This year’s ‘celebration’ of women is anything but

Celebrate International Women’s Day? Yes please. Make mine a pint. Of wine. I am indeed a woman, not a womxn or a Mx or even cis. I am just an ordinary gal. Macho sometimes, a diva others. I am indeed all kinds of everything but then the only person allowed to say “I’m Every Woman” in my book is Chaka Khan.

Actually, I don’t feel we have much to celebrate at all. Call me a party pooper if you like, but political parties themselves are doing the pooping.

The Green Party, with its sole MP, decided at its recent conference what its priorities were. And women are not one. They debated a motion that argued women are discriminated against “solely upon their biological sex”. (Is that even a debate?)

In the vote, 232 were for it and 289 of these fruitcakes voted against. All of this is done in the name of not marginalising the rights of trans people.

It’s hard to know now who is trying to alienate women more: the Lib Dems, Labour or the Greens. All are dismissing their own female activists to include a minority with disproportionate power.

It is not that trans rights don’t matter – many trans women have been pushed to the front of the International Women’s Day celebrations – but let’s have some perspective here. In this country, up to three women a week have been killed by their partner or former partner during Covid.

We live with this domestic terrorism. Rape convictions are at an all-time low. Globally women aged between 15 and 44 are far more at risk of rape and domestic violence than from cancer, war, car accidents or malaria.

The sad truth is that women’s rights were going backwards and Covid has pushed them further down.

Women were more likely to work in shutdown sectors than men, more women were furloughed, women did most of the domestic work and home schooling, many are using food banks and struggling to cope. Child care was non-existent when nurseries and schools were closed, so how were mothers supposed to work?

This is no surprise when we look at the top of government. What does astonish me is the absolute stupidity of the Green Party, or any

Pretending biology is irrelevant helps no one, however they self-identify

party that professes an interest in saving the planet, not making the obvious connection between promoting women’s rights and stopping climate change. It’s a no-brainer.

When women are educated and given access to contraception, life improves for everyone. They have fewer children and are the most vocal activists for cleaning up the environment. I have witnessed this myself in Uganda, India, China and refugee camps all over the world.

The ecology of the planet depends on women’s emancipation as well as our resourcefulness. That the Greens should not see this in order to mollify the gender fluid is simply pants.

Indeed, the new right-on feminism beloved by those who mainly want to be seen as a little edgy but basically on trend ignores the global difficulties women face, from sex trafficking to paid surrogacy, genital mutilation to the menstruation huts where women are often sent to die.

All of these things are related to the biology that we must now pretend is irrelevant. This is lunacy and it helps no one. No one at all, however they self-id.

Many of the policies that parties are forcing their members to sign up to are done in the name of “inclusion”. Inclusion of whom, one may ask? Certainly not inclusion of those who most need help in this world.

The effect of all this is actually the exclusion of many women who have been the backbone of party organisations for many years but no longer feel they have a place. They are not transphobic at all. Indeed in the case of Labour, many of them are lesbians, long-serving trades union activists and people who fought hard against Section 28.

I can’t speak for the Greens, who have always seemed to be dotty geography teachers, but good local councillors concerned about trees and bin collection. But I will never vote for them again. Ever.

Quite what International Women’s Day is for now I don’t know, as we have lost both the internationalism and the women. Gender equality remains a far-off dream. Never mind liberation.

For that to happen we may have to acknowledge that women exist, that we have a right to call ourselves what we like and to remove our support from organisations and parties that do not recognise that.

Womxn can organise their own set-up as far as I am concerned. Just don’t ask us to make the sandwiches. We have better things to do.