Party of Women – number of votes for 16 women brave enough to take a public stand

[IwantToRetire]

290 ... Lisa Morgan ... Barrow and Furness
332 ... Julia Maria Long ... Bexhill and Battle
196 ... Kellie-Jay Keen ... Bristol Central
452 ... Catherine Briggs ... Doncaster North
318 ... Katharine Margaret Murphy ... Finchley and Golders Green
244 ... Hazel Exon ... Honiton and Sidmouth
354 ... Lesley Woodburn ... Islington South and Finsbury
116 ... Una Marie O'Mahony ... Kensington and Bayswater
283 ... Liz Panton ... Newcastle upon Tyne East and Wallsend
455 ... Linda Jane Law ... Norwich South
337 ... Katherine Mary Longthorp ... Oxford East
482 ... Louise McDonald ... Sheffield Heeley
295 ... Bernadette O'Malley ... South West Hertfordshire
274 ... Bev White ... St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire
286 ... Kelly Jane Oliver Dougall ... Tynemouth
363 ... Seonaid Dawn Barber ... West Worcestershire

Original thread here https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5092728-party-of-women-has-16-candidates-standing-for-election-on-4-july-2024

You may be confusing me with someone else. I never once said breastfeeding or menopause groups are being overwhelmed by men.

Well done sinnerboy. There would have been one in our household (and 2 women) had we had a candidate.

My husband told people at his work he would have voted for PoW given the option.

I pulled up a male colleague last week for referring to PoW as the anti trans party last week. I asked him if that was true, or whether they were about women's rights.

He blustered and said they're 'extreme'. I asked in what way? He said they tell people that h if labour get in you will get the sack for saying TW aren't women.

I pointed out that even though this belief is currently protected by law, people already have been sacked for saying this.

He then blustered again and said he wasn't going to argue with me.

So, he was trying to mansplain women's rights to me, a woman, getting it wrong and then trying to shut me up. Ok. Tell me again why we don't need PoW mate? 🙄

I'm gender critical but keep eating too many crisps.

Who'd like to go next?

There is considerable infiltration of breastfeeding groups, which of course were originally set up to ensure that babies were fed in as natural and nutritious way as possible. Now that focus seems to have slipped.

La Leche League

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/05/01/breastfeeding-la-leche-league-suspends-trustees-trans-women/

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-43071901

https://internationalbreastfeedingjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13006-024-00624-1

Yes, KJK made that comment. I can't speak for her but I think her reasons are she wouldn't want to hire someone who believes they as a male have the right to use the female facilities at work. Not because they are trans per se. I could be wrong though. I can understand women being reluctant to hire someone that could prove a legal minefield at work. The renting thing though is different.

I don't believe trans people should be discriminated against simply because they're trans. At least, that was my starting point. However, the more I think about it, the more I can see why someone wouldn't want to rent a house to someone so diametrically opposed to their beliefs, beliefs that they find morally repugnant and abhorrent. I would be uneasy knowing someone who fundamentally believed womens rights to single sex spaces is wrong and should be abolished, in fact shouldn't have existed as right in the first place (as many trans activists have told me on social media - we women should never have had the right to single sex spaces, according to them), was living in my house. Posting on forums, sitting in my house, posting those views. Advocating their position. That me, their landlord, didn't deserve our sex-based human rights as a woman. I could imagine them posting their views, from the loungeroom in my house.

It's a really horrible imagination. It feels dehumanising, just imagining it in my head just now.

Just as I can imagine many wouldn't want to rent to a Reform voter or a Tommy Robinson supporter.

Would you want to rent to a KKK member, for example?

So I guess my views on that are changing due to the visceral reaction I feel imagining that person advocating and activisting (if that's even a word) from my house. I would feel like I would need my house cleansed by an exorcism or something. So the more I think about it, really think about it and actually visualise it, the more I can see where KJK is coming from. We all should have the right not to sell or rent to someone whose views are so absolutely horrifically repugnant, that the idea would distress us.

Six trustees of a nationwide breastfeeding support group have been suspended for demanding that biological men be excluded from their services.

A transgender woman has been able to breastfeed a baby in the first recorded case of its kind, researchers say.

This case report underlined that lactation induction protocols commonly used for cisgender women are also effective in transgender women. However, the amount of milk produced may not be sufficient for exclusive nursing. Nevertheless, success of induced lactation may be attributed to its importance for parent-infant bonding, rather than the possibility of exclusive chestfeeding.

If people think lactation fetishists aren't going to keep going on, and on, and on, they're naive.

The Internet is plastered with men desperate to do this.

So maybe read the post I was replying to before you tell me I'm ill informed and shouting IT ALREADY HAS HAPPENED at me

Um, before jumping to one tiny bit of the post, maybe consider my "IT ALREADY HAS HAPPENED" response was to your denial that self ID becomes the norm, and sterilising gay children and encouraging irreversible surgery resumes, unchecked, and it's all rolled out in schools like fact, if it's all men taking women's medals and opportunities - would happen.

The British wing of La Leche League (LLL), which gives mother-to-mother support to those finding it hard to breastfeed, has been told by its US-based board of directors that the service cannot be single sex and they must support “male lactation”.
They were also told that the use of the term “mother” could be a “roadblock”, and that questioning gender ideology was “harmful”.

La leche league, Cassie. You said yourself you don't believe men can lactate. So what the fuck are they doing there?

Still claiming it's "hyperbole designed to scare women." ??

I think saying menopause and breastfeeding groups will be overwhelmed by men is scaremongering, yes. Which is what the poster said.

You can find as many links as you want to services being trans inclusive, that is not at all the same as "overwhelmed by men".

AstonScrapingsNameChange · Today 14:52

Crikey, your colleague is a bit of a plonker.

Self ID is not going to become the norm. Sterilising gay children "unchecked" was never happening and after the cass review, it's certainly not going to "resume".

Overemotive, hyperbolic language designed to scare people is not helpful.

Oh I see, it's about the number of men? Not the concept.

Got it.

For me, it's about the concept.

And the fact that even one man in a group of women seeking help with how to get their baby to latch on, would feel overwhelming to those women.

And the fact that the entire group, in 89 countries, have a policy that allows men to join, on the basis of ... saying they want to.

Self ID all around the world already IS the norm! All a male has to do is say he 'identifies' as a woman. Even males in Planet Fitness in the UK and other places prove this!

Sterilising gay children unchecked already IS the norm all around the world. It's not hyperbolic, its the hardcore proven truth!

It's the Swiss cheese concept. Safeguarding illustrated by slices of Swiss cheese with holes in then. And when you get all the holes to lineup, you've got a loophole the size of a planet.

Telling men they can join lactation groups on the basis of the fact that they would really like to is going to attract, guess who?

It's my post this quote comes from.

Fair enough, cassie. You think my worries about what could happen in the future were we all to just give in and let this happen unchecked are scaremongering and an overreaction?

In reply, though, you are taking the stance that this NEVER happens and there is no evidence that it does.

So let's take a midpoint - if a man WERE to join a breastfeeding group, for example, and it distressed other members, do you think it would be fair and reasonable for those women to ask for the man to be removed?

Do you think it would be fair for those women to ask if that man could be excluded from SOME of the meetings, so that they can be more comfortable, but he doesn't have to be excluded from ALL of them as there would be women who don't have a problem with him sitting amongst them, putting his nipple into a baby's mouth?

That could apply to all sorts of scenarios and I would support it - men can join women's groups as long as the other women consent and there are parallel services where women who do not consent to share their spaces with men can feel comfortable.

Would you support that, as a solution to this specific issue?

Because this compromise has been suggested, specifically when Sarah Summers was looking for support from a rape crisis centre in Brighton, and she was told no. There was no process or inclination to exclude men from the rape support group, as long as they identified themselves as women (GRC certificates and documentation was never requested, so this is in fact self id).

Sarah was told to find another service. If there had been one, ba service where she could access a woman only support group where men were excluded, even of they did identity as women, it might not have been a problem, but there wasn't one.

See again the recent Edinburgh rape crisis employment tribunal for another example.

So what would your suggestion be, for these women, who want women only services in these specific scenarios which have definitely already happened?

Personally, I find the concept that breastfeeding groups, formerly respectable and well known, encouraging men to sit in on the women, just because the men want to, really bloody scary.

Likewise rape crisis centres. It's fucking petrifying that women cannot have a woman only space to discuss their rape. Or have to just cross their fingers and hope.

And there are people on this thread claiming that this doesn't happen 😑
Ah well - some people believe women have penises and the world is flat 😹

The refrain of TRAs:
"That's never happened."
"That isn't happening."
"That will never happen."

It's oh-so predictable.

And if it does, it's not much.

Yep, it's not much, what's the problem?

Complacency and ignorance about what was happening is what got us to where we are now.

Where did I take the stance it never happens? That is not my view. You are projecting.

if a man WERE to join a breastfeeding group, for example, and it distressed other members, do you think it would be fair and reasonable for those women to ask for the man to be removed? yes. I don't think males should be at breastfeeding groups.
I think a trans man would be fine though, they might need support. So it depends what you mean by "man".

I have a problem with extrapolating from a scenario where some males might try to infiltrate a breastfeeding group, to a dystopian future where menopause groups and breastfeeding groups are "overwhelmed by men". That statement is hyperbolic and in my opinion scaremongering.

LLL which is active in 89 countries actively encourage is men to attend their breastfeeding groups.

Men who, clearly can't lactate, and have no need of a breastfeeding group. And the actual trustees who object have been suspended.

You don't think that's a dystopian attitude?