Tag: Feminism

Civil-Liberties, Law-&-Justice, Media, UK-Current-Affairs, UK-Politics

The Partisan Mainstream Media, and Bias-by-Omission

‘Tory rapist’ allegation: how hypocritical, virtue-signalling, point-scoring MPs and a selectively reporting, biased, partisan media combined to undermine further both the presumption of innocence and the rule of law.

Note: longer and updated version of the article originally published at The Conservative Woman on Sunday 09 August, 2020

Despite a plethora of stiff competition, ranging from Covid-19 to the post-Brexit trade talks and beyond, there really was only ever going to be one contender for the lead story on which our fearless Fourth Estate turned its forensic, objective and impartial gaze last weekend.  And that was the Conservative MP arrested in connection with an alleged sexual assault.

Although it ought to be axiomatic, I suppose that in the current atmosphere of febrile, intolerant, censorious Wokery where silence is automatically deemed to be conclusive evidence of acquiescence, I must for the avoidance of doubt declare right away an absolute abhorrence of any kind of unwanted sexual assault, or even attention.  Particularly in the workplace context of boss and subordinate, it’s often not so much an expression of sexual interest as an exercise of presumed status or power.  So, for the record, if the arrested Tory MP is eventually found guilty by due process of law, I want him both expelled from the Commons and imprisoned.

But equally, that should in no way impede the expression of legitimate reservations about how his arrest has been reported and subsequently treated.

‘Tory ex-minister arrested over rape‘ splashed the Sunday Times, notably omitting the word ‘alleged’ from its headline, and helpfully informing us firstly, that the man was an ex-minister and secondly, that the alleged assaults took place in Westminster, Lambeth and Hackney – both of which might be interpreted as narrowing the possibilities down somewhat.

From the Sunday Telegraph‘s headline, we learned, further, that the man was a ‘senior Conservative‘ – whatever that means these days – and was in his 50s.  It then took me only approximately 10 minutes to establish there are 89 male Tory MPs currently ‘in their 50s’, i.e., born between 3rd August 1960 and 2nd August 1970.  Without laboriously checking the parliamentary careers of each, to anyone interested in contemporary politics, it was obvious just from the list of names that not all were ‘former ministers’ by a long stretch.  One was, therefore, probably looking at a shortlist of no more than 30 possibles.  So much for anonymity.

Already, the Times, the Guardian, and the Financial Times were either demanding that the Tory MP in question be named, suspended, have the whip removed, or even sacked, or going further by additionally criticising both the party (and by extension the Government), for not having done so immediately.

This pressure intensified over the following days. ‘Row grows over failure to suspend Tory MP accused of rape‘, protested the Times.  ‘Tory MP arrested on rape charges should have whip withdrawn‘, scolded the Guardian, purporting to report the words of Labour MP Jess Phillips. ‘Tories criticised for not taking sexual misconduct claims seriously‘, chided the Financial Times. 

On Monday 3rd August’s edition of BBC Newsnight,  the ever-willing rent-a-quote Phillips let rip.  Living up to her uncomplimentary – but not entirely inaccurate – ‘Midlands Motormouth’ sobriquet, she condemned the Tories’ failure to name and suspend the accused MP, and declared Parliament was not doing everything it could to make itself a safe workplace.

‘Chief whip defends lack of action against Tory MP accused of rape‘ followed in the Guardian on Tuesday 4th August.  As did the predictable call from ‘a coalition of women’s charities and unions‘ for the accused MP to be suspended while facing investigation, on the grounds that failing to do so represented ‘another example of minimising violence against women‘.

Then, on Wednesday 5th August, it was the turn of the Spectator‘s Isabel Hardman, with an implied criticism of the Tories’ parliamentary whips as ill-suited to deal with disciplinary issues like misconduct, particularly of a sexual nature.

Finally, on Saturday 8th August, the Times‘ Esther Webber contrived to add a bit more unsubstantiated innuendo to the pot, suggesting that the Conservative whips’ office had been aware of concerns relating to the alleged behaviour of the arrested MP dating back to 2010 – which would, of course, narrow the range of possible arrestees down even further, in excluding by definition anyone not elected before 2015.  So much for anonymity.     

However, there’s one rather large elephant in this particular room-full of indignation; one which both protesting politicians and harrumphing hacks alike overlooked, or perhaps more likely, chose to ignore.  It was hinted at early on in the imbroglio by Tory MP Michael Fabricant, but seemed to gain no traction whatsoever.

It is that, on 10th February 2016, the House of Commons itself voted to change its procedures so that any arrested MP would not be named or otherwise identified (which either suspension or removal of the whip would undoubtedly do).  Moreover, the proposition was passed with only one vote against (the then Labour MP and now recently ennobled John Mann), which implies that among those voting for the change was – yes, you’ve guessed it – Labour’s current Shadow Minister for Domestic Violence, one Jess Phillips MP.

Although the Commons’ decision to abandon naming an arrested MP appears superficially to confer on MPs rights which are not available to others, it’s easy to see the logic behind it.  Once the arrested MP was named and suspended, in such a relatively small workplace, the identity of the alleged victim would quickly emerge.  Is that what the ardent namers and shamers in Parliament and the Press want?  Or are they happy to throw the victim’s anonymity under the bus for the sake of some political point-scoring?  So much for anonymity.

Nor should it have gone largely unremarked that some of the MPs who were shouting the loudest for the accused Tory MP to be named and shamed are also usually among the first to argue for anonymity for alleged rape victims in other circumstances.  The double standards on display are nauseating.   

Yet not only did the Newsnight presenter not challenge Phillips with this inconsistency, much less suggest that, by condemning the application of the very procedure for which she had herself voted, she was guilty of both rank hypocrisy and blatant political opportunism.  From what I can see, in the reportage contained in all the supposedly ‘quality’ press articles linked to above, that 2016 decision of the Commons itself, to prohibit the naming of an arrested MP is mentioned nowhere.

To assume that every single political reporter or lobby correspondent involved in the production of all this material would have either been unaware of that 2016 change or had forgotten about it, especially on such a clearly sensitive subject, seems to be stretching credulity beyond its limit.  It’s hard, therefore, to dispel the suspicion that it was specifically and deliberately not mentioned, because that would have diluted or negated the narrative which the media wished to convey.  In other words, bias by omission.

Not that the media alone are deserving of criticism.  The ‘Conservative’ Party, which currently appears to be frightened of its own shadow, reacted by giving its now-familiar impression of a rabbit frozen in the headlights of an oncoming truck, and allowed the opportunistic ‘Liberal’-Left a virtual monopoly of comment. 

Where was any immediate statement to the media by any Tory MP that, with a police investigation under way, the matter was effectively sub judice, and that excessive both public speculation and premature assumptions of guilt could jeopardise a successful prosecution?  Were I the accused MP’s lawyer, I would have been screen-grabbing every tweet issued taking his guilt as a given and demanding his head, and compiling a portfolio of them to present as evidence prejudicing the possibility of a fair trial.

Why was four days of Trappist silence allowed to elapse before Boris Johnson managed to deliver a semi-apology for his party neither identifying nor suspending the arrested MP? 

Where, also, irrespective of the details of the present case, was any forceful riposte that the non-naming of any arrested MP is specifically the direct consequence that 2016 House of Commons decision for which many of the zealous self-appointed Pestfinders-General themselves voted?  Not to mention a sharp reminder that the presumption of innocence still applies until a guilty verdict by a jury?   

Which leads to another point worth making: that the importance of upholding the presumption of innocence is so readily either disregarded or dismissed is an increasingly disturbing feature of the Woke witch-hunt.

Ever since the advent of the #MeToo movement, no longer are the finger-pointers content to wait for due process to take its course; they demand instant condemnation and punishment of the presumed guilty perpetrator based on (often one single) accusation alone. Woe betide he or she who objects, especially if facing the likelihood of a viciously aggressive social-media pile-on. 

Is it too fanciful to suggest that the prevalence of the New Puritanism is conducive to the mainstream media feeling it can abandon impartial and accurate journalism for partisan activism with impunity?

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The Curious Case of Peston’s Paramour

Note: Revised version of the article originally published at The Conservative Woman on Wednesday 2nd October 2019

Right from the outset, both the story, and even its layout, looked fishy.

When, late that Saturday evening, the Sunday Times splashed with the revelation by its Deputy Political Editor that its new Style Magazine columnist Charlotte Edwardes was using her very first column to accuse Boris Johnson of squeezing her thigh beneath the table at a private lunch, the doubts arose immediately.

For a start, only at the foot of the fourth paragraph was it clarified that the allegation was no fewer than 20 years old. Could that have been to make that rather important detail invisible to a non-paywall reader?

Set against the apparent 20-year delay in going public on the accusation, the timing of its eventual revelation looks intriguing. Because if the alleged assault was as discomforting as Edwardes suggests – and there is no reason to believe that, if it indeed took place, it was not discomforting – then she does seems to have missed a remarkable number of opportunities to bring it to wider attention.     

Since the time when Edwardes claims she was assaulted by Johnson in 1999, it’s possible to identify at least 11 politically-significant occasions on which she could reasonably have reported it to the general public, and thus amplify in the public domain the issue of his suitability or otherwise for office. She could, for example, have disclosed it –

  1. when Johnson successfully stood for election as MP for Henley in 2001. She didn’t.
  1. when he successfully stood for re-election as MP for Henley in 2005. She didn’t.
  1. when he successfully stood for election as Mayor of London in May 2008. She didn’t.
  1. when he successfully stood for re-election as Mayor of London in 2012. She didn’t.
  1. when he was selected as the candidate in 2014, and successfully stood for election as MP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip in 2015 . She didn’t.
  1. when he successfully stood for re-election as MP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip in May/June 2017. She didn’t.
  1. when Michael Fallon resigned, and Damian Green was accused, both over historic – 15 years and 3 years respectively – allegations of “inappropriate touching” of women, in November 2017, in the wake of the #MeToo scandal. She didn’t.
  1. when Johnson and his wife announced their separation and intending divorce, in September 2018. She didn’t.
  1. when he confirmed his bid for the Tory leadership, in May 2019. She didn’t.
  1. when the blazing row with his girlfriend, to which the Police were called, was front-page news for several days in June 2019. She didn’t.
  1. when he was successfully elected as Tory Party Leader, in July 2019. She didn’t.

At this point, one might well ask: if Johnson was such a danger to women as Edwardes claims to have felt, why did she apparently not feel compelled to use her privileged position in the media to alert other women who might conceivably find themselves vulnerable to a similar assault?

Instead, the revelation has appeared only now, for the first day of Johnson’s first Conservative Party Conference as Leader. And, moreover, in the approaching culmination of his struggle to extricate Britain from the European Union, in fulfilment of the largest ever popular democratic mandate in UK political history, in the teeth of intransigent opposition from a recalcitrant, Remainer-dominated and election-averse Parliament, a judicially-activist Supreme Court, and a substantially pro-EU hostile media.

If that is merely a coincidence, then it’s certainly a quite astonishing one. And potentially a very convenient one, too, for several of the various elements of the anti-Brexit Establishment who increasingly seem willing to resort to any tactics to stop Brexit.

It could, for example, be very convenient for Amber Rudd, ex-Cabinet ardent-Remainer, who has resigned the Conservative Whip, and who, only 2 days prior to Edwardes’ revelations, was reportedly positioning herself as our prospective interim, caretaker Prime Minister in the risibly mis-named all-Remainer “Government of National Unity” being proposed by the similarly all-Remainer Rebel Alliance attempting to coalesce in the Commons around a Parliamentary coup to oust Johnson as PM. ALR readers will no doubt form their own judgement.

Two general points about the current climate of multiple attacks on Johnson from various sources are perhaps worth noting.

First, what we’re seeing from the anti-Johnson-as-proxy-for-anti-Brexit camp is neither new, nor even original. Shenanigans and procedural chicanery in the legislature: synthetic outrage in the media: febrile talk of impeachment: and now, decades-old sex allegations. They’re taking their tactics from exactly the same playbook as the Democrats and wider US “Liberal”-Left, echoed by their reliably on-message media amen-corner, are deploying against Trump. It’s a measure of their bubble-insularity and remoteness that the possibility it might be counter-productive just doesn’t seem to occur to them.

Second, despite desperate efforts by the marinaded in anti-Brexit groupthink mainstream media, with BBC News and Sky News as ever to the fore, to give the original story legs and keep it going, as far as the non-mainstream media online political audience and community is concerned, it seems to have succumbed, to widespread derision, within 48 hours.

2019.09.30 Me on Boris & Peston's Paramour

Contrary to what I suspect the aim of the story was, people aren’t outraged, or even much fussed, about Johnson’s inveterate eye for the ladies, being far more interested in whether he delivers Brexit on time.

Social media may have its faults, and its corporate inclination to left-“liberal” censorship is a growing worry, but the power it can give even 280-character citizen-journalists to, in the jargon, disintermediate the media, and thereby disrupt and counter their desired narrative, is not to be denied.

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Visit by The President of the USA? Protest! Visit by The Emir of Qatar? Tumbleweed..

How the reaction of the ‘feminist’ Women’s March and Women’s Equality Movements to the Emir of Qatar’s London visit contrasted somewhat with their reaction to Trump’s London visit of barely a fortnight earlier        

During the week of 23rd to 27th July, the Emir of Qatar, HH Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani,  was visiting London, ostensibly to ‘strengthen bilateral relations between both countries‘, but also to seek international support in the face of the ongoing blockade, now over a year old, imposed on Qatar by Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates. 

Included in his schedule, as well as meetings with a delegation of MPs and Peers from both houses of Parliament, was a meeting with Theresa May and also one with Jeremy Corbyn, (who, despite having ostentatiously declined to meet President Trump, the elected Head of State of a democratic republic, evidently had no qualms about meeting HH The Emir, the unelected Head of State of a hereditary absolute monarchy). 

Anti-Qatar protest LON 23-27 JUL 2018The visit was not uncontroversial. Protests were expected, and duly materialised, not only against Qatar’s alleged role as a promoter and funder of Wahhabism-inspired international Islamist-Jihadist terrorism, but also its involvement in both the Syrian and Yemen conflicts. 

Nor are those its only failings. Were I a woman, Qatar would not be high on my list of desirable places to live. As a society where Shari’a Law is the main source of legislation, women can be flogged for ‘illicit’ sexual relations, by up to 100 lashes for adultery, but punished by death where those ‘illicit’ sexual relations were between a Muslim woman and a non-Muslim man.

Although never, apparently, used, stoning remains a legal punishment. Apostasy is similarly punishable by death, blasphemy by 7 years’ imprisonment, and proselytising any religion other than Islam by 10 years’ imprisonment. A woman’s testimony remains worth only half that of a man’s. LBGT rights are minimal, if any: ‘sodomy’ is punishable by 1-3 years in prison.        

The ‘Women’s Rights, Sexual Orientation, and Gender Identity’ section of Human Rights Watch’s 2017 report on Qatar noted that Qatari law on family and personal status ‘continues to discriminate against women‘. A wife’s responsibility to ‘look after the household and obey her husband‘ is enshrined in law, which criminalises neither domestic violence or marital rape.

So, bearing in mind both the Women’s March and Women’ Equality Movements’ calls to arms for vociferous protests against Trump’s visit a mere two weeks earlier. . .    

Womens March Womens Equality notifys re Trump visit. . . and particularly their forthright condemnation of his self-evident misogyny. . .

WEP Trump misogyny comp. . . there would surely, I thought, be ‘feminist’ Twitter outrage, condemnation, and protest from them, against the visit of an unelected Head of State of a country as infamous as Qatar for such egregious maltreatment of women, and on a scale at least double or triple that manifested against Trump? 

Alas not. Here, as far as I can discover by back-searching both their timelines, are all the tweets of protest issued by both groups against the Emir’s visit:

WEPUK & WML tweets protest Emir Qatar

Nor, it seems, was I the only one to notice. I fear a potential recruit to the cause may have been lost. . . 2018.07.22 Eva Bradbury WML Emir Qatar

In my earlier ‘Faux-“Feminism” on the March‘, published as recently as 13th July, I suggested that both these movements, despite their names, aren’t political movements about women, but political movements for women, and specifically for women of a certain political persuasion, exhibiting virtually the predictably-standard package of Left-‘Liberal’, fashionably politically-correct, attitudes.

I suggested that both movements present as metropolitan middle-class left-wing movements, principally for metropolitan middle-class left-wing women favouring an aggressive cultural-marxist third-wave iteration of feminism which is viscerally and stridently anti-Western generally and anti-American especially. And, outside what can be included within those parameters, one not much concerned about the rights of other oppressed women at all.

No further questions, M’Lud.

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LibDem MP’s Claim to Victim Status Goes Pair-Shaped

“Oh, what a tangled web we weave, exploiting our maternity leave” –           (with apologies to Sir Walter Scott)

Note: this is the longer (and updated) version of the article originally published at The Conservative Woman on Wednesday 25th July 2018  

Pairing’ is one of those arcane Parliamentary practices covering voting – or rather, not voting – that somehow survives where modern electronic, internet-enabled technology ought to obviate the need for MPs to vote in person by physically trooping through Aye or No lobbies to be physically counted by tellers, but doesn’t.

It’s a strictly informal arrangement, not recognised by official House of Commons procedures, between two MPs of opposing parties not to vote in a division, thereby cancelling each other’s votes out.  Though clearly equitable in the case of, say, a Minister or MP temporarily overseas on official businesses, in other circumstances it can be open to abuse.

The Commons votes of Monday/Tuesday 16th/17th July respectively, on the Cross-Border Trade Bill, saturated with Brexit significance by a 12-strong bloc of unreconciled ‘Conservative’-Remainer MPs trying to defeat their own government, were extremely close. In the end, the Government prevailed by 6 votes, mainly thanks to the votes of 5  Labour-Brexiteer MPs.

At least three Liberal-Democrat MPs, however, were absent, and so did not vote: it was over one of them, Jo Swinson, that a row subsequently erupted. The allegation was made that, despite being officially ‘paired’ with ‘Conservative’ Party Chairman Brandon Lewis MP, because of her absence on maternity leave, the Government Whips instructed all its available MPs to vote anyway, effectively breaking the Lewis-Swinson ‘pair’.

Accusation, denial, condemnation and counter-accusation duly followed, culminating in the Government first claiming that the ‘pair’-breaking had been an ‘honest’ mistake’, but then apologising profusely for it and vowing not to repeat it.

So far, so predictable. And there the matter might have subsided, but for an apparent attempt – whether instigated by Swinson herself, or by LibDem Chief Whip Alastair Carmichael, or by identity-politics SJWs from one of the other Leftist parties is unclear – to capitalise on it by playing the feminist victim-card, stressing Swinson’s inability to attend the key vote(s) specifically because of her being on maternity leave.

Perhaps, though, someone should have checked the LibDems’ Twitter feed first.

Because it didn’t take long to emerge that, despite Swinson’s maternity leave having allegedly prevented her attendance at those key Commons votes, it fortuitously hadn’t prevented her virtue-signalling attendance at an anti-Trump demonstration 3 or 4 days earlier, on Friday 13th July. Along, evidently, with said offspring.

2018.07.13 LibDems Swinson standing up to Trump

In a truly shocking, but no doubt inadvertent, aberration from feminist solidarity, this was inconveniently pointed out, by, among others, one of those 5 Labour-Brexiteers MPs whose vote enabled a Government victory, Vauxhall’s Kate Hoey. And was it right, asked commentators, to whinge about exclusion from a key vote because of being on maternity leave, but to take an infant along to what was potentially a violent demonstration?

Then it all got worse.

It transpired that, apart from Swinson, neither the immediate past, nor present, leader of the LibDems managed to attend those key votes either – the three of them accounting for no fewer than a quarter of their entire complement of 12 MPs. 

Even more deliciously, in Leader Vince Cable’s case, this was because he had been busy attending a ‘confidential dinner’ about the setting up of a new ‘anti-Brexit movement’.

Just think about that for a moment. The Leader of most pro-EU, anti-Brexit party in British politics, missing a key Parliamentary vote which could have killed off the Government’s Brexit plans, because he was absent elsewhere, conspiring confidentially with others on, ahem, a new pro-EU, anti-Brexit party in British politics.

A party leader, exposed as conspiring with others to form a new party to compete with his own party. You’d need a heart of stone not to laugh.

And not only that. A new, centrist, pro-Remain party? But isn’t this supposed to be the defining USP and key electoral proposition of the party that he now leads? The one which secured a massive, erm,  7 per cent of the vote at the 2017 General Election?

In addition, the LibDems refused to say which Labour figures, if any, had attended Cable’s ‘confidential dinner’. Was that perhaps because there was little interest from anti-Corbyn Labour ‘moderates’, contemplating a splitting-off, at the prospect of Cable as leader? And whoever might be providing the funding remains a matter for speculation.

Probably inevitably, the spat has prompted the operation of ‘pairing’ arrangements to be examined rather more closely than might otherwise have occurred. Of 2,000 ‘pairs’ arranged since the Election, reported Politics Sense, 66 have been broken: 14 by the Government and 52 by Opposition parties, of which 7 were by the Lib Dems.

Which, assuming those figures are correct, prompted the question: are the LibDems themselves the biggest breakers of ‘pairing’ arrangements?

Proportionately, the answer seems to be Yes.  With 7 out of the 66 ‘pairs’ broken since the 2017 General Election, they have instigated 11 per cent of all ‘pair’-breaks, despite having only 2 per cent of all MPs. Moreover, despite having only 4 per cent of the total number of ‘Conservative’ MPs, they have been responsible for 50 per cent of the number of ‘Conservative’ pair-breaks, and 33 per cent of the combined ‘Conservative’ and LibDem total.

Then, on the morning of Monday 23rd July, The Times reported the rumoured existence of a LibDem plot to oust and replace Cable as party leader. Given the multiplicity of problems, muddle and even failures currently besetting the party – not least the semi-existential question of why on earth anyone should believe in them as a political force when they clearly don’t believe in themselves as one – this was hardly a surprising culmination to what started out in all probability as a mere opportunistic anti-Tory, anti-Brexit gripe.

Cable, flags, rally

Going, and in just 5 days, from carping about alleged breaches of anachronistic Parliamentary procedure to a plot to defenestrate and replace your Party Leader is pretty impressive, even for the LibDems. Remind me again of that old proverb about people in glass houses?

The final irony of this whole imbroglio is that it still leaves unresolved the thorny issue of ‘pairing’. Moving in one fell swoop to a facility for real-time electronic voting, even from non-Parliament locations, sounds tempting, but e-security would be a constant concern, and the system would be wide open to voting-fraud.

On the other hand, many struggle to understand why, when MPs are provided by the taxpayer with handsome salaries, along with generous allowances for in-London housing and staff, they should in effect be excused, on sometimes purely domestic grounds, from attending and voting in debates?

As so often, the incremental approach seems to have an advantage. Tighten up the conventions on what constitutes a valid reason, justifying a pairing, for the non-attending and non-voting. And don’t enthusiastically tweet pictures of your female MP attending raucous lefty demos with a baby if you’re going to play the maternity-leave victim-card on her behalf less than a week later.

Whether, of course, this would be enough to save both Cable’s leadership and Swinson’s credibility is a moot point. One would be unwise to bet on it.                      

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Faux-“Feminism” On The March

The Women’s movements protesting Trump’s London visit aren’t about genuine feminism, but about left-wing faux-minism 

The London protests of Friday 13th July against Trump’s visit to the UK have given a chance to see in action, more visibly than hitherto, a phenomenon until recently largely confined to America. 

Springing to media prominence in the aftermath of Trump’s November 2016 election and January 2017 Inauguration, the Women’s March Movement got known principally for marching around in pussy-hats or dressed as vaginas, not to protest the oppression of women regardless of perpetrators or victims, but chiefly to protest, from the Left, the outcome of democratic elections which it disliked. 

For their UK counterparts / equivalents / imitators, the opportunity presented by Trump’s visit was irresistible. To give a flavour. . . . 

Womens March Womens Equality notifys re Trump visit

. . .although the “day of joy and love” and “the thank-you he deserves” were perhaps not what most of us would have interpreted from those innocuous phrases.

Both the WML and WEP vociferously condemn Trump’s alleged misogyny and white-supremacist racism, indisputably evidenced by the shockingly-egregious appointments, made entirely on merit, of Indian-Sikh heritage Nikki Haley, née Nimrata Randhawa, as UN Ambassador, and Betsy De Vos, a former donor to his rivals, as Education Secretary.

Curiously, however they seem reluctant to condemn, except by a no-doubt heartfelt and eloquent silence: Female Genital Mutilation, which despite being statutorily illegal in the UK for almost two decades, has resulted in few, if any, convictions: Marital Rape: Religio-cultural so-called “honour”-based violence against women: the genocide, murder, rape and sexual enslavement of thousands of Yezidi women and girls by ISIS: and the systematic grooming, rape and trafficking of untold thousands of young or even under-age, vulnerable white working-class girls, predominantly by organised gangs of Pakistani-Muslim men. 

But let no-one doubt their commitment to calling out misogyny wherever they see it, even if they’re, ahem, somewhat selective about where they choose to see it. Or not.

WEP Trump misogyny compAt this point, it might be instructive to examine the so-called “Women’s Equality” Party and its co-founder, Sophie Walker, a bit more closely. Psephologically, the electoral potential of a party whose very name could by implication be read as specifically excluding half the electorate is debatable, but ignore that.

Walker has an undistinguished electoral record. In London’s 2016 mayoral election, she received just 0.6% more of the vote than the odious George Galloway. Then, in the 2017 General Election, she decided to contest the Shipley, Yorkshire, seat of Tory MP Philip Davies.

Now you might think that the natural Yorkshire seat for a “Women’s Equality” Party Leader to contest would be Rotherham, where some 1400, mainly under-age, vulnerable, disadvantaged, white working-class girls were groomed, raped and trafficked by gangs of mostly Pakistani-heritage Muslim men. However, some women are obviously deemed less deserving of equality than others.

For Walker, Davies’ (far worse) crime was to impede the Parliamentary progress of measures to tackle male domestic violence against women, because they excluded any measures also to tackle female domestic violence against men. His arguing for true, not selective, gender-equality, claimed Walker, was “sexist” and “regressive”. So it was against him, and not for the Rotherham victims, that she stood. She polled 1.9% compared with Davies’ 51.3%. 

On BBC Sunday Politics London in early December 2017, she asserted, without offering any evidence: “gender-inequality is the main cause of domestic violence”. She continued: “the vast majority of men who experience domestic violence are in gay relationships”. Thus seamlessly blending a belittling of male-victim domestic-abuse with homophobia.

Walker regularly retails the stock Leftist narrative on the alleged gender pay gap. Yet this has been comprehensively debunked by economists who’ve shown that, once you control for factors like type of job, number of hours worked and lifestyle choices, the “gap” virtually disappears, or even favours women.

Reverting to the WML, potential clues about its own apparent insouciance about the religio-cultural abuse of young indigenous women aren’t that hard to find. The movement makes no particular secret of its advocacy of uncontrolled mass immigration, and a willingness, even eagerness, to excuse or even indirectly promote radical militant Islam, not least by readily deploying the Left’s specious “hate-crime” narrative to protect it from criticism, even in the immediate aftermath of an Islamism-inspired terrorist atrocity that killed 22 people attending something as clearly “Islamophobic” as an Ariana Grande concert.    

Womens March Islam open borders comp Womens March London Muslims comp

Where, then, does that leave their protests as “feminists” against the Trump whose alleged misogyny towers above all others?

Despite their names, these aren’t political movements about women, and especially not about securing for women even freedom from oppression, never mind true equality. If they were, they wouldn’t be so selectively myopic about the abuse of women from sources, and on motivations, to which they appear content, even keen, to turn a blind eye.

They are instead political movements for women, and specifically for women of a certain political persuasion, striking pretty much the standard package of Left-‘Liberal’, fashionably politically-correct attitudes and shibboleths.

Womens March London invite re Trump

Believe “women should have control over their own bodies”? Except victims of FGM, marital rape, and “honour”-based violence, presumably.

“Believe our planet is worth protecting”? But not the African woman cooking over a dung fire because Green-Left NGOs decree that giving her cheap, reliable energy would cause “catastrophic climate change”?          

“Believe racism should be fought every step of the way”? Victims of religo-cultural anti-white CSA need not apply.

Both movements come across as metropolitan middle-class left-wing movements, principally for metropolitan middle-class left-wing women favouring the aggressive cultural-marxist third-wave iteration of feminism which is viscerally anti-Western generally and anti-American especially.

One might ask, finally, where they were when Erdogan, appeaser of misogynist Islam and jailer of journalists (including women), was in London recently? Or where they were for the visit of Xi Jinping, fan of media censorship, show trials, torture of dissidents and summary executions, (including of women)?

Tumbleweed. Wrong kind of victims. The faux-“feminist” Leftists don’t march for them.

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