Is MH just an echo chamber on FWR?

[NarcissasMumintheDoghouse]

Article in the New Statesman shows women's rights not a voter priority (and elsewhere in the publication they predict Labour would get more votes that the Tories).
sotn.newstatesman.com/2022/03/sotn-what-issues-matter-most-to-voters/

I don't think it's an echo chamber, I just think it isn't the number 1 priority for many people. Myself included. It's a very important issue but families not being able to feed their children is far more important at the moment in my opinion.

Thing is, when you dig down into the very real threat about families struggling to feed children...

let's be honest about which parent is most likely to do the shopping and cooking and the trying to make budgets stretch to do this
which parent is most likely to be raising children as a single parent, quite possibly with little to no financial support from the other parent
which parent is most likely to be on a lower income as a result of having been the one who was pregnant, gave birth and spent time out of their career for children

Women's rights come into everything about this. We cannot recognise or address the issues if we can't identify who women are in law or separate out that being biologically female comes with specific issues, needs and challenges that are not the same as male people's regardless of their gender identity.

There is going to be a whole lot of shouting of 'squirrel' phrases like 'yes but what really matters is....' - they are not unrelated issues. Just the usual attempt to scold women for womening wrong.

It's not a priority because people have no idea. That's changing because once they realise what's been going on, people are horrified and it becomes a priority.

Keeping people in the dark so they can't form an informed opinion on this has been their strategy from the start.

How is polling like this conducted?

It might not be a voter priority but it is an area where it is easy to see the chasm between the parties.

When it comes to manifesto time, no party is outright going to say 'we want to raise taxes astronomically' or 'we want to remove all benefits'. The differences between the parties on a range of items is very nuanced - all parties want to alleviate poverty, Labour tend to emphasise making benefits more generous and the Conservatives tend to emphasise making work pay.

But here there is a very clear difference. So if this matters to you fundamentally, it is very hard to vote for a party you feel would harm your rights so significantly (and both sides of this debate feel the other side would harm their rights).

Hasn't that often been Labour's miscalculating? It was a mistake they made in the New Labour years, just assuming the northern working class vote was in the bag while they sold off and offshored UK industries. As we've seen right now in Ed Miliband's interview with Kay Burley, it's women, just be kind, remember you are an emotional support animal and set your personal concerns and interests aside. I know lifelong Labour voters who are Jewish who couldn't bring themselves to vote Labour over the anti-semitism in their ranks in the Corbyn era, and I don't think anyone would have dreamed about telling them to simply set that concern aside in the polling booth.

Women's rights come into everything about this. We cannot recognise or address the issues if we can't identify who women are in law or separate out that being biologically female comes with specific issues, needs and challenges that are not the same as male people's regardless of their gender identity.

I'm really not trying to be facetious, but surely you can actually address issues like e.g. food poverty, child support etc regardless of anything gender identity-related. I agree with a lot of what's said on here but then comments like this just seem so hyperbolic.

Recognising that there are specific issues that come with being biologically female, and that the large majority of parents so affected will be female is hyperbolic?

Ok...... I think it's nuts to pretend otherwise, and unhelpful to those parents, but ymmv.

Rather like pretending that FGM is not a sex based thing, can happen to anyone, and having nice support regardless of identity that doesn't offend anyone.

It's not THE issue but it's AN issue. Things raised here do breakout into the mainstream. What is a woman, was helped to gain traction by this site (thank you No(a)kes and Creasy), I'm sure. Everything that followed from that, this site can take some credit. I don't believe the Mail would have given women's issues such prominence, even if it is just as a stick to beat Labour and 'the woke'. I think the posters on this site raise awareness, inspire and educate. Even the contrary voices help polish arguments and bring new points of view, sometimes, bit of a palate cleanser. MN wouldn't get treated with such disdain, because if you don't have credit they wouldn't try so hard to discredit.

What does the title mean? MH just an echo chamber?

What is MH?

Sorry. What MH are you referring to please?

Recognising that there are specific issues that come with being biologically female, and that the large majority of parents so affected will be female is hyperbolic?

Recognising female issues isn't hyperbolic, no. But the implication that the trans agenda means you can't address a lot of issues that disproportionately do affect women is hyperbolic. The examples you gave and which I mentioned are certainly things that many people care about regardless of what they think about gender. People aren't going to suddenly be too confused to be able to create family-friendly policies about things like childcare or whatever because of a few fringe views on whether men can be women. Clearly there are important areas it does affect like sports, female spaces and safeguarding, medical treatment etc but I don't agree that all social justice issues affecting women (and children) are necessarily impacted in the way you imply. Just my opinion.

Of course the public haven't voiced their views. The Denton's playbook revealed the "everything behind closed doors" and alongside Stonewall's #nodebate - has kept all this hidden from view. The tactics have been to avoid democratic scrutiny and debate at all costs .
It's only now that the extreme impacts are coming to light that people are voicing opinions - and they're generally unhappy with what's being revealed.

The New Statesman has a very specific political agenda. They’ve called this wrong, as they often do.

Most men may not care about women’s rights, but a lot of women do. Look at Mumsnet! Here we have a pretty random sample of (mostly British) women, and, as the thread about Boris yesterday showed, so many of us are prepared to chose how to vote based on this specific issue.

Are there thousands of women on the streets about it? Not really. That isn’t traditional female behaviour: we’ve got too much stuff to do! But, when casting our votes in the privacy of a ballot booth - I’m voting for children’s safeguarding and safe spaces for biological women. Labour, Libdems and Green lost me when they lobbied to house male rapists with female prisoners, the majority of whom are already victims of male violence. Those women have no vote, I owe them mine.

I too was wondering what MH stood for? It’s widely used as an acronym for mental health, but that makes no sense here, so possibly a typo for MN, which also makes no sense! I’m certain we’re being scolded, although for what remains uncertain 🤨

Women's rights specifically don't have to be a priority for this issue to turn people off Starmer and Labour.

Just hearing them struggle to define a woman or saying out loud that some women have penises will be enough for many people to conclude that the seat of power is not to be trusted with someone who says ridiculous reality defying things.

I think the New Statesman are deliberately missing the point.

Clearly the majority of those who post on Mumsnet on these issues are gender critical. And I have seen those who take an alternative view receive some fairly heavy criticism - so most of them probably stop posting here. It‘s probably a bit like being pro landlord or pro Tory. You would have to have quite a thick skin to persist.

But I think the views expressed here on gender issues do reflect the views of the vast majority of the UK population: Respect the rights of individuals to present as they wish - but protect female spaces, female sport and young people - and refuse to accept that people can change sex because that is just not true.

I am not sure how much that translates into votes - which is what politicians are concerned about. Most people vote on the basis of their wallet. Most Conservative and most Labour voters never swap sides. I guess the percentage of floating voters is greater amonst younger people and I suspect that after the environment, gender issues are quite important for a small but very vocal group. I guess for most political parties the question is how many voters do we attract with this policy and how many will not vote for us if we adopt it.

Not quite sure of your point - do you mean mental health or do you mean mumsnet and it is a typo?

Do we have to post in here about whatever it is you think we should be posting about to prove something to someone? Or are we allowed to just post on the threads that we feel we want to post on as and when we want to?

Still confused. Is the OP going to come back and tell us what MH is.

@Aspiringmatriarch

Women's rights come into everything about this. We cannot recognise or address the issues if we can't identify who women are in law or separate out that being biologically female comes with specific issues, needs and challenges that are not the same as male people's regardless of their gender identity.

I'm really not trying to be facetious, but surely you can actually address issues like e.g. food poverty, child support etc regardless of anything gender identity-related. I agree with a lot of what's said on here but then comments like this just seem so hyperbolic.

But women are more likely to be at the coal face on issues involving feeding and caring for the old and the young.

Political parties have women's sections to address issues that women appreciate more than do men. Because they're the sex class at the coal face.

If men start taking over the women's sections, then we're back where we're started before the women's sections were established.

So gender identity stuff really matters for these coal face issues.

Another more pertinent issue - period poverty. If the trans-identified male head of the women's section of party says they're not going to campaign on issues that don't affect ALL women (as some of them do) then the women's section is not going to address period poverty because (in their logic) TWAW and TW do not have periods, therefore it is not a women's issue.

They probably didn't list women's rights as one of the options - just gave them poverty, immigration, economy etc and asked them to say which they thought were important.

Performance mumsnetting just to keep the OP happy, yes that's what I want to sign up to. :)

If the OP could issue their checklist of all the things they want us to talk about and we can comply after all, that's what we are all here for, right?

Climate change is my no 1 issue, however because Labour and the rest can’t even get a simple thing like what is a woman right, it means I don’t trust them on anything else and more complex issues.