Misogyny row rocks the sisters

HOW distressing for a party that boasts ‘a proud record on progressing women’s rights and freedoms’ to be embroiled in a toxic row involving accusations of ‘grotesque misogynist rage’.

But this is what happened after pressure group Standing for Women, which believes only people born as women can be called women, put up a billboard in Liverpool city centre.

It quoted the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition: ‘Woman; women/(noun) adult human female.’

This was a challenge to Labour policy that its all-women shortlists of election candidates should be ‘ open to all women, which of course includes trans women’. Within hours of going up on Monday, the poster was removed after activists condemned it as ‘transphobic’. Standing for Women said this was ‘an act of grotesque misogynistic rage’ and it is seeking legal advice.

All this poses a dilemma for sisters in the party, which, in an anti-feminist move, also yesterday abandoned a plan to guarantee to have a female jointdeputy leader.