Your experiences of politics and politicians

[RedToothBrush]

Good, bad, ugly. As a woman.

Have you tried politics and given up?
Have you felt its no place for you?
Have you done it and achieved success?
What might encourage you to engage more?
Do you feel you have anything of value to add to the pot?

Have you tried politics and given up?
Local politics (town councillor, somewhere very like Handforth!). Signed petitions, lobbied my MP, donated, leafleted and protested. Mostly given up now. Was extremely politically active until recently.

Have you felt its no place for you?
Yes. Not just that I'm the wrong background (and the wrong sex), but the increased aggression from men and the hours really put me off.

Have you done it and achieved success?
I was fairly successful as a town councillor - voters seemed to like the work I did, we got some things done at a local level (e.g. playgrounds). The candidate I helped campaign for got elected as a MP.

What might encourage you to engage more?
Less aggression and misogyny. Even five years ago I felt like it was important to 'debate' with the woke bros, or snobby men, to try and change their minds (rarely had these kinds of aggressive debates with women, it mostly seems to be a male issue). Now, I'm partly ashamed to say, IDGAF and I'd rather not put myself through it due to the toll it was taking on my mental health. I'm lucky enough to have a high(ish) income, which insulates me from a lot of problems, so I donate money to causes that I think will advocate for the things I believe in / want changed instead. As this is anonymous I can say it does feel like a cop-out because I'm articulate, I understand the system and that's not the case for many women - I sometimes feel that I have a voice I could use to support my sisters, including the incredibly brave ones who are still in politics, and I don't use it. But I keep coming back to 'put your own oxygen mask on first'.

I also have to say the left-wing misogyny, the TRAs and the horrific violence and threats meted out to anyone who holds gender critical views, has really put me off party politics and politics more generally. I have ASD and I'm five foot nothing, so I have particular vulnerabilities that mean I have been completely put off engaging in the political sphere on feminist issues, because politically-acceptable feminism these days means accepting things that I fundamentally a) don't believe and b) in some cases actively disagree with / find harmful.

Do you feel you have anything of value to add to the pot?
Yes, I think everyone does. Society only thrives if it has a respectful plurality of discourse. I think we are moving ever further from that now.

Wow Arghmetoes you have just about said it all. Shocking reasons why women are reluctant to stand in local or national politics. It sounds as though you have done a good job and we should thank women like you who have done the time. Looking at the absolute clowns that have risen to the top of the rotten barrel it is no surprise to see the state we are in. And of course there are now hundreds of tw waiting to step into empty places formerly filled by women. I despair.

I joined my local Labour Party some years ago, but then Momentum happened and it became full of shouty, unbelievably arrogant men. I found myself at meetings wondering why I was spending my free time with these awful people. It became soul destroying.

Then the unbearable wokeness of all the TWAW stuff reared it’s head, and I just felt like I was going mad and left meetings wanting to tell everyone to fuck right off.

So, yeah...that was my unsuccessful foray into the world of local politics.

I don’t feel it’s ‘no place for me’, but local politics is certainly very off putting for women, I think. At least that’s my experience. I want to have grown-up debates about things, but it’s all so aggressive and based on ego and who shouts the loudest. Politics in general just seems to be about who can bullshit the most successfully. I feel very disengaged from it all at the moment.

I don’t know what would make me want to engage more. The only political forums I feel even vaguely connected to and ‘part of’ are radical feminist ones, and I’m a fairly staid, suburban, heterosexual married mother, so that tells you something about how utterly toxic and hostile mainstream politics feels to me right now.

It’s not safe for me to say the most basic things that I believe, like ‘a woman is an adult human female’ or ‘I don’t want men in the same changing room as my teenage DD’ without being abused and cancelled in mainstream political culture. That’s the crux of it.

Arghmetoes I have to say so much of what you have written could have been a carbon copy of what I'd say. Though i never got as involved as you. I saw it as a pointless exercise and to further any political issues i had was better undertaken outside the channels of party politics and in other arenas where I might actually have a hope of making an impact or some progress.

Party politics offered nothing whatsoever to me apart from a load of abuse and disresepect.

The sheer level of patronising I got from men was staggering. Its something I've never dealt with to that extent before.

One councillor did tell me I was the most politically aware and astute person he'd met in 30 years and was stunned at the degree to which i saw things coming on the political horizon. It didn't stop him just point blank refusing to accept their was an issue with the trans stuff instead dismissing it saying it was niche and irrelevant. This was despite the fact he had very strong views about maintaining true and reality as he was from a polish immigrant family who left to escape the excesses of Stalinism and persecution. That particularly upset me tbh.

It does feel like there is complete disinterest when it comes to anything that affects women to a much larger extent than men. Political interest and will drops off a cliff and you start getting outright hostility because its 'not important' or because its not their pet project which is centre stage.

Its awful. Its toxic. Its deliberately made unpleasant towards women. Hostile environment is a phrase that springs to mind.

I don't have an issue with disagreement on issues. Its the rest of the toxicity and personal stuff that accompanys the culture that is the issue. And no one is willing to admit its existence and thinks this culture is just how it should be (i do think the British political culture is particularly toxic because of the political system being government v opposition (essentially two party system although other parties do exist) rather than more proportional representation and because of the existing boys club public school top down mentality. This is something i dont think is universal across the world).

I think the way the abuse of position - such as sexual harassment and bullying - has been dealt with by Parliament itself speaks volumes.

The lack of willingness to admit issues and deal with individuals because of party partisanship is reminiscent of the Trump impeachment. Any behaviour is accepted as long as its by your side and furthers your aims.

Its utterly appalling.

And i think it destroys respect for politicians across the board in the public's eyes regardless of whether they are male or female because so many of us in the real world care about issues over and above the regressive tribalism.

It does feel like there is complete disinterest when it comes to anything that affects women to a much larger extent than men. Political interest and will drops off a cliff and you start getting outright hostility because its 'not important' or because its not their pet project which is centre stage.

Its awful. Its toxic. Its deliberately made unpleasant towards women. Hostile environment is a phrase that springs to mind.

Yes to both of these. I don't know if ironic is the right word, but it strikes me that the antithesis of what should happen, then happens:

1. Women get bullied out, or put off, politics by aggressive behaviour, or through fear (I forgot to say in my earlier post, I also work with some very woke companies - I can't afford to put my income and mortgage on the line for some of these issues). A plurality of women's voices are not heard, the system only works for those who are in it, the same system perpetuates itself.

1. I have observed that a lot of young women (and I would count myself amongst them at one point, on some things) don't see an issue until it affects them directly, by which point they are often hip-deep in shit wife-work, struggling to maintain a career against male competition, struggling through lack of sleep, or dealing with long-term physical and mental effects of childbirth, or other gynaecological or female health issues and have neither the time, headspace or the money to get involved and help deal with it. Women as a sex-class, despite being approx 52% of the population, often don't have 52% of the population available to deal with some of our core issues, that transcend party politics. I'd be really interested to see what results a study looking at natal female participation in local and national politics looks like when broken down by income, race, education, whether a woman has children under 18, what kind of (paid) hours she works, would produce.

I also agree the two party system is a problem, not just because it reduces choice for those voting, but also because it's impossible to work out afterwards what people were voting for. If I only have apples and oranges to choose from, I'll pick an apple. It doesn't mean I wouldn't have preferred a banana (and that takes me back to point 1 above).

I believe women of an age most likely to have school age kids are one of the most under represented groups in politics.

Women in local politics has increased dramatically but the women who do so are older and more typically retirees. And are also wealthier.

So there is a mentality to point towards the number of women increasing as being good because its increasing representation but this way of presenting the data hides a real issue about representation too and how certain groups are excluded from politics.

The irony here of course being that the core MN demographic fills this void perfectly.