MPs who believe ‘women have a penis’ will be named and shamed ahead of general election

[fromorbit]

Brilliant plan sure plenty of Mumsnetters will be up for being part of the volunteer army asking questions:

An “army” of volunteers in an apolitical new grassroots campaign is gearing up to meet all MPs and parliamentary candidates at hustings events and on their doorsteps to ask each one the question: “What is a woman?”

Their answers will be video recorded and uploaded individually to a website which is being launched in the coming months.

It will allow voters to find out instantly whether their next MP thinks women must be born female and that binary biological sex cannot be changed, or whether they believe that male-born transgender women are women too.

Sharron Davies MBE, the former Olympic swimmer and feminist campaigner who has been appointed as the campaign’s first ambassador, said it would let voters “know if their MP will stand up for women”.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/09/23/mps-believe-women-penis-named-trans-election-sharron-davies/

We also need a women's issues hustings in every constituency in the election run by people who know what women are. Women Won't Wheesht (WWW) have already run the prototype in Rutherglen [the hustings was reinstated after an attempt to cancel it after they realised banning women's meetings is in fact illegal.]
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4899435-womens-group-hustings-for-rutherglen-hamilton-west-byelection-cancelled

Only MPs or all standing candidates?

It claims to be a grass roots movement but who are they? Has anyone heard of them?

More details will be forthcoming I am sure, but it is pretty clear it is a legitimate group from within Parliament just a recently formed one.

Sharron posted this on September 20th:

Today at The House of Lords I was honoured to be asked by a cross party free speech group to launch a brand new on line site that will show transparency on ALL MPs & candidates views re the question ‘What is a Woman’. If your MP or candidate doesn’t know what a woman is they can’t fight for us, our rights, safety, our hard fought for equalities & our opportunities. Simple.

https://twitter.com/sharrond62/status/1704594494467842551

Sharron had been attending a cross-party Freedom of Speech event at House of Lords on September 20th in attendance were reps from the Women's Rights Network, Sex Matters, Free Speech Union amongst others with Maya, Glinner and Helen Joyce too and many politicians as it was a cross-party event. It was organised by Baroness Jenkin prominent gender crit Lib Dem peer. Copies of new Lib Voice for women pamphlet were being shared out. You can see some pics here:
https://twitter.com/LibVoice4Women/status/1704835182237290527

It sounds like those involved had been thinking about this for a bit I guess, but maybe it developed more in a brainstorm session on the day and it is all still a bit haphazard hence the launch via twitter and a news article. It is pretty clear it is being backed by a bunch of cross party types who are happy to upset all the parties, even the Tories who have a bunch of MPs who are reluctant to answer this kind of question. The campaign is being shared on twitter by a bunch of groups who attended.

An “army” of volunteers in an apolitical new grassroots campaign is gearing up to meet all MPs and parliamentary candidates at hustings events and on their doorsteps to ask each one the question: “What is a woman?”

The client would be the Tories, or some think tank with money and this a cynical part of their campaign strategy, given if I'm right they've paid a PR company to pretend to be a grass roots org, rather than actually engaging with women.

I may well be wrong, I'm just speculating at the moment.

Let's wait and see what transpires...

And just because this was launched at a meeting where women we know and support were there, it doesn't mean they have anything to do with it necessarily. This is politics.

And they do it through a PR agency precisely because they don't want to be publicly associated with TERFs. Smoke and mirrors

We're in the run up to an election and the Tories know they will probably lose, they'll be trying all sorts of angles to try to cling on to power.

JK Rowling doesn't need to pay someone to pretend to be a grass roots movement - she is part of the movement!

The Telegraph Article says "The campaign is being managed by the free speech firm Riverside Advisory, who were not available for comment"

That doesn't sound much like a grass roots feminist org to me.

Who are they, when they're at home then?

Bingo.

https://www.riversideadvisory.co.uk/

"A strategic advisory firm offering bespoke, discreet and high-end communications to private clients around the world.We specialise in global reputation management, litigation and strategic communications counsel, drawing only upon the talent of a global network of senior and experienced public relations and public affairs experts. We know our clients value discretion and experience, which is what Riverside Advisory is founded upon."

Bet they don't come cheap!

Let's not allow ourselves to be useful idiots here.

I'd rather support an actual feminist org I know than this lot. Didn't Sex Matters have an election campaign, for example?

Hello??

OP has found the tweets explaining how it was set up. Ironically for those of you who seem to think Sex Matters is some sort of bench mark, Sex Matters was part of the meeting.

Sharron had been attending a cross-party Freedom of Speech event at House of Lords on September 20th in attendance were reps from the Women's Rights Network, Sex Matters, Free Speech Union amongst others with Maya, Glinner and Helen Joyce too and many politicians as it was a cross-party event. It was organised by Baroness Jenkin prominent gender crit Lib Dem peer.

Too many of you are getting caught up in the way one newspaper has reported this.

The article said "grass roots" when clearly given who the organisers of the meeting were and where it was held it is anything but grass roots.

And quite honestly seeing who is part of setting it up its not surprising they would turn to a profession group rather than a DIY approach to launch a campaign.

So nobody is a useful idiot and it is incredibly self absorbed and smug to say that, particularly when FWR is famous for tracking down information and sources.

All you've done is get obssesed by one newspaper report, who from their lofty perspective, say this as "grass roots".

And most of us are more than able to support a campaign that is useful to an issue we care about, without becoming subserviant followers.

Just as we are able to post info from right wing papers such as the Telegraph without turning into right wingers.

It may not have the impact of the KJK slogan, but if it keeps the issue in the pubic domain during electioneering all well and good.

Particularly as I suspect many GC feminists in the run up to the election because of pre existing ties to Labour will not be asking any direct questions as they wont want to expose Labours duplicity. You only have to look at the creepily ingratiating language of VAWG "manifesto" to see how few professional feminists are prepared to be publicly talking about women as a sex class. https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4900356-vawg-is-a-gendered-issue-which-is-deeply-rooted-in-societal-inequality-it-is-violence-that-is-directed-against-a-woman-because-she-is-a-woman-or-that-affects-women-disproportionately

I just checked and not a single one of the people or groups you mention has tweeted or RTed the twitter account promoting this.

That's significant, surely?

They can't be behind it, it looks like they don't even want to support it!

Yes I'm a bit as well.
I feel like this is a pro-conservative culture wars movement.
As other posters have said, it also means nothing if MPs/trans rights groups think you transition to be a female.

Ms Davies said: “This is a David vs Goliath battle but we are winning. Having battled all my life for fairness in sport where women are disadvantaged, I am delighted to back this campaign.

Sharron Davies has been brilliant

If she’s involved that’s more prominent shoulders to the mill

Good on her. She’s deserves a name in women’s rights history

Yes, my feeling is that's exactly what that is.

Why does it matter?

Well, because if their real aim is to trash the Labour party and help the Tories cling to power then they won't be running the campaign with the integrity a women's group would, nor to the same end.

If it's all a PR grift for the Tories, or some other RW think tank, then I would be worried that this isn't about changing MP's positions at all, it's just about vilifying Labour.

I wouldn't trust them to report MP's positions truthfully. PR companies by definition are about spin, not truth.

Also their other aims may be anti-women. And, I expect I don't really need to point out, this matters.

Plus, if they use their considerable money to gain the limelight on this, then that may be to the detriment of other similar campaigns such as the Respect My X campaign that may have had a better chance of actually changing politicians' positions by engaging with them.

It's important to know who or what we're actually supporting here IMO.

Sounds good. I fear it won't come to much though / won't change much.

The PR organisation is irrelevant. They're not making MPs say that women have a penis, that's the free choice of the MPs. We shouldn't be berated into hiding the fact that some MPs are downright fools just because they're in the party you want to vote for and you don't want to hear any inconvenient truths. That's without going into highly dodgy alliances eg Kate Osborne and Private Eye regular Linda Riley.

Naming these people sounds good to me. Presumably if this is the sort of thing they believe then they won't feel embarrassed about it being made so public.

Personally I don't care which party a politician sides with, if they are TWAW, don't support women's rights and single sex spaces then I want to know so I can discount them in my list of sensible people to listen to (and to vote for).

Nothing wrong with a campaign using PR

Even charities heavily invest in marketing otherwise how do people know about what you do

It seems a limp attack based on fearing their party will be exposed more

Any sunlight is good

Maya did retweet this see screen shot below. I am not saying she is directly involved though obviously.

Andrew Doyle and Toby Young did as well.

How grass roots it is remains to be seen I agree. It is great people are sceptical of this. Because being wary is sensible.

From what I can see so far it seems to be coming out of the pro Free Speech movement rather than purely women's rights. Free Speech is not a right, left or centre value. It is a universal one. There are a tonne of very wealthy people who want to support free speech, there are also a bunch of rich people who want to end free speech for their political/ideological opponents, especially if they are women and or gay. Wealthy supporters of free speech are going to be incredibly varied include traditional Tories, Blairite Bankers, Libertarian tech bosses, eco start up hippy types, Members of the House of Lords/MPs, Union organisers, wealthy academics, Scot Nat business owners, wealthy authors, rock stars add your own examples. Free Speech is going to be one of the few things these people agree on.

Riverside Advisory ran the first "Parliamentary event in support of freedom of expression" in 2022 as well. It was written up here:
https://unherd.com/2022/07/how-right-is-kemi-badenoch/

A short write up of the event last week is at the Free Speech Union:

FSU attend House of Lords free speech event!
On Wednesday, FSU staff along with some well-known and familiar faces (such as Maya Forstater, Helen Joyce and Baroness Ann Jenkin) were invited to the second annual parliamentary event in support of freedom of expression. MC’d by FSU Advisory Council member Andrew Doyle, the event was a great opportunity for pro-free-speech groups to get together, including Battle of Ideas, Big Brother Watch, Don’t Divide Us, Freedom in the Arts, LGB Alliance, Together and We Are Fair Cop. Each organisation gave a short elevator pitch, outlining their biggest achievements over the past 12 months and what they see as the biggest threats to free speech on- and offline in the coming year.

FSU Chief Legal counsel, Dr Bryn Harris, updated the room on our priorities for the next 12 months, namely, defending workers compelled to abide by the ‘progressive’ values of their employers, pushing the courts to recognise that academic freedom is a fundamental right and working with friends and supporters in Parliament to reform public order legislation (being offensive really shouldn’t bean offence).

As to what the What is a Woman Campaign becomes well that rather depends on what ordinary British people think. Either they participate and report their findings to the website and other people look at the website and it becomes very grass roots and viral during the election campaign or they don't. Ideally it would later be extended so we know whether our local councilors believe in biology or not.

It is an interesting example of finding out if people care about these issues beyond Mumsnet and twitter. Because the reality is if ordinary voters DO NOT care whether biology exists in the long run the TRA are going to win. Or rather biology will become an issue only for the right and our politics will become like the USA where the only choice is between what flavour of misogyny you pick from when you vote. To stop that happening we need every weapon we can use.

If this works great. If it doesn't then we will need to try a bunch more things. Because the TRAs are using schools, universities, corporate HR, the NHS and everything they can lay their hands on against us.

Normally I would vote on a range of issues, generally I am a labour supported, although did not vote when Corbyn was the leader as I did not support him. However, this issue is so important to me I will only vote for the local candidate who reflects my views so I would like to know what my local candidates believe, I have tried to find out what views the local candidates /MPs hold. The sitting MP was quite upfront, he does not believe that it is possible to change sex/gender, however a couple of months after finding this out he announced he was standing down. It has been impossible to find out what the prospective candidates think and I have tried so I would welcome the clarity

My other problem is that a huge proportion of the electorate vote red/blue and for the leader/party regardless of their MP. That's why we have MPs with so many objectionable views on a range of topics, MPs who are proven liars, MPs who lobby etc. Most people don't actually care what their particular MP stands for.

This campaign is aiming to focus on particular MPs, for a lot of them who are in safe seats they aren't going to be particularly motivated by it.

Continuing to pressure political parties to back policies that prevent self ID and put in place a sex based definition would be a better approach. And that means targeting the leadership and the party grass roots, not individual MPs

Who is behind it really isn't relevant. It's a question to be answered. It's the contents of their statements that matters, not who is recording their statements, ffs.
That's stupid. Like blaming the camera operator for what they record.

From what I can see so far it seems to be coming out of the pro Free Speech movement
This really concerns me too.
We already have free speech in this country, subject to defamation laws and laws around inciting hatred. I am very wary of "free speech" movements as to me they appear more often than not to be right wing people wanting to erode protection to the vulnerable. The "health and safety gone mad", anti "woke agenda" people. They support people like Jeremy Clarkson, Nigel Farage, Russell Brand.

I think women should be very careful with this one.

I cannot see the issue with an MP answering this question and voters having access to the answers

They will need to be upfront and answer

Good

I totally see your concerns. However on the other hand it is also wise not to underestimate the seductive nature of simply standing up for women as well and letting women free to say what they want is dangerous to any set agenda.

The problem for the right, especially in the UK, is once pesky women start getting listened too on one topic they can end up influencing a bunch of other stuff as well. Oh we will just let Julie Bindel say something because we can use it it to attack Labour... oh wait now she is saying rich corporate men also need to to be reigned in too. Now the women are using the platform we gave them to demand better child care and safeguarding. Oh no they had their own agenda all along!

Yes I have no doubt that some on the right are using the free speech issue in their own interest, and there are definite difficult choices where free speech vs safeguarding are discussed. None of this is easy.