50:50 Parliament Campaign to Encourage Women in Politics now have TWO Transwomen on the Panel

[gardenbird48]

I saw 50:50 women tweet to Sue Pascoe Chair of the Conservative Women’s Organisation some time ago on their #askhertostand, but then I couldn’t find the tweet and thought maybe they’d realised their mistake (can you guess?) and deleted it.

However, how wrong I was! There are now two people that have extremely limited ‘lived experience’ as a female (Sue was a married father and successful businessman and Master to Foxhounds until a few years ago). The other person has said hi on here recently.

I don’t mean to be rude but surely the whole point of encouraging women to stand for Parliament is to help overcome the barriers women face in entering politics. Any barriers that trans people face are rather different. It is also interesting that on a panel of three for their ‘Encouraging LGBT+ Women to Stand’ campaign, there us only one person with actual lived experience of being a woman (I am hoping that Mandu Reid of the WEP was born female at least...??)

@SunsetBeetch

Tell us how you really feel, Jaz.

So angry with women.

@BoreOfWhabylon

Word to the wise, Jaz, if you're still reading (and we know you are)

For someone with political ambitions, the sheer degeneracy on display in the photos on your alternative Twitter (which you helpfully link in your bio) is a big, big mistake.

I do hope there is archiving going on.

Jaz's comments last night that since Jaz says Jaz is a woman, therefore Jaz is an adult female human (because that is the definition), does seem to indicate a disconnect about how material reality works (perhaps that's how it works in fantasy role play). 'Woman' is just a costume, like all the others

And most role play/gaming characters are highly sexualised - fetishised; with larger than life and outlandish bodies and costumes.

BoreOfWhabylon I'm a newbie at Twitter, very likely to be on a substandard block list! (Though I was oddly proud the other week when I looked up a trans contestant on University Challenge and found out they had blocked me!!) Challenor did indeed invent that, another "politician" who wasn't into engaging with debate

@AmericanSlang sign out of twitter and then just visit the links.

Suggest we don't do any copy and pastes of tweets though.

Me too, here in my local council wards. They are utterly impenetrable or amenable to reason.

My local LD councilor looked very embarrassed when I brought up women on boards, in refuges and medical needs. He mentioned that yes, there was a new exec and not everyone agrees. Sadly, my LDMP is immovably on the ‘be kind’ soothing. She says it often to me.

@Winesalot

Me too, here in my local council wards. They are utterly impenetrable or amenable to reason.

My local LD councilor looked very embarrassed when I brought up women on boards, in refuges and medical needs. He mentioned that yes, there was a new exec and not everyone agrees. Sadly, my LDMP is immovably on the ‘be kind’ soothing. She says it often to me.

Send her some twitter links Wines

And thanks for the sock recommendations. I am on to it now. Looking forward to blister free walks in my post lockdown future!

Bore

I have done that. She must groan when she sees my emails.

@AbsintheFriends

I have dipped in and out of this thread and found it truly upsetting, more than any thread here I can remember. We are being trampled over by people who have absolutely no connection to material reality, people who talk absolute nonsense.

bourbonne I hear you. It's jaw-dropping.

But we have to believe that common sense and reality will prevail. The relative quality of arguments put forward by the women of FWR and an actual barrister have shown that none of this stands up to scrutiny. Institutions were captured by stealth very early in the process, but there is pushback now. We must keep pushing, and keep digging to help those who are taking the strain.

I really, really hope so. I swing between being heartened by the legal victories and this government's recent approach, and disheartened by the increasing doubling-down elsewhere, the spread of these ideas all over the place, otherwise sensible adults tweeting about the puberty blocker ban being a terrible thing, every time I go on LinkedIn there are more people with pronouns in their screen name - a year ago I'd never seen any.

It seems like this comes out of a passive, consumer society where subjective individualism is king. So mad ideas can run rampant, and civic society is too weak to stop it. I don't know if there was ever a golden age of civic society, but this isn't it! I don't know what to do other than dig deep and support the inspiring women who are taking it to the courts. It's a real education watching them. And who knew the Mail and Spectator (and the Times) would be champions of sanity here. It's made me open my mind a bit, see shades of grey.

I sometimes also wonder whether identity politics will indeed eat itself, as we could use exactly the same tactics if we so chose. Look at how people talk about Rachel Dolezal and other "transracialists". It's clear there is a case to be made for our identity, lived experience, material reality, even our precious feelings and vulnerability for goodness' sake.

I have to confess, in my haste to unpack my new socks last year recommended by the running shoe store with my new shoes, I did not read the packet. They look like Hilly twin socks now that I see them. No wonder I liked them so much!!!!

This particular 50:50 initiative reminds me of the one time I met Boris Johnson.

When he was President of the Oxford Union, there was an Emily's List campaign to try to get more women to be members of the Union.

Traditionally the Oxford Union was an enormously male dominated area, very similar in many ways to Westminster and, as we know, many household names cut their political teeth there. Membership involved a fee which, at the time, seemed like a big old chunk of my grant money so I wasn't sure how much I wanted to join.

From memory, about 60 female students turned up for the Emily's List session. After a tour of the historic building, Boris Johnson told us we were to be given the opportunity to speak in the Union. It was felt that we, as women, might be nervous about doing so - plus our voices might not carry as well!!

I had always enjoyed and been very active in debate and public speaking and drama at my all girls school so I was really looking forward to participating.

As I listened to these clever women who took it in turns to speak, I gradually became aware that the guy with the distinctive shock of fair hair in front of me (together with the bloke next to him) was marking the women out of 10, not on their oratory but on their appearance. They quietly congratulated themselves for organising the day because apparently there was some 'top totty' there.

Unsurprisingly, in the face of such sexist behaviour, I decided not to join the Union.

Fast forward to 2021 where, like many women on this board, I find myself politically homeless.

I couldn't in all conscience join or vote for a party that pretends it doesn't know what a woman is. At the last election I did seriously consider standing as an independent pro-women MP but, in the end, the personal financial burden of being an independent outside the party structure and the impact being an MP would have on my kids and family life was not worth the risk.

How will we ever get to 50:50?

Conservative policies seem to have a disproportionately negative effect on women. Lynne Featherstone told women like me not to vote for the Lib Dems, the Greens think I am a non-male, and WEP kicked out Heather Brunskell Evans for expressing concerns around child transitioning. Nicola Sturgeon sacked her smartest politician, Jo Cherry, and Keir Starmer ignores the rank misogyny of male MPs like Alex Sobel who doesn't think women should have single sex spaces.

We know the use of all-women shortlists are a specific single sex exemption under the Equality Act 2010 because females face challenges and inequalities due to our SEX, yet we can also see all programmes designed to redress female sex inequality have males in them.

In 1986, Boris Johnson and his chum just saw my sex and ignored what I had to say.

34 years later and some males claim to be my sex and ignore what I have to say. Not only that - they are happy to usurp the right and the spaces to speak on my behalf and to be my representation. Plus I, as a mere female, am not allowed to say what I see using the evidence of my eyes and ears and 5 decades of female experience and have to pretend this is progress.

Riiiiight.

Meet the New Sexism, worse than the Old Sexism.

Yes, "misgendering" is a big no-no.

Oh. Eeek!

Somebody is too much online, imo.

Vitamin D deficiency