WEP deletes GC forum

[thinkingaboutLangCleg]

The Women’s Equality Party has suddenly closed down one of its sex-based rights groups, without warning. A woman had tweeted that the group was applying to become an official caucus.

From an email sent this morning:

Within ... an alarmingly short time frame- just two hours- the South West WEP WhatsApp group was terminated. Shut down.

A forum, built over a number of years, for an established network of feminist women to chat, share WEP information and organise was gone in moments. No time to swap numbers, no right to reply, no debate, just gone.

The first response [to the tweet] is staggering. referring to us as a 'so called sex-based rights caucus' is outlandish. It dismisses well founded and well evidenced concerns. It dismisses women who want to talk about our sex. Before the end of the first sentence we are a 'misogynistic neo-fascist grouping'.

So there we have it. Gulp.

Straight off the bat, all discussion shut down. Not 'hmmmm, I'm not sure about this group', or, 'I feel my sex is not relevant', or 'alternatively', or, 'I beg to differ'.....No, straight into claims of misogyny and neo-fascism, betraying either a complete misunderstanding of our group, or a complete misunderstanding of both misogyny and fascism.

I knew the ironically named WEP opposed women’s single-sex rights. But this move, destroying a whole network of contacts, is a loud antifeminist statement.

I hope the group can find each other on Mumsnet.

Have the WEP worked out what a woman is yet or is that a stupid question?

OP that’s utterly appalling behaviour by them and im really sorry. I really don’t see the point of them!

The men are in charge of the Women's Equality Party

They really should be prosecuted under the Trades Description Act. Women's Equality my arse .

Wow that's extreme.

I wonder if this will happen to similar groups in other parties?

@MonkeyNotOrgangrinder

The men are in charge of the Women's Equality Party

They always have been. WEP should be done for making false and misleading statements and advertising, they are not and never have been a Women's Equality Party.

I'm still annoyed with myself for taking them at face value, not doing my due diligence (pre mumsnet!) and paying them a membership sub. I live in a ward where they field candidates

Might be worth having a look at their FB page, it all kicked off on 31st March, when a post about Trans Day of Visibility caused some debate. It also saw some posters ask to moderate against "hate speech", when people were talking about biology.

www.facebook.com/WomensEqualityUK/

Women's Equality Party has allowed and colluded with outlandish false accusations against female members for a number of years.

MAR 6, 2018 Heather Brunskell-Evans
Open Letter (following disciplinary proceedings)

(extract)
The purpose of the #WPUK event was to discuss the possible impact on women and girls if the proposed changes to the Gender Recognition ACT (2004) become enshrined in law. The law would enable men to self-identify as women through changes to certification, including birth certification, which would record natal female not natal male. Panelists variously explored issues of the increasing current de facto acceptance that transwomen are women by the Labour Party, the WEP, and other institutions. They did so with subtlety, and affirmed their respect for the rights of trans identifying adults. However, the following day Toni Harrison tweeted about the event:
(see screenshot)

It is becoming clear that sections of liberal society are persuaded by reductive binary logic: either you accept that men who identify as women, including those with unmodified male bodies, are not only transwomen but are women and have been sexed female since birth, or you are a transphobe (and worse).

In conclusion, I utterly disagree that I promote transphobia, and I have found it shocking that the WEP has chosen to adopt this stance. The importance of this debacle goes far beyond the local, internal wrangles of a small Party. The issues upon which these events shed light are societal, and illustrate a deep belief system at the heart of transgender identity politics whose consequences are wide-ranging: Men who identify as women are women and this belief has to be accepted not only as rational and but as the irrefutable truth.

In anchoring transgender identity as inherent, outside of the social forces that have shaped it, and in describing any dissent as illiberal, free thought as well as free speech can be erased. Whilst the WEP and the Labour Party leave unremarked the chilling comments such as the ones made above, they discipline and expel women party members for any dissent from what has become an article of faith.

The significance of the WEP debacle is the larger terrible irony that a Party which had set out to be revolutionary for women has highlighted the very weakness of its own approach. The result of aligning itself with transgender identity politics is to obfuscate, drown out and suppress the very voices the WEP set out to listen to and to promote, namely the voices of women.

The more ‘the progressive left’ enshrines in its constitutions and policies its belief that transwomen are women, and that boys who do not conform to gender stereotypes are girls, and compels its party members and officials to faithfully adhere, the greater the need for women to resist such authoritarianism and to continue their historical struggles for bodily, intellectual and political freedoms."
www.heather-brunskell-evans.co.uk/body-politics/open-letter/

I'm not surprised by the action but I am surprised at the speed.

I imagine that many of the women Ono led have personal connections within the group and can gather together and start again.

We need a new WEP and have done for some time.

It is a violation of trade descriptions WhereYouLeftIt.

Women described as a cancer. Isn’t that nice.

Men who claim they are women are only ever on their own side. They gain positions of influence then use those positions to push their agenda of male supremacy. They often allow an easily influenced woman to have a position that is ostensibly above theirs as camouflage, but we see the pattern again and again.

Sadly the WEP is fielding a candidate in the London mayoral elections. Imagine how wonderful it would have been to vote for them - if only they knew what a woman is

Women described as a cancer. Isn’t that nice.

Women standing up for children's Safeguarding and sex based rights described as a cancer, the SS and misogynistic neo-fascist grouping. Its almost as if there is a pattern of behaviour.

The Women's Erasure Party in action.

Relevant thread on the origins of the WEP (including links to all the MN webchats)

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4058470-the-big-lie-how-the-wep-was-always-about-gender-rather-than-sex

@InspiralCoalescenceRingdown

The Women's Erasure Party in action.

Sadly a more appropriate name

[quote Ereshkigalangcleg]Relevant thread on the origins of the WEP (including links to all the MN webchats)

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4058470-the-big-lie-how-the-wep-was-always-about-gender-rather-than-sex[/quote]
From the thread

the party’s first policy document published in October 2015 stated “We also recognise that the binary words “woman” and “man” do not reflect the gender experience of everyone, and support the right of all to define their sex or gender or to reject gendered divisions as they choose.”

So it was the Equality Party for Some People of Both Sexes and Any Gender Identity?
I can't think of another political party which struggled to define a key word in its name.

@McDuffy

I'm still annoyed with myself for taking them at face value, not doing my due diligence (pre mumsnet!) and paying them a membership sub. I live in a ward where they field candidates

I was a founder member. They left me over the lack of due process wrt the way that they dealt with Brunskell-Evans and their abandonment of any sense that they're woman-centred.

If ever there was a case of "Well, they would, wouldn't they?" this is it. The surprise is that they let it go on so long.

We need a new WEP and have done for some time

Yes we do

Here’s the link for everyone to read what actually happened (includes the conversation itself, anonymised)

www.wepsbr.com/post/why-we-need-a-caucus

The thread title here is inaccurate - WEP as a party have not shut down any GC forum. A group of members have applied to become an official caucus. One member raised this as a discussion point in a regional WhatsApp group. A group admin tried to ban discussion of it within the WhatsApp group and then closed the group when the members queried this.

So this is a decision by 1 WhatsApp admin, or at best the leadership from WEP Exeter - not a central party decision - and affects a regional WhatsApp discussion group, nothing else.

Yes it is concerning and somewhat sinister, although unsurprising to me as an ex-member who left over WEP HQs failure to act on this issue. But there’s no need for the hyperbole of the OP title here.

If I was still in WEP (I know plenty of members must read here with their heads in their hands every time those 3 letters come up on this board) I’d be writing to Mandu Reid directly and asking if this is how WEP wants its representatives to behave, to be censoring discussion between members. It’s such a poor look. Refusing to allow discussion.

Although it wouldn’t be the first time that the “official line” (very loose term) is “don’t talk about this issue”. I attended a hustings at conference 2018 for candidates for spokesperson & movement builder roles for the various campaign areas. An audience member asked the candidates their views (I think the ‘what is a woman’ question or along those lines) and the chair of the hustings quickly interrupted with (paraphrasing) “DON’T ANSWER THAT!” as the first candidate started to speak and then rounded on the questioner saying it “wasn’t fair” to ask the candidates to “out themselves” wrt their views on sex/gender. The chair was one of the self-ID motion signatories. So she was allowed to be open on her views on the subject!

I'm increasingly surprised that WhatsApp is used for these things; apart from it being easy to miss a great deal and hard to find posts, it's clear the whole thing can be deleted or people ousted very easily.

I know the same can happen in Facebook but people have the opportunity to find names and friends more easily.

I'm pretty about it for school parent groups (fb is better as letters can be pinned, items searched for etc) let alone political parties.

That's a good piece and shocking that voices were silenced like that.

Is it the Biden effect?

Also, I'm glad biological essentialism was addressed, I've been finding those accusations horrific given society/ patriarchal structures force biological essentialism.

You must be gutted @EmbarrassingAdmissions

What do you mean by the Biden effect PurpleHat?