Aaargh! This is just a rant!
Had my two actual Labour party candidates at the door (one man, one woman) . Asked them about single sex provision for women and how they would support this as councillors, e.g. ensuring in commissioned sexual/domestic violence services that there were single sex services for women. The response from the man was brilliant - he spoke clearly and in detail about why this was important, what he would do, and how he was prepared to make himself unpopular to support it. So I had a conversation with him, and then the women candidate came in with ' but what about the men, men suffer terrible violence from women and they get hardly any services.'
So I raised the issue of women not being centred, but being deprioritised in favour of males, and in her response she chose to centre and prioritise men. Not women, whose services are being eroded, nope her focus was on men.
Now I agree that men need sexual violence/ DV services, but I was talking about women's issues and women's rights being eroded, and I object to this 'whataboutery' where she cannot hold her focus on women. And the fact that she chose to centre men in her answer shows me she does not understand the this issue of sex-based rights at all or its significance for women's rights.
It turned into quite the argument! Despite me saying I support men's single sex services she rolled her eyes and countered with how little men get compared to women. So I said women have greater spending as women have organised and campaigned hard for those single sex services and they are not being destroyed, as which she eye-rolled again and went on about men again.
I hope one can vote separately for the candidates as I would absolutely vote for him but not for her.