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

I feel utterly depressed after that

So do I. I can't work them out, whether they are disingenuous, scared about repercussions or genuinely believe that men can become women and that women will lose nothing under self ID.

But any of these options leave them unelectable for me.

Too many times I have been told I don't look like an MP. That's because I am not a 45 year old man. We have to be more determined to demonstrate that anyone can be an MP.

Is that anyone? Or just anyone with a degree from Oxford and / or parents who are already very active members of the party?

Anyone can be an MP disappears into a myth when you actually look at the bios of every woman in the cabinet and shadow cabinet. Including Rayner who had support from extended family.

You have to stroke the palms of the right people for a long time and be highly educated and well supported by family.

Theres nothing in there for anyone who falls outside that.

If you are not prepared to tow the line you aren't welcome. The LDs said that explicitly.

If you cant get interships with Daddy, and you aren't available on weekends to go canvassing or leafleting or just generally be available, you cant do it.

If you are a party member standing for a parish council somehow I doubt you are going to get support from the party

And even if you could manage a meeting its all the things you have to do as part of the role which you have to fit around all the other tasks you do as a parent. Like cooking tea, running around taking them to clubs, doing the housework, doing homework with them on top of your daytime job. Men have far more in the way of freetime.

I just get this feeling that this just isn't understood. Or it is, and its thought of as tough shit.

Is that anyone? Or just anyone with a degree from Oxford and / or parents who are already very active members of the party?
Quite. I don't mean this in a snide way but Nokes has never actually worked for anywhere else except her dad afaik so I don't think she was probably the best person to ask for advice on how to get selected as an MP.

You have to stroke the palms of the right people for a long time and be highly educated and well supported by family.
Contacts are more important than beig highly educated though. A lot of MPs don't have a particularly high level of education.

@EastWellowBride

You have to stroke the palms of the right people for a long time and be highly educated and well supported by family. Contacts are more important than beig highly educated though. A lot of MPs don't have a particularly high level of education.

Of all the women in the Cabinet and Shadow Cabinet only two didn't get a degree at a uni or poly.

They are Nadine Dorries and Angela Rayner.

And Angela Rayner worked her way through the union system for many years.

Even then Nadine Dorries is well known for her rather unhealthy sycophantic relationship with Boris Johnson.

I usually just lurk but I was dumbfounded by SC saying “What sex based rights do you think are not protected? There is a lot of heat and not a lot of light about what impact changes such as GRC would make etc and so genuinely open to understanding what rights these 'take away' as opposed to extend?"

Is she seriously saying she hasn’t engaged with or understood the arguments AT ALL???

So, is that the issue? Same as what I assume is going on with the female comedians and artists and actors who all repeat Accepted Speech - they go on about privilege but don't see that they all have degrees or been to drama school and have supportive parents and a nice, stable background?

They don't see the scared, poor, traumatised, illiterate, desperate women because who fucking does bother see them?

Sorry, that was to @RedToothBrush - badly worded because I'm still fuming.

Are the majority of female politicians as spoiled as the other big names who refuse to debate on these fundamental issues? They just don't see the needs of women who are not like them, because the women who need our rights to single sex spaces are among the most invisible in our society?

This sounds like the usual predictable shitshow. Glad I didn't bother in the end.

Zero point engaging with politicians who cling to the insistence they don't know what a woman is. Their policies will have no coherent definition and will no doubt act as trojan horses to get those incoherent definitions into legislation.

Shame they can't figure out the intention of those lobby groups that stalk the corridors of power.

It's quite incredible that CN seems to think recognising women as a distinct sex class is playing into the hands of the patriarchy. Just for the record Caroline, I think the patriarchy is probably pretty chuffed at your efforts so far. Thanks to politicians like yourself women have nothing now that can't be hijacked, stolen or appropriated by men for their own ends.

Even though I expected it, I am still floored,

& disbelieving, and left with a hollow depressed feeling when I'm faced again with the reality that we have politicians, who claim to speak for women, who will not define a women as an adult human female.

The reality of this, still leaves me reeling, & has fundamentally & permanently altered my view of the world and people.

'Be kind' made me flip my lid. Total waste of time to discuss women's rights with people who think anyone can be a woman. Hope they both lose their seat at the next election.

you are all trending on twitter!!

I just read the thread through and it made me really emotional. There are some amazing, passionate women on Mumsnet who asked fantastic questions that were either answered weakly, insultingly or inadequately. We deserve better politicians. Way, way better.

Be kind!
Raise the level of debate!
What sex-based rights do you not think are being protected?

Responses from female MPs, on a Mumsnet Webchat, about how to engage more women in politics.

There is no hope 😐

I honestly couldn’t be bothered knowing these two. Their position on trans doesn’t make sense and they refuse to answer any questions trying to get at the truth. For example, Stonewall define ‘Gender’ as a social construct usually called masculine or feminine which is ‘assumed from sex ‘assigned’ at birth. Gender Identity is defined as ‘ A person’s innate sense of their own gender, whether male, female or non binary’. Note the word slippage - gender is masculine but gender identity is male and vice versa.

So - by definition- a female who isn’t conventionally feminine and doesn’t feel very feminine is now a transman. A man who isn’t conventionally masculine is a woman. This is of course why they try to ‘trans’ Joan of Arc - she is no longer a woman breaking the boundaries and limitations of being a woman in her time, but ‘really’ a man. It’s about nothing but sexist limiting stereotypes - any woman throwing off the restrictive assumptions attached to her sex isn’t a woman showing what women can do but a man accidentally born in the ‘wrong’ body.

Awkward questions about Eddie Izzard, Philip/Pips Bunce are simply ignored because they ask the difficult questions that neither Caroline nor Stella want to answer - at what point, if any, should a male sex person be considered ‘a woman’? And if Eddie is a woman, then what IS a woman? And does this mean that any man who puts on a dress and lipstick is now a woman too? Because if not, then what’s the difference between Eddie and any other man with a different presentation? And are clothes and makeup the definition of being a woman?

Neither Caroline nor Stella seem able to think through the conceptual issues or what they mean and any question about practical out working of gender ideology is simply waived away. It’s beyond disappointing.

Thank God for Richard Dawkins who recently described gender identity ideology as ‘ludicrous’. Indeed.

Did anyone else think the pubic hair thread (with lots of traffic, now seemingly disappeared from this board) was a conveniently timed distraction??

@Doobeedoobee that was a really strange thread. I actually had to double check what board I was on because I was so surprised at the posts.

Yeah came here from twitter been trending most of the day.

twitter.com/search?q=Mumsnet&src=trend_click&vertical=trends

@Eve

you are all trending on twitter!!

I've just been having a look. It's the usual, blah blah they're all daily mail, cliquey, bigot right wing mummies who gives a fuck what they think they've all been radicalised, they're obsessed it's all they talk about blah blah blah.

Yeah, they WISH we wouldn't talk about it. They WISH we'd all just shut up and let the men identify themselves into womanhood and not make such a bloody fuss.
They WISH we'd all stop "being obsessed" AKA opening people's eyes, every day, to what's really going on, the end of women as a sex class and they thought they could sneak it in and we wouldn't notice or be too polite to say anything until it was too late.

Nope. Ain't happening. I couldn't give a shiny shite what they call us on twitter. I hope Stella and Caroline are having a good hard look at themselves, what they're representing and what the very women they're trying to appeal to really think of them when they push this 'anyone can be a woman' bullshit.

@MalagaNights

Even though I expected it, I am still floored, & disbelieving, and left with a hollow depressed feeling when I'm faced again with the reality that we have politicians, who claim to speak for women, who will not define a women as an adult human female.

The reality of this, still leaves me reeling, & has fundamentally & permanently altered my view of the world and people.

Share this feeling 100%. Some days are harder to take than others, and the fact that this webchat went to from TWAW to be kind to we're deleting any post about trans issues has actually shocked me. Fuck knows why but sometimes the absolute deletion of women is so clearly drawn that it shocks all over again.