This is not strictly news but on Tuesday night I went
to see Sandi Toksvig speak as part of her fundraising tour for her new British
political party: The Women’s Equality Party. Whilst not a ‘headline’ this was
an interesting and thought-provoking evening that revealed a lot about the
state of feminism in modern Britain so I thought it warranted a blog post.
Particularly given how whenever I look at the news at the moment I just want to
bury my head in the sand. In six months’ time a man who thought it would be a
good idea to kill Muslims with bullets covered in pigs blood could conceivably
be on the brink of being the President of the United States meanwhile the UK
could be out of the EU with a man who is most famous for zip-wiring across the
Thames and cycling bikes as their leader. Things are not looking good. So
burying myself in some feminist sand for the evening was a welcome distraction
from this chaos.
Sandi Toksvig is extraordinarily eloquent given that
English is just one of her three fluent languages. She was born in Denmark to a
family who subsequently travelled around the world and has made her fame in the
UK as a presenter, author and comedian. Her new show ‘Politically Incorrect’
sees her touring the UK with the Women’s Equality Party raising awareness and
funds for the new venture which was established at WOW 2015 by herself,
Katherine Mayer and Sophie Walker. Their political strategy is to field
candidates in as many constituencies, hopefully get some votes and use these
votes to wield policy influence in the lead up to the 2020 elections. Their
manifesto is an elaborate and comprehensive document comprising many
inspirational and admirable policies to improve the lives of women and girls in
Britain. Not just women and girls however. Their slogan reads that ‘Equality is
better for everyone’ and this was at the core of Sandy Toksvig’s message on
Tuesday night.
The first half of the show was hysterical feminist
stand up enriched by Toksvig’s astounding knowledge and witty humour. She comes
across as a hilarious human encyclopaedia. The stand-up is structured around trying
to figure out why men remain superior to women in almost all walks of life in
the UK. She discusses brains, strength and lastly (perhaps most hilariously)
the idea that perhaps it is all to do with the male appendage! Having
hilariously debunked all of these myths she concludes that inequality is simply
a misguided cultural construct that must be overthrown. After a break in which
she encouraged the audience to join the party, she brought a couple of guests
on stage to begin the Women’s Equality Party pitch: Sophie Walker and a member
of the Birmingham branch whose name escapes me now. The-woman-who’s-name-escapes-me
was possibly the best bit of the evening politics wise because she genuinely
demonstrated the frustration many women in the UK feel towards the ‘male pale
and stale’ political system. The aim of the evening was obviously to get as
many people to join the party as possible. I have not joined the party: I
hadn’t before I arrived and I didn’t as I left. This is because I still have a
lot of doubts - I am very conflicted. On the one hand, the last election was a
complete catastrophe for women: we were literally given a pink bus as a
tokenistic gesture to encourage women to vote and then the Conservative party
won and have continued to ravage women’s services and force women to bear the
brunt of their austerity-induced poverty ever since. Not to mention the voting
engagement of women was barely up from 2010 and there remain on 22% female MPs
in parliament. Perhaps anything we can do to stop this patronising and misogynistic
politics is a good thing?
On the other hand there are several reasons not to
join the party. Most practically, given the political system in Britain I think
it would be better to help properly integrate gender issues into the (currently
non-existent) opposition for 2020. Otherwise the WEP risk simply splitting the
vote and allowing for another Conservative landslide that definitely will not
help improve gender inequality. Also, Toksvig herself announced the party
non-partisan which I find highly problematic. In my opinion feminism is
inherently part of the left-wing movement and given what the right-wing are
doing to women in this country at the moment it seems a bizarre decision not to
abhor this. This leads nicely into my biggest problem with the party which was
perfectly exemplified on Tuesday night: I did not see one women of colour in
the audience. In fact, the room was full of seemingly middle class, older,
white women. It is this that worries me most about WEP because with a following
like that, a definite emphasis on economic empowerment (Toksvig made a big
point of the idea that women are an ‘untapped [economic] resource’ worth £20
Trillion to the global economy) and a non-partisan outlook I worry that it is a
very neoliberal project that risks missing many of the problems that face
intersectional women. See more on this here. This was evermore potent for me as I had just spent
the afternoon in one of the most desolate areas of Birmingham where a friend’s
mum had just gone into hospital and was receiving very little attention.
Furthermore, Sophie Walker’s speech was very focused on economic empowerment
and I query the correlation between economic participation and political
participation for women. Personally, I do not feel the prior should be a
precursor to the latter. It is for these reasons that I am yet to be convinced
by Toksvig and friends but time will tell how they grow and develop. In the
meantime, it was a very funny night out!
