The Women's Equality Party is rotted through

sent by group of former WEP members

Sandi Toksvig and the Wi Spa flasher

Three witches, three heretics, three TERFs, three bigots. Three highly motivated feminists from three different worlds who put their faith in two influential women - Sandi Toksvig and Catherine Mayer - and the vision they had to create a new kind of politics; to do things ‘differently’. A political party that had at its core one aim - to cease to exist because all other political parties had finally recognised the simple yet elusive reality: women exist and we matter. 

We gave our time, our money and our ideas to this experiment because we believed in a better world where male violence was a thing of the past, where women were not discriminated against for procreating (or not), and where our girls could grow up without being sexualised in their school uniforms. Instead, we are now told by our leaders that men are women, that ‘woman’ is a feeling, and that sex-based rights are hate speech. Well, the ones who deign to speak to us that is. The silence from our mighty founders is deafening. 

Some brilliant feminists have already left the party, whilst others are hanging on by their fingertips. Recently we finally got our hands on the much-awaited motions for the WEP conference (suggested policies to be added to WEP’s existing policies that are debated and then voted on in conference)  - an event that was supposed to be a rushed, one day, elitist affair in central London but was hastily put online after an avalanche of complaints and some resignations. A conference where non-members can vote on motions if they pay £50-£80, but actual members with kids or jobs might find it a little harder. 

As we scrolled the list of motions, two of us on our way back from the mighty FiLiA 2022 event in Cardiff, what did we see that WEP leader Mandu thinks is the most important issue facing women today? 

Self ID. 

Mandu’s motion here:

As you can see in the motion she’s decided to completely ignore the interim Cass Report recommendations on self-ID and the care for gender non-conforming kids that has led to the Tavistock closing. Or that Mermaids is under review by the Charity Commission due to having a pro-peodophile advocate on its board AND a communications manager who enjoyed showing his penis and arsehole to the world on public ‘art' forums. There’s no recognition of the scandals upon scandals proving the cold hard fact that gender identity ideology is responsible for hundreds of perfectly normal, if not perfectly happy, adolescents believing that they will be happier if they try to be something they are not – and all based on the most appallingly regressive sexist stereotypes. If you like football and don’t like pink you must be a boy! Why not chop off your breasts and take cross-sex hormones which will render you infertile? And remember, anyone who dares to suggest a course of exploratory therapy or counselling to see why you feel as you do, and maybe help you come to terms with the healthy body you have, hates you and wants you dead.

She’s happily ignored the recent sporting bodies including World Rugby excluding men who identify as women to play in women’s sports to maintain safety standards and fairness for the female players. And as for women in prison? Well, let’s just lock them up with rapists and sex offenders and murderers so long as these criminals call themselves ‘she’. Nor has she recognised the increasing oppression and silencing of women, especially those who are escaping and / or recovering from male violence, who want access to female-only spaces. Or the thousands of pieces of writing, articles and factual evidence showing AGPs using the trans umbrella for nefarious purposes and abusing women and girls. Or just that EDDIE IZZARD NOW SAYS HE’S A WOMAN (except when he’s playing male parts for a big-budget TV series).

As one of the witches in our heretical coven said upon reading Mandu’s motion: Seriously? The Women’s Equality Party can’t see or say what is wrong here? 

Nope. Mandu, along with her cabal of TRAs - deceptively renamed as her Deputy Leaders or the ‘Democracy Committee’ (which has yet to be founded) - have decided to double down and support self ID wholeheartedly. They think that by mentioning the single-sex exceptions in the Equality Act they make it all right, but they're not saying how the party will promote or strengthen the single-sex exceptions. Nor do they recognise that anyone who tries to hold the line on perfectly legal single-sex spaces is liable to be subjected to barrages of abuse (Oh, hello, JK Rowling!). They claim in this terribly written motion that women’s shelters losing funding is the problem we should all focus on, yet if you dare to mention that these shelters are losing funding FOR BEING WOMEN ONLY - you are ostracised and labelled a TERF. Their own VAWG Spokeswoman Tabitha Morton refuses to even acknowledge that WEP’s own policies emphasise single-sex spaces. 

They are living in a bubble that even Twitter would be proud of. After one election a deputy leader said to one of our witches in disgust: ‘I don’t want to hear one more woman ask me about sex-based rights’. The idea that this subject ‘isn’t coming up on the doorstep’, or that all their members support Self ID is bullshit. They complain all the time about how much it comes up, yet still they think that by silencing us, forcing us out, and by making the party intolerable for any woman who doesn’t repeat the mantra ‘Trans Women are Women’, that they will be on the ‘right side of history’ - so that they can then go and start their NGOs or be industry leaders or run whatever vanity project they aspire to next - after destroying a party that was born out of the blood, sweat and tears of thousands upon thousands of women. 

None of us can quite believe that the party with the word “women'' in its title has been so unwilling to support women in the fight to maintain our hard-won rights, in favour of validating the feelings and wishes of trans women who, with the best will in the world, by definition do not know what it is to be female. That our party is funded - and therefore run by - a straight white man who works for Google, has a ‘trans child’, and wears a ‘This is what a feminist looks like’ T-shirt with no hint of irony. But maybe we’re the ones in the wrong for being surprised, or shocked, or disappointed. For having hope. Because this is a party where - in the wake of the Wi-Spa incident - someone posted their concerns in a WhatsApp group, a group that included WEP’s anti-VAWG spokeswomen and other leaders in it. And when other group members - survivors of male violence - added to this by stating they didn’t want to be in a women’s only spa with with male-bodied people, those so-called defenders of women’s rights laughed at them. 

Here are the screenshots. They called the mother who reported the incident a ‘Karen’ - a deeply misogynistic slur. This was allowed. The woman who said it was applauded, not disciplined. White women calling a woman of colour a ‘Karen’ and then blaming her for bringing her child to a spa - saying that the mother was responsible for traumatising her child, not the sex offender getting his penis out in front of children. Gross face emoji’s at the idea of Korean Spa allowing nudity & children in single-sex spaces. A quick backtrack when they realised white Europeans do it too. No disciplinary actions. No words to remind us to ‘be kind’. No removal of the hateful posts, nor warnings or ostracism for the offenders. Just a jolly good laugh by a bunch of white, middle class, liberal feminists at a woman of colour and her daughter being targeted by a sex offender and then demonised in the press. ‘Intersectional feminism’ in all its disgusting, racist, misogynistic glory. 

Remember, the man in the spa was revealed to be a convicted sex offender.

This is the true face of the Women’s Equality Party. This is why most of us have left. We have nothing but admiration for those that stay - that continue to fight the good fight and to do solid feminist work in their local branches and who - every time a conference comes around - spend hours upon hours writing motions and amendments to hold the party to account, and to force it to follow its own constitution. Fighting for the soul of WEP is like fighting with the man who keeps punching you in the face as he screams ‘look what you made me do’. It takes on average seven attempts for a woman to leave her abuser. How many attempts will it take before those that are still fighting finally walk away?