Jess Phillips MP has been since her election in 2015 the epitome of the Guardianista feminist. She’s used her position in the House of Commons to, rightly in my view, highlight the women who’ve been murdered by men over the previous year since her previous similar statement.
However her feminism is just a mask, an act, a performance worthy of an Oscar or a Bafta. There is clearly no substance to it nor any commitment to any of the currents within feminism whether that be radical feminism nor equity feminism. This is because from what I’ve seen and read as a man about feminism and the feminists I’ve known at various points in my life, there is a baseline or bedrock to feminism of various sorts and that’s standing up for women and girls when faced by oppression, no matter who they are or where they are from. Jess Phillips does not meet that feminist baseline.
Her willingness to put herself and her career before the safety of women and girls by agreeing to being the frontwoman to announce that the already paltry inquiries into Britain’s Islamic Rape Gang problem were being scaled down, shows me that when push comes to shove, Ms Phillips, doesn’t give a toss about working class women and girls. Yes I know she’s not alone in being that shameful, too many other middle class feminists are the same, but Ms Phillips could have come out of this if not a heroine but at least not the villain.
Ms Phillips could have gone a long way to redeeming herself and her claimed attachment to feminism by making the statement, which I believe are not just her words but the words of the entire Labour Establishment and then publicly resigning her position. Ms Phillips could have chosen to step down from her position of Safeguarding Minister at the conclusion of her statement but chose not to. By making the statement and then publicly stepping down immediately from her position she might have made herself look as if she has got some form of functioning moral compass. This action might also have helped to disassociate Ms Phillips from the decision to scale back what were already monstrously reduced in scope inquiries into Islamic Rape Gangs. But by failing to do this she is now indelibly associated with a decision that benefits nobody except the Islamic Rape Gang members themselves and the Labour councillors and MP’s that these rapist creatures and the community that spawns them, often vote for.
Jess Phillips has shown every British woman whose side she is on and it’s clear that it’s not the side of British women and girls. Despite her high profile public advocacy for women such as the reading of the names of murdered women, when the political chips were down Ms Phillips made the wrong choice. She was faced with a choice between defending women and girls or hanging onto the votes from the culture that creates the monsters in human form that are raping and murdering them and Jess Phillips and the government she serves chose the latter.
After observing this shameful government’s equally shameful handling of the Islamic Rape Gang issue I’ve had to come to the conclusion that the departure from political life and a long period spent in penitential obscurity would be my preferred future for both Ms Phillips and the government she serves. Many of us knew that a Labour government would be bad but many of us would equally not have thought that it would be throwing women and children under the Islamic Rape Gang bus sort of bad. The next time Jess Phillips bangs on about feminism I going to remember how she willingly fronted up an announcement that was in effect saying that the votes of rapists were worth more than abused women and children and despise her even more than I do already.