October 28, 2024 - 10:00am
Members of the Women’s Equality Party (WEP) have been left sobbing after the leadership supported a motion to close the party. In an article in the Observer, WEP’s founders Catherine Mayer and Sandi Toksvig, announced that after a decade of dilettante feminism they were reluctantly taking the decision because of a “changed political landscape”.
“The Tories’ attempts to contain the electoral threat from the hard Right has instead seen them fully captured by it,” opined the pair, adding of the Labour Party: “The leadership barely listens to its MPs and wider membership, so it is hardly likely to pay heed to us.”
But why should politicians listen to the views of women who have virtue-signalled themselves into oblivion? Ultimately, the party failed the Ronseal test when it was unable to define the word “woman”, let alone advocate for people who were, until recently, widely understood to be adult human females. After her election as leader of the WEP in 2019, Mandu Reid told Pink News that “transwomen are women […] but they’re women among a rich tapestry of what it means to be a woman, of which we all are a part.”
In an instant Reid reduced the reality of womanhood to metaphorical soft furnishing. This put WEP on the side of those advocating for men’s right to identify into women-only prisons, changing rooms and hospital wards.
Sophie Walker, who led WEP from 2015 to 2019, warned Reid not to support a policy of gender self-identification, writing in an open letter: “I don’t know how you write policies for women, if anyone can be a woman.” Yet Walker herself is not without blame; it was under her leadership that the first scalp was taken, when academic Dr Heather Brunskell-Evans was pushed out of her role within the party for publicly questioning the idea that children should be affirmed in cross-sex identities.
Arguably, it was Walker’s parting shot marked the real end of the party. When announcing her resignation, she claimed to be “frustrated by the limits of my own work to ensure that women of colour, working class women and disabled women see themselves reflected in this party and know they can lead this movement”. Unsurprisingly, this sowed division. It suggested that simply being born a woman was not good enough, and that the party ought to focus on identity politics rather than feminism.
Yet in the years since Reid took over WEP, a bold, energetic grassroots movement has coalesced around the threat to women’s rights from trans activism. Women from all backgrounds meet to share their stories of being harassed, abused and cancelled. There is even a new political party, the Party of Women (POW), which was founded without celebrity backing or cash and managed to stand 16 candidates in the general election. Compared to this rising tide of women’s rights activists, the WEP is at best an irrelevance, and at worst an embarrassment.
There are, of course, many pressing issues that deserve both feminist analysis and politicians’ attention. Whether that’s the failure to tackle grooming gangs, the exploitation of women’s bodies in surrogacy or the prevalence of pornography, women are still getting a raw deal. Yet, the WEP opted not to tackle such tricky problems, opting instead for politics by hashtag.
In this vein, Toksvig recently berated women like those in the POW who want single-sex toilets, telling them to “shut up”. Meanwhile the Women’s Equality Party is so in thrall to fashionable causes that it even overlooks male violence when it is inconvenient. Last week when firearms officer Martyn Blake was cleared of the murder of Chris Kaba, a violent criminal who had abused his girlfriend, the WEP posted on social media that it was “both terrifying and outrageous to hear politicians say the police should be scrutinised less after they kill unarmed members of the public. No justice, no peace.”
It seems, to the minority who share the values of the celebrity class, being a trans ally and calling out white supremacy are sexier causes than boring old women’s rights. Yet, clearly, the majority of politically inclined women who have no option but to use the public services captured by such trendy ideologies disagree.
This is how the WEP has ended; not with a bang, but with a confused whimper.
Josephine Bartosch is assistant editor at The Critic and co-author of the forthcoming book Pornocracy.
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SubscribeAs a child in Ireland, fifty years ago, there was actually not a lot of difference between the classes. Most so-called “middle-class” people were just working types who’d made good, so there was a certain affinity within society. Today, Ireland is like every other western country, it’s second and third generation middle-class totally divorced from the people beneath them, yet, for some incomprehensible reason, feeling totally at liberty to speak for them and to articulate what they want. Whether they want it or not. Thus, you have the NGOs, all filled with the same university educated non-entities as everywhere else, literally dancing in the street (LITERALLY, not metaphorically) upon the passage of abortion, and screaming for the silencing of anyone who utters a word of dissent under the odious label of “hate speech”. Unfortunately, Ireland is a diseased country, and it’s not much comfort to know that the others are as bad.
I liked the bars, so its not all diseased.
A lot of these NGOs are providing social services that would otherwise be provided directly by the state, e.g. Barnardos, Rehab. But yes, some just exist as taxpayer-funded lobbying outfits… the government lobbying itself, basically. This is the phenomenon of “policy-laundering” that Mary Harrington of this parish has documented very well:
This is utterly corrosive to democracy.
I’ve always voted in elections seeing it as a small way to not accept the status quo but now with these NGO’s dictating policies behind the scenes I wonder if my vote is worth anything st all.
P.S. Thank you for comparing the NGO spend with the health budget.
Don’t give up – In Wales I went to vote at the last (local) election determined to spoil my ballot paper with “none of the above”. It’s the first time I have not voted for the “least- evil”.of the offering. Until the main parties sort themselves out or I stumble over someone worth voting for I shall continue to do the same. I will continue this while telling those who dare knock on my door what I think of them in no uncertain terms. I’m reading “Cynical Theories” by Pluckrose and Lindsay on a ‘know your enemy’ basis. I found it hard going for the first several pages but I’m getting the hang of the first-read. Seems to be extracting-the-urine is a good place to start the fight-back. Onwards and Upwards!
I always vote for whoever is the furthest right. They haven’t a chance of winning, of course, but as protest votes go, it’s about as good as it gets.
Great article. This is the template being followed in many other countries (certainly Scotland). There is also a revolving door between the media, ministerial and Special Advisor roles, to remunerative CEO and Head of Advocacy roles in NGOs. The state also funds the media either directly through the license fee (which is allocated to the “independent” broadcast sector as well as to RTE), or through lavish communications budgets. Many television programs are directly funded by State bodies, and are effectively advertorials. As journalism jobs are poorly paid and insecure, they are really just entry points into political and NGO roles.
Thanks, Conor, that was very informative.
“The National Council of Women has historically been a relatively neutral organisation, but in recent years it has adopted increasingly progressive positions, such as signing a letter asking the Government to no-platform gender critical voices.” Is this NGO trying to erase women?
Great piece
Billions of taxpayer money and philanthrocapital going to change policies and laws and the low IQ half witted goons who work in the sector consider themselves “activists”, making fools of themselves at government sponsored protests
NGOs are jobs prigrammes for half witted UCD Arts graduates
I think this is why their push back against populist politicians is so fierce. They threaten this enormous sector. If you add in universities- which you really should (at least in part) – then it probably doubles in size. Their entire existence relies on taxpayer money – but they act as if they are untouchable. Under normal conditions no politician could defund them because of the noise they’d create. But a populist politician running against the ‘elites’ could and should. Could you see a Donald Trump figure saying ‘screw the entire lot of you – pay for your own programs.’ I could. In fact in the US it is already happening – they are refusing to give loans for certain degree programs in some states.
It seems that the term ‘progressive’ is being massively misused now. Anything that contradicts our values and attitudes is being pushed as the ‘valiant,better way forward’ despite the majority not necessarily supporting it. They used to use that word in the college where I taught to try to bounce us into changes definitely not in our best interests and dubious at best.
It’ll be interesting when Sinn Fein are elected on both sides of the border to seek unification and have to suppress Protestant dissidents in the north, then watching NGOs tie themselves up in knots to support Sinn Féin’s medieval belief system based on religious bigotry and not human rights.
A very interesting article. More attention must be paid to the role of NGOs in all countries. It is quite clear, for example, that Russian funding of German environmental pressure groups was instrumental in shaping that country’s disastrous energy policies.
And the UK’s.
Strange. I made a very innocuous comment about foreign funding of NGOs and my comment was stuck in moderation. Now it has vanished. Not impressed by the moderation system.
I’ve read i another topic that the site had issues yesterday.
It’s yet another example of a lack of courage: you might expect that from the powerless but from the poerful? This smacks of craven cowardice. But that’s hardly new. We have grown men and women, highly intelligent afraid of being ‘canceled’ by ignorant morons.
And all-powerful NATO afraid of backward Russia? Wouldn’t it have been a simple matter for Sweden, Finland and Georgia to threaten NATO membership if Russia invaded Ukraine? Of course they’re considering it now! Too late cowards! And/or to increase their military spending (and all existing NATO countries as well) if the invasion occurred? Theyre doing it now of course. Too late cowards!
And wouldn’t it have been simple for the UN to instruct every member country that borders Russia to mobilise on thier borders eg India, Pakistan, China etc. immediately an invasion occurred. They would at least force Russia to split its forces and give Ukraine a fighting chance! But no! Lily-livered sanctions instead. Pretend sanctions even! Cowards!
Trying to appease rabid tyrants is never hoing to work be they Russian dictators or mad bitches!
The UK isn’t increasing expenditure, and it’s policy to reduce the army to be even more of a token hasn’t been stopped.