Mumsnet Webchat about women/mums in politics with Stella Creasy and Caroline Nokes - 1st February

[Bosky]

Anyone got any questions for Stella and Caroline?

Go to:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/mumsnet_live_events/4468388-Webchat-about-women-mums-in-politics-with-Stella-Creasy-and-Caroline-Nokes-1st-February

Correct me if I'm wrong, but they didn't come to this "event" to debate and were speaking in broader terms? Thus explaining why they didn't enter into a debate?

It was not a debate event, we were invited to ask them questions about encouraging women into politics. Posters wanted to know if we were all talking about the same type of woman. For many MNetters that means adult human female, for Stella and Caroline it means anyone who says they are a woman. How can women be equally represented if anyone who claims to be a woman is counted as one? Barriers such as lack of maternity leave will continue to be a problem for women but less so for TW.

@littlbrowndog

I thought it was patronising to come to a webchat and not be prepared with childcare. I can’t do my job with the toddlers by me. It’s not possible

It was like we weren’t taken seriously

How can you give your full attention to what your doing

It irritated me as well, and i was a bit 'Sure Jan', too.

I seriously doubt she had the baby on her lap, but it was her very transparent way of ingratiating herself with the 'Mums'. 🤨

@TinselAngel

The juggling a wiggly baby line bugged me and I have been trying to work out why.

I'd suggest it was attempted forced teaming and that's why it made you feel uncomfortable.

I thought it was bullshit, personally and the comment immediately got my back up.

I think the pair of them came across dreadfully and were actually hostile in some of their responses.

Their attitude stinks and my takeaway from the debacle was that I found that i disliked them even more than I did at the start.
CN has a chip on her shoulder.

How very prescient of Private Eye.

@IKeptYouLikeAnOath

I think the above poster has it when she said the baby line wouldn't have been used with a male 'professional' audience. Dumbing down for a really educated audience was never going to land well.

How on earth is it dumbing down to say you've got a baby on your lap? Not only is there nothing dumb about it, it's directly relevant to (what was supposed to be) the topic of the talk, which was mums in politics.

Again, as an outsider, I can only say the talk did not look at all like the guests were ignoring legitimate concerns, it looked like they were doing their best to carry on in a chat which was clearly being brigaded by a minority group of posters with an agenda, who were determined to make sure there was no room for anything but their pet topic to be discussed. Hecklers shouting at a stage and congratulating themselves on being a majority after everyone else has got annoyed and left. It also looked like a moderating failure that this was allowed to happen to such an extent.

The subject was 'women and mothers in politics' actually.

Again, as an outsider, I can only say the talk did not look at all like the guests were ignoring legitimate concerns, it looked like they were doing their best to carry on in a chat which was clearly being brigaded by a minority group of posters with an agenda, who were determined to make sure there was no room for anything but their pet topic to be discussed.

I don't think women who believe in biological reality are a minority group on Mumsnet.

'this talk was brigaded by almost everyone except me wanting to talk about other things to what I wanted everyone to talk about'

The wriggling baby comment annoyed me too.
Seeing as “women/mums in politics” was being discussed, the definition of what is a woman is pretty pertinent.
(I did wonder if the word “mums” was used rather than “mothers” as “mother” seems to have fallen out of favour. “Birthing people” wouldn’t have gone down well though. But it was probably a nod to Mumsnet.)

@vivariumvivariumsvivaria

I also want to thank you, Justine.

You, and this place you built, are our only hope. You're women's Obi Wan Kenobe.

I think it is nuts that an astute businesswoman has that responsibility placed upon her - because our female politicians are not brave enough to try and balance what women need, what we want, and what the law says we are entitled to.

I am furious. Absolutely livid. My disappointment makes me shake with anger.

I NEED those two politicians. I NEED to have women in parliament and I really don't care which party they are in - just that there are women representing the interests of 51% of the population; the interests and needs that the 49% are often totally oblivious to.

I want to vote, I am politically engaged and if either of their parties made a commitment to protect my sex based rights I would vote for them.

As it is, I'm hoping that Rosie Duffield, Johann Lamont, Joanna Cherry, Joan McAlpine, Baroness Nicholson, and Jackie Doyle Price set up a political party for women.

Because without women standing up for women then we are fucked, by anyone who wants to fuck us.

I suspect that civil servants and political staff will be looking at this thread now - well, read this:

I am a floating voter. I am not alone, by refusing to uphold my sex based rights you have created a mess because there are an unknown number of women thinking "they have done WHAT?"

Our tights to privacy, safety and dignity matter a great deal to women - you just aren't bothering to ask us about it because it's Too Hard and worse, you aren't doing any sort of impact assessment on what effect losing our rights to privacy, safety and dignity has us as a group. That is your job. You are letting me down.

This sounds a little dramatic, but, I mean this sincerely - I will never forgive you for allowing women to be raped in jails. I will never forgive you for dismissing the marginalised women. I will never forgive that women who are escaping male violence and get to a refuge find it is shut because it has lost funding because they refused to accept male people. And I will never forgive that the person in charge of Rape Crisis Edinburgh has none of the skills, qualifications or aptitude for the role, but has one special quality that freshly raped women do not want to be around.

You can come on MN and give us mantras and slogans and refuse to engage in the ONE issue which comes up repeatedly - that's unfortunate but it's up to you.

The consequences of your dismissal of us on here, though, are that I will never forgive you and I will never vote for you while you contribute to women being fucked over.

No thank you.

apologies in advance for shouting But bloody well said @vivariumvivariumsvivaria THIS IS ME TOO I was a previous Labour Party member. Not any more. 100% politically homeless now. It’s a bloody disgrace what is happening.

I don't think human beings who believe in biological reality are a minority group anywhere, despite the desperate attempts of lobby groups to convince otherwise.

And I'll say again, it's laughable to be told that posters are trying to 'make sure there was no room for anything but their pet topic to be discussed' given the success of the chilling effect.

@Waitwhat23

I don't think human beings who believe in biological reality are a minority group anywhere, despite the desperate attempts of lobby groups to convince otherwise.

And I'll say again, it's laughable to be told that posters are trying to 'make sure there was no room for anything but their pet topic to be discussed' given the success of the chilling effect.

You're probably right. Although I have noticed that certain men seem to find it much easier to believe that trans women are women.

I don't know whether it's because their spaces and sports aren't under threat, or they consider "women" to be a catch all category for anyone who isn't a proper man, or whether they simply can't comprehend the enormity of female biology and how it affects our lives on a daily basis and so a male person believing they can identify as it is ridiculous.

@CosmosLily

Correct me if I'm wrong, but they didn't come to this "event" to debate and were speaking in broader terms? Thus explaining why they didn't enter into a debate?

Caroline Noakes is leading an inquiry into menopause in the workplace. Caroline Noakes also believes that men should be able to identify as women. Can you see how Kafkaesque this is?

Gender ideology has given men who really despise women a socially acceptable platform to express these views - it's now possible to issue rape and death threats without condemnation under the guise of 'inclusion'. All the horrendous incel views of women are openly stated. Those men think women shouldn't have been given rights in the first place - how often have I seen a man state 'well, you wanted equality!' when women talk about sex based rights being eroded.

Those men simply don't see women as fully human. We're here to provide sex. To be support humans. Our views simply don't matter.

Kellie Jay Keen's response video to the chat was excellent

I'm yet to meet a person in real life who believes a man can become a woman by simply wishing it so. Politicians like SC and CN are not representative at all. They've just spent too much time on Twitter.

"Caroline Noakes is leading an inquiry into menopause in the workplace.
Caroline Noakes also believes that men should be able to identify as women.
Can you see how Kafkaesque this is?"

Does this mean the enquiry won't even mention women and will say "people experiencing menopause" and "menopausal employees"?

@fenulla

Kellie Jay Keen's response video to the chat was excellent

She made me laugh out loud. She should have been a comedian in another life.

@SevenWaystoLeave

Spot on

waitwhat23 true

@Franca123

I'm yet to meet a person in real life who believes a man can become a woman by simply wishing it so. Politicians like SC and CN are not representative at all. They've just spent too much time on Twitter.

No one really believes it, though and those 2 only say it because they're too spineless to tell the truth.

They see the flak JKR and Rosie Duffield get and toe the woke line to hold back the ravening mob.
I hope those woke cookies taste like ash now.

@TheMothersAreInRevolt
I can't remember which thread had the old article where Justine said "The mothers are in revolt" but it seems very relevant to this thread.

@borntobequiet

The wriggling baby comment annoyed me too. Seeing as “women/mums in politics” was being discussed, the definition of what is a woman is pretty pertinent. (I did wonder if the word “mums” was used rather than “mothers” as “mother” seems to have fallen out of favour. “Birthing people” wouldn’t have gone down well though. But it was probably a nod to Mumsnet.)

I thought the constant baby comments were an attempt to gain an empathetic 'oh look, she's just one of us' sort of thing, although misjudged because that's not who we are for a large part. We're far more diverse than that - life stage, education, economics, age and life experience. I think that's why, for me anyway, it felt patronising.

It’s been a while since my child has been a baby but if I was going to a meeting, to discuss important issues, I would have arranged childcare so that I could give my full attention to the subject.

The fact that these two very mediocre politicians have any say in law making makes me shudder. Least we forget that Caroline Nokes’s held a spite committee around the GRA reforms and treating those with an opposing view disgracefully. I wouldn’t trust Caroline Nokes and Stella Creasy anywhere near a wet paper bag let alone having a say over our rights. Yes OUR rights Caroline and Stella. OURS. WOMEN’S. Those pesky adult human females that do biology not feelings.

Oh I forgot. You both pretend to not know what a woman is.

Something I don't understand - The webchat was an important topic, so as feminists why wouldn't you forgoe the incessant and repetitive questions that you knew would lead nowhere, in favour of actually speaking about the topic at hand? What was the point? Soon Mumsnet won't host these webchats anymore if they're all taken over by the exact same topic, which is literally in the rules to avoid doing as it becomes pointless. I just really don't see the point in this context. By all means continue asking those questions elsewhere but it pretty much caused the webchat to be mostly useless whereas it was an important topic to do with feminism that could've given insight to a lot of people, but now it's just a graveyard of the same questions over and over. I just don't get it, it looks like a vendetta and like you wont allow any talks about feminism topics until everyone agrees about this one thing, it's just not progressive.