Leader of the Women's Equality Party
@WEP_UK
. 1st person of colour to lead a UK political party. Usually reading something. Plenty of fire in my belly.
I’ve been much quieter on here than usual lately and that is set to continue for a good while!
From the 7th of Nov 2023 I’ll be on maternity leave.
Baby is due very soon and so begins my journey into solo parenthood.
For anything
@WEP_UK
-related feel free to holla at the team.
I was right there. I witnessed this firsthand.
We were at an event that was supposed to celebrate our work.
For people like Lady SH, people like us will never really belong here.
Infinite solidarity
@Sistah_Space
.
✊🏾
Mixed feelings about yesterday's visit to Buckingham Palace. 10 mins after arriving, a member of staff, Lady SH, approached me, moved my hair to see my name badge. The conversation below took place. The rest of the event is a blur.
Thanks
@ManduReid
&
@SuzanneEJacob
for support🙏🏾
The
@metpoliceuk
is so far from fit for purpose it’s terrifying.
The heavy-handed and totally disproportionate treatment this woman received (in front of her distressed and bewildered young son) was for suspected bus fare evasion, to the tune of £1.75
1/2
If they think it’s normal / justifiable to behave like this in plain sight, in the bright glare of the public gaze: what do you think happens when there is less scrutiny… when we aren’t watching?
We cannot trust them.
Policing by consent is impossible without trust.
2/2
🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️
To mark the start of
#PrideMonth
I want to celebrate and appreciate
#Heartstopper
- a wildly popular, beautifully rendered show that offers a candid but ultimately positive and uplifting representation of what it can mean to be a young LGBTQI+ person today.
#LoveIsLove
1/2
Fascinating to observe the difference when someone like Huw Edwards associates their transgressions with mental health issues, as compared to the response someone like Meghan Markle gets when her mental health struggles are revealed.
Compassion is conditional, it seems.
Meanwhile, we are still waiting for officers who took and shared selfies they’d taken with the dead bodies of Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman to be properly held to account.
Don’t believe the ‘bad apple’ defence - institutional and leadership failures are at the heart of this.
Another woman murdered in a senseless act of brutal violence.
Sabina Nessa: say her name.
She lived, worked and was murdered within a short radius of where I live in Lewisham. This could’ve been me or my sister.
#EnoughIsEnough
We will honour her life.
I’m appalled and outraged by the decision to strip Shamima Begum of her citizenship and the decision to deny her right to appeal. She is British. She was groomed, manipulated, abused, and radicalised here.
Since when did we abandon our citizens like this?
This is abuse of power of the highest order. It’s absolutely terrifying. How are women supposed to trust the police - when the leaders and politicians responsible for them will barely acknowledge let alone commit to addressing the misogyny in their ranks?
No thanks Piers, not interested in helping you peddle this kind of crap. Today the worst sex offender in modern history was sentenced BUT it’s
#MeToo
that’s gone too far.🙄
We were guests... we were there to celebrate efforts to end violence against women and girls. And by the end of that interaction, it felt almost like we were trespassers, we didn’t belong. I mean, our nationality being questioned? It was hard to take.
“What happened to us validates the accounts Meghan and Harry gave. I want to see everyone in the royal household step up and acknowledge that institutional racism, the kind of dynamics we experienced are a real problem and have really damaging effects.”
Please do not refer to me as a non-man.
There have been a few times when the term non-white-person was used to describe me… I didn’t like that either.
🚫
On Newsnight I spoke about how alongside Megan & Harry’s accounts Lady Susan Hussey’s remarks to Ngozi from
@Sistah_Space
indicate a pattern, an institutional problem, a racist culture that won’t be addressed simply by removing her from the equation.
This is absolute bulls**t.
For a start, Rose West and Nicola Sturgeon are not characters in Game of Thrones.
You knew exactly what you were doing… you were serving up a violent misogynistic fantasy (seasoned with racism) and expecting to be applauded for doing so.
Oh dear. I’ve rather put my foot in it. In a column I wrote about Meghan, I made a clumsy reference to a scene in Game of Thrones and this has gone down badly with a great many people. I’m horrified to have caused so much hurt and I shall be more careful in future.
SAY THEIR NAMES:
Fatoumatta Hydara has died in hospital after her two young children Naeemah Drammeh (1 year old) and Fatimah (3 years old) were killed in a fire at the weekend.
A 31-year-old man is in custody on suspicion of murder.
1/2
Women have fought for decades to get even an iota of recognition in football. For PrinceWilliam to shirk the World Cup Final is the wrong move, deeply disappointing and calls in to question how sincere he is when he proclaims his support for women’s sport.
Mercy Beguma.
Say her name. Remember her name.
I am ashamed and embarrassed and so angry that in contemporary Britain a mother can perish next to her malnourished baby as a direct result of callous, inhumane Government policy.
Today a woman will be sentenced for taking abortion pills to end her pregnancy during lockdown.
She has pled guilty despite being unaware of how far along her pregnancy was at the time.
She will get a criminal conviction and faces a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.
1/2
Good. That article was disgusting and it is utterly disgraceful that it was ever published.
We see sexism and misogyny in the media every single day which has wide-reaching cultural impacts. It is hugely significant for these complaints to be upheld.
1/2
Two thoughts on this:
1. I feel safer knowing that there are fewer (potentially trigger happy) armed officers roaming the streets of my city.
2. Very interesting to see that police officers CAN take a stand when they perceive an injustice has been done.
In response to
@borisjohnson
’s announcement, I’m calling on govt to enact emergency measures to protect women & children trapped in abusive homes: police powers to evict perpetrators from homes for duration of
#lockdown
, via DVPOs including waiving court fees for them.
He’s been charged. My prevailing emotion is sadness. Sad that we’ve lost Sarah and every other woman before her. Sad for her friends and family. Sad that the prime suspect is someone we all should have been able to trust.
#EnoughIsEnough
#SarahEverard
This crushing sentence is exactly why it's so important that abortion is decriminalised in the UK.
It's a national scandal that women are being criminalised for seeking healthcare. I send my solidarity to the woman who has been sentenced and her family.
LONG THREAD (Disturbing Content)
There is a catalogue of evidence that misogyny is baked-in to the CULTURE of the Met. Alongside others, I have been calling this out for a long time. Yet police leaders and politicians have insisted on burying their heads in the sand. 1/14
I won’t share Jeremy Clarkson’s appalling misogynistic tirade against
#MeghanMarkIe
.
Shame on
@TheSun
for platforming such despicable bile. Hateful rhetoric like this provokes the terrifying threats to her life that caused Megan and Harry to flee Britain.
On Sky News yesterday I explained that I didn’t want to see Lady Susan Hussey step down and I wanted to her step up. I wanted to see the whole Royal Household step up to acknowledge and respond to the institutional racism baked into its culture.
If Emily can publicly condemn her dad’s disgraceful behaviour so too can the King & Queen Consort. So too can
@TheSun
. So too can other media outlets. So too can our political leaders.
Refusal to do so amounts to a tacit acceptance of how toxic our national discourse has become.
Jeremy Clarkson.His wonderful daughter Emily has just put out a statement on her instagram account. "I stand against everything that my Dad wrote about Meghan Markle". FYI Emily has spoken many times about how she suffered very badly from online abuse when she was younger. 💪🏼👏🏼
Charged FOUR times. Before he murdered Sarah.
Only in an organisation with a baked-in institutional misogyny problem could a guy like Couzens (nicked-named The Rapist no less) be allowed to continue serving with impunity.
We need a statutory inquiry now.
Just watched the
#ShamimaBegumStory
. I am so ashamed that we have forsaken her. Depriving her of her British citizenship is cruel, disproportionate, and a complete moral failure: we don’t even strip murderers or mass rapists of their rights in that way.
I would like to see what ‘evidence’ they examined to explain why black men are 19 times more likely to be stopped and searched and black women are 4 times more likely to die during pregnancy or childbirth.
Met Police Officer David Carrick served alongside Wayne Couzens. He faces a total of 53 charges against 13 women, including 27 counts of rape.
We need to talk about how deeply ingrained misogyny is in the culture of the
@metpoliceuk
- it’s institutional.
The more I think about it, the more it hurts.
My heart is broken, truly broken, for
#ChildQ
and for all the black girls who have been subjected to this or have now to fear it.
@pritipatel
what will it take for you to start listening?
The details of what these police officers did are beyond horrific. As Mina Smallman has said: we HAVE to examine why and how they felt comfortable enough to do such a thing, we HAVE to address what this tells us about the culture within the
@metpoliceuk
.
The first lockdown was horrific for those trapped with their abusers, double the number of women were murdered by their partners.
I am calling for Domestic Violence Protection Orders to be extended to remove perpetrators from the home to protect victims and their children.
This is true. It matters that boys are overwhelmingly the perpetrators and girls overwhelmingly the victims.
Editors have a choice about how to frame these things.
It’s like when we hear about ‘child prostitutes’ - when the correct description is ‘child rape victim’.
This gender neutral reporting in mainstream media outlets obscures the reality of sex abuse in schools.
Boys are almost exclusively the perpetrators & girls overwhelmingly the victims.
Masking the reality of this behaviour only compounds the problem
@emmako
@ManduReid
#VAWG
The REAL problem is that we have too many rapes.
The priority has to be PREVENTING all forms of violence against women and girls, rather than putting all our energy and resources into MANAGING it, as if it’s an inevitable force of nature.
#EnoughIsEnough
Yes. Totally agree with this. Also, the completely unnecessary reference they made to
#NicolaBulley
’s menopause symptoms… can you imagine the police deciding it was relevant to share details of a missing man’s erectile dysfunction issues, or low sperm count?
No. I can’t either.
Police revealing that Nicola Bulley has 'alcohol issues' reminds me of when they made mistakes with the search for Owami Lewis before saying she 'may be using alcohol to self-medicate'.
Linking a missing woman to their alcohol intake makes them sound unstable and is very damaging
On my way to the silent walking vigil for
#ZaraAleena
who was attacked and murdered just a few days ago.
She’s the 52nd woman this year lost to male violence. We grieve and rage for every single one.
And we will demand a more robust political response, because
#EnoughIsEnough
Thank you
@misanharriman
.
I completely agree with you. We cannot and must not turn a blind to this kind of depraved, unhinged hatred.
We as individuals must publicly condemn it, but so too should our institutions including: royal, political, and media institutions.
The recent article by Jeremy Clarkson is genuinely scary territory, WE cannot look away or be indifferent to this type of hate.
We have to be better than this.
Wondering why women’s trust in the police has collapsed?
Mourners at an outdoor vigil for a woman murdered by a cop get prosecuted, whilst revellers at Number 10 get fines for multiple breaches… and mainly male fans at the Euros get patted on the back.
Dear Nurses, we support you. It takes courage to challenge the system.
Your work, care work, is the backbone and soul of our society, but for too long you’ve been taken for granted. You have our unconditional solidarity.
#NursesStrike
@theRCN
@patcullen9
I welcome this statement. It aligns with our party policy and was supported by our members’ assembly in 2020. The recent trend towards gender neutral commissioning is a huge threat to women's services, alongside piecemeal, short term funding. 1/2
THREAD
Today we publish our single-sex services position, following a consultation with members & stakeholders. We are proud to have a range of services, including single-sex services & services that meet the needs of trans & non-binary people. (1/2)
➡️
Right now. Your testimony delivered straight to the House of Commons.
Because
#EnoughIsEnough
and politicians must make addressing violence against women and girls a top priority.
No more platitudes. WE’ll accept nothing less than real, substantive action.
@WEP_UK
Yesterday was devastating and moving.
Hundreds of us gathered to walk Zara home. Dressed in white, solemn in our silence, but resolute in our resolve to love and support each-other and to demand a more robust political response to the scourge of male violence against women.
In this interview I get the space to talk about the bigger picture: how intimidating whistleblowing can be, how misogyny and racism often travel together within our most powerful institutions, and how our national discourse is regressing in disturbing ways.
This is why the racist interrogation of Ngozi Fulani by Lady Hussey matters.
@ManduReid
witnessed the whole episode - and tells us exactly what happened, and why we should care.
👇👇👇
CHILDCARE & THE AUTUMN STATEMENT
I'm angry about today's
#AutumnStatement
. It appalls me that the millions of people (mostly women) who are kept out of paid work due to unpaid caring responsibilities are considered 'economically inactive' by this Government.
1/5
Tonight 2000 of us gathered in Kidbrooke to honour the life of
#SabinaNessa
and mourn her loss.
This was the third vigil I’ve been to in six months for women murdered in London - representing a fraction of those lost to male violence across the country.
#EnoughIsEnough
Very encouraged by
@Keir_Starmer
's top team. 17 women out of 32, including brilliant women in pivotal roles (Party Chairperson, Chancellor, and Foreign Sec), more BAME women than under Corbyn. Talent from across Labour Party ranks. This is a positive start.
#RepresentationMatters
I’m so tired of this. In London in 2021 the burden is on women and girls to observe hyper-vigilance or not go out without a ‘chaperone’.
London should be a city where EVERYONE can take freedom and safety for granted.
@SadiqKhan
we need you to step up.
There’s no way the Tory party didn't know about this TWO YEAR rape investigation into one of their own.
@BorisJohnson
you owe the public an explanation of what you knew, when you knew it and why you failed to act.
#EnoughIsEnough
#BreakingNews
#Pestminster
Gaslighting 101 from the
@metpoliceuk
And by the way, it’s not just about safety… it’s also about freedom. While the THREAT of harassment or violence looms over us, women and girls will never be free.
#EnoughIsEnough
This case highlights how archaic the laws that govern our reproductive rights are - they date back to before women having the right to vote.
Abortion is healthcare, no-one should be criminalised for seeking healthcare. I hope the judge sees sense. 2/2
THIS. IS. POLITICAL.
Huge crowd in front of Hackney Town Hall in solidarity for
#ChildQ
Righteous Anger. Pain. Determination.
Solidarity. Love. Community.
Everyone united against MISOGYNISTIC and RACIST abuse of power.
#EnoughIsEnough
How many times do we have to say it
@Guardian
?
There is no such thing as: ‘child prostitution’ or ‘sex with children’...
...the correct terms are: ‘child abuse’ or ‘rape’.
After being detained by Greater Manchester Police, doctors confirmed that Zayna suffered sexual injuries. She believes she was drugged and raped.
GMP have failed to provide footage covering the duration of her detention - three hours are missing. Why?
This is typical. We see this time and again: institutions closing ranks to protect powerful men accused of sexual harassment or sexual assault.
This is how and why toxic cultures thrive.
Infinite solidarity with Jenni Hermoso and the Spanish Team.
We saw what happened.
The Spanish football federation announces that, instead of removing president Luis Rubiales, they will take legal action against player Jenni Hermoso as they claim she ‘lied’ about non-consensual kiss.
The federation also says players have an “obligation” to play for the…
I’m shocked. Has
@MattHancock
really just announced a badge for social care workers? A BADGE? Instead of the funding, support, and PPE the care sector needs. Where’s the strategy?
I can’t believe it.
Hundreds of us. We drummed, we yelled, and we cried for
#ChildQ
. We held eachother and held space for our girls. We pledged never to give up. We demanded accountability and consequences for perpetrators and for our schools to police-free zones.
Because
#EnoughIsEnough
.
Congratulations to everyone who campaigned sucessfully to make misogyny a hate crime. This is an important symbolic victory that we must build upon to move us towards actually eradicating both misogyny itself AND the violence that stems from it.
#EnoughIsEnough
Deeply upsetting scenes unfolding in Clapham. The
@MayorofLondon
and
@metpoliceuk
have completely misjudged and mishandled this - their silence so far compounds my disbelief. To see violence and chaos when all we wanted was to grieve and honour those we’ve lost is beyond painful.
Incredible how quickly the statue of Jen Reid was taken down, compared to the decades of inaction in response to the calls for Edward Colston’s statue to be removed.
This is not a gender neutral crisis. We know that women are massively over-represented in frontline roles: social care, healthcare, childcare etc. Women are the majority living in poverty who cannot afford to stop working. The hardship that will now be endured was avoidable.
The BBC really messed up this week. It was ill-judged, stupid, and potentially damaging to interview
#AndrewTate
(a self-confessed misogynist) and on the same day to platform
#Mizzy
(someone who has used menace create a following) to give his perspective on
#Tate
.
1/4
Deeply disappointed that
@Keir_Starmer
’s speech offered nothing more than a dose of ‘tough’ criminal justice to address male violence against women. Longer sentences wouldn’t have protected Sarah, Sabina, Bibaa or Nicole.
We must prevent violence against women, not manage it.
It was always an absurd and vindictive power-move for the
@metpoliceuk
to drag women who came mourn at Sarah Everard’s vigil through the courts.
It stank of institutional misogyny and completely undermined their rhetoric about wanting to build trust.
The man running the country has literally broken the law, and the news of the day is… a female politician sitting crossed legged.
These headlines are 5 years apart. This is how misogyny has improved under a Conservative government.
The fact that there wasn’t a peep about childcare in
@BorisJohnson
’s statement, speaks volumes.
Parents - women in particular, who do the lionsshare of childcare - it’s time tell the Govt that is enough is enough.
Across the world, at least 6 women are murdered by men every single hour of every day. And still, governments in almost every country fail to act to address the causes and consequences of male violence against women.
#EnoughIsEnough
Rest in peace Ashling.
This is one of the most moving, inspiring, and uplifting episodes of
#DesertIslandDisks
ever.
Thank you
@nazirafzal
for setting the standard of what it means to be a genuine male ally to women and girls in world disfigured by patriarchy and misogyny!
I feel numb at the news that Wayne Couzens has been given a whole life order - the first police officer to receive this sentence.
It won’t bring
#SarahEverard
back - nor will it turn the tide on male violence.
To honour Sarah and all women lost - we have to change society.
Yes, Cressida Dick should be held accountable for today. I don't disagree. But, let's be real: getting rid of her is superficial, it will do nothing to address institutional misogyny in the
@metpoliceuk
or make London materially safer for women and girls.
#EnoughIsEnough
It's hard to know where to start with this... I feel sickened and betrayed by the Met Police who have, so far, refused to investigate - compare that with the approach they took in the lead up to and during the vigil for Sarah Everard.
#EnoughIsEnough
1/2
The
#SarahEverard
case must be handled by a neighbouring police force now that a
@MetPoliceUK
officer has been charged. There is significant evidence that police forces cannot be trusted to investigate their own when it comes to violence against women.
@SadiqKhan
pls take action.
@seyiakiwowo
I’m disappointed by what these figures suggest about white women... but given everything that’s happened this year, I’m absolutely astonished by the suggestion that 18% (nearly a fifth) of black men voted for Trump. I definitely didn’t see that coming.
An appallingly insensitive and complacent comment to make in the week that Wayne Cousins pleaded guilty to the abduction and rape of Sarah Everard AND the murder trial for Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman began.
Not gonna lie. I did not see this coming.
Surely there's more to this than meets the eye, but my first reaction is that I'm sad to see her go - for the last few years she's stood apart as the grown-up in the room through incredible political turbulence.
My heart aches for
#BriannaGhey
’s family and loved ones. The pain and grief of losing a young woman in such tragic circumstances is difficult to process. We owe it to Brianna and her whole generation to keep striving for a world where violence is vanquished and love prevails.
Sexual harassment is so normalised, most girls experience it for the first time in childhood / adolescence.
It’s poison. It degrades, diminishes, dehumanises, and stifles us.
It’s not inevitable though - the power to eradicate it lies with men.
BREAKING: Incredibly proud of our campaign to challenge abuse of power in Westminster. Thanks to our candidate
@JennSelby
and
@WEP_UK
activists: Mark Field MP has tonight announced that he will be standing down at the next election. Let’s end abuse, starting with Westminster.
Today is
#IDEVAW
- International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women and
#WhiteRibbonDay2021
.
I want to pay tribute to the survivors and campaigners who work tirelessly to end this violence and support those affected by it.
This is very worrying indeed. The Govt is leaving it up to employer’s discretion whether employees will be expected to work or not if they have unmet childcare needs. It should be ILLEGAL for any employer to penalise an employee who can’t work for this reason.
1/3
Hi Kemi, how about you start by telling the truth about how institutional racism and misogyny infect and corrupt policing, politics, business, education, and most of the systems and structures upon which our society is built?
Tonight belongs to
@staceyabrams
- leader of the resistance against right wing populism in the USA.
I’ve admired and been inspired by her a for couple of years now. Her phenomenal organising played a huge part in clinching a double Senate victory for the Democrats in
#Georgia
🍑