Saturday 15 December 2018

Theresa may is pretending to be a feminist again


In Tory Britain words speak louder than actions. This is clearly the only possible explanation for Theresa May's decision to pretend to be a feminist just two days after deliberately welcoming two alleged sex pest Tory MPs back into the Tory fold so that they could support her in the internal Tory party vote of confidence in her leadership.

In a celebration of 100 years since the first UK election in which some women were allowed to vote Theresa May claimed that she's "personally committed to ensuring women seize opportunities to enter politics".

It sounds like a noble and worthy ambition until you realise that her actions demonstrate the exact opposite.

One of the reinstated Tory MPs harassed two female constituents with thousands of sexually explicit text messages (no doubts about this at all, the texts are in the public domain) and stands accused of bullying a female councillor for years (Andrew Griffiths). The other stands accused of raping a former member of his staff (Charlie Elphicke).

What kind of message does it send to women who want to "enter politics" that the men in politics who are accused of sexually harassing, bullying and even raping women in politics are welcomed back into the Tory fold with open arms?

Aside from the despicable decision to welcome these two back into the Tory party before the completion of investigations into the very serious allegations against them, there's loads of other glaring evidence that Theresa May is a misogynist.

House of Commons research demonstrates that 86% of the economic burden of Tory austerity dogma has been loaded onto the shoulders of women.

Rather than do anything to reverse this outrageously sexist trend since she became Prime Minister, Theresa May has actively continued it. The most recent Tory budget demonstrably continued this ideologically-driven Tory "war on women" by discriminating against the lowest income workers (the majority of whom are women) and single parents (even more likely to be women).

One of the central ideological tenets of the Conservative ideology is that wealth provides economic liberty, and that economic liberty equates to freedom in general. So by deliberately loading the majority of the economic burden of Tory austerity dogma onto women, Theresa May and her Tory pals are wilfully and knowingly making British women less free.

Then there's Theresa May's close association with the tyrannical, homophobic, misogynistic, head-chopping Saudi war criminals.

Theresa May knows perfectly well that Saudi Arabia is the most notoriously misogynistic nation on earth where women are denied basic human rights like freedom of movement, freedom of association, and where women face severe restrictions on their rights to own property and run businesses.

Theresa May also knows that Saudi Arabia persecutes, jails, tortures, and kills women who participate in non-violent protests in favour of women's rights and democratic freedoms, yet she continues to create a veneer of legitimacy for this vile regime by sucking up to them and even welcomed them to Britain with open arms on International Women's Day 2018!

Theresa May also knows that women and children constitute the majority of the victims of the famine that Saudi Arabia is deliberately causing in Yemen as part of their wider campaign of war crimes there, yet she still keeps selling them £billions in weapons.

How can she claim to be "personally committed to ensuring women seize opportunities to enter politics" when she's perfectly happy to turn a blind eye to grotesque Saudi misogyny in order to flog them even more weapons to commit war crimes in Yemen with?

All in all it's absolutely obvious that Theresa May doesn't give a shit about other women. Especially women who have suffered sexual harassment at work, women who have suffered destitution as a result of her own party's sexist economic policies, or women suffering horrific abuse at the hands of her tyrannical Saudi mates.

But sadly many right-wing women are just as susceptible to the kind of ridiculously shallow identity-politics as people on the left are so often accused of.

That Theresa May is a woman and that she claims to care about other women is enough for them, and screw the fact that her track record proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that she's every bit as bad as any male misogynist when it comes to her failure to stand up for the women who need it the most; the poor, the persecuted, and the victims of sexual abuse.


 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.




OR

No comments: