Women's and Equalities Select Committee

[ArabellaSaurus]

Welcomes Nadia Whittome, Kim Leadbetter, and Kevin McKenna.

This is very, very bad news for women.

https://x.com/CommonsWEC/status/1983110894835130644

Jenrick also spent most of his parliamentary career as an almost parodically conformist Cameroonian wet, until he decided to have a go at the leadership and reinvented himself as Diet Farage. His colleagues don't call him Bobby Generic for no reason.

Mordaunt is an odd character in terms of her popularity in the party. She's effectively a Lib Dem when it comes to policy, but lots of right wingers like her. Probably a lot of that is vibes, and it can't hurt that she's an unusually attractive politician. (Though I don't want to lean too heavily on Tory boys with a weird psychosexual thing for dominant women - the type exists, but not enough to swing a leadership election... right?)

Diet Farage! 😆

😂

I know American politics doesn't translate automatically, but Emily Jashinsky has some thought provoking comments here

@SionnachRuadh As you like a long-form interview, may I recommend this, if you haven't already heard it.

(The corresponding interview with Tugendhat is well worth a listen - he was possibly the most dangerous of the lot - no idea how he convinced the moderates he was their man given how unhinged his views on foreign policy were, and presumably still are.)

AOC's attack on Riley Gaines looked spectacularly poorly judged to me. And that clip is saying this shows the Dems to be 'out of touch', roughly speaking.

I suppose the accusations of 'two tier' Labour echoes that.

What I found a bit weird was that government pay people (I assume) to assess and study and survey the electorate, yet seem to get this stuff spectacularly wrong. But it was pointed out to me on here that their audience isn't the electorate. It's party members, internal and external lobby groups, other governments, global corps, etc.

Bluntly, they don't give a fuck what we think. Only inasmuch as they want to avoid civil unrest, be able to spin 'victories', and lastly when it comes up to election season, will briefly court voters.

I feel like politics is just a neverending series of onionskins where all my naivety about institutions is repeatedly stripped away.

Re the Jashinksy video, I thought it was interesting that Sanders agreed that a country doesn't exist without borders, and he was even willing to concede that Trump had done a better job of maintaining borders, but he still couldn't quite make the leap to understanding that women's rights don't exist without any clear definition of 'woman'.

Be careful what you wish for. They might and they might get changes through because Labour has a huge majority of MPs (tho not votes) and the Lib Dems (75) and Greens would support a change in the law to make certificate sex legal sex and not biological sex (which would become something no-one bothered about).

It was not always thus, but now we have career politicians, rather than politicians who have had a career, and the difference is that they have no idea what real people think and don't it matters (previously they thought it mattered 'a bit' which meant they were 'a bit' more cautious).

Or understanding from what, and why, women on certain occasions or types of circumstance, are in need of protection.

I quite like her. There are a few MPs like her on the sinking ship, and it would be a shame to lose them.

Women's support of TWAW is massive on the left, sadly. Many Lesbians also support TWAW which is why LGBAlliance gets so much hatred - they are pointing out the elephant in the room (that men cannot be Lesbians) to Lesbians who do not want to make that choice because it impinges on their membership of social circles etc. So being Lesbian or bisexual is no guarantee of being GC.

You are all quite that Jenrick will probably be the leader to take us into the next election.
Kemi will still be a Shad Minister for something and she will still keep fighting away. I doubt she will settle for an easy life.

It would be really dumb to have Jenrick as the leader at the next election.

It will just make reform and the tories sound the same.

And given how bad the tories reputation is, those inclined to the right or a protest vote will go with Reform.

The problem is that Kemi (for a Tory) probably says the rights things.

But she doesn't show boat.

So both msm and sm dont even bother with what she is saying.

We dont have politics in the UK any more. We have theatrics and desparate attempts to get media attention.

And we are to blame as well.

Just pick up on the shouty bits, or dramatic tv images.

Although on reflection if Starmer is still PM we will have 3 parties all saying much the same way. Some in an not very full on well (Labour) through the Tories to Reform revelling in being as gross as they can be. Great to know that they think this who the British are.

Yes. Although that self defined group of lesbians needs an awful lot of unpicking, there's a lot of different groups within it. A lot of whom wouldn't actually fit the definition of lesbian if you were being SCJ kind of picky, but are speaking for lesbians. And as always, the actually homosexual women who would provide the balance of views have long since been driven away from LGBT as a label or from groups or from anything not wholly man-identity centric. They're never in the polls and people who belong to the man-centric groups will swear they've never met one of these weird homosexual people who aren't actually nicely bi when a man is involved.

I should think they'll let Kemi lead them into the next election, and when it all goes badly wrong for them, as it seems likely it will, they'll blame her and then have an leadership election to replace her. A leadership contest now would be to much of a poison chalice, nobody will want it if they know they'll have to stand down after their defeat in the next election.

Now they know how Labour felt!

After the understandable defeat my thinking was this:
Someone sensible was needed to hold the team together whilst our Party leaders came to terms with reality and worked out policy and the way forward. Then when we had a set of policies we are happy with we take them around the country and measure reaction. With about 15 months before the next G E, a new fresh Captain takes over and we go on to win about 150 Seats. At the moment I accept that seems optimistic. But hell let's be ambitious.
Kemi is keeping the show on the road - but only just. At a personal level I am disappointed in her. I think the party accepts that she is OK.
Jenrick is the best hope for a high profile leader to take us into the GE. Cleverly, Philp & Victoria Atkins are very good and are not likely to have extreme views and will be good in senior positions in my view..

Eleven members of the committee - two of them on record in believing in the existence of women.

Rosie Duffield, Independent and Rebecca Paul - Conservative

What a farce.

We have two sane members, but like the best women they are doing way more than others.

Important question from Rebecca_SPaul in the CommonsWEC this afternoon on the importance of single-sex changing rooms for women and girls.

"It's not just about them being safe, it's about them feeling safe."
Thread
https://nitter.net/hartleythinking/status/1983582870288335212

I find it interesting that Labour seem to think it's a requirement for the token men on the committee to be gay men.

It reminds me of workplaces where DEI leads conceive their job as "rainbow lanyard stuff" and are genuinely surprised to hear that there are nine protected characteristics.

Quite.

When there is much ranting and emoting and scenery chewing about the necessity of men with trans identities feeling safe not only physically but emotionally, spiritually, expressing their true self and feeling welcomed and respected and all the rest of it - but this is not in any way extended to the women the man wishes to share the room with, never mind equally extended, and the speaker gets cross when this is questioned - it becomes very evident that this whole 'safe' business is a lie.

There is no belief in the value of any of this. Just a belief that men matter in ways that women emphatically do not, particularly when they are required for service to the man, on a binary, sexed basis. All the wittering is nothing more than disguising this revolting misogyny to themselves and the electorate while bullying women into line.

Committee for the Elimination of Women and Equality nails it really.

And what a light it shines on the current state of the Labour Party. Absolutely shameful. What do you say, Deputy Leader Powell?

Oh. Nothing.

Labour have lost all moral compass on this. Well said Rebecca Paul.

I can see this logic, but it’s possible Kemi’s position will be made untenable and then surely Jenrick or another man will have to step up.