Millwall event cancelled

[OfficerGrant]

Just saw this on the sun website.
Looks like harassment scared Millwall.

www.thesun.co.uk/news/uknews/5776126/millwall-axe-feminist-night-threats/

[OfficerGrant]

//www.thesun.co.uk/news/uknews/5776126/millwall-axe-feminist-night-threats

Sorry can't get the link to work

[LabourLostMe]

I believe The Times are reporting this also (can't see article due to paywall). Good on Venice for getting it out there.

I am so sick of the reporting being 'fears of violent clashes between feminists and transgender activists'. Show me just one incident of a feminist being physically violent to a TRA and I will donate my uterus to Mermaids.

[MarSeeAh]

Here's the Times article.



Tough Millwall cave in to transgender ‘bullies’

The famously hard-edged football club has cancelled a feminists’ meeting as claims spread of intimidation by transgender lobbyists

Andrew Gilligan
March 11 2018, 12:01am,
The Sunday Times


Millwall football club buckled under a barrage of phone calls, emails and tweets.

They are renowned as English football’s toughest club, their shirts proclaim they “fear no foe” and their fans chant: “No one likes us, we don’t care.” But even Millwall have given way in a drive by transgender activists to “bully and silence” their critics.

Feminists who hired the club’s conference suite for a meeting last week about “how concerns raised by women are being shut down through threats, harassment and accusations of transphobia” say Millwall cancelled the booking after pressure from transgender lobbyists.

The event was to protest against potential legal changes allowing people born male to “self-identify” as women. Feminists say the move threatens women’s spaces and rights.

Venice Allan, the meeting’s organiser, said: “I got a call from the club saying they’d never seen anything like it — constant phone calls, emails, tweets. They were really spooked. It wasn’t exactly ‘No one likes us, we don’t care’.”

A Millwall spokesman said the event “was cancelled mutually with the organisers. We were pulled into a drama that we didn’t really feel we should be part of.”


The cancellation came as it emerged Therapy Today, the official journal of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP), has been bombarded with protests by trans activists after publishing a letter saying some young people were identifying as trans through “youth culture” and “social contagion” and being encouraged to “medically alter their bodies” even though they might later change their minds.

More than 500 people signed a statement attacking the letter as “transphobic” and saying that “affirmation of a child’s . . . gender identity is non-negotiable”. The statement added: “This is not a free speech issue. Therapy Today is not a tabloid newspaper or TV talk show.”

Within days the editor, Catherine Jackson, published an apology for the “serious error of judgment on my part”.

The letter’s author, Stephanie Davies-Arai, of Transgender Trend, an organisation questioning the diagnosis and treatment of children as transgender, said: “Things are in a bad way when even a letter in what is supposed to be a forum for debate can be suppressed,” she said. “Attempts to bully and silence are revealing only of the fact that this new dogma cannot withstand scrutiny.”

BACP said it had apologised “because the letter was not compatible with our responsibilities as a signatory of the memorandum of understanding on conversion therapy”, a document that treats anything other than affirming a child’s transgender identification as akin to controversial “gay cure” therapies.

Meanwhile, a woman who criticised a transgender charity on Twitter has been questioned under caution by police and told she will be arrested if she tries to leave the country. Kellie-Jay Keen- Minshull accused the group Mermaids of “suppressing free speech”.

She had accused Mermaids, which calls for children to be allowed irreversible sex-change treatment the NHS currently prohibits, of “prey[ing]” on gay teenagers and of “mass child abuse”. Mermaids declined to comment.

@mragilligan

[EmpressOfJurisfiction]

Shareable open access link to the Times article. It's a good one. www.thetimes.co.uk/article/tough-millwall-cave-in-to-transgender-bullies-nltnkpv3d?shareToken=293e6c99da13a3bca0d8190d8568ded0

[MarSeeAh]

So glad that journalists are getting the word out there. That's a great article in the Sunday Times, and Andrew Gilligan is joining the dots for people, and showing that this is a much larger issue than one meeting, or one letter, or one woman.

[NotTerfNorCis]

“I got a call from the club saying they’d never seen anything like it — constant phone calls, emails, tweets. They were really spooked."

And they say there's no trans lobby...

[Pythagonal]

Kelly Malone is a Millwall supporter, just saying 😉

[ItsAllGoingToBeFine]

But the new meeting location?

The House of Commons - how genius is that!

[EmpressOfJurisfiction]

Really?????

[ItsAllGoingToBeFine]

According to the Sun article.

[RedToothBrush]

There are several genuis things about holding this meeting at the HoC.

1. It legitimises these meetings. No one can say they are extremist if the HoC is prepared to host. This means other venues have no reason to be cowards in future. If they are forced to pull an event it shows up the TRAs to be the extremists.
   
   
2. Hosting at the HoC gives the opportunity for MPs to attend quietly. I'm assuming they will be able to enter without being filmed doing so too.
   
   
3. Women at the meeting might get a chance to demonstrate to the people making the law what their concerns REALLY are.

[RedToothBrush]

The HoC is setting an example about free speech and the principles and democratic right to debate.

Hello Bristol University. You should be ashamed.

[RedToothBrush]

One more thing.

I wonder how this came about? Did WPUK just book it, or did someone help facilitate this.

My money is on the latter. In which case someone is concerned about this issue and how free speech is being suppressed and they've got some interesting contacts.

[HairyBallTheorem]

Is the Sun correct that the next meeting is in the HoC? It seems a bit implausible. Could they possibly have looked at the WPUK website, seen the HoC logo at the top (which is actually about a letter-writing campaign to raise the issue with MPs), put 2 and 2 together and got 5?

[LifelongVaginaOwner]

The HoC venue has been confirmed by the organisers. This isn’t a WPUK event.

[OvaHere]

I believe any official organisation can use the HoC for functions. I don't know if there are stipulations but I have attended a small charity campaign event there in the past.

One of the benefits of it is that any MPs can drop in and mingle too, they did at the one I attended.

[EmpressOfJurisfiction]

Tweet by Anne Ruzylo: twitter.com/sargesalute/status/972639785616642050?s=21

[RedToothBrush]

Well either way, you have a meeting with people who have been forced out of a political party at the HoCs.

[Datun]

Venice Allan isn't anything to do with A Woman's Place.

She certainly has a certain flair. No doubt about it. Millwall was a brilliant decision, and them caving has also made news.

The House of Commons is absolutely genius.

I know A Woman's Place is more moderate. But frankly, the different approaches to this are all only going in one direction.

It's certainly a very interesting time to be a feminist, that's for sure.

[HairyBallTheorem]

Thanks for the clarification. Wow, that's amazing. Well done Venice Allen!

[TimbuktuTimbuktu]

You have to have a sitting MP to book the event for you to host a HoC event.

[RedToothBrush]

Haha! I said it was likely to be facilitated!!!

[Triliteration]

House of Commons is indeed an act of genius. What a dilemma for the trans activists.

[Mouthtrousersafrocknowandthen]

This person writes up imaginary versions of things .

twitter.com/Giuliana_London/status/972753463292628992

Apparently we were all doing this "They tried to persuade Millwall fans to kick up trouble, and they talked of bringing baseball bats."

How can someone demand respect at the same time as showing absolutely non?