Local elections and GC feminism thread

[JohnnyMcGrathSaysFuckOff]

Hi, just thought I'd start a thread as have seen threads recently about campaigning but not about the actual elections.

I live in a Tory-controlled area which has recently been in the news for bad mismanagement and Lab and LDs snapping at their heels here in different council seats. I don't necessarily want the Tories in but also worried now about the impact on local women's services if anyone else gets in - we currently have good council-run leisure facilities with clearly sex-segregated changing and a local SARC that is female-only.

I am worried these things will be lost.

How is everyone feeling/ voting as we move into Thurs?

Hi all, read through this with interest. Thanks to all who shared!

So in the end I voted Tory but my council (previoisly blue) fell to Labour. I am worried for WaG locally now.

DH is also GC but when I mentioned how I felt, he sort of shrugged wrily. I just thought - you don't get it, it won't affect you.

Looks depressing if results at GE are also bad for women with gender ideology looming more and more

This sums it up for me too.

There’s going to be a permanent uphill struggle with whoever is in power locally and nationally because all of the parties all shrug off their responsibilities to women and girls. And when in future we do get pro- female gains, we will have to constantly defend them.

Because this isn’t just a fad, it is a men’s sexual rights and sexual access to women and girls campaign. It is just one further logical conclusion of misogyny, which is as old as time.

So I take great cheer and comfort from these threads that so many GC women by whatever route are making their GC views known to candidates and parties and elected representatives, covering all of the main political parties. That, in combination with the GC legal cases, is how we’ll get national-party level policy changes. It’s ultimately how we will get Parliamentary legal changes that will protect and support women and girls.

Women will always have to defend our gains whatever they are, that’s just a given, but we are seriously on the back foot right now in terms of legal protections and so we need to keep pushing for much more within all of the parties.

@Boiledbeetle I was a trade union activist for a very long time. Was involved with the work for equal pay for work of equal value campaign and helped write a local authorities equality policy when they were quite a new thing. I have just voted Conservative as well. I have spoken to two Labour canvassers in my area they were quite frankly idiots who just didn’t care about women at all. I quite frankly despise a world where new wave feminism seems to think that women being gawped at by men when naked is empowering for the women. Behind all this are men laughing and I think they are not actually the transgender activists that our rights are being rolled back. Women were really starting to get somewhere and men cannot handle it.

If you write your message in such a way as to make it unclear whether you are voting for someone (eg the X in sex could land on your least worst candidate) it might get read as then you are creating doubt.

For first time in my life voted Tory. Wanted to send a message that this issue matters. Didn't have a Labour candidate.

Spoke to Lib Dem candidate - he agreed with me entirely. Said he wished they'd change their stance but he didn't speak up 'cos there was no point.

Felt a bit sorry for him -he didn't feel confident to raise and argue the issue as a man. I can imagine being faced with militant TRA women like Lynne Featherstone would be disconcerting.

I don’t think Labour and Lib Dem will change tack now if they feel they’ve got the GE in the bag

They don’t have to. People are voting for them as is and endorsing their approach. As for campaigning afterwards it’s a big late.

Changes will go through and that’s it, very hard to change back.

NZ / Canada style. Brilliant

SunnyEgg· Today 11:25
I don’t think Labour and Lib Dem will change tack now if they feel they’ve got the GE in the bag

They don’t have to. People are voting for them as is and endorsing their approach. As for campaigning afterwards it’s a big late.

Changes will go through and that’s it, very hard to change back.

NZ / Canada style. Brilliant

I agree; and add US &
Australian style too. Then we’ll have a dash of totalitarian state added to the mix all of our own.

Sunak needs to safeguard women's rights now.

I don't think he cares one bit about women's rights, if he does anything positive at all it'll be a side effect of trying to rile up the gender enthusiasts in the Labour Party. Which I am happy for him or indeed anyone else to do as it'll end up kicking Starmer off the fence where he is very carefully seated trying to avoid engaging in any of these issues.

My fear of Penny Mordaunt is increasing again.

Yep. Too depressing

If people are cheering today over Tory result then that’s the outcome with Labour

Yes. Voting for these idiotic parties which pretend that women don't really exist as a sex class is so fucking stupid that I have no words. Your vote is an endorsement and they will carry on eroding our rights.

There will be no u-turn when all of this shit is law, when self id is a thing, when women and girls have no privacy or safety from men - they will not change their minds whatever the left wing GC women keep telling us.

Then Sunak needs to sort it now before he is replaced by the country or his own party.

Agree @Badgeringabout

People just don't care enough about women and children and they don't think bad things will happen.

I read a book once about Germany when Hitler first came to power and there were people just saying 'oh it won't get worse' about the persecution of the Jews. They said 'oh it's just affecting a tiny minority, if they keep their heads down they'll be ok, only the outspoken Jews are being affected' etc etc. And yet it did get worse, and worse and worse. People just didn't believe that the party could be driven by a clearly insane ideology.

You only have to look at Iran to see that women's rights can be lost pretty much overnight and the attempt to gain them back will be long-winded and bloody with an uncertain outcome (girls are being poisoned in school over there FFS - and the western media is largely silent).

People are complacent and complicit. I hope KJK and the POW can wake more people up about the dystopian future we're walking into (if you're a woman or a child).

There was a woman at the most recent Let Women Speak who said I don't blame the kids over there (the noisy TRAs shouting thought terminating nonsense) but the vast majority of the adults who are remaining silent and not doing anything out of selfishness. Even though they are at least somewhat aware and know the whole ideology is bonkers, Orwellian and is harming women and children.

I'm so upset that labour have won here. I know one of the new councillors and she will be utterly shit apart from the fact she is a massive TWAW flag waver. I despair.

I was unsurprised that Labour won, but it's always either LD or Lab here.

Agree.

Also if anyone thinks Labour are better for working class people than tories and so it's worth throwing women and girls under the bus, they are woefully naive. Labour gained my council last year. Nothing has changed. They have the same policies (austerity, Big Society) but they call them "value for money" and "community co-production". The Labour councillors mainly care about looking good on social media and campaigning for parliamentary elections. I have no idea what Labour's policies are apart from Gender Self-ID. They are bereft of creativity and ideas for growth.

If you had done this your vote would still count as it is a clear vote. Anything else you say won't negate it - though it will be a matter of discussion.

It means you turn up at the poll and exercise your right. I have voted in every election since I was 19. So I go to vote.

Definitely a re-name since they do not support actual democracy. I have not forgotten that in 2019 they campaigned with the policy of holding another EU referendum and then not leaving the EU, whatever the result. Not democrats, for certain. Liberals, yes, but in the neo-liberal fashion rather than that of John Stuart Mill.

I spoiled my ballot for the first time ever. I cannot vote Tory because they are bent on destroying the NHS (the Chancellor - Hunt - is pro a US-style insurance system). I can't vote LibDem because of their stance on a second EU referendum which they'd only take notice of if it was a Remain vote (so about as democratic as Attila the Hun). I phoned the Labour constituency office and got one of the candidates (not mine) and was told that 'it depended' and the definition of woman had a biological and a social meaning: some women had a uterus and some women identified as women, both were women. I got too cross. They said they'd ring me back - my vote depended on it, I said - but did not. The candidate I spoke to and both candidates in my ward are women, women throwing women under the bus. I might have voted Green for mayor, btw, as the X of 'Respect my sex if you want my X' landed on their name - but at least it will get looked at. For the councillors (all members of the council up for election as locally we only have council elections every 4 years) I wrote a longer piece referring to my conversation with Labour. Had a conversation with the LibDem candidate (who knew me) who was slightly anti-gender woo but thought it was not an important issue and not one he was prepared to be thrown out of the party over. I see no hope whatsoever.

One thing will negate your vote - writing a name on the ballot paper.