candidates are and what they say on the issue. It may not transfer into policy action but the more sensible people elected, and in the House, the better, IMO.

In some cases that won't be possible because there is some horrible policy, but when all parties seem screwed up I find that can be the only way to make a choice.

My Labour MP has not responded to my emails regarding women's rights issues at all. 3 emails and nada. Shame really as she is good at responding to other issues.

(I will continue to contact her).

[quote TheFleegleHasLanded]Here are links to the two main party’s websites. The other parties have women’s groups too but I don’t have links on this device. If anyone wants to be put in touch with any of the parties, please drop me a PM, I have contact details for all of them.

labourwomensdeclaration.org.uk/

conservativesforwomen.org/[/quote]
This is wonderful - thank you x

@ChestnutStuffing

One option is that rather than focus on the Party, look at who your local candidates are and what they say on the issue. It may not transfer into policy action but the more sensible people elected, and in the House, the better, IMO.

In some cases that won't be possible because there is some horrible policy, but when all parties seem screwed up I find that can be the only way to make a choice.

Yes, excellent point.

Blair is a discusting opportunitist, in the article his only argument against genderism is that it is not popular, there is no understanding of womens rights or the issue at all. He will blow whatever way the establishment wants him to blow, and the establishment wants TWAW enshrined in law, so he would be no different to Obama on this issue. Izzard is an avowed blairite and has only declaired himself a woman to appeal to party membership (so he thinks) as his actual politics make him toxic to the left wing membership, so he is hoping he can ride in to a nomination through tra support.

Dirty politics by dirty men, not one single ounce of integrity between them.

Seriously, Id vote tory before voting Labour now.

Blair is just doing what all the other non-woke politicians are doing, including Starmer and the Tories: waiting for there to be overwhelming evidence that this is not a popular policy so that they can shrug at Stonewall and say 'We get it and we'd let you erase women's rights if we could, but the electorate just won't have it.'

There isn't a single politician apart from the mavericks such as Rosie Duffield who dares to stand up and take the flak. They know that at the moment Starmer would be forced to demote them/ send them to the back of the queue for promotion. Friends of mine who are still in the Labour Party are talking about having to wait a whole generation — 15-20 years — before queer theory is out of the universities and trans-indoctrination has been purged from schools, when all the radical blue-haired TWAW types are in their 40s and in heterosexual relationships with mortgages and children and jobs in the finance industry, at which point memories of the great Trans project will fade a bit and Labour will be able to pretend it never happened.

Alienated Labour voter, politically homeless. Nobody has women's backs. 🤷🏼‍♀️

Falleninwiththewrongcrowd I’ve been thinking of ditching Labour membership and defecting to the SDP for a while. I was expecting to have been reported and booted out by now and it’s killing me that I’m still paying subs and making monthly donations to a party that is actively campaigning against the interests of women, children and gay rights.

There are women battling away inside the party but, as PPs have pointed out, the unions are just as bad and it is hard to see how the whole Labour Movement can be turned around after openly celebrating its misogyny.

The Left learned long ago that it had to hide its racism to be PC but it never got the hang of hiding its sexism - and now it doesn’t even have to try.

At the moment the SDP has as little chance as any of the raggle-taggle Communist Party remnants of winning seats in local or General Elections. The Women’s Equality Party is a dead loss, expelling women who know what a woman is.

The SDP does seem the most welcoming and fitting haven for politically homeless women expelled or disenchanted with Labour, Lib Dem’s and Greens. Not just politically homeless but politically active, experienced and motivated. Maybe the basis for revitalising the SDP as a viable alternative?

I am talking myself into this more and more!

The SDP’s “Communitarian” philosophy, balancing individual and collective interests, sits well with what originally drew me to the Labour Party, which was primarily traditional Workers Rights and the influence of Methodism rather than Socialism. This was because I grew up in Wales and these featured heavily in Welsh History at school. (When I was a Regional Rep to a Union National Committee it was striking that out of 14 Regional Reps covering the whole of the U.K. that 10 of us were brought up within 12-15 miles of each other in North Wales!)

Maybe it will be my New Year’s Resolution to make the leap. It feels partly disloyal to leave, abandoning the women who are clinging on in there, trying to get the Labour Party to do right by women. Partly like struggling to leave an abusive partner who promised so much at the start, thinking that if I just try harder the abuse will stop and the relationship will be fixed.

The delusional triumph of hope over experience

Yes (thinking aloud) I think the trap is the Sunk Cost Fallacy / Escalation of Commitment. It’s a very uncomfortable feeling, cognitive dissonance.

@yellowcatss

yes labour does not care about women that is why in over 100 years they have only ever elected men to be leader of the party

The three women candidates in recent leadership elections made themselves unelectable with their TWAW manta bollocks.

Grumpymiddleagedwoman I wish that was how it worked. However, it's been a year and I see no evidence of the LibDems changing their stance.

Spoiling ballots, resigning from positions and parties: it sounds like a noble, principled thing to do, but it's an empty gesture, especially in these times when you're simply replaced or ignored.

I won’t vote for any party that doesn’t understand the issues for women. Labour put me off with their declaration and their pushing out of pro-women people. I won’t ever vote for them again unless they oppose such utter crap.

The Greens are important and need votes, but have a totally naive attitude about this.

I heard the LibDems and their “Look how woke I am” rubbish, so I’m not voting for them either.

The more time goes by and the more I see and learn(thanks to this forum and elsewhere), the more importantly I take the issue of women’s rights. So, if it came down to it, I’d vote Tory if they were the only option to stop this. I wouldn’t feel happy doing so, but at the moment I think this is a crucial issue and so it would be my top priority in deciding how to vote.

I’m all for trans rights, but I’m very much not for the erasure of women as a class and for people being able to identify into oppressed groups simply by identifying as such. It’s a nonsense - and I believe it holds more dangers than just the erasure of women.

If the alternative is voting for a party that appears intent on giving away my rights then empty gesture is the best I can do.

I remember reading some time ago in a discussion on here that there is a problem with staff screening correspondence and deliberately not passing on anything about women's rights to the MP.
Similarly there was an issue about software being set up to intercept emails. A bit like the twitter terfblocker programming.
I am sure someone more knowledgeable will be able to elaborate.

@Tanith, in that election she didn't mention any spoilt ballots featuring women's issues. She'll be getting one next time.

I was ignored within the LibDems and I would have been thrown out if I'd got more active. I can't vote for them next time, unless the local candidate is capable of some independent thought on this issue.

I emailed 3 high profile lib dems prior to the last election. Didn't get a reply from any of them.

I don’t think the situation is as hopeless as you think. It was noticeable - I thought - how muted the opposition parties were to the announcement in September that the government weren’t proceeding with GRA reforms. There were a few platitudes but nobody is launching a sustained campaign to change the government’s mind. Likewise, there was very little political response to the Keira Bell case.

I suspect that the majority of MPs simply don’t want to discuss the issue. They know that - for most of them - campaigning in favour of trans issues isn’t a vote winner, but that the enormous downside in terms of social media trolling means they don’t want to speak out in favour of women either.

The shelving of GRA reforms means that none of our (English) politicians needs to break cover and express an opinion - there’s no Parliamentary debate or vote on trans rights - so why take the risk of saying anything? There are ways for opposition politicians to get business on the agenda but - for this issue - they’re choosing not to.

There are plenty of issues that politicians will express a view on when they don’t have to, of course. But they choose their subjects carefully to appeal to their voters. Very few are choosing to make public statements on this issue.

The dilemma for many is that this is a very important issue for younger activists and of course the parties want to harness and encourage the energy of younger people. So far, I think they’re walking a tightrope (with varying degrees of success) by paying lip service to young activists’ agenda while actually doing very little to progress it.

Interestingly, the one party whose politicians are talking about it is the SNP and the trans issue has become a proxy for the underlying split between the Salmondites and the Sturgeonistas. Don’t know enough about Scottish legislation to know whether the recent vote was a political move to emphasise the split, but it’s certainly becoming very bitter.