The managed silence of women in politics

[IwantToRetire]

None of this needs a censor’s red pen. It takes venue policies, “values” statements and security theatre – and a legal climate ambiguous enough to chill – to make people police themselves. That’s how self-censorship becomes the house style.

You don’t need prohibitions when you have process. Venue terms. HR protocols. “Dignity at work” rules stretched past their purpose. Security assessments that become vetoes in all but name.

Layer in legal fog – see the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act, with its elastic definitions of “abusive” speech – and the effect is predictable: people trim sentences, swerve topics, decline invitations, and ladle on caveats until the point collapses.

Result: careful words, careful silences, careful disengagement. The oxygen leaks out of debate and everyone learns to breathe shallowly.

... watch where the stage literally disappears – where apologies are issued for a guest’s presence, and “security” is the pretext for cancellation. It clusters around women who speak plainly on sex and gender, or whose faith informs their politics.

For years they were told to take up space. Now the instruction is different: mind your tone, moderate your beliefs, make yourself smaller. That’s not equality; it’s an equal-opportunities gag.
Hard censorship is obvious: a cancelled event, a withdrawn platform, a disciplinary.

Soft censorship is subtler and more corrosive: “we can’t support the impact of hosting you”; “let’s not distract from priorities”; “for unity, could you not raise this now?” None of those measures bans content. All shrink the space where women can contribute. ...

Continues at https://thinkscotland.org/2025/11/censorship-with-paperwork-the-managed-silence-of-women-in-politics/

We categorise women as being the female people and men as male. So does the Supreme Court. The Equality Act is how we manage competing rights. There is no right to enter a space designated for the opposite sex.

There is no category of women that contains male people.

Forstater was fired for believing this. FiLiA's conference venue was vandalised because some of FiLiA's speakers believe this. There is stilll a chilling effect on women's ability to say "women don't have penises" and that's what this thread is about.

Interesting

I cannot say anything gender-critical in public in my own name as I work in Equalities in the public sector. I would be an easy target to claim I was transphobic and get me sacked, despite there being no evidence of transphobia because I'm not.

Everyone knows I'm a feminist but I can't discuss this aspect of women's rights or publicly join the battle because I and my children cannot afford for me to lose my current and future livelihoods. Maybe when I retire.

So yes, there absolutely is self-censorship. And it is predominantly women self-censoring.

Such an interesting thread. The idea that anyone's arguing women haven't been silenced / are self silencing, both in and outside politics, is nonsense. It's so well documented with the BBC's recent issues highlighting how the media have taken an active lead.

The whole issue of 'gender' has been used as a Maguffin, a way to signal loyalty, to show who is willing to chant a mantra, no matter how absurd. And then can be used as a way to punish dissenters.

It is phenomenally weighted against women, too.

One only has to look at the difference between what happens when, say, Rosie Duffield says something on the matter and what happens when Wes Streeting says something.

Yes, the TRAs will go mad after both of them, but only one has ever been censured from the top/other party members.

Put it this way, the term 'terf' is 100% 'gendered'. Women are terfs. Men are just saying something people don't find okay I say, steady on chap.

But women are dehumanise by 'terf' or 'germ' and banished forever. We are easily tainted by the wrong beliefs or statements, and tarnished beyond redemption.

I suppose it's the old virgin/whore dichotomy re-branded for the 2020s.

Women are performing their requisite female roles, or they are worthless.

Agree, thank you

@IwantToRetire
What is the point of constantly posting on a feminist board where there is a shared understanding that women as a sex class are oppressed by the male sex class.Therefore all discusion is through this prism.

Thanks for the linked article in your OP and for this comment. I might spend more time on FWR if the trolls were kicked off.

So, I’ve just watched Babs the Taxi driver for the first time, @RedToothBrush . How on earth did we end up where we are when men could clearly see the situation back then? Noticeable that it is men in both shows.

When did that get forgotten? Monty Python (also men) got it, LoG and LB got it.
They knew! So why was that all ignored in favour of the victim mentality?

And I am without a doubt unable to talk about this anywhere else. There are two groups of people in my world- the ones who agree but it’s ’such a tiny problem, let’s just be kind, it will never happen, stop going on’, and the ‘people are literally dying because you said that out loud!’, bunch.

It’s infuriating. The penalty is social (including some family) exclusion for me, rather than losing my job. But my work is without doubt pretty woke.

Nevermind the 'we'.

How did Gatiss, Moffatt and Russell T Davies work together at any level and not end up having conversations about the impact of authoritarianism, censorship or themes about fantasy and denial of reality? These are integral to Dr Who. They all have this idea of 'the dark side of everyday life in all classes' to some degree.

Literally the only explanation is a level of huge misogynist undertones.

When you look at the background, careers and general beliefs of the three of them its pretty mind-blowing on a macro level and micro level.

Politically there's something missing.

There's obviously a massive elephant in the room here thats not a bull elephant but a mighty elephant with tits.

I had no idea there was a Russel T Davies connection.

Gatiss has written with both Moffatt and Russell T Davies previously for Dr Who.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Gatiss

His career is fascinating.

Toxic masculine nerdsville central. (On a personal level a lot of this works for me, but jesus, there's a blind spot in his writing).

🎯

It was the first signature of trans rights activism that I perceived. The dupers’ delight joy of reversing reality as a DARVO.

Yep.

And I think seeing it, become a factor in women digging to the trenches and setting up for WW1 levels of stagnation.

I self censor for fear of displaying my ignorance at times, but here goes- when they analyse conversations/films/meetings and identify the ratio of air time taken by men v women…
I’d be interested to see that done on FWR/MN. Obviously we don’t know who is male, but we do know that some posters take up a lot of space compared to others.

Also, discussion v argument. You can want to have a conversation about an article, work out the implications, see what holds and does not hold. I’d call that a discussion.
In contrast, you can have arguments. When people are focussed on drowning out other opinions, uninterested in refining their own ideas, interested only in disproving other people’s, perhaps even disagreeing for the sake of it, that’s not discussion, it’s argument.

Sometimes MN reminds me of toddlers grabbing your cheeks and turning your face towards theirs, putting their fingers in your mouth, because you are talking on the phone. Me, me, me mummy! Look at me!

Self censorship is often associated with lower levels of confidence.

Men who know shit all are much more likely to blah their way through something and fake it than women.

Also, discussion v argument. You can want to have a conversation about an article, work out the implications, see what holds and does not hold. I’d call that a discussion.

Straw man arguments are for when you have no other clue and ad hominem attacks are known as the argument of last resort for a reason. If you have nothing else attack the reputation of MNetters rather than have a credible discussion based on substantive matters.

This is a pattern that's becoming more and more prevalent round these parts as one by one these court cases and emerging scandals give no where else for discussions to go as TRAs literally run out of respectable arguments.

Don’t self censor on here, @PrizedPickledPopcorn, that post seemed pretty accurate! Of course MN in general and FWR in particular is a very unusual discussion forum in being majority female. It might be vaguely interesting to see how some of the ‘sealion’ types who beach up here from time to time post on a more typical, ie male dominated platform.

When a venue cancels because of protestors threatening to break things, they are putting up a big neon sign that says "we negotiate with terrorists". The venues ought to refer themselves and the protestors to Prevent.

Once again, I am minded of this study.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-33613781

'"Low-status males that have the most to lose due to a hierarchical reconfiguration are responding to the threat female competitors pose," the researchers, from the University of New South Wales and the Miami University in Ohio, write. "High-status males with the least to fear were more positive."

...
When performing poorly, players increased negative statements toward women and submissive statements toward the men who were winning.
"As men often rely on aggression to maintain their dominant social status, the increase in hostility towards a woman by lower-status males may be an attempt to disregard a female's performance," the researchers write.'

It's more important for men to kick a ball than it is for women to speak on matters of law and policy that affect us profoundly.

In other words, another example of police misogyny on a day ending in Y.

They are certainly making their beliefs clear, yes.

Let's not forget Julie Bindel taking legal action against Notts City Council for cancelling her talk - and winning!

Also, though, wrt online/social spaces: 'taking up space' doesn't just mean 'posting a lot'.

Silencing women can also include derailing women's discussion, intruding on conversation and hijacking it with 'not a question, more of a comment' interjections.

It’s that pattern of insisting on engagement, repeatedly demanding that women reply, respond, justify themselves, or defend against bad-faith claims. The online equivalent of street harassment, the belief that women own men attention and that their silence is a challenge to be overcome.

Anyone who has spent time online recognises the dynamic and any woman understands it instantly.

When women don’t respond, some men often treat the silence as acquiescence. And every woman knows this type of encounter—the man who demands a response even while being rude, insulting, or deliberately provocative. The entitlement and pressure to “take the bait” is the point. It’s a performance of attempted dominance framed as debate.

Very much on the subject of self-censorship: does anyone else remember a database that I saw a while back, which was a series of anonymised testimonies from staff and students in academia, about feeling unable to be honest about their views on gender, and how that affected them?

I don't remember where I saw it. It's not the list of hounded academics, with newspaper references, that is on Sex Matters - the focus was on people who were still under the radar but only by keeping quiet, rather than ones who were suffering because their views were known.