It appears that Harriet Harman held a meeting with gender segregation in the audience (or constituency or whatever you call people at a political campaign meeting).
Liar MPs @LiarMPs 3 hours ago
Imagine the outcry from the left wing if any other Party held a meeting with gender separation. @HarrietHarman pic.twitter.com/1qIXLzbMio
I suppose they could have sat that way by chance…or this could be a photo from some other event…
But LiarMPs again –
It’s a poster for a Labour Party jalsa or rally in Birmingham today, and at the bottom it says
Cllr Mariam Khan is organising a women’s section for Jalsa & is inviting all women to attend.
Well gross.
I’m not sure how UK political parties are organized. Can the MP be expelled? Because if the LP does not make a firm response against this, they will lose big time in the next election.
Don’t some extreme jewish sects also segregate?
In many orthodox synagogues, a partition called a mechitza separates a section for men and a section for women.
And that picture isn’t even as bad as it gets.
I’ve been in gatherings where there’s literally a physical barrier separating the men and the women, so that each group can see the speaker at the podium, but they can’t see each other.
And that’s how it is in many mosques, of course. The men in the real space and the women stuffed into some hot little cupboard.
Even after leaving Islam, I used to sometimes go to mosques for social reasons. But I just can’t bring myself to do even that anymore. Sitting silently in a place where women can’t use the main entrance is the same as agreeing with it. It feels like patronizing a place that has “whites only” water fountains.
Feels like it and is like it.
Ophelia Benson (#5) –
That was going to be my comment, my immediate reaction to seeing the picture. Five wide seating alloted for women, ten wide for men. If women had shown up in the same numbers as men (and probably did), they would have been forced to stay outside.
The organizers claim they’re being “egalitarian” by offering women separated seating. A synonym of “egalitarian” is “classless”. The other definition of classless is an apt description of said organizers.
You’re right. Poor word choice on my part. Should have said “it is like”, not just “it feels like”.
And this reminds me of the rule about women not being allowed in cemeteries (even if it’s their loved one who has just died). Rotting corpses under ground is okay, but having a woman among you is disgusting. The reason from the moderate side I’ve heard is that women will start crying and that disturbs the respectful atmosphere of the cemetery. And the reason from the imam from a recent death in the family was that the dead can see through clothing so it’s best that women not be present. No joke.
Saad, I didn’t mean to correct you! It was agreement plus addition, not correction. Perfectly good word choice.
Oh okay, I misread that. 🙂
To be fair to Harriet Harman I don’t think she organised or attended this meeting, she may well not even have been aware of it. People on Twitter were asking her to comment because of her prominent role in Labour’s outreach to women voters.
Unless the story gets picked up by the UK press I doubt she or any of the Labour candidates who did attend will comment. The picture were first tweeted by a Labour MEP who seemed to think this was a normal and regular election event.
The original tweet by a Labour MEP is here https://twitter.com/sionsimon/status/594537312115159040