Debbie Hayton in the Times

I dont particularly want to do 'feel sorry for me' but I have had this so many times. Each time I would have major political figures whipping up hate on the net, that would bring down hell that would last weeks, under that there would be at LEAST two dangerous people who posed risk, and often because it had major political figures behind it the police wouldnt touch you. I didnt have a husband. Or any money. They CHOSE me because I was in poverty and had a child. THAT is how Labour and the left have maintained control. I wont pretend its not deliberate it is. It absolutely is.

The prevention of discussion of political consensus spo that the left wing identity can be protected, turns the entire WPUK into an operation that exists to prevent discussion of austerity. You ask ONE woman involved in WPUK if thats what she signed up for, not one did. I cant pretend its not deliberate because it is and it had to be stood up to because these are by far the most dangerous activists I have ever seen and they are no less dangerous because they have lost. The women whose names you know through this are at serious risk. I am less so but have fewer resources so that amplifies risk. THis was serious.

Appreciate the background Lisa - unsure quite what has gone on re the Leeds meeting but it sounds disturbing and unjust and again the result of policies and actions being sex and class blind. The middle-class women who inhabit those lofty heights often know not what they do....

It's top-down uninformed policy that takes no account of the impact of those women at the coal face of austerity. Shunning Posie replicates coercive control tactics - talk and behave like I say or you'll get it - exiled to the outer reaches. It's all coercive control and abusive. Posie has a strong family and network and seems financially secure so isn't as vulnerable as someone not armed with those. I don't like many comments other women make but I don't exile them because that's abuse. I try and find common ground and work through conflict. WPUK didn't do that with Posie they deplatformed her replicating abuse tactics - thus it was bullying. They may not like what Posie said, but that isn't enough to ostracise her plus it doesn't recognise that many women agree with Posie. The Women's Umbrella must be a broad church not a politically correct one.

I think what Lisa is alluding to is that once the feral trolls and TRAs know a woman is "on her own" and hence vulnerbale - they will mob and attack her through any channel they can, knowing she is defenceless - that's how predators operate. So the trolls and TRAs have been targeting Posie on social media with abuse etc plus Posie's kids' grandmother's FB account was hacked and her kids and their school doxxed on Twitter. So WPUK's actions have had a profound, harmful impact by abandoning a woman to the troll wolves.

Actions have far-reaching consequences - especially for women and especially when shunned

The hundreds of account on twitter baying for you, will mask two or three or even four seriously dangerous people, thats just from the twitter mob. When it is combined with TRAs and your name is known, thats double the risk to you and your kids. This isnt women who are public figures or have resources. The women trying to assert authority that way have resources, trade unions, political parties, media, money, the women on the receiving end of it do not have that. And its ONLY the women that social culture dont want who get it, the culture at the core dont change and nothing they do will get them no platformed. Its class. Media class.

What do you think happens when a twitter mob, with institutional backup are baying for your blood because they have been told you are a racist, while you are also subject to international attention from batshit activists? Elite left media cultures PREVENTED women from challenging austerity by inviting occasional people as tokens/objects, elevating them and making sure they they didnt discuss political consensus by then inventing a spurious reason they had failed the purity test and throwing them to the wolves. I have been on the receiving end of this more times than I care to count.

You know Posies name because of the activists who target her, I got TWO separate people last week go pout of their way to demand I denounce Posie as a racist, I got a two day pile on demanding the same. When you do that to women particularly mothers you put them at risk,. You are USING violence and intimidation of activists to assert authority over a woman to control what she can say. Its how the left have always worked.

Its bad enough dealing woth activists THIS dangerous without the women who say they are standing with you, doing that to you. It was about asserting authority, saying we control the platform and sending a message. Well the message was received and the response was we dont do business that way any more, thats the left not us. I FULLY support women of WPUK, I know many of them, I wanted to go to the Leeds meeting but that doesnt mean that I can pretend that didnt happen or that we can let that happen again. In order to prevent it happening again it has to be called out, which it has been, there need to be enough women saying no thats not ok, which there are and if it doesnt happen again, and I dont think it will, thats sorted.

Hi

I still don't understand the points made (by you and / or amplified) about PP's children? Are you saying (or sharing - whichever) that WPUK have doxxed PP and her children?

I believe I know that you're referring to something earlier in the year when PP made a series of comments that were not universally well-received and she didn't then speak at one of their nights.

But the thing about the children seems to be something new, and if it's true it does need to be challenged. That is what I am asking you about now ....

I and others made hte point of calling it what it was because we cant have that happen even though it upset people, because we are at risk of actual violence and we dont have a political party or trade union or fat salary to protect us. We cant put women and kids at risk of violence to create hierarchy and assert authority. Its dangerous here.

While the mob are baying for you on twitter(whether it be scab, melt, racist, or whatever else) you are sat at home dealing with the nasty pieces of work who can do what they like because the mob you had assumed was solidarity have told them you are unabusable and make enough noise that anything can happen to you. Its just what the left do.

We cant throw women to activists in the name of purity politics when the activists are this dangerosu and we cant do that to mothers. Solidarity is safety. Not a whip to be used to recreate left wing hierarchies that made this mess.

It was about sending a message, It was about showing taht Posie could be thrown to the wolves and it was a message to all of us. Every woman whose name you know connected with this, is also dealing with constant threats to security from very mentally unwell activists. The left spent eight years doing just that. They spent 30 years doing it. Control the platform, use purity politics so that anyone can be thrown to the wolves, knowing that activists are violent and its how the left retain such a tight culture at the centre of their culture. Its what the left do. Control the platform, use purity politics and the mob(very visible through twitter) and py women at risk of abuse and violence to police them. Its what the left just did for eight years to prevent discussion of austerity and it was a reflex response by a SMALL number of women at the core of WPUK who are from cultures where that is normal.

But this is all new, we are all finding our feet. I dont need that machinery, and most WPUK women are amazing and what they have done is amazing. Its just how the left have always done business, they showed teeth early, was made clear thats not acceptable and we can move on.

"and then putting Posie and her kids at risk was an announcement that they controlled"

Hi. What exactly do you mean by this? I've seen this over on twitter but I don't really get what it means.
It's quite a serious allegation to make and I'm sure I'm not the only one asking this?

You'd think by the time your media and politics culture had actively sold austerity you'd realise that showing solidarity means showing some humility. Nope. They just want to keep doing what they do and they cant now cos we can bypass them and I dont even think there are enough women in WPUK that they can pull that off this time. Its not the whole of WPUk. Its how the left do business. Just enough people at the core to derail it. They cant derail the rest of us.

We have been seriously defamed by women at the heart of WPUK, to the point whree WNTT was blacklisted and I had to change the name of correcting a blindspot because someone wouldnt speak(I cancelled them anyway) because of what had been said. The problem was that Karen Ingala Smith had featured in my blog because on the single occasion a politician mentioned mothers during austerity she had basically tantummed and said it wasnt to happen, and with Ruth its about the fact that PCS just actively prevented opposition to austerity which rolled equality back. Their shame means they have blacklisted and actively marginalised women and then putting Posie and her kids at risk was an announcement that they controlled the platform and this was how it would be because they were used to behaving this way. Preventing women speaking and using violenec to enforce is what the left do, did, and how we ended up with TERF. I know women organising Leeds, they are amazing women, I know women up and down the country who are part of WPUK and they are amazing but not one of those women signed up to marginalise, defame, put women and kids at risk or to prevent discussion of austerity and its impat on women and THAT is what key media women, already occupying political machinery, who actively sold austerity, want it for. To derail it into that. Its not fair, its done in such a way that anyone objecting and saying this is the impact SHOULD be marginalised but we have sufficient power, clout, numbers that we are not reliant on that and it didnt have that impat and I FULLY support the women in Leeds and their meeting but I cant go and the message sent by the elite women at the core was to let me and every other woman know that. This is not a game, these activists are scary and could hurt one of us and probably will and we need to be co-ordinating security and not dealing with the shame and entitlement of the women who made this mess. And not one woman I know involved in WPUK would be part of that but thats how the elite left work. And how they have always operated. Which is why there was no opposution to austerity. TERF they are concerned with is not equality its their media and politics terf.

I am grateful for all that these women's groups do - don't get me wrong. I wouldn't be without them.

However, WPUK and some others (WEP etc) really need to have much more awareness around the impact of their organisational branding and behaviour on other women. Thinking that they are working as advocates for all women, only to be dumped on again with more ill thought out policies and reactions, that don't take account of women grossly disadvantaged, is a huge betrayal. Raising women's expectations only to kowtow to "woke men" is not what I'm fighting for.

it was the active marginalisation of women by those from existing media cultures and particularly the rhetoric framing WPUK as left wing and labour, which de facto excludes people from WPUK and also the reflex response to place Posie and her children at risk to jostle for a position in a hierarchy that doest exist at a time when we need to be co-ordinating security.
Add message | Report | Message poster lisamuggeridge Mon 17-Sep-18 02:25:53
EDIT ''WPUK as left wing and labour, which de facto excludes people living with austerity'. De facto excludes all women living with austerity.

Really underwrite this - WPUK seem to be more interested in changing the Labour Party than representing women as a group - it has never sat well with me because their brand positioning actively excludes those women (and their children) screwed over by Labour policies and by Labour's wholesale endorsement of austerity by failing to fight it at every turn as a party. So politics and penis trump women's lived experience and voices yet again.

And their treatment of Posie was woeful and very mishandled. Shunning her and casting her out was unforgivable and replicates what many women experience when they speak the confronting truth and stand up for themselves. Replicating the dynamics of coercive control and toxic families is not on. Women have enough of that. Women policing women usually indicates them doing men's work by proxy, thus I have red flags around WPUK, despite their great work.

We need a coup. An actual coup of women rising up saying "get out of our fucking spaces", "stop killing us", "don't move our statues", "stop paying us less", "respect our unpaid work" and whatnot.

YY

We need to take to the streets - enough is enough...

EDIT ''WPUK as left wing and labour, which de facto excludes people living with austerity'. De facto excludes all women living with austerity.

Women have to fill that vacuum created by backlash or something more toxic will. Its really that simple. The status quo that existed before this madness has gone and its done. And we are the centre of something breaking that is global. That cant be undone either. My beef with WPUK was never about elevating trans voices, I thought they should, it was the active marginalisation of women by those from existing media cultures and particularly the rhetoric framing WPUK as left wing and labour, which de facto excludes people from WPUK and also the reflex response to place Posie and her children at risk to jostle for a position in a hierarchy that doest exist at a time when we need to be co-ordinating security.

I think there is a very serious issue about marginalisation of female voices, deference to male voices even in this debate that is hard to stomach. I do think Debbie was given a huge number of platforms and that happens and I think has created the impression its a debate. It stopped being a debate ages ago and became about women having a) right to boundaries b) the right not to be absed and intimidated. Minute women were pushed there it was over, all or nothing. I dont think Debbie was expecting that and nor will most of the transsexuals unaware of much of this, but that has happened and cant be undone and it wasnt a debate with a moderate centre position. It was do women decide their own boundaries or not with no room to budge and a renewed understanding of the dangers of giving an inch on that.

When Maria Mac was attacked, I think everyone was in a shocked state. The fact that Stonewall backed out of the WNTT meeting it seemed so sinister - we couldn't even have a conversation with both sides?

WPUK pretty much over-represented trans voices in order to let the conversation happen, even though it narked people like me, but it was important to create a platform where people could publicly disagree.

Debbie has been given so many platforms which weren't available elsewhere - women made those happen. I think most people, myself included, hoped that transsexuals and women would come to an understanding through simply conversing, keeping the lines of communication open - I hoped transsexuals would all concur that reality trumps wishes. But it seems there's a wider gulf than was presumed.

I still hope the penny will drop and Debbie will move in our direction. We'll see.

lancleg ah, ok. Then I‘ll apologize for my rant, I guess.

I'm short with tiny hands and I do get misgendered" I think I failed part of the female socialisation

I'm really hoping it isn't that I smell like a bloke

"dont mention the war" did literally make me laugh aloud btw

Descent, men and women definitely do smell different. I think male people underestimate this difference, as females do tend to have a more sensitive sense of smell (scientifically, not anecdata).

Wonder if this contributes to the "but many pass"/"nobody passes" disagreement - males are judging whether someone passes on fewer criteria than females...?

It's interesting how many people thanked Debbie at the start of the thread for standing up for women - when that's actually not what the article is doing at all. It's standing up for the right of the people Debbie thinks are genuinely trans to continue imposing themselves onto female spaces. Not many people doing much thanking towards the end of the thread. I think that's because up til now, Debbie has done a good job of convincing feminists that Debbie is really "one of us" anti self Id types. But turns out that's what Debbie is without a GRC so not very anti self ID? This article shows that Debbie isn't one of us at all. It seems to me that Debbie wants to make sure when we say "no males" we don't really mean Debbie cos of being nice to us. It sounds like Debbie is more pissed off because the new style TRAs are exposing those who have been getting away with pushing back on women's boundaries for years and from a woman's perspective there's really no difference at all between the two groups and now we are saying no, neither group likes it very much.