The (literal) end of the Women's Equality Party

[WomanDaresTo]

Proposing to close themselves: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/oct/26/womens-equality-party-to-vote-on-closing

Shame it didn't work out - i was excited when they launched.

TWAW issue has nothing to do with the demise of the party

So, those of us who left over the lack of due process for HBE, not a TWAW issue?

Sophie Walker's comments since stepping down? The disagreements in the meetings? Walker's letter to Mandu Reid?

I’m writing to ask you please to scrap your proposed motion on self-ID to the Women’s Equality Party conference this weekend. I think you’re making a terrible mistake and wish you would reconsider.

I have no right to ask this of you except as one feminist to another. I am not a member of the Women’s Equality Party and have not been for a while. The leadership and management groups in the party do not make it a comfortable home for women who do not accept the ideology of gender. I left for many reasons but this was one of them. (I am aware of course of the irony of this. I feel responsible for every woman who left WEP when I was Leader on the same grounds, as I struggled to hold the party together around this schism.)

But here we are, and history is repeating itself. Four years ago, a group of WEP members brought a motion to conference to ask members to approve a policy of self-ID: That anyone could be a woman on their own say-so. I was deeply concerned about the implications of this motion and that it could be passed as party policy by the small percentage of party members present in the hall. Working with the members who brought that motion – to whom I am still grateful – we instead held a special debate, and the motion was referred back, with a request that the party undertake a members-wide consultation.

https://www.wepsbr.com/post/sophiewalkerletter

The alignment of the agenda with the main funder?

The re-writing of history happens quickly. I expect that the fantasy history will be forthcoming.

ETA: given how much WH usually uses even-handedness as cover for having different perspectives, why didn't WH take the opportunity to interview Sophie Walker for her views?

Women's Hour just finished a hand-wringing interview with Catherine Meyer and Sandi Toskvig. Dear god, that's my BP buggered for the day, then ...

I heard it was happening and couldn't bear listen. Ridiculous lying nonsense.

Hope your BP is steadily lowering.

As said upthread - privileged women involved in a vanity project that centres men rather than women's rights. I suppose if your political activism ignores women's rights and child safeguarding, you'll never be insightful about your limitations in running a party for women (and your preferred men).

Ugh, WH already featured one of them and I complained then. May have to complain again.

The best quote on WH was, in the context of talking about self-ID, Toksvig saying "I couldn't be more trans-inclusive."

I got the impression that her and her WEP mate regretted that they'd not been able to do more for transwomen.

@nauticant and the reason for them not being able to do more is the amount of inconvenient, pesky women members (the majority I believe) who expected the WEP to centre women's needs, which from the start they weren't good at, prioritising things like chairs for men on maternity wards and trans prison policy.

Listened to the interview. Sandi Toksvig is such a disappointing fool. I'll never, I think, stop being frustrated and baffled at the number of women who hitherto seemed to be intelligent and have turned out to be either craven cowards or rather stupid or simply desirous of having their fingers permanently in their ears.

It's probably been said before but ....

It's a side effect of British feminism deciding trans people would be their main priority- feminist individuals and groups who were well respected a decade ago just before the obsession started are now shutting down.

The funny thing is, that is exactly right, but not the way you mean it!

And they decided that males who claim to be women should be their priority, not people who claim a special identity in general

Toksvig? This Toksvig?

@RethinkingLife thanks for your post about WEP internal politics. I heard this WH slot whilst driving down the M11, through Huntingdon, so was very focussed on staying below 70mph. Which saved me from getting annoyed.

I actually felt soooo sorry for Sandy who sooo wants to keep her career that she would say anything (that she knows not to be true) to do that.

Someone bought me her autobiography, i did not get very far into the jolly hockey sticks language, and chucked it in the bin, lest it screwed my credibility.

She is a satirist, and a be nice lovey, who has never possessed any personal traits that could possibly be suitable to the arena of politics.

She is and has always been a hollow and sometimes witty CLOWN.

I read her almanac of women. Every day of the year was linked to another woman who has largely gone unsung.

The thing is, she must've said, several times, that women routinely get written out of history, or maligned in order to undermine their credibility or power. She absolutely knows what happens to women.

And the stupid thing is, she included a man in that book - who identified as a woman. she made a point of saying so, something about she knows not everyone will agree!

She didn't have to bloody go on women's hour. She could just not publicise her unbelievable inability to connect the dots.

So it makes me think she knows exactly what's at stake, but is prioritising something else, very likely her career. Or maybe one of her children is trans.

Either way, it's a bit shit.

Datun her partner is a psychotherapist who makes much of her LGBTQI++++++++ experience.
I presume that it wouldn't do her career much good to have her famous wife saying that men can't be women.

I started to respect Sophie Walker when she attended a WPUK meeting, listened to WEP being hissed & booed, then stood up, identified herself & said she’d come to listen. That took guts.

I thought they'd split up?

Or even

oh well, that's the islington dinner party circuit fucked then.

off you fuck then and don't let the door hit you on the way out...

So glad I missed it; I had far too much to get through yesterday and that would have ruined my day.

Helen Joyce for bbc balance ?

I suspect that many women who are masculine lesbians, autistic or otherwise non conforming( being a bit detached, overly idealistic, centred in their head rather than in their body) feel little empathy or alignment with women as a group - and so cannot get their head around what the problem is. "Women are just like men but with different bits", aren't they?

Helen Joyce for bbc balance

No chance. The number of times I’ve suggested it to WH…

Most of the masculine lesbians I know view gender as sexist bollocks.

The WEP reminded me of being a teenage attendee at 1980s women's groups set up and attended by middle-class, white women where meetings could end with women accusing one another of putting the interests of middle-class, white women above those of black men, gay men, working-class miners, Latin American men, and whales, who were all more oppressed.

Yes, in the sense that they themselves are non conforming; but a lot lesbians do seem to get behind gender identity theory and the whole trans business - maybe as a result of that non conforming nature......and Sandy Toksvig may well be one of them.