Active discussions

Please or to access all these features

Talk
Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Feminism: chat

Original poster

WPUK launch new wider based campaign - but contrarily only to their immediate followers.

37 replies

stumbledin · 14/01/2019 23:35

Not sure I support the idea of a top down campaign that women (and men?) are supposed to be passive supporters of, but genuinely wonder at the tactic of launching to what is in effect its immediate fan base.

The campaign is about:

  1. Women have a right to self-organise
Women have a right to self-organisation, to speak and to be heard free from fear of abuse, threat or vilification in public and political discourse and in academia. This should be actively facilitated by those with civic or legal responsibility for promoting equality.
  1. The law must work for women
The law must be strengthened to ensure that all women who want or need single sex spaces (including toilets, health provision accommodation, prisons, sports, sexual and domestic violence services) are able to access them without resorting to extraordinary measures. Service providers should be supported in offering such services through legal and financial means and clear guidance must be issued on the exercising of such rights.
  1. An end to violence against women
Government must make the end to male violence against women and girls a priority. Sustainable funding for independent women-led services for women subjected to VAWG must be fully resourced by central government alongside the implementation of statutory relationships and sex education in all schools.
  1. Nothing about us without us.
All organisations, committees and politicians speaking on issues of material concern to women to demonstrate that they have widely consulted the women they represent and serve and that such consultation informs their action and their policies.
  1. Sex matters
Rigorous collection and analysis of sex-based data and high-quality research must be central to the development of any services, policies or actions which address women’s needs or which challenge sex discrimination and inequality.

(I wonder if these were drawn up through some sort of democratic consultation - or ... ?)

(Also not sure how effective as a campaign to have a meeting structure of a platform where agreed speakers presumably go through the new demands. Aren't we all more adult than that - equal? - and wouldn't it be great if those attending had read and thought about the demands and so could straight way go into an open discussion)

www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/a-womans-place-is-resolute-tickets-54586767491

OP posts:
SaskiaRembrandtWasFramed · 15/01/2019 09:37

Nothing about us without us predates the disability rights movement by several hundred years.

feministfairy · 15/01/2019 09:18

Looks great. And even if the 'nothing about us without us' is borrowed from another campaign, it's a bloody important principle and about time it was implemented for adult human females.
I know that feminist campaigns are always picked apart by others but I'm not going to. There is a growing network of women's groups fighting in all sorts of ways against the political and literal eradication of women and I reckon we should support and celebrate them all as far as is possible.

SpartacusAutisticusAHF · 15/01/2019 08:09

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

Knicknackpaddyflak · 15/01/2019 07:16

Ah sorry! WPUK - I thought this was the WEP.

More coffee needed.

Knicknackpaddyflak · 15/01/2019 07:14

All that sounds good.

I just don't believe they mean 'single sex'. Unless they've had a huge u turn, they're believers in TWAW aren't they?

Didactylos · 15/01/2019 07:02

I thought 4 and 5 would be pretty important to the fight against austerity measures: if these principles had been in place then many austerity policies which have disproportionately impacted women (eg most of them) might have been subjected to more rigorous scrutiny in their planning stages and thus altered or abandoned.

womanformallyknownaswoman · 15/01/2019 00:15

Where are they on advocating on austerity and it's horrendous effects on lone mothers and their children?

I find WPUK's stance as being for women, yet complicit in the silence against austerity together with its close ties with Labour and myopic vision to their complicity in austerity very incongruent. I also think their rejection of Posie was a huge faux par and one I can't get past. I notice they have taken off from their front page of the website anything that refers to socialist feminists yet this was from one of their founding women's speeches:

It can only be created through respectful debate and discussion, even when we disagree, and by uniting against those that oppress us all: the right-wing press and establishment that fan the flames of both transphobia and misogyny, and the Tory government that has brutally cut services to both women and trans people; a Tory government that seeks to divide and set us against each other in competition for scarce resources.

It seems like one has to be woke Labour to belong there

BubonicTheHedgehag · 15/01/2019 00:03

Is that WPUK or FPFW?
Can't be arsed to haul the various fliers and clippings out of the bottom of my bag, at the moment!

Yambabe · 15/01/2019 00:02

Well they could if this one hadn't sold out within a few hours Smile

My understanding is that the event is the "official" launch of their new resolutions, that the speakers will explain the scope and aims of each one in detail and that the whole thing will be filmed and either live-streamed or available on youtube to anyone who wants to view.

All sounds good to me.

rosablue · 15/01/2019 00:00

But what they haven't mentioned anywhere is a key central point - their definition of a woman... which obviously used to be so obvious that it didn't need a definition. And then it did. And suddenly it wasn't quite the same as it used to be, at least by some people - and now - who knows? In this day and age, you'd want them to mention it up front...

MsJeminaPuddleduck · 14/01/2019 23:58

There new demands sound great to me - just wish WPUK could move the launch to a bigger venue.

Btw Stumbled - the events are open - anyone can go

MsJeminaPuddleduck · 14/01/2019 23:55

Errr .. which of these 5 demands do you have a problem with Stumbledin?

Aren't they fairly basic to feminism?