Gender Criticals - how are you going to vote in the election?

[ProfessorFlitwick]

My political views are centre-left. I am genuinely unsure how to vote in the next election because I am absolutely not voting for any party that supports harmful woke ideology. I am curious to hear how other GCs are thinking of voting next year?

I'm perfectly aware no rights can be taken for granted but I find the chatter about reproductive rights being at risk in the UK under a Tory government quite bizarre. There is simply no evidence that the Tories are anti-abortion. - we've had them in power for 13 years (including in partnership with the DUP!) and the direction of travel has only been towards more liberalisation (tele-abortions, northern Ireland). Thatcher was pro-choice ffs.

While we should never take our eye off the ball (northern Ireland again) I am very cynical about those import US culture wars into UK discourse. I'd go further and say pro-choicers who are trying to centre abortion in mainstream British political debate 50 years after legalisation should be very careful what they wish for.

Plenty of people in the Labour party want safe auto-erotic asphyxiation on the school curriculum and managed sex work zones like Leeds Holbeck. Plenty of weirdos on both political party fringes (or mainstream).

@Kucinghitam "What I've learned from many years of scolding by Good People on here, is something along the lines of...

Expressing an opinion that is different r

But there are now extremists in the centre, it seems to me. I don't want to vote for a party which is going to roll back rights that women won, for example, 200 years ago thanks to Elizabeth Fry.

@FKATondelayo I agree. I’ve never seen anything about the “rolling back of reproductive rights” as Tory party policy so I can only assume that a) somehow all right wing parties are lumped together as having the same policies and American right wing is the same as UK right wing etc, and b) it’s Project Fear to scare us all into doing The Right Thing and voting Labour.

I’ll be voting Tory for the first time ever because my MP is onside and I don’t trust Labour on this issue at all.

I'll spoil my ballot with 'Terf' stickers.

Labour got 69% of the vote in a recent parliamentary by election, they’ve never had less than 50% since the seat was first created.

My one vote makes no difference to the election outcome if I cast it or spoil it.

So I’d tell your mum that there is no way to remove anyone’s nose from anyone’s face in my constituency, let alone my own.

SNP, Scottish Greens, Scottish Lib Dems - I'd rather burn my ballot paper than give my vote to any one of those women hating fuckwits.

Scottish Labour - comes closely behind in the ballot burning stakes. A bunch of craven fuckwits.

Scottish Conservatives - not a fan and will never win in Scotland - a wasted vote.

Alba - eh. Too problematic and I no longer believe in Independence.

ISP and Independents - no point. Too small.

I have no options. Same as many others up here.

I couldn't agree more with your paragraph about Starmer. When he said that 99.9 percent of women don't have a penis it was the final enraging straw for me. He really believes that 0.1 percent of women (35 thousand in the UK) have a penis? Of course not.

Once women lose the right to define ourselves independently of men, the lives of women worsen. This is what the Labour Party stands for.

The more time goes on, the more I believe that the Labour movement stands only really for men in general.

There's nothing democratic about being forced to decide which party will do the least harm at implementing an elitist topdown global ideology.

No electorate asked for gender self-ID to replace sex. The majority of voters reject it. No-one is sitting in foodbanks, or dole queues, or hospital wards, or schools or businesses thinking - "I really hope the next government prioritises mastectomies for teenage girls and synthetic hormones for sex offenders. That's the key issue."

Shaming voters for deciding not to play this game is pointless. Most women on this board participate in political life to an incredible degree - campaigning, lobbying, meeting their MPs and councillors, writing letters and articles, going to protests and talks, raising awareness. All the women in my WRN group are school governors, charity workers, volunteers, council candidates, sit on police boards and are active in membership groups.

So they have decided to spoil their ballot or not vote at all. So what? They do more for democracy than most who just show up once every 5 years.

I've never voted Tory but I can't vote Labour.

This is the only issue to me. Without knowing who is a woman, everything else falls apart.

You vote however you want, but I will vote for womens rights and freedoms. If that requires holding my nose, then I'll do that. You say I've no perspective, I say you dont care enough.

I really dont want clueless and spineless to run the country. I'm pretty sure super difficult decisions have to be made when running a country.

If they are not as twaw as they appear to me, they could fix that quite easily. Just say the right words. But none of them bar rosie duffield have managed to accurately define a woman. Not even the leader of the party. And dont get me started on womens "safe spaces" what gobbeldy gook is a safe space? What is a woman in this scenario?

It really is astounding to me how many supporters of my old party seem to believe the way to secure our votes is to belittle women's concerns and tell us to get some perspective. And who act like we're too stupid to know the difference between the Conservative party and the US Christian right.

Come on Labour, you could still get my vote. Do better.

It's astounding to me and I've never even voted Labour before. This would have been the first time.

In fact the longer this shit show with labour goes on, the more I think they just dont want to be in power.

This is not really a difficult decision to make. Give some tiny fuck about women, or keep on with the twaw line.
Let's face it, all us women would be super happy if they just dropped twaw, we would likely vote en mass for labour, landslide victory and all. Labour could at this moment even leave in all the errant nonsense about gaza/benefits/that shit about saving the NHS and more. Just this tiny crumb would see them through to victory.
Yet this close to the election and still they wang on about 99.9% and safe spaces. So sad for them.

ALL THIS! 👆🏼

Anyone who hopes that the Conservatives will be more protective of women’s rights than Labour is not keeping up with events. The Conservative Party’s first choice for leader was Liz Truss, and Liz Truss has just endorsed a Republican (ie. Donald Trump) as the next President of the US. Donald Trump’s base is the US Christian Right.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/nov/27/liz-truss-republican-president-election-2024

If you're going to single out one of my posts, you could at least take the trouble to check what else I've said. I made it clear in my first post that I don't vote Conservative and want a change of government.

Do better.

I write to my Labour MP frequently. I keep a tally of how many times I've written and how many responses I've had. It's quite the ratio. She also refuses to meet with me.

I bumped into her a few weeks ago and spoke to her briefly. Mentioned that Labour are making it very hard to want to vote for them over the conflict between women's & trans rights. Her response, "do you really think you've got a choice?"

That arrogance alone is why I will vote Conservative. It's a safe Labour seat, but she lost half of her majority at the last election, the neighbouring constituency went Conservative. I appreciate this was Brexit related and there won't be that influence this time, but it shows people are not as fixed as they'd like to think.

I'll still be poor no matter who is in government and my Labour MP clearly doesn't give a shiny shit.

https://www.votenone.org.uk/protest_votes_count.html

Her response, "do you really think you've got a choice?"

Hah, she probably posts on this thread

Tactically. Between Reform and the Tory party, if predictions are correct, the whole thing's going to be a shit show and the prospect of having a govt thats more right wing than it is makes me shudder. None of the other parties inspire any great sense of confidence.

In short, no idea yet. It's all very depressing.

In fact the longer this shit show with labour goes on, the more I think they just dont want to be in power.

I've thought this for a while. It's a lot easier to be the opposition than sort out our country's many irreconcilable problems.