is our aim protecting our sex based rights or is the issue our political leanings?

[vivariumvivariumsvivaria]

I've been confused by the falling out on social media by some women against other women and have been following the discussions online.

I am not very well informed politically - I think my opinion is that the important thing is ensuring that sex remains a protected characteristic and that "woman" means adult human female and not gender so that our rights to safety, privacy and dignity are protected in law and safeguarding follows that.

However, I can understand that it is difficult for left wing women to collaborate with women who are right wing, or for working class women to link with middle class or upper class women, because their politics and priorities are varied.

I think it is a strength that there are different approaches and different women speaking up because we desperately need to raise awareness because the majority of women are unaware of the threat to our sex based rights. That means we need a variety of voices, and everyone, as far as I can see, wants the same thing - our sex based rights and protections for children.

Maybe I'm being simplistic to think that "play nicely" will prevail. I hope so, though, because what I am watching looks like a big waste of energy and goodness knows this stuff is exhausting enough.

What can an ordinary woman like me who doesn't have a youtube or a book or a column do to try and help move things along? I'm worried we will land up with a GC purity spiral and nothing good will come of it.

The primary reason for the Self ID fiasco, is the Conservative Party policy of Self ID, introduced by Theresa May, championed by Caroline Nokes and Penny Mordaunt. Followed by what has been happening in our prisons, hospitals and yes, the Tavistock.

People need to understand how government works. The civil service (which doesn't change at election) are key to those sort of laws. They draft up the policies and have it ready for the new minister to sign off. The civil servants are signed up to Stonewall campaigns and they deliberately leak stuff (like conversion therapy) to try to stop ministers reversing those policies.

Self ID was not dreamt up by Civil Servants. It was put together by a cross parliamentary group headed by Caroline Nokes, Conservative MP. It was then made policy by Conservative PM Theresa May.

What's with the minimisation of the Tory party role in this?

I don't want to sound cynical, but I'm afraid I think our society is so soaked in misogyny, women's second-class status is so deeply ingrained, that even when people become aware of the issues there is no will to do anything about it.

Two women a week murdered in the UK, and we're not rioting in the streets? Rape effectively decriminalised. So, what would it take?

What would it take? A lot of changes. Making misogyny a Hate Crime would help, but the Conservative Party said "No".

I don't really think this is something The Patriarchy started. Women seem to be quite good at on their own.

Most people's views aren't really some kind of purist academic ideological position.

And for that matter, the LP and the CP are both mish-mashes of different ideological approaches. They've both been significantly affected by liberalism, and globalism. The LP has become very beholden to bourgeoisie values and the Conservatives OTOH now seem to be the more interested of the two in working class issues. This seems to follow that pattern of similar parties internationally.

So I tend not to see voting for mainly ideological reasons as making much sense. I can find things I like and dislike across the political spectrum. I think that's common, even for people who tend to vote most of the time for the same party.

But right now what worries me most about parties like the LP is not just their commitment to gender ideology. I look at what has happened here in Canada, and you can see that it is not just about that, it's about a kind of moral puritanism that is very comfortable with becoming authoritarian and undermining the basic rights of liberal democracy, that is deeply committed to identity politics that are destructive and IMO deeply racist, and totally at the mercy of whatever lobby groups manage to catch their interest.

Even a really shit economic plan is better than that, from my perspective.

Hate crimes are an interesting point.

I think that quite a few people on the left who used to think they were a good idea have now come to the conclusion that maybe, actually, they weren't.

So not a reason to vote Labour, or avoid voting Tory.

Yip. That's a point.

There are so many appalling things which have not raised so much as an eyebrow in society.

We have lost so many dead women we don't even know their names. The ones we can name are the rarities. Wheras, every year in November we have a pantomime of mourning for zero dead trans people. Zero. Not a single trans or NB person dead since 1996 in Scotland, but half mast pastel flag and mournful speeches.

And not a single word for the nameless women killed by men. Let alone the beaten, raped, terrified of us.

You make a good point.

Every year a Labour MP, Jess Philips(?) reads out the names of the women who have been murdered by domestic violence that year so they are documented by the government and are not forgotten or nameless.

I can't name them, @TooBigForMyBoots .

Only the ones who make the press because they died in very gruesome way.

The rest? Not a clue. It's a problem.

Some TWAW type asked Jess Phillips why she had not included dead transwomen in her list of murdered women.

The truthful answer? No dead transwomen to report, in the UK. For a few years now.

So let's all join hands now and shout "Hurray!" that there are no dead transwomen in the UK for the past few years. That is good. Transwomen are not being killed at anything even vaguely like a rate of two per week.

In the meantime. Two women are killed by men every week. Not transwomen - women.

Our aim should be to protect women and children from male violence. No loopholes.

They all died in a very gruesome way @vivariumvivariumsvivaria. Your "problem" is one that is addressed annually by a Left wing woman who stands in the House of Commons and reads out the names of women murdered by domestic violence to an almost empty Chamber so that their names are recorded in perpetuity by Hansard. And while you don't know about them, the Government does, yet does nothing.

Jess Philips reads out the names of all the women & girls murdered in the UK using the information supplied by Karen Ingala Smith from Counting Dead Women.

Jess Philips hasn’t said a word of support to Rosie Duffield, Jo Cherry or to any of her colleagues who have had murder & rape threats or to any women’s groups who are fighting back. She should be ashamed of herself.

And it’s not just victims of domestic violence, it’s women & girls who were murdered by strangers as well.

You are absolutely right. What I have loved about feminism, over the past 50 years or so, is that women can contradict, dislike, dispute, oppose and have colossal arguments on crucial principles or tactics. Yet still work together towards the essential shared goals.

(Obviously I mean feminists, women who centre women. I’ve never understood why women who prioritise men over women would call themselves “feminist” — it’s not as if it’s fashionable.)

Thanks for clarifying that.

Because of women's rights issues, it's been about 7 years now since I last voted for any political party in any election - local or national.

Each time, I've made the effort to go to my local polling station, and then spoiled my ballot with paper with "Women don't have penises" or similar.

It's not a party political issue. It's a life issue. Either you think women are human, or you don't.

I shan't vote for any party, until any party starts really and genuinely accepting and accommodating women's rights, and safeguarding children against those who seek to harm them. And I shall applaud any woman who stands up for the rights of women and children.

www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2022/31/contents/enacted

Here is the enacted Bill. I can't find any trace of those amendments.

It's late and maybe I'm missing something but the only reference to abortion is section 178 which amends the 1967 Act to permit telemedication- so actually extends abortion rights.

The Bill was enacted in April 2022. The Independent article is referring to statements made by Ms Dorries, not ongoing legislation- she's been making such statements for many years to no effect. She has also made it clear that it's the time limit which concerns her- not the right to abortion.

The 1967 Act has had only 1 major revisal - the reduction of the effectively "on demand" time limit from 28 weeks to 24 weeks in November 1990; there is still no upper limit for exceptional threat to women's life cases.

The Tories have had decades of large majorities and have done nothing to restrict abortion rights other than reduce the limit from 28 weeks to 24. Improvements in caring for premature babies made 28 weeks untenable.

Even at 24 weeks the UK is an outlier with one of the longest time limits in the world- most of Europe, including the EU, are around half of that.

Just catching up with thread. As KPSS said upthread:

"Jess Philips hasn’t said a word of support to Rosie Duffield, Jo Cherry or to any of her colleagues who have had murder & rape threats or to any women’s groups who are fighting back. She should be ashamed of herself."

I do get the feeling a few years now that her, Jess Phillips, reading dead women's names does seem performative, when she fails to stand for living women's rights.

Have Rosie Duffield or Jo Cherry talked about Jess Phillips and her lack of support? What did they say?

Jo Cherry has said that she hasn’t received any support from any of her direct colleagues at Westminster including Blackford & Black, and her “ leader “ Sturgeon but has received support from many, many other Westminster colleagues. Jess Philips was not one of those, same with Rosie Duffield, crickets from Philips...

In what sense has it been made a policy? It was an issue which merited consideration- other countries have done so.

Has any legislation followed from it?

And I know this because I asked both of them. Why don’t you ask them yourself?