Women don’t feel safe with Starmer's Labour

[ChristinaXYZ]

Interesting article on Unherd

unherd.com/2021/05/women-dont-feel-safe-with-labour

"... violence against women is a major issue for many — if not all of us. All the more so after a recent succession of particularly vicious murders – Sarah Everard, Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman in London, and Julia James in Kent to name the most high-profile ones. But it hardly featured in the election campaign. Rape convictions have fallen to a historic low, domestic violence is rife, sexual harassment is an everyday experience for girls and women and confidence in the criminal justice system has collapsed.

Leading figures in the party, however, seem more interested in ticking off fellow MPs and activists who “like” social media posts from feminist organisations than meeting any of the women’s groups expressing concern.

At the end of last week, the Labour MP and former frontbencher Khalid Mahmood homed in on identity politics as one of the causes of Labour’s poor showing, arguing that the party has been captured by “brigades of woke social media warriors”. But he’s a rare voice of sanity in a party that seems to have surrendered to a form of magical thinking."

I experienced this hatred of anything other than full on Labour supporter yesterday on another forum, where I tried to explain why the party is currently unelectable. I compared Lisa Nandy, Dawn Butkler and Diane Abbott, with Kemi Badenoch, who I described as a very intelligent, level headed person.
Because of that, I was told that Kemi was a "fascist footsoldier" and that I was a "gammon".
I think my Labour voting days are well behind me.

I hear you, Shedbuilder, and I will not write that again. Unfortunately, sexuality and gender is very much tied together through Stonewall, who remain all powerful, and who still seem to enjoy considerable support amongst the LGB. The tide is slowly turning, but Stonewall is still seen as the good -guy- person of unspecified gender to the uninitiated.

Anyway, my point was, women are now at a stage where, thanks to entities like Stonewall trying to erase us, we should be allowed to lobby on the single issue of WOMEN without being told that other things are more important. That shit has been going on for too long, particularly in the Labour Party, where women have been the backbone, but constantly kept in their place.

Will do re LGB / QT+ Shed

The point that @LadyWithLapdog and most of the Labour Party are spectacularly missing is that many women want to vote for Labour. If we were all happy Tories, we wouldn't be complaining about Labour's misogyny - we'd be delighted, because it means more votes for the Conservatives.

The problem is that you have made the Labour Party hostile to women. You have chosen to do that, and now you're blaming women for not wanting to vote for you, which illustrates just how deep your misogyny goes.

If you campaigned against equal marriage, would you expect gay people to vote for you?

If you campaigned to remove anyone non-white from the UK, would you expect black people to vote for you?

It's only women who are expected to suck up any level of erasure and abuse, yet still do what our masters tell us, and vote for you anyway. Fuck that.

Shedbuilder. Not just on women's issues and not just our political parties. Unfortunately, the world does not seem a broad church at the moment either. It's all a bit depressing.
I do think we as a society are still getting to grips with www and sm echochambers which seem to discourage rather than encourage debate. But that's a debate for elsewhere!
One glimmer of hope - in many spheres of life - to hold on to is that we do get a distorted view on here. Most people aren't on mumsnet and most people aren't on Twitter. When you talk to people in real life (lockdown has not helped in this respect as lack of face to face contact and group interaction) people are generally more reasonable and less extreme in their view and more interested in discussing rather than lecturing.

Labour is on your side as long as you are the right sort of person of colour, stay in you (victim) box, and agree with everything I say. It's barely veiled racism.

This is a very shrewd insight.

There is that champagne socialist ethos of having special pets, the current patronised groups, with a lot of talk about how special those groups are and how much the speaker cares - but they absolutely expect those patronised groups they are condescending to should stay in their box, and behave and think and speak as told. The response to any of those group who do not behave nicely in staying in their box demonstrates it clearly.

It's based on a belief in superiority, greater purity, greater righteousness that permits making decisions for lesser people. And good lesser people who follow nicely get cookies. People who get out of their boxes and challenge..... deserve to be punished with lesser civil rights. This is what we saw in the appeal for women who argue for single sex spaces to be denied political representation. For women who will not prioritise a male person over their culture, faith, disability, trauma, to just be excluded from access to public spaces because they don't deserve it for their sins.

This is the dregs of Mandelson's statement about believing politics had reached a post democratic era where the general public would be told what to think, what to do and what to vote by their betters, who were much better educated and worldly wise than they were.

Mandelson and his descendent's massive mistake is not to realise the very serious problems this reveals about Mandelson and this culture of Labour . And Labour and their followers' responses are still - if you're not voting for us, it's because you're too stupid to see our superiority and the rightness of our plans for you. It's a continual attempt at Mother Knows Best. And they're so divorced now from reality or people skills or a sense of equality with others that they just get angrier with the disobedience of the electorate than question themselves.

@Shedbuilder I don't normally post on these threads as I am definitely not as knowledgeable and many others. But I wanted to say how much your LGB / QT+ seperation resonates with me. It's mad really that they are grouped together, really.

Thanks, I feel like I've just had a little light bulb moment!

Just wanted to add that I cancelled my membership last month and didn't renew my daughter's because of this very issue.

I've always voted Labour, but will not be able to again until they recognise that being a woman & female is biology and not a shifting definition of an undefined gender identity.

I didn't vote in the PCC election last week, Labours Keith Hunter lost the election to a Tory candidate, I heard the result on the radio and felt pleased, never before have I ever felt pleased to hear a Conservative election win......just awful.

[quote PoTheDog]@Shedbuilder I don't normally post on these threads as I am definitely not as knowledgeable and many others. But I wanted to say how much your LGB / QT+ seperation resonates with me. It's mad really that they are grouped together, really.

Thanks, I feel like I've just had a little light bulb moment![/quote]
The LGB part is the human shield. The QT+ on its own would not survive its own mind bending "logic", behavioural inconsistencies, biological impossibilities and (things I can't say or I will get deleted). But without the QT+, Stonewall is a defunct entity. It's a big old cash cow, fingers in all the pies, and a guaranteed gong for its leaders if you play your cards right. Hard to let go of. That's why Stonewall is so frightened of the LGB Alliance, and has to paint it as a hate group.

“ I think identity politics is heavily damaging Labour support but the Conservative Party are happy to create and implement policies that actively harm the most disadvantaged women in real life, yet because they don't say TWAW a lot of women on this board are happy to give them their vote.”

They don’t say “TWAW” these days because it suits them to let the issue tear apart the Left. Behind the scenes, they have just as a big a problem with identity politics.

It is the Conservatives that are in power, and have been since 2015. Prior to that, it was the Conservatives that formed a coalition with the LibDems.

If women don’t feel safe, that’s down to the Conservatives. They are the ones with the power to do anything; they are the ones that stirred up this whole Trans issue in the first place - it was the women of the Greens, LibDems and Labour that brought it to our attention and did the fighting when the Conservative Government was pushing the TRA agenda. Many of them are still there, still fighting. How disrespectful to ignore their work!

The Government could put a stop to all this if they wanted to. They choose not to for political purposes.

And Liz Truss will say whatever it suits her career to say. Just like Penny Mordaunt, Justine Greening, Maria Millar and all the rest did.

And Liz Truss will say whatever it suits her career to say. Just like Penny Mordaunt, Justine Greening, Maria Millar and all the rest did.

Agreed.

However given the choice between not doing much to actively stop it but not letting it get much further, with a lot of low level fiddling around and an awareness that this is an absolute hot potato best not touched..... and full steam ahead total insanity?

I know which my vote goes to.

I do wonder how much the Conservatives let the Lib Dems have the TRA agenda as a sop in the coalition government. Lbr they shafted them on everything else they wanted especially proportional representation. The Tories probably saw this as niche issue that hardly anyone cared about.

2010 Coalition government
2011 publication of the transgender action plan www.gov.uk/government/publications/transgender-action-plan

The Lib Dems would have worked with and influenced a number of key people in Parliament and the civil service so even when they were no longer in Government, the seeds that they planted flourished.

@Artichokeleaves

And Liz Truss will say whatever it suits her career to say. Just like Penny Mordaunt, Justine Greening, Maria Millar and all the rest did.

Agreed.

However given the choice between not doing much to actively stop it but not letting it get much further, with a lot of low level fiddling around and an awareness that this is an absolute hot potato best not touched..... and full steam ahead total insanity?

I know which my vote goes to.

This. Our choice is between:

Option A: quite shit
Option B: totally shit

Labour seem perplexed that women prefer Option A.

The Lib Dems would have worked with and influenced a number of key people in Parliament and the civil service so even when they were no longer in Government, the seeds that they planted flourished.

Former Lib Dem minister in the coalition Lynn Featherstone famously said Feminists weren't welcome in Lib Dems unless they support gender neutral toilets.

And Lynne featherstone was minister of equalities and signed off the transgender action plan in 2011

As PP have pointed out, this has been a long game. Having the entirely captured Lib Dem’s in a coalition government was a dream come true

Coalition comes into power in 2010 & a few months later. Helen belcher TW & Lib Dem activist sets up Trans media watch as a charity

ArtichokeLeaves

Good point about the 'special pets'. Used to be the working class, now ethnic (and sexual?) minorities.

What's next? The left-handed? Gingers? People who can't roll their tongue?

@Freespeecher

ArtichokeLeaves

Good point about the 'special pets'. Used to be the working class, now ethnic (and sexual?) minorities.

What's next? The left-handed? Gingers? People who can't roll their tongue?

Tongue-phobe.

I identify as a roller.

I think it actually helps if you take a longer view of political parties. And by longer, I mean, since they've been around.

The Conservative Party is in some ways more instructive just because it's so much older than the LP. It's had more than one really different incarnation and changed some of it's beliefs at a pretty deep level over the years. It's had PMs who took very different approaches to politics, and life (and the nice ones weren't necessarily the ones that accomplished the most.) Maybe there is something that held these ideas together, but many ideas that people think of as being typically CP ideas - say free trade - have not always been what they think. They have changed ideas in the past and will change again.

The LP is relatively young, but I think it's unlikely it will prove to be less changeable over time.

So maybe parties should never be given a certain kind of loyalty, and we should also never make assumptions that what they think at one moment is what they will think for all time. I hear people make statements like the CP wants women to stay in their box, and I expect some might, but plenty of people here have shared stories of their MPs who were very concerned about women's rights, and there are a few prominent Conservative figures who have done a lot of work on behalf of women. I'm not sure how that translates to "the CP hates women."

'The Whigs were a political faction and then a political party in the parliaments of England, Scotland, Great Britain, Ireland and the United Kingdom. Between the 1680s and 1850s, the Whigs contested power with their rivals, the Tories. The Whigs merged into the new Liberal Party in the 1850s, though some Whig aristocrats left the Liberal Party in 1885 to form the Liberal Unionist Party, which merged into the Liberals' rival, the modern day Conservative Party, in 1912.'

When you say long view....?!

The conservative party (note still called the Tories):

'The Conservative Party was founded in 1834 from the Tory Party and was one of two dominant political parties in the 19th century, along with the Liberal Party. Under Benjamin Disraeli, it played a preeminent role in politics at the height of the British Empire.'

The modern Labour party:

'The party was founded in 1900, having grown out of the trade union movement and socialist parties of the 19th century. It overtook the Liberal Party to become the main opposition to the Conservative Party in the early 1920s, forming two minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in the 1920s and early 1930s'

You really expect people to consider all of that, the historical context, social norms of the time, economic situation, wars etc etc before they come to an opinion?

I supported Labour all my life, that is until the Jay Report (Rotherham), and I know I'm not the only one around here, in the former Red Wall, who did this.

They called Anne Cryer a racist, forced Sarah Champion to resign, both strong northern women MPs, who tried to raise awareness of serious gang crime issues in the north.

The LP can now go fuck themselves as far as I'm concerned.

I don't think you could have summarised more effectively the attitude of the current Labour party. Kudos.

Yup, one of the main problems in a nutshell, well demonstrated.

Am yet another who is currently politically homeless, after lifelong Labour voting. And no, that does not mean I am a Tory supporter. Torys are no friends f women either, however, noone is currently. Not even the fucking WEP. Sorry state of affairs.

SelfID is also potentially my priority voting issue right now (yes, despite being long term disabled, which is a fucker to start with but the Tories are my enemy on that really more than anyone). As in my mind, it undoes a hundred years of progress for women in one swoop, and would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to undo.

You really expect people to consider all of that, the historical context, social norms of the time, economic situation, wars etc etc before they come to an opinion?

Well, I didn't say that, so...

'I think it actually helps if you take a longer view of political parties. And by longer, I mean, since they've been around.'

You really did.

I hear people make statements like the CP wants women to stay in their box, and I expect some might, but plenty of people here have shared stories of their MPs who were very concerned about women's rights, and there are a few prominent Conservative figures who have done a lot of work on behalf of women. I'm not sure how that translates to "the CP hates women."
The Conservative party is not interested in breaking down the patriarchy. It actively pursues policies that maintain the patriarchy. The whole point of the patriarchy is that it is an insidious subconscious system that benefits men at the cost of women.

So for example the conservatives are constantly looking for ways to reward "family" for social care. Now we all know that "family" means women. Women who are already likely to have children and be working, and doing the majority of housework (statistics).

Clearly that disproportionately impacts women who have a "choice" to ignore societal pressure to look after family; take on more work at home and a consequent hit on their career and earning potential or give up work and be financially dependent on someone else and potentially disparaged for being "on benefits". None of those are good choices for women.

Whereas for the men? They can opt out of the whole thing because society/party policies support them being "the breadwinner". There is no downside of the new policies to them really, only an upside of not having to pay tax to cover social care.

Framing what the Conservatives do as "hating women" is the same way as feminists don't "hate men". Inaccurate and unhelpful. Their policies and approach do damage women as a class though, and so I won't vote for thwm