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

That has to be a parody, surely?!

Still comes down to” well Stella.when your wriggly baby is 10 or 12 or 15, would you be happy to see adult males of any type being in a space where she is changing , in hospital on women’s ward, ( I am talking about patients not doctors) going on a school residential or guides camp where there is mixed sex accommodation? Would you rather that she was safer in an all female environment ?” I cannot believe that you would really see no problem

@DomesticatedZombie

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.

My biggest problem is who were they trying to target?

Thats what I'm struggling with.

Either its women who are already politicised. And MN would see a good bet for that, but you would have to be aware of the political views here cos its relevant to the webchats purpose.

Or its to go for a softer, women who might be a little bit interested and not really that politicised. In which case, whats so great about politics? Why is it a good area to go into? Etc etc.

Or its a deliberate and cynical exercise to alienate a certain kind of woman from political engagement. Or its an utterly feckless attempt by a couple of women who don't know what the fuck they are doing.

I believe in Hanlon's Razor, about incompetence before malice but I don't know if thats any better.

@RedToothBrush

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.

Every word of this, Red. Thank you.

@DomesticatedZombie

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.'

How is a male going to produce an egg?

@Waitwhat23

That has to be a parody, surely?!

It seems to be serious. I agree it's hard to tell.

'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.'

Hmm I'm not knowledgeable enough to speculate about the future of human evolution but no man will ever naturally conceive or naturally give birth.

Must be a transphobe, what does birth sex have to do with anything if TM really AM and always have been.

Or its a deliberate and cynical exercise to alienate a certain kind of woman from political engagement. Or its an utterly feckless attempt by a couple of women who don't know what the fuck they are doing.

I think you're onto something here. I think it's an attempt to alienate the women who would/could make a difference (for women and society) because men/patriarchy doesn't want there to be any change.

The men in politics are happy to support women in politics as long as no demands are made to change things to disadvantage men or accommodate women who are not compliant, and so long as the women who are in politics (like Creasy & Nokes) ensure that they only focus on women's issues which are frippery nonsense which doesn't actually help us. Hence, they'll pile in with agreeing we're all so mean and should be ignored.

"Evolution", apparently Red

I wonder if Stella reads the crazy shit coming from TRAs and if it gives her pause?

Stella's follow up twittering is unbelievable.

Yesterday I thought she was being a bit disingenuous about the whole thing; this morning I'm almost convinced she's secretly GC and educating the lurkers

My biggest problem is who were they trying to target?

It could be 'lurkers' I suppose. Big audience on MN. Most of whom probably are voters. On the face of it, it's a good site to aim for when looking to demonstrate how 'down with the mums' you are.

Or it could be an audience outwith MN, with MN women being used as an illustration to contribute to the 'both sides' argument.

My biggest problem is who were they trying to target?

The key here is how MN is seen by most voters, isn't it? Is it still seen mostly as 'mums' aka the average woman in the street? Outside of Twitter, that's probably the case.

And I was staggered reading the WESC report at how Nokes had apparently done somehow less than zero research. Either she'd really really not done her homework and breenges into situations not giving two fucks that she comes across unprepared, ill informed and ignorant, or she is just not capable of grasping what are fairly straightforward arguments.

I'm not criticising her viewpoints, at all. It wasn't that I disagreed with her (although I did) - it was that her statements just didn't seem relevant or to follow on from any of the issues raised. Total non sequiturs, to an almost bizarre degree.

I think people coming for webchats always have the same aim - to use MN for publicity and credibility.

I could easily believe that SC and CN thought the campaign name has 'mum' in it so the obvious place to go to publicise it is MN. There may even have been a layer of cynicism that because the name included mum we'd all see that as a nod that they know what a mum is and would be fooled into thinking they know what a woman is too. Then they could have talked about their campaign and picked up some pithy quotes showing how the MN demographic supports them.

They may even have thought they could throw in TWAW and we'd all know they didn't really think that because after all they're talking about sex and birth and mums. So we'd all turn a blind eye to the inconsistency happy in the mum's campaign crumbs being thrown our way.

Their aides probably pointed out that if it didn't go to plan and the pesky MNers got caught up on women, then there was the opportunity to frame CS and CN as woke warriors standing up against 'reactionaries'. From their pov, a win/win ... except when it comes to being credible to female voters but nobody cares about them anyway.

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.'

Oh for fucks sake.

Look. Go believe whatever you like. Go live in your brave new world. Have fun. Enjoy yourself. I wish you nothing but joy of it all. But can you just fucking respect for two seconds that the entire world does not revolve around you, that other people do not share this belief, that they are not going to jettison their entire belief system on the spot because you say so and you've got some new world order about five minutes old that you say is better than theirs?

The tolerant thing to do, the kind thing to do, the diverse thing to do - and the only bloody thing that will ever end in peace and harmony instead of long, drawn out, never ending battles with increasing anger, resentment and refusal to co operate -

is to accept that people are different .

Many females continue to need female only spaces, services, resources.

if the issue is you want a new world order and all the cool kids are up for it - great. Create new spaces. Call them whatever you like. Add all the new stuff. The new resources. They can be mixed gender, mixed sex, neowhatever today's buzz word is, go nuts. Gold plate them. Whoopee for the new world.

But alongside all this female only spaces must be retained, provided and respected by all, including all male born people for the females who need them for their inclusion, beliefs, access .

Provide an inclusive, accessible society for all. Not just you.

And that ends the problem. Today. It's over.

Except this is where the lobby will kick off and show: there's a lot more to this than wittering about some people are so old fashioned and won't live in my personal moment on command.... some of this is absolute intolerance of females and a desire to stamp out females as a group. To ensure that those females comply with subordination to male born people and surrender their rights, or are stamped out of all spaces, all inclusion, all access, all provision.

And the answer to that part is No. Get over it. Because there is nothing morally ok with that.

[quote Alekto]This whole debacle has at least caused Glosswitch to write another Mumsnet article thecritic.co.uk/much-ado-about-mothers/[/quote]
This is brilliant.

Victoria Smith is so bloody smart. I have been struggling to articulate why this has pissed me off so much and she has laid it all out so clearly.

Creasy is an incredibly privilege woman, in a very fortunate, and fairly protected, position. Rather than recognise this and understand that her job as an MP is to help those less fortunate than herself, she instead wants to bank her 80k+ salary while trying to implement men-friendly faux-feminist policies which benefit herself and a few other very fortunate women, while expecting unpaid, overworked women (like us) to do the hard, dangerous and risk work of making sure the structure that gives women & girls a modicum of protection - a structure that she depends on to support her fripperies - remains. But we have to do it for free, and get actual abuse and threats and financial penalties, while she takes a salary to serve herself.

And she can't even be arsed to use her massive salary to pay for childcare, like every other woman would have to do. The child is about 8 months old, loads of women are already back at work then, or at least juggling KIT days and not being allowed to bring their baby to work.

And whoever said upthread that she wouldn't have brought a baby to a meeting with a load of bankers, nor told them to Be Kind when they pointed out her poor preparation and nonsensical policy - absolutely.

And I'll tell you what, the day that female only spaces- respected by all as the decent, kind, tolerant, inclusive thing to do to ensure equality of access for all - are cobwebbed and unused by choice by anyone at all,

Then you can get rid of them.

Not before.

it was that her statements just didn't seem relevant or to follow on from any of the issues raised. Total non sequiturs, to an almost bizarre degree.

As I said earlier in the thread, she appears to have a fundamental misunderstanding of what people are talking about when they say "transwomen" which she indicated that she thought meant they have a GRC, and that "self identified" people who identify as women were somehow a different group.

I’m horrified by the whole thing. I’m really upset by the whole “mumsnet are filthy transphobes” by people that have never ever been here. I’m upset because there is so much love and support for women struggling in terrible relationships, women who have gone through appalling situations. Stella has basically gone on Twitter to sob about being bullied by us narrow minded bitches. She wasn’t prepared. She patronised women with her wriggling baby, it sounded like trying to get in with the silly baby brains without having a single second of empathy for us. What’s a woman? Won’t answer. Just be kind nasty transphobes.

As I said earlier in the thread, she appears to have a fundamental misunderstanding of what people are talking about when they say "transwomen" which she indicated that she thought meant they have a GRC, and that "self identified" people who identify as women were somehow a different group.

Yes, which is just a position held by about nobody, so I don't understand why both women and trans people haven't put her right, or whether they've tried to and she's not understood.

I'm appalled by Stella, frankly. I thought better of her before her various car crash forays into this issue.

@Artichokeleaves

And I'll tell you what, the day that female only spaces- respected by all as the decent, kind, tolerant, inclusive thing to do to ensure equality of access for all - are cobwebbed and unused by choice by anyone at all,

Then you can get rid of them.

Not before.

Blimey yes, this.

It is interestingly that CN was very far from kind when interrogating the knowledgeable academic women and allowing other MPs to dismiss the evidence in the committee hearing fawning over the trans people giving evidence on gender recognition act reform...almost like they had all made up their minds already

Indeed.

At least Gordon Brown was embarrassed when he was caught calling members of the electorate 'bigoted'. Stella Creasy thinks it's perfectly acceptable to shout insults at women she disagrees with on Twitter.

And with no comment at all from 'where's your cervix' Starmer

I guess Labour will continue not to elarn lessons, and to lose more elections. They are already losing points in their lead against the Conservatives, which is incredible really given the current shitshow.

www.newstatesman.com/politics/polling/2022/02/why-is-labours-poll-lead-over-the-tories-falling