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

@334bu

" Biscuitgate" ? Sounds interesting. What Mumsnet scandal was that?

It's traditional on MN when politicians do a webchat to ask them what their favourite biscuit is. When Gordon Brown came on many years ago people kept asking him about his favourite biscuit and he kept not answering.

Difficult to credit now, but it was big enough to make the news at the time. The explanation was something to do with Brown being fed the questions by aides and them neglecting to pass on the biscuit question (apparently regarding it as trivial), so he didn't know he was being asked.

Yeah, Noakes’s ‘fault on both sides’ thing nearly made me snap my pencil in half

The behavior of feminists seeking to ensure women’s opinions are taken into account is in no way comparable to the behaviour of some of the high profile trans activists (bus stop flashing (Jess Bradley), hounding women from political office (Lily Madigan), advocating for violent pornography (Jane Fae), violence against women (Kellie Maloney))

This whole debacle has at least caused Glosswitch to write another Mumsnet article thecritic.co.uk/much-ado-about-mothers/

Brown being fed the questions by aides and them neglecting to pass on the biscuit question (apparently regarding it as trivial), so he didn't know he was being asked

I assumed that Stella and Caroline also had aides check the questions ahead of the chat to make sure they were sufficiently prepped. Which makes their performance so mind boggling. They didnt read the room, sought to lecture and patronise rather than listen and crucially had no clue about the people who post here and how to engage with us.

@BernardBlackMissesLangCleg

Yeah, Noakes’s ‘fault on both sides’ thing nearly made me snap my pencil in half

The behavior of feminists seeking to ensure women’s opinions are taken into account is in no way comparable to the behaviour of some of the high profile trans activists (bus stop flashing (Jess Bradley), hounding women from political office (Lily Madigan), advocating for violent pornography (Jane Fae), violence against women (Kellie Maloney))

Of course not. But there are plenty of people willing to compare women's angry tweets with male's actual violence. As we've seen.

Maria McLachlan being reprimanded for failing to use the correct pronouns for her (male) assailant springs to mind. Wolf's sentence was reduced on that basis, iirc, which to me suggests misgendering there has been directly equated with actual physical violence.

That's why I think #beeeekind was contrived.

I wonder if CN or her aides have gone to the trouble of retrospectively coming here and reading threads like this, resulting in her wisely shutting up and keeping her head down.
Hopefully she’s learned something.

I'm assuming there will be someone from the MPs offices keeping an eye on this thread

I feel totally disrespected by those two MPs.

Would Stella Creasy have turned up to a web chat with a bunch of bankers with her baby on her lap?

I believe she would have organised child care so she could give the people she was speaking to her full attention.

She underestimated us. She believed the crap you read online about how MN is full of ditzy ladies talking about ephemera. There is that on here, and I'm rather partial to a bit of that myself, but that is not what this board is.

Caroline Noakes was no better. She came with a slogan and not her brain. She did not answer any of our points, she batted the away and told us to behave nicely.

If either of those women want the votes of other women they had better start treating us with the same respect as they would give to an anonymous selection of men.

You never know who's on here, but it is clear that there are some people who really know what they are talking about. A smart politician would have done her homework and come with an enquiring mind rather than having the audacity to tell us what the accepted topics of conversation were.

I'd really like them to come back. Doesn't need to be official, there's no real way to spin that for a political win - come and lurk, Caroline and Stella. Sign up and read and learn. I've got interesting and important things to tell you which will get you more votes than the Stonewall script will. And, I'm far from alone.

To quote the greatest political mind I have ever known:
"Come the fuck in or fuck the fuck off."

@borntobequiet

I wonder if CN or her aides have gone to the trouble of retrospectively coming here and reading threads like this, resulting in her wisely shutting up and keeping her head down. Hopefully she’s learned something.

You’d hope but in Caroline’s case, I very much doubt.

This isn't even Stella Creasy's first appearance is it? If I recall correctly, the last time she was on here was when Posie Parker got banned. So I'm going to assume she knew exactly what to expect which makes her wide eyed surprise all the more distasteful and makes me even feel even less inclined to trust anything she says. (Sorry if this has already been discussed, I've not followed the whole thread.)

Yeah, Stella is a MN old hand, which makes her reappearance admirable in my view, but the fuck up she made of it inexcusable

@Ereshkigalangcleg

That's why I think #beeeekind was contrived.

They planned to come here and say that, knowing what the response would be, so they could then point and say 'see? they're all horrible!'?

I wonder if they volunteered to do the chat or were invited?

For me, i went on the chat in good faith and didn't want to ask the gender / sex question.

I actively avoided it because it had already been asked many times.

Ive felt actively forced out of political party engagement. I have tried to engage previously.

The barriers ive felt about not being allowed to debate and then actually had it said that i should not be as opinionated on the basis of my sex are not unique and not exclusive to me.

To then be told to be kind rather than get to the point and the heart of a problem - which may actually be difficult for some at times but quite frankly needs to be done otherwise you get festering issues is precisely the bullshit barrier that women are facing getting into politics.

When the two people who come on mn campaigning about getting women into politics, dont acknowledge this and THEN go on to demonstrate that they are indeed PART of the problem that making women disengage is a staggering level of a lack of self awareness.

You cannot just come swanning in with a slogan and hope women will wave and cheer. Women want policies that are for them. They want environments and systems that work for them. They want cultures which don't constantly tell them to shut up and 'stop being difficult' in whatever euphemism its phrased. You would never go into a room to debate politics with men and tell them to be kind if the debate wasn't going your way and expect to be taken seriously. So why is ok to do it to women? The whole Mummy thing is dire. Women want to be more than their biology and lazy stereotypes. And if the mum bit wasn't bad enough, throw in the patronising 'wiggly' baby. Not just a baby. Like wtf.

We want to talk about stuff like what paths are there into politics for women who don't have degrees. Who perhaps dont have the ability to turn up to meetings in evenings at childrens bedtime. Who dont have the support of family. Women who have tried the local root and found it dominated by attitudes that belong in the 1970s but local politics has yet to shed. Women who have lots to offer.

Talk more about these issues and the actual campaign you want to do Stella. Less wiggly baby more actual substance.

Empathise with women by speaking about common problems with the need for a prop.

Acknowledge that your own parties have glaring issues with sexism and structure and the way they operate at local level, which you need to change. Embarass your bloody parties by being honest about it! Make a stink!

The fact you don't, just highlights my point. That you wont speak out because that rocks the boat and that damages your own career.

And the fact that women don't feel that there are really people fighting their corner in a tangible way, at a time when the mood is right with metoo, really shows the institutional level sexism and why it's so utterly depressing. Why would woman want to do that. Who is inspiring them?

We all know its going on. We know you know.

Hiding behind the wiggly baby looking for an easy life, isn't going to win support.

All of that red

@Mollyollydolly

The problem is when you see how disingenuous they are about a topic you've read about, researched and formed a view which you know is reasonable it makes you doubt everything else they say. The trust is gone.

I very much agree with this. Plus the bizarre refusal to listen or engage. The Labour party as a whole is clinging onto this in such an idiotic way, it makes them unelectable imo. That makes me really angry, they are betraying their voter base for a twisted ideology, and conflating adult males -who see women as inferior and so get a kick out of being feminised - with teenage girls fixated on gender boxes and traumatised by our hyper sexualised culture. These two demographics are almost polar opposites yet we are being told to treat them both the same, to validate both when we should be invalidating the former and supporting the latter in growing into healthy young women.

red
Has made me teary reading that. Nail on head.

[quote Alekto]This whole debacle has at least caused Glosswitch to write another Mumsnet article thecritic.co.uk/much-ado-about-mothers/[/quote]
Ooh. Excellent article . Thanks for posting.

Yes, Red. To come on ostensibly to discuss with women what barriers they face, and then ignore the one question that participants are most concerned about, and then tell women they shouldn't be discussing this particular barrier but should 'be kind' and then continue to reprimand them on Twitter and complain about tone without ever properly engaging. It's slippery and disingenuous - at least that's how it comes across.

Two possibilities:

Either MPs attended this hoping to demonstrate that they care about women in politics, while failing to grasp/research/understand the real issues/barriers facing most women who are less privileged, or

MPs attended knowing that women would want to discuss the erasure of the category of 'woman', and attended purely to say 'look how mean and single minded all these silly feminists are'.

Neither inspire me with any confidence in the system itself or these two particular MPs, I'm afraid.

The main difference that I can see is that Nokes is an outlier within her party, and Creasy is very much speaking from the party rulebook.

"I wonder if CN or her aides have gone to the trouble of retrospectively coming here and reading threads like this, resulting in her wisely shutting up and keeping her head down."

It's because she's a Conservative and has been told to keep quiet and let Stella Creasy contribute to the "Labour are lost to women" narrative.

If I recall correctly, the last time she was on here was when Posie Parker got banned

Yes, KJ referenced it in her video about the webchat.

“I don’t notice a person’s sex” is the political equivalent of “not noticing” the washing up (while still knowing it exists and relying on someone, somewhere, to do something about it). The current feminist hand-wringing over Mumsnet is just another example of how those yet unmarred by “burdens of obligation” treat the women who are.

YES! (from Glosswitch article)

That is a brilliant article. Thanks for hte share.

It also comes across as deeply unprofessional. I've been a bit aghast at the continuing Twitter digs - she's an elected representative, making comments about the electorate.

I was interested to discover that currently, there are no particular limits as to what a serving MP can say on social media which led to Nadine Dorries quite astonishingly telling a journalist she would “nail your balls to the floor” with “your own front teeth” on social media in 2013.

I'd like to ask 'what is a woman?'

twitter.com/lucy_amethyst/status/1488531049789468681

'This will continue on Mumsnet until the first woman not born female conceives and gives birth naturally. That time is a long way off, but it's coming. At that point their whole nonsense belief system will be blown wide apart.'