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

The question isn’t focussed on penis or not it’s What is a Woman

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 answers will be recorded so we can see what MPs say

Those uncomfortable with it may have something they’d rather hide but for the rest of us it’s a great start

Mark Gallagher:

www.pagefield.co.uk/people/mark-gallagher/

"Mark Gallagher is widely regarded as one of the leading communicators, campaigners and political lobbyists of his generation. He founded the award-winning PR Agency – Pagefield Communications – in 2010, which now employs a team of fifty communicators, having served close to 300 companies, countries, charities and extraordinary individuals.

Before launching Pagefield, Mark was Director of Corporate Affairs and Chief of Staff at Europe’s largest commercial broadcaster, ITV plc, was the first communications director to sit on the main shareholder board of any large British company at Camelot Group plc and was Public Affairs Director at ITN, Europe’s largest broadcast news producer, where he was the youngest member of the Executive Board in the company’s 50-year history.

At Pagefield, Mark has advised companies as diverse as Airbnb, British Airways, BAT, Discovery Networks, Starling Bank and the World Economic Forum, alongside clients of unique global significance – including members of the British Royal Family and the estate and family of Professor Stephen Hawking.

Mark also sat on the advisory board and working group that delivered the Thames Diamond Jubilee Pageant for Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, with Pagefield being the first external communications firm to deliver PR for a major Royal event. He was a Trustee of the Museum Association, served two terms as a Commissioner at the Royal Hospital Chelsea and has spent several years on the external advisory group of His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury. He is a trustee of the London Youth Choirs.

Mark was the only consultant to be included in the top 50 of Iain Dale’s most politically influential people in the UK. He has appeared annually in Bloomsbury’s Who’s Who since 2017 and the PRWeek Power Book for more than a decade, where he has also been listed amongst Britain’s top ten public affairs campaigners for many years. Mark has featured several times in the Evening Standard’s Progress 1000: London’s top one thousand most influential people.

Mark advises a number of private clients around the world through his second business – Riverside Advisory – which he turned into a separate limited company in 2019."

I appreciate that this is Mark Gallagher in his own words but he seems far more a member of the slightly left of centre Establishment than a Machiavellian arch-manipulator sneaking around in the shadows trying to trick women out of their birthright.

I disagree because I believe it is a yes/no answer.

No, I am not doing the same as believing TWAW, from any side.

There is no good answer for particularly female MPs. Say "women cant have penises" and get rape and death threats from TRAs. Say "legally, women can have penises" and get ridiculed by the press and accused of fence sitting like starmer and castigated by feminist groups.

I'm not looking for a good answer, I want a correct answer - ie what someone believes to be true. That is what the website will deliver and that is what many people want to know. If a someone believes in something they should stand up and have the courage of their convictions. They are expecting to be paid a reasonable salary for the job of politician after all.

If more people had done this over the last few years, then maybe we wouldn't be in this ridiculous situation.

"There is no good answer for particularly female MPs. Say "women cant have penises" and get rape and death threats from TRAs. Say "legally, women can have penises" and get ridiculed by the press and accused of fence sitting like starmer and castigated by feminist groups."

Political parties need to address this issue very quickly, don't they? So that they don't leave any candidate exposed to any threats, or any abuse from any person or group. So that they provide support for candidates to answer the question. Clearly and without any ambiguity.

On the other hand, is pushing back with discussion and questions not allowed?

@JanesLittleGirl what you've missed (because he deleted it) is that he represented Prince Andrew and engaged in some dark arts:

https://theweek.com/951692/prince-andrew-advisers-used-internet-troll-attack-sex-abuse-accuser

@KristenH@DadJoke
I think we've already established that generally those who think the new website is a good thing don't care if Mark Gallagher is 'pure' enough.

Sounds like a person who has diverse interests and a very wide professional experience and draws from a wide range of sectors.

I asked this question of the Lib Dem wannabe councillor when he came knocking on my door, he muttered and would not say.

This is an excellent idea, I will keep my phone handy when they come calling!

Everything is "allowed"
I, as a random FWR poster, don't like this as a strategy. I don't think its particularly clever and it doesn't tell us anything we don't already know.

I far prefer Posie's poster tactic and asking MPs about their definition of women to making it all about penises.

Sorry if this seems a bit troll-y but... why? Why is this a big issue for feminism? More so than say - maternity rights or sexual violence or prevalence of pornography? Or access to palleative care or painkillers or medical models for heart attack recognition or autism diagnosis which are based on the male experience and mean women get reduced access to medical care. These are issues which impact millions of women.

Trans people are only a handful, a teeny tiny percentage of our population. And classifying a trans-woman as female doesn't make any cis-women less women?

I just genuinely don't understand why this is something we get so exercised about but maybe I'm missing something?

I'm interested In the question, the person being asked and the answer. I don't care who asking it, Barney the Dinosaur, the green Power Ranger, Mr Kipling, Joe Biden, Skeletor, I don't care. Fuck, Tufton Street could wrench itself from its foundations and go round asking. Donald Trump! Who is asking is of no interest to me.

Although Skeletor would be awesome.

I take it back, Barney the Dinosaur...terrifying <shudder>

He might be quite good on the PTA.

Has anyone nominated an acceptable alternative agency that can offer a similar level of experience who would be even willing to do this?

To provide a robust platform that has the level of security for the website to cope with service denial attacks and to manage this without worrying about being doxxed and personally threatened? Which professional agency would be acceptable that offers this level of service?

And I am talking about professional services not purely activist driven services.

That is the question though

Go by the copy in the article

to ask each one the question: “What is a woman?”

Because if you dismantle the meaning of 'female' or 'woman', then all of those other rights become meaningless.

Women face disadvantage due to our biological sex.

For that reason, we have additional protections enshrined in the Equality Act.

If you can't define 'woman' then the protections cover men, too. Which renders them meaningless.

I dgaf about how people want to identify - women need our rights, and to have rights to fight for all of the things you mentioned, we need to be defined in law.

I'm just going to get some lunch so short of time, but for starters and to give you something to chew over:

If anyone can identify as a woman then women's right, women's healthcare, women's single sex spaces, women's sport etc etc stop to being for actual women and are just peoples rights, peoples healthcare, mixed sex spaces, mixed sex sport etc

If you can't identify what a woman and any Tom, dick or Harry can choose to opt in, these issues you mention can't be addressed to help the people they are supposed to be helping - ie women.

classifying a trans-woman as female doesn't make any cis-women less women

Classifying a man as a woman means that the category of 'women' no longer exists.

If you are happy for all sports to be mixed sex, all prisons, hospital wards, toilets, changing rooms, shortlists, groups, to be mixed sex, and oppose all sex segregation, then fine.

Many women are not happy for those things to happen and want to maintain our sex-based rights.

And one more thing! The EHRC specifically noted that, for example, transmen may still require protection against discrimination when pregnant. If you predicate it all on 'gender' then any transman could be sacked for being pregnat and would have no legal recourse whatsoever.

Sex matters.

Great. I think there is room for different tactics from different groups.

The website has not be published yet, so who fucking knows what the final question will be. If you want to be involved and to shape the question and what content is on that website, get involved and contact Sharron Davies, I am sure she would put in contact with the group and would welcome any assistance.

In the meantime, has the question been chosen because Starmer has shown us just how unreliable 'what is a woman' is when it is answered by a 'spin doctor'? I have little confidence that a question that allows such indirect answers will give the result of allowing voters to know what a candidate thinks. As per Starmer's latest contribution.

A Skeletor and He-man double act on the website would be awesome, especially if they announce each politicians answer with 'by the power of grey skull' 😁

Genuine question though but again... why?

Protection against discrimination on gender should apply to anyone right? Like I have two sons and if they wanted to go into early years education I wouldn't wish for them to be discriminated against because of their gender?

Equally I wouldn't wish for anyone to be a victim of sexual or partner violence. Those laws don't need a different definition of women and men as both are victims and perpetrators. Far more women victims than perpetrators but I don't know you would need specific laws to recognize that per se. Getting to a place where no one is a victim or perpetrator of either is I think, a question for our society and culture rather than the law.

If we have a legal system which is totally gender blind, would that really make things worse? Obviously police and so on need to be trained on different issues arising with different groups (eg: male and female models for engaging in coercive control my differ) but that isn't just a male / female thing - it would include cultural sensitivity and many other things. That's just decent policing.

I'm not being deliberately obtuse I just don't get what we think is at threat?

Because if you include biological males in surveys, tests, facilities and research for women, the results are meaningless.

Gender pay gap? Disappears if you count males in there.

Differences in heart attack symptoms? Don't be silly, now we're counting males in the results for women, they're exactly the same.

Womens crime suddenly looks just like men's crime in terms of type, severity and ferocity.

Don't be stupid.

Now I think you're the one being deliberately obtuse with the reference to sport and changing rooms :-)

Those things are not defined by our legislature. They are determined by culture. The 'sliding scale' argument could be used to say that in a society which permits alcohol everyone will end up smack addicts. We are living proof that you can permit some things (eg: addictive, harmful substances which can kill) but not others and people mostly respect that boundary.

I don't see that there is a huge groundswell of anyone other than a teeeeny tiny minority of campaigners who would advocate that all sport is mixed, or even that trans women be allowed to compete alongside cis women. I don't even see trans women in sport arguing they should be allowed to compete against women other than a few tiny little outliers.

Equally with changing rooms. There are so few trans women! And if one wanted to get changed in the ladies changing room at Zara at the same time with me that would probably be... just fine? Like I'm trying to think how often, living in London, a trans woman crosses my path and it would maybe be once a year tops. It's not like there is a swarm of invading blokes waiting rubbing their hands ready to come into our changing rooms?

If you cannot define women and girls, female people, in law and policy to be a unique and separate group of human beings, how then do you create laws that protect all female people (of any gender or age).

"And classifying a trans-woman as female doesn't make any cis-women less women?"

How does classifying a male as a female improve the lives for female athletes? How do you suggest that protects the needs of women and girls to be safe and have fair competition?

How does classifying a male inmate as a female inmate and therefore admitting those male people into a female prison improve the lives at all for those female prison inmates? Particularly since a large % of those male people seeking admission into female prisons are sex offenders. Do you think this is acceptable?

How does classifying a male person as a female person and accepting that male into a female rape crisis centre group or a female refuge improve the lives of those female people who have suffered significant harm at the hands of other male people? Do you think that male inmates should be included in female only rape crisis centre groups and services and female refuges? If so, why?

Do you think it is acceptable that a male teen who identifies as a 'girl' should share sleeping accommodation and shower facilities with female teens at an away trip where they have to share sleeping & shower accommodation? If so, why?

Do you think it is acceptable that a male over the age of 8 years old is naked in a communal female changing space with girls or women? If so, why?

I suggest that yes, you are missing something.