Green Party - again

[Rightsraptor]

I joined the GP in order to vote in their internal elections and try to change their direction in matters related to gender ideology.

This evening I got an email from Green Party Women calling for candidates and registering to vote and guess what it says?

"If you a (sic) member of the Green Party of England and Wales, and also identify as a woman or gender variant, you are eligible to vote in our upcoming 2021 Green Party Women internal committee elections. To register to vote, please sign up here confirming that you identify as a woman or gender variant and are therefore an eligible voter!" (why the redundant ! at the end?)

Next:
"Please note:
We recognise some women feel they are women rather than identify as women. This is how the wording is set out in the constitution, and we are obliged to follow it. We intend no offence by it."

I do not feel I am a woman, I do not identify as a woman, I AM A WOMAN. It is a state, not a feeling. I should not have opened that email before bedtime. I am not offended, I am raging.

I can't vote anyway because I will not tick any box saying I identify as a woman (or 'gender variant' FFS).

Tomorrow they get my resignation from their poxy party. Fuck them.

We find it just as frustrating, ridiculous and offensive as you do but are stuck with it until some sanity is allowed to raise it's head over the parapet.

The main problem is that the overwhelming majority of the membership don't understand what's happening to the Party they joined to help fight climate change and protect the planet. They have no idea about the group of activists who have joined with the sole intention of promoting gender identity politics and who have absolutely no interest in the planet.

We desperately need people who will stand with us and not be taken in by the seemingly innocent narrative being promoted about gender, or the creeping policy capture being introduced by stealth.
The future of the planet is far too important to be wasted in favour of this farcical but dangerous agenda.

But, but, the box you tick today doesn't commit you to how you might "feel" next week?

Or even tomorrow?

Cos it's all fluid innit?

Thanks for all your comments some very good points made.

Unfortunately, the Green Party leadership - along with most of the Green Party membership - don't care about this issue, I'm afraid to say. It's far too peripheral. It would help your case if there were an impressive empirical base to give an objective force to your position - but that doesn't exist. Transwomen haven't oppressed natal women. They might do, in theory ... but it's barely happened in practice. It carries on barely happening in practice, no matter how much certain natal women claim it just must do.

Perhaps you should join up with the Conservatives, instead? They're very good at cobbling together arguments that claim that those who most would see as privileged and entitled are in fact oppressed. Katie Hopkins is also a good first source for the sorts of arguments you need to fortify your views. Given the right reading, you'll soon feel much more comfortable that you're one of the oppressed, rather than one of the oppressors, again.

Hope that helps. :)

It would help your case if there were an impressive empirical base to give an objective force to your position - but that doesn't exist. Transwomen haven't oppressed natal women.

It's such a shame you went to the trouble to write all that out but have spectacularly missed the point.

There is nothing OP has said about transwomen being a threat - is that genuinely what you think everyone is thinking about?

You centre transwomen to complain that women are accusing transwomen of all sorts of nefarious things that no-one else is thinking about, and then if anyone says that they're not thinking about transwomen and this has nothing to do with their views on transwomen, I suppose your next move will be to ask why we're not all centring transwomen when we should be, right?

Does it actually matter? NO

Why doesn't it matter?

In your opinion. Interested to know reasons.

They're very good at cobbling together arguments that claim that those who most would see as privileged and entitled are in fact oppressed.
Admiring the irony from ides. Those poor oppressed white males who can now vote as women with their ‘gender variant identity’

I'll tick any box to get in and be able to disprove any points with biological reasoning

Especially as the greens are likely to attract more people over the coming years due to
Climate crisis

"Transwomen haven't oppressed natal women."

Really? It feels pretty bloody oppressive to have women's sport, prisons and rape crisis centres being made to be inclusive of transwomen. It feels pretty bloody oppressive to have our language policed ("cervix havers", "chestfeeding", etc). It feels pretty bloody oppressive to not be able to say that biological sex matters when it has been used to oppress women for centuries.

@Snugglybuggly

Does it actually matter? NO

The party which is supposed to care the most about the greatest threat to humanity (climate change) is too busy fretting about pronouns to care about the environment. There is a great deal to be concerned about.

I remember when the greens were anti nuclear energy and wanted to save the whales.

They might do, in theory ... but it's barely happened in practice.
@ides let's talk specifics instead of vague allusions. Which specific incidents are you referring to that have happened?

(I know you won't answer)

The wording is absolutely not the choice of many GP women, those of us against misogynistic gender ideology. It's rude and insulting. But there is currently no choice about the wording. Please help us change this. GC women leaving the party is what the misogynistic ones want. I'm hanging on by a thread myself, but don't want the party to become yet another vehicle for this disrespectful hateful attitude towards girls, women.

Yep. Sadly you are right.

I was alerted to this post and thought I would come on to say I do really get why women are so affronted at the idea that green party women seems to cater for everyone except women who ARE women.

I am the current co chair of green party women. I don't identify as a woman, I am one, and I fully understand how infuriating it is that we have to jump through hoops to try and re-build a strong women's group that is actually for women.

Like other left wing parties the green party swallowed gender ideology hook line and sinker, and when it adopted trans women are women as a policy the TRA lobby was very strong. More members are starting to realise the implications of self ID and are beginning to question it, but we are not there yet.

All the usual tactics have been used to try and silence gender critical people – Andy Healey was suspended for 2 years, Olivia Palmer was treated atrociously, there is an ongoing campaign to oust Shahrar Ali and the leadership label women speaking out about women's rights as transphobic bigots.

It was in this atmosphere that the green party women constitution was changed a few years ago to cater for all and sundry, even though no one knows what 'gender variant' means.
There will be an opportunity to change the constitution at an Emergency General Meeting next year, but for now we are stuck with it.

Whether we succeed in getting it changed will depend on whether we can get sensible strong women candidates onto the committee, so if there are any green party women who want to be the change (rather than identify as the change), please consider standing, nominations are open till December 16th.

I absolutely understand why women are angry and why they have left the party, but for those who are hanging on, I would urge you to please register to vote, and if you want to tell the party exactly what you think about this, feel free to email [email protected]

They’ve caught the variant terminology from Covid.

Thanks @letterem I know exactly how hard you're working to deal l with these men, and women, who deny women their rights.

I loved the book club when it ran. I'm gutted this idiocy has infected a party that is so committed to environmental issues.

I'm shocked that people would vote for someone clearly more obsessed with their looks and glittery nail varnish (total shite for the environment) than women centring green concerns and feminism in their activism.

Backing you all all the way.

I also appreciated the wording in the email around the fact that the vast majority of women are up to their chins in busy home lives and don't have time to deal with this childish nonsense, but you're making it as flexible as possible for us.

Thanks @WarrriorN. I do know that we keep saying to people 'please hang on, vote for these people', and it does not look from the outside like things are improving, but there are changes being made on the inside. Unfortunately they have to be made incrementally and can only work when we get enough people who can see the harm that this ideology is having on women and the reputation of the party.

You're right. Step by step the wall is crumbling.

To the monitors, who are reading, I see you.

I work with vulnerable children, have regular safeguarding training and my god, you skate on thin ice.

@Ides: If the GP didn't care about this issue why did they bother to change policies and procedures to reflect their newly-woke status? They do care, just in the wrong direction, sadly for women. My position is something I feel you must have misunderstood as I nowhere mentioned being oppressed by anyone. In case you didn't get it my point in my post was being forced to describe myself in a way I disagree with/don't recognise as being valid in order to take part in a democratic process in a democratic (ha!) party to which I belong. You think I need 'an impressive empirical base' for this? And since all mainstream political parties are as useful to women as a chocolate teapot, I will not be joining them, voting for them or in any other way aligning myself to them while they continue to insult women.

As a previous poster is telling you, there are many instances of transwomen oppressing 'natal' women - have you heard of the increasing number of women being assaulted by these males, sometimes convicted rapists, in women's jails? Besides that, the bar is not set at 'oppression'. For me, it's set where my dignity, comfort and privacy are located.

Hope that helps

Lol @ ides. A new angle would be less tedious.

Is the point of posts in that vein, which obv are two a penny. To pop in, say ner ner de ner ner, teehee, job done, aren't I clever? I can't see another reason. Maybe to show off to their mates look what I did! That showed them!

I mean obv never to do the actual conversation, no arguments, just essentially. You smell of poo! And run away.

It's really interesting because posts like that really remind me of my brother when he was small. To me it's really 8yo boy, may well not be universal.

It's also sort of like schoolboys shouting stuff and then running off laughing.

Anyway sidetrack. Sorry. It makes them happy