Government launches national taskforce aimed at tackling misogyny across society

[BridgetYourFortyDaysAreUp]

'No woman should have to curb ambitions out of fear': National taskforce to tackle misogyny launched | UK News | Sky News

Yawn.

Yet another attempt to "deal with misogyny."

How about starting with a bold, public statement, Bridget: "Stop pretending that men can be women and learn to deal with reality. Women and girls have rights, too."

A national taskforce aimed at tackling misogyny across society has been launched by the government.

The group will seek to root out harmful attitudes online, in workplaces and within communities, bringing together representatives from women's organisations, academia, local leaders and ministers.

Women and equalities minister Bridget Phillipson told Sky News' Sunday Morning with Kamal Ahmedthat the taskforce "will tackle some of the attitudes that we've seen develop, particularly in recent years, that I thought were a thing of the past".

She continued: "And I want women to live lives of opportunity, of freedom, and not to have to worry about whether they feel safe on the street, whether they're safe in their own home, about whether they'll face harassment on public transport, attitudes in our schools that young girls will experience.

Dear Bridget,
Define “woman” and “women”, then we can begin.
Thank you.

I’ve just seen Bridget being interviewed about this. Not one single mention of who the actual problem is. It’s as though we have this huge issue and everyone is working together to tackle it across society. But we can’t seem to identify the people causing it.

I'm happy to wait and see what concrete policy announcements they make next week under the banner of 'dealing with misogyny.' Infuriating as it is that she fails to accept the boundaries of the concept 'woman', I don't think it completely hogties all the other possible initiatives.

I am really struck, though, by the rise of this word 'misogyny' over the last decade or so, during which it has gone a long way towards replacing 'sexism'. I suspect that this change is down to the fact that 'sexism' uncomfortably evokes the material reality and significance of sex.

I can see that there might be some useful resonances that 'misogyny' has and 'sexism' lacks - chiefly fear and hatred of women. But 'sexism' is a usually better term because it hits hard on the injustice that supervenes on violence and abuse against women. Namely that they face greater dangers than men and more exclusion/marginalisation than men in a range of situations.

'Sexism' is focused on the outcomes suffered by women, rather than the mindset of men. We should talk about misogyny when we are discussing men as a social problem, but in other contexts we should centre the effects on us, rather than continuing to centre men's distorted perceptions of us.

This should be interesting

they are going to try and tackle it while pretending being a woman is a vague feeling a man can have, and (rightly) tackle the Andrew Tate/manosphere stuff while ignoring the fact that there are undocumented men entering the country every day who have to be told that women have rights here and consent is a thing, not tackling grooming gangs and letting tax payer funded primary schools enforce mandatory hijab.

Couldn’t have put it better myself 👏🏻

The government's statement:

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-launches-national-taskforce-for-tackling-misogyny

And some of the people involved:

(I suppose it's too much to ask for these organizations to attempt to define who they mean when mentioning "women" and "girls.")

Gary Barker, CEO Equimundo

https://www.equimundo.org/about/

Equimundo: Center for Masculinities and Social Justice has worked internationally and in the United States since 2011 to engage men and boys as allies in gender equality, promote healthy manhood, and prevent violence.

Our Beliefs

We believe that male-identified individuals must be active allies in achieving gender equality and full rights for women, girls, and non-binary individuals. Read more here.

Deniz Uğur, Deputy Director at the End Violence Against Women Coalition
https://www.endviolenceagainstwomen.org.uk/explainer/

Soma Sara, CEO of Everyone’s Invited

https://www.everyonesinvited.uk/about/values

Everyone’s Invited is an inclusive organisation. We are a platform for all survivors of all ages, religions, genders, identities, sexualities and backgrounds. Black and minoritised survivors, disabled survivors and LGBTQ+ survivors are disproportionately victims of sexual violence. Everyone’s Invited is committed to taking an intersectional approach to tackling rape culture, recognising how different forms of discrimination intersect and overlap to create unique experiences of oppression.

Felicity Oswald, CEO of Girlguiding
(we all surely know the recent background to Girlguiding by now...)

Am I encouraged? No. This looks like a make-work project for Bridget. She needs to do something to justify her place in government. I'd be very happy to be proved wrong.

NB part of the taskforce's remit is to "halve" incidents of misogyny. Which half would that be?

Ed. random text

What Equimundo believes:

(This tells me all I need to know about them. Surprised, moi?)

We view patriarchy as creating and sustaining power inequalities by men collectively over women (including cis and trans women), as well as gender-nonconforming individuals, and by some groups of men over other marginalized men, and as a social force that keeps all individuals from having the connected, fulfilled, and peaceful lives they deserve.
[my bold]

https://www.equimundo.org/we-believe/

Ah. So it's already evident that 'misogyny' will be 'gender' defined and not actually about the female half of the population, (because nice people are misogynistic in that way since women and girls became dirty words)

and outcomes will largely spend a lot of time lamenting 'transphobia' and the problems of men.

What a waste of time and money in a country where people are now afraid to put the heating on.

https://www.endviolenceagainstwomen.org.uk/our-story/

The worst part of this, for me, is that a lot of these organizations have, on the face of it, very good intentions and some fairly lofty goals. (such as the End Violence link shows) All rendered useless because of their refusal to point out the elephant in the room.

This is what a couple of decades of rewriting history, obfuscation of language, and redefining terms has given us: an inability to tackle men's VAWG and misogyny because women now include men.

Waste of time and money, indeed.

I hope Bridget is at least feeling virtuous now, because that's the only outcome this project will achieve.

Cue a drag queen being invited to talk about it.

And I want women to live lives of opportunity, of freedom, and not to have to worry about whether they feel safe on the street, whether they're safe in their own home, about whether they'll face harassment on public transport, attitudes in our schools that young girls will experience.

Keep toilets safe.
Not just so that we feel safe but so that toilets are safe. Look at the evidence. Do not design-in unsafe toilets.

Having run a lot of implementations/projects you start my defining the terms, the problem statement and the objectives. If everyone involved doesn’t understand what they are working towards and why there is no way to successfully reach the goal. So:

• Who is a woman/girl?
• What is misogyny?
• Why does it happen?
• what does success look like?
• How do we measure it?
• When do we assess progress?

I would have thought that the bare minimum, when setting up a taskforce to try to tackle some of the worst issues affecting women in society, would be to start with groups who know what a girl is and what a woman is.

With some of these organizations, the taskforce will be hobbled before it even gets off the ground.

As @MyThreeWords has noted, what does "sexual violence" mean if "sex" is a meaningless, unmentionable term? It's a very good point, I think, if we are replacing "sexism" with "misogyny" because some people (men) don't want to accept the reality of sex.

Ps. Cross-posted with @InfoSecInTheCity !

From the Government's press release (link previous):

Bridget Phillipson MP, Minister for Women and Equalities, said:

"...No woman should have to make her world smaller or curb her ambitions out of fear – and making that a reality is everyone’s business.

As a whole society, we can and must be better. With political leadership and the best experts from across the country, we will shift the dial on the poisonous attitudes that blight women’s lives, ...."

[my bold]

Think about what you are saying, Bridget. THINK. WAKE UP.

This pretty much covers what I wanted to say about this.

They've got no intention of actually doing anything about the real causes of misogyny any more than they've "halved VAWG" It's all talk.

We will halve violence against women (while allowing men into women's changing rooms, dv shelters, prisons etc and housing 1000s of young male undocumented migrants from countries with questionable attitudes towards women in various communities.

How's that working out then?

Idiots. If their ideology blinds them so far as to fail to see that trans identities are a consequence of misogyny, there's no way they have clear enough insight into the causes of misogyny to make the tiniest dent.

If misogyny ever truly went away, there'd be almost no trans people. Not because [all] trans people are knowingly misogynist, but because misogyny is the framework upon which the belief in fundamental mental differences between men and women rests, and without that belief the concept of trans identities is impossible.

I would really like at this point to see the budget for Bridget Feeling Virtuous, and just how much tax payers have coughed up for it.

I've mentioned before my Labour MP who has explained they absolutely stand by single sex spaces for women and girls (who and whatever they may be), and can wax lyrical about the importance of them, but this should not start from a point of.... exclusion of men.

This is the level of absolute banana at the highest level of government.

No thoughts, just vibes.

Nowadays I simply read this Queer Theory/Intersectional Feminism guff as part of the ongoing 'progressive' project to position all of society's ills as being caused by 'cis', white, heteronormative conservatives.

A big yawn from me.

Many people born/raised here and plenty of documentation clearly haven't been told that or they wouldn't have to be stripped of almost all their unearned privileges or be in jail for sex trafficking minors. It's a dangerous myth for victims to pretend this abuse is limited to some ethnicities or socioeconomic group.

I'm sure they'll just blame social media and look at further curbs on that.

It's a good job nobody said that then.

Did you not read my post properly?

😂

I would not be at all surprised. They can make a lot of noise with that, Bridget can chalk that up to Something That We Did, and they can kick the "men are not women" can down the road until Bridget finds a better job. Win-win!

Actually, to bring it up to 2030, they should probably blame AI. It's all the rage, I hear.