You may have heard of the “gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss” mantra before, a parody of the popular motivational quote “live, laugh, love” which was popularised back in the late 2000s, the slogan is a staple of TikTok memes and is often used to satirise so-called corporate feminism whose adherents are seen as self-interested and completely out of touch with ordinary people by many in Gen Z.
Nobody quite embodies corporate feminism and “gatekeep, gaslight, girlboss” more than Penny Mordaunt and her campaign. Before going into Politics Mordaunt worked in PR for both the Freight Transport Association and Hanover, it was also revealed by the Observer in 2010 that she was director of and had a 15% stake in lobby and PR firm Media Intelligence Partners. On top of this, Mordaunt is backed by multimillionaire PR agency CEO Chris Lewis with whom she co-authored the book, Greater, which has been criticised for being so disconnected from working people that it resembles “a speech given at Davos five years ago”. The book is bedazzled with buzzwords, platitudes and cliches yet is shockingly low on substance, much like Mordaunt’s campaign for leader.
Indeed, it is rather hard to find anything that Mordaunt stands for: her self-proclaimed “legendary” campaign launch video communicates nothing but a desperate desire to be seen as patriotic; it is chock-a-bloc with vapid slogans and promises such as “we need a return to clear policies” and “[leadership must become] a little less about the leader and a lot more about the ship” yet without any explanation of what changes will be made and how they will be implemented. The only ship Mordaunt seems to be in command of is the empty vessel that is her campaign, blasting out patriotic songs and platitudes in the hope that disillusioned Brexiteers will come to her rescue.
However, one line from the video that does stand out is “choose [your leader] because you trust their motives” as trust is something that Penny Mordaunt can’t seem to buy. Whether it’s among gender-critical feminists or her fellow candidates - Kemi Badenoch suggested that she didn’t fully trust Mordaunt during the Channel 4 debate on Friday evening - Mordaunt’s motives are seen to be anything but trustworthy. This is not surprising given her claim that she “changed maternity legislation that was drafted in gender neutral language to use female terms” has been widely disputed as it appears to be massively at odds with what she did whilst in Government. Suella Braverman, who dropped out of the leadership contest on Thursday, claims Mordaunt “did resist the inclusion of the word woman and the word mother” in a bill concerning maternity leave just last year.
The removal of “mother” and “woman” from the bill is not the only thing that Mordaunt stands accused of lying about. In the same twitter thread Mordaunt attempts to defend her record on women’s rights by claiming credit for the setting up of an inquiry around “the volume [of] girls referred into trans services”. Yet it seems that this claim is misleading at best as no such inquiry was ever launched, instead it was integrated into the LGBT Action Plan before being dropped completely after July 2019. Additionally, if we look beyond Mordaunt’s twitter thread, which at the very best is deceptive in the extreme, Mordaunt’s record on these issues starts to resemble Braverman and Badenoch’s depiction of her as being flagrantly dishonest and gaslighting people when it comes to trans rights.
For example, she seems on several occasions to support the highly contentious “affirmation” approach towards children with gender dysphoria; this approach is heavily promoted by charities such as Mermaids and binds parents, teachers, and therapists into unconditionally supporting a child, no matter how old, who comes out as trans with their transition. Those who support the approach often contend that challenging a child on whether they really are the gender they say they are will lead to self-harm, depression, and suicide; ergo challenging gender ideology is harmful and an act of violence. Mordaunt seems to support this approach during a 2018 article with Pink News in which she claims that “We need to ensure the processes when they’re going through a transition are there to support [trans people] and not add to their stresses” – the inference here is that those who do not support trans children who claim they are a certain gender are adding to their stresses which will lead to self-harm and suicide. She then goes onto claim that “trans women are women”, a phrase she infamously uttered at the despatch box last year in a debate over the aforementioned Ministerial and other Maternity Allowances Bill.
Mordaunt also deleted a retweet supporting an article written by Crispin Blunt and Sue Pascoe for ConservativeHome last year which declares that “we are out of step with other countries around the world in adopting rights for transgender people” and that it “would be anathema to British values to attempt to blanket-ban trans people from toilets and shop changing cubicles”. In addition, during her time as the Minister for Women and Equalities Mordaunt appointed “a majority of panellists [that were] on the side of militant trans activists” to the advisory panel on LGBT health. People appointed included the ex-chief executive of Stonewall (who was still CEO when she was appointed), Paul Martin from the LGBT Foundation which covertly supplies young girls with breast-flattening devices and an advisor to Mermaids. Does Mordaunt really expect people to believe that she is not “woke” when allegedly 75% of those she appointed to this panel were avid trans activists?
Fast-forwarding back to the present day, leaked documents given to The Times after the debate reveal that Mordaunt “was in favour of removing at least one medical requirement needed by transgender people [in order to change gender]” which seem to completely contradict what she said during the debate where Mordaunt said “she would not have divorced [the gender identification process] from healthcare”. This leaves the question; can we really trust Penny Mordaunt on anything? Given the tone of this essay this might come as a surprise, but I believe we can! If Penny Mordaunt becomes Prime Minister, she can almost certainly be trusted to gatekeep non-trans activists from advisory panels, gaslight everyone on what she’s doing in government all whilst continuing to “girlboss”.