Did anyone see the ITV News piece about of water bills on customers?

[inkjet]

https://twitter.com/PaulEmbery/status/1674332639921045505

Yes this is the feminism board. Paul Embery clipped it but I wonder if anyone saw it in full? He says the piece was about the impact of soaring water bills on an everyday mother. The voiceover calls the person a customer but the customer calls themself a mum. On the Twitter thread someone points out that the customer works for the TUC and is an economist who has been published in the Guardian. I think it’s fair to say the customer is neither a mother nor an ‘everyday’ one.

"Mika, can you have the camera crew round your house to film you pretending to be a "struggling mum? ".
Do you think it was actually Mika's place? Mika was so clumsy doing the dishes - it looked like Mika had never encountered a washing-up sponge before. And it could explain why Mika used a washing up bowl as a laundry basket - Mika couldn't find the real thing in somebody else's house.

Do you apply that logic in all things? You see no issues if I call myself a policeman in everyday conversation and share my views on crime and disorder? If I call myself a vicar and share my views about the church? Can I call myself a doctor and suggest some improvements to health? Can I call myself 8 years old and join conversations about childhood? Can I call myself gay and give you my thoughts on homophobia? Can I call myself trans and chat about what being trans is all about? Can I call myself TeaKlaxon and explain in conversation how for me, being TeaKlaxon is all about being a person who enjoys being sanctimoniously judgemental?

Or is it just words for women that don't need objective common meanings?

This 'you don't get to dictate what another person chooses to define themselves as' line is getting trotted out a lot.

As a busy yet benevolent Queen Victoria, I'm saying that they can define themselves to me as they choose. And I can in response say that they are talking bollocks and I'm not participating in their fantasy. And that they're actually not just being silly, but extremely offensive to others.

All they had to say was “parent” . Don’t really care how mika was dressed or what they were doing ( even though it came across as a parody of what a woman’s work is.

This was deliberate just to wind women up . No doubt about it.

and it has resulted in Rosie Duffield being attacked from all sides . Can you believe it attacked for telling the truth , an MP telling the truth .

it’s a parallel world .

@TeaKlaxon

its not policing everyday private conversation , this was on ITV .

And the law says that Mika can call themselves a mother but equally we don’t have to accept that .

Also with the so called logic that’s being banded about if a man sadly lost his wife and became the only carer of his children and took over the laundry and washing up he would morph into the mother .

it’s ridiculous and insulting . But am I surprised ? No .

Come on Rosie. Cross the floor and bring the other few sane minds left in Labour with you.

I deplore any sort of online abuse for any reason, just to be clear.

But this tweet did make me laugh, for other reasons.

It’s such a brain-twisting load of nonsense 🤣

Yep.

@senua I'd assumed it was Mika's place. Why would they film it at someone else's place?

Is he serious? Because tbh he's channeling his inner Little Britain.

"The only mum in the men's club".

@FlirtsWithRhinos 💜💜 you have a lovely way with words.

Role play as reality.

Untruth is stranger than fiction.

What a time to be alive.

Yeah right! Show me you've never done the laundry before without telling me you've never done the laundry. A washing up bowl??? What does he use to wash up in? Tupperware?

If it was an actual mum I wouldn't have cared. They can struggle getting people at short notice for these kind of clips. But not being a mum and the breast pump is just bizarre.

Mika was trying to portray Mikaself as an ordinary mother struggling with CoL. Mika is not a mother, being of the male sex. Mika has no need of a breast pump in Mika's kitchen, being of the male sex. Mika is not ordinary, being deeply involved in unionism and politics.
It makes you start to query everything in that piece. Maybe Mika borrowed a friend's place because Mika's place was too posh or festooned in activist material. And then pretended to ITV and everyone else that it was Mika's home.
It's not unknown for people to do interviews in other people's houses..

Bit of a social experiment raising your children to call their father, mother, no?

Is this a good way to raise children? Lying about the central figures in their lives.

See Stella Creasy has weighed in about this tweeting 'Still don't think MPs should police what a child can or can't call a parent'. So disingenuous - as if this is all about a child's choice of language, rather than the loss of the word mother as humans have understood it for the whole of humanity.

I worry about the partner and child being caught up in his lies. I would think that it's an abusive relationship and should be investigated by social services.
Also if anyone is a mother that means it's easier for surrogacy lobby to push onwards.
These people are like viking raders in the land of womenhood - pillaging everything of women for their sick pleasures.

Yes, this weaselly little 'we shouldn't judge' line is being trotted out a lot.

People are free to publicly call themselves what they like and everyone is as free to tell them what they think and whether or not they choose to play along. If they are calling themselves things that damage society as a whole because they feel their personal feels and fiction matters more than anyone or anything else? They're going to get told in fairly strong language.

Perhaps Stella should try universally applying her 'don't police' beliefs to all without prejudice, instead of trying to sound all nice and liberal while silencing women and destroying motherhood to pat the ego of a man who appears to lack capacity to care about his impact on others.

If only all Labour MPs were as courageous and principled as Rosie Duffield. Instead we have a load of Creasys and Russell-Moids spouting disingenuous idiocy.

It's not policing the child. (Although that's another question).

It's telling Mika or Mila (I forget) that he can't use the word 'mother' to describe himself. It's absurd.

It is hard to think of another word as important to human society as mother

Becoming pregnant, giving birth, breastfeeding, ie being a mother, is the ultimate role/ability that women have and men don’t and can’t and it absolutely infuriates them (NAMALT).

Feels like everything else in terms of erasing women has been leading up to this point of specifically erasing the meaning of the word mother. Makes me wonder about the relationship such men had with their own mothers. Feels very dark.

But the collective insanity of how seemingly intelligent people in corporations and institutions just go along with the erasure of women is the craziness that I don’t understand. Just how did this particular ad, for example, get the go ahead from so many people? Sigh.