WPUK meeting in London 20 May with Meghan Murphy, Julie Bindel, Selina Todd

clitherow

Yes, you are right, it doesn't come from Thatcher. I think for a lot of people that is when they began to see that POV take over public life though. It also took many people a long time to see the connections between postmodernism on the left and the kind of neoliberalism Thatcher represented. It's still a difficult connection to make for many - many of my liberal family members just look at me like I've grown an extra head when I say things like that.

I put a lot of blame on academia as well, it makes me really angry. In particular, a friend of mine lost a post over gender issues, not even things said in an official capacity, I am looking at my own college now having largely succumbed to it. What's notable to me though is it happened under the direction of people who were not postmodernists at all, and indeed some of them are still there. But they are all people who somehow believe that the perspective of the postmodernists is part of the dialectic, that coming to terms with oppression is an important part of healing. And when you talk to them, they actually don't see what is happening right before them. They remind me of Evergreen, right now they are involved in a project centred around "working through" the historic connections of the college to slavery. Except.... they were almost non-existent, and had no institutional effect then, much less today. So what is the point supposed to be?

Anyway - I am putting more and more blame on the whole project of modernism, but that isn't a popular position. I have recently been rereading The Closing of the American mind, and a lot of it is resonating as well, more than it did when I read it when it came out.

Wow Posie Parker on FB is livid about this. I feel so dismayed that GC women are starting to attack each other when the threat we face as women is so huge, we should be standing together as we all have a common enemy and we all have so much to lose, whatever our political persuasions are...

I was coming on to flag the Helen Lewis piece. It’s more supportive of GC feminism than she’s been in the past. Watch the twitter pile on ...

Helen Lewis has written a piece about the meeting

How an email with a secret location led me to the most vibrant feminist meeting of the year

Gender critical feminists – like A Woman’s Place – are gaining ground, after decades in the wilderness.

www.newstatesman.com/politics/feminism/2019/05/how-email-secret-location-led-me-most-vibrant-feminist-meeting-year

clitherow - interesting comments and lots to think about. Thank you!

Yes, I think the point is we don’t want ideology being taught as fact the in schools

My thoughts entirely MsJeminaPuddleduck CoL's undemocratic imposition of unisex facilities, despite the outrage from women, is a testing ground for a national rollout. If we don't kick up a major fuss, and make inconvenience for men as one poster pointed out, the govt with assume they have a green light on the GRA.

Our apparent acquiescence will be viewed as a political opportunity. I wish this was merely paranoia, but I do think this juggernaut has yet to come to a halt. I'd like to believe we've 'won' on Self-ID, but I don't see the evidence yet, and today's news re the CoL is not encouraging.

I really want to get something moving re City of London/E. Lord, but I'm no Sweary G!

I agree with you on this Sunkisses. I used to want feminist studies in schools, but had to confront the reality that the only 'feminism' gaining any traction was pseudo, alphabet soup-funded, and therefore deeply inimical to the rights, needs, safety and dignity of children - especially girls.

Women's history, yes, but aside from the obvious need to teach reproductive biology, there are too many bad actors motivated by misogynist ideology who want to get involved with SRE in schools.

Oh Goosefoot, I know what you mean about science - it's my fault, I am putting my point very badly because I am having a very frustrating day that has nothing at all to do with postmodernism!!

For various reasons, I had my head in the sand completely until I came across WPUK on the internet. They really opened my eyes and I shall be forever grateful. But the two things that really shocked me was how the left was reacting and what was happening in Canada.
It soon dawned on me that what was happening was much bigger than feminism. It seemed to me that it was as if we all live in a huge building and somebody had started to take off the roof but not the bit over my head. When I saw the WPUK videos then I started to see the sky through the rafters. This is the same for all of us - something has been happening for a long time but it is only now becoming apparent when the courts are insisting that we call male rapists who identify as women "she." This is an altering of reality the likes of which I had only come across in 1984 and the Gulag Archipelago - but this was global - Argentina, Canada, Pakistan, Australia and so on.

We have been let down by the left, by the right, by science, by academia and so on. I find the betrayal by academia particularly infuriating and I blame it for much of the confusion that is now going on. So when I come across statements that Postmodernism and queer theory are in some way rooted in Thatcherism I feel great despair. Don't get me wrong, I lived through the Thatcher years, my dad and grandad were miners - but this is quite clearly wrong and does not help us analyse what is going on and what is going on is much bigger than parochial political issues in the UK.

I feel for you in Canada but the battle has only just begun and it's going to be long and hard, I fear.

I'd be interested to see what women here think of the Woman's Place UK manifesto demand for compulsory sex and relationships education in schools (I think it was including primary schools). It wasn't qualified/conditional enough for me. I'd be up for feminist-based SRE in schools, talking about sexism, boundaries, consent, the degrading and sexist nature of porn etc. But given all the furore about the queer theory-pushing ideology of No Outsiders and Peter Tatchell wanting teachers to show kids how to masturbate, it has completely turned me off schools and the state having any control over SRE at all

Goosefoot I suppose, in that situation, you start building yourself. Back to the consciousness-raising group. A book club at home, a group of interested women meeting regularly and deciding on a purposeful, achievable goal. Read books together, discuss, and work it out. Better for the sanity than listening to the eerie silence! So much starts with simply speaking.

It's strange, as well, re Canada. Meghan's writing and podcasts are highly influential to feminists over here. Seemingly more influential here than in her home country...You might perhaps meet like-minded women in the comments on her site? I wish you luck and hope you find your political kin.

Where is 'the movement' headed now? Have we actually seen off the GRA reforms for good, or will the govt next try to do what the City of London has just done - throw women under the bus

I think this is important Pinchpoint

Our response to the City of London actions may have a broader strategic importance in that govt/translobby may be watching to see if they get away with it before deciding what to do next.

With regard to science:

This is one of those problems that is bigger than feminism. The way that popular culture treats it, the way that it is taught in schools, even in universities. There was a thread a few days ago by that skeptic movement fellow - a group which promotes a very slanted view of science, but believes they are highly rational and scientific.

Science understood this way can only ever be a tool to promote ideas based on totally different, non-scientific, underpinnings.

It was chilling to hear that, when C-16 passed in Canada, "nothing happened...nobody demonstrated." She, and a fellow feminist from Vancouver Rape Relief, made representations in court. That was the full extent of the Canadian feminist pushback against the erasure of women's sex-based rights. We are far beyond that, thanks Goddess.

I am in Canada, and it really was chilling. That bill was the first that I had really heard about how far all of this had gone. I had some knowedge of the situation in universities, but it didn't twig for me that it had spread. And it took me a little bit of time to think about the implications of the whole thing, by which point it was over.
Even since then though I have looked for some sort of place to take some political action, or meet other people, or even just exchange information, in a Canadian context. I've tried to find information about people and parties I might vote for. I've even gone to far as to look up our various Marxist parties and see what they say.
There is zero. I am not really a traditional feminist, but I would be willing to meet people in such a group, or some other group, but there really is nothing.

Oh, and I forgot to add that one of the things that is going to make future battles very difficult is the two faces of science.

The word is often used as shorthand for objective, impartial observation of reality. Unfortunately, we are now looking at science as a religion. It is more helpful to think of science as it was used as a tool in Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. See for instance the deliberate sowing of confusion that is being discussed on this thread.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3591572-Nature-Journal-accepts-that-people-with-Y-chromosomes-have-vaginas

I agree with several posters casting doubt on the how far the established Left can take us in the direction of women's liberation from patriarchal oppression or, at very least, consolidating our existing legal rights and widening their scope in places, so life is tolerable while we're waiting.

That said, I'd prefer that WPUK worked to influence decision makers in their neck of the woods, than give up because there is misogyny on the Left. They are hardly going to wash their hands of bipartisan politicking, which is their jam. I'm glad they're pushing for the Nordic Model, which seems to be catching on abroad.

As Meghan said at Monday's meeting, we in the UK are fortunate to have "more than one group" working to assert women's sex-based rights. It was chilling to hear that, when C-16 passed in Canada, "nothing happened...nobody demonstrated." She, and a fellow feminist from Vancouver Rape Relief, made representations in court. That was the full extent of the Canadian feminist pushback against the erasure of women's sex-based rights. We are far beyond that, thanks Goddess.

Let's not forget the rest of the (feminist) world is checking in to see what moves we make next. I feel we are in a holding formation, waiting to see whether the govt makes another attempt at pushing through Self-ID. WPUK and others are, at least, channeling some of the otherwise free-floating/undirected energy of 'the movement.' Plenty of us are busy at local level, opposing gender ideology in our schools etc, but the top-level stuff isn't over yet.

I wish we could build something like the National Organisation of Women, as an alternative to the disappointing Women's Equality Party. Attached to no party, lobbying across the issues which unite groups of women. There could be a Mothers' Caucus...

I know, this isn't the 70s. We don't have the conducive context for the same kind of women's movement we had then. However, we showed, last year, that collective action by women is entirely possible and effective when the stakes are high enough to unite us across differences. We are powerful when we speak together. We have...power. If we didn't, would the M/TRAs, and their backers, be going to such lengths to silence us?

Where is 'the movement' headed now? Have we actually seen off the GRA reforms for good, or will the govt next try to do what the City of London has just done - throw women under the bus, ignore our legitimate complaints, and dare us to challenge them? If so, we will have to come together again to fight for our sex-based rights.

I found Monday night's meeting inspiring, even though I wouldn't have the stomach for trying to win concessions to adult human females' humanity and rights from a Labour Party which insists there is no problem with their women's officer. I imagine that will be a long, arduous process, and you would have to be closely wedded to the Left to go the distance. The betrayal was not unforeseeable. I sincerely hope WPUK's trust and optimism will be warranted.

All that said, if it begins to look as though Labour - via WPUK - responds to a growing power-base of GC women by adopting GC-friendly policies, I would seriously consider supporting them.

In accurately locating postmodernism/queer theory as the social push of neoliberal Thatcherism

No, this is certainly not wholly correct and does not explain why the left has so whole-heartedly embraced such things as the transgender ideology which is a distinct product of the breakdown of the faith in human reason that is the hallmark of postmodernism.

Some neo-liberals and libertarians embrace it because it will allow a radical form of eugenically - produced social-Darwinism which they use to explain their own self-defined superiority and justify their control of the process.

Those on the left embrace it because it will, at last, (in their view) allow us to produce a scientifically-ordered highly-collectivised society in which an elite Party will preside over a subordinate underclass. Humanity will have wrested its destiny from the randomness of nature or the judgement of God and taken control of its own destiny (in reality the control of the "party" and the scientific corporate elite). If you doubt this look at the hive-minded group think that is currently rearing its head in the face of any reasoned debate.

Individual self-definition is an illusion and tightly managed via social media and the like. In fact transgenderism is the most tragic evidence of the illusory nature of this self-definition - pathetic men modelling and mutilating themselves according to a ridiculous parody of womanhood. And all of this backed by Conservative, Labour, Liberal and the rest.

To argue that this is an outgrowth of Thatcherism is outrageous - its roots go back to the temper of the French revolution, to Sartre, Derrida and Foucault; the hubris of John Stuart Mill; the dreams of Marx and Nietzche; the brutality of Stalin and the power-hungry blood lust of Mao. Thatcher is an ant in comparison.

On a more constructive note about left/right wing positions and ideologies, I think Selina Todd's speech was a tour de force. In accurately locating postmodernism/queer theory as the social push of neoliberal Thatcherism - there's no such thing as society, we're all self-interested individuals and nothing more - she exposed the contractions in the IDPol iteration of the progressive left.

If woman means nothing any more, for these people neither does left wing. What is left wing about a hyper-libertarian, ultra-individualist, change yourself not society, ideology such as extremist genderism?

The answer is: nothing.

Another link to the text of Selina's speech:

womansplaceuk.org/2019/05/21/feminism-postmodernism-and-womens-oppression/

Extracts:

Suspicion of feminism owes much to postmodernism, which began to prevail in British and US universities after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Dressed up as radical, it is really the acceptable face of neoliberalism. Many students were and are taught that people cannot break out of the confines of capitalism – though this is a strange form of capitalism, in which language, rather than money, makes the world go round. People cannot change the world, but individually they can alter their relationship to it, through their self-description and performance of gender. No reality exists other than self-description.

Over the past thirty years, students have studied collective movements less, and individuals’ identities, emotions and desires more. While individual choice is celebrated, the very notion of collectivity is deemed oppressive. Revealingly in our neoliberal times, socialist, labour and feminist movements have been most strongly attacked. The leaders of feminist movements were, it is claimed, attempting to dominate those they purported to represent. The world was and is a collection of self-interested individuals seeking to dominate others or avoid domination themselves. In the words of that great postmodern theorist Margaret Thatcher, there is no such thing as society.

I'm coming full circle from paid up Guardianista round to nigh on despising the left so WPUK's loyalty is a frustration to me. But for them it's probably far more than politics - the left will be their life and their family. It's up to them as long as they don't annoint themselves the leaders of women or try and destablise work by women who choose to do it differently.

I think selecting the questions for an event you've organised yourselves is controlling but it doesn't cross any red lines for me. And quite honestly I don't see much wrong with that question. It's topical and pertinent. If the whole panel had been in agreement then I would have found it troubling but they didn't so if WPUK were trying to stage manage it then it backfired.

Nor do I think it's created division - that was there already and I think trying to paper over it would be a mistake. Dissent and asking awkward questions are how we got here in the first place, otherwise we'd all be chanting TWAW.

But I also think the identification of women's rights with the left may be a problem. The dismissal of women who are apolitical, or see themselves as on the right, is a problem for feminism. There are as many women there as there are on the left, and you can't claim to represent people's interests when you dismiss them

yes, I really agree with this

If WPUK want to be a political party, that's fine, but they need to be aware that if their primary focus is socialism, then it isn't women's rights.

I've got a lot of respect for fair play for women - apolitical and with laser like focus.

Goosefoot - I very much agree with this

Grinitchspinach (great name btw)

Your clarification was useful - thank you

I tend to think that issues around women's rights won't really be resolved unless other larger issues are resolved, things like how we think about work, how we think about the way we categorise and value people, how we think about nature.

So to put feminism in the context of a larger political movement makes a lot of sense to me. In fact, I think a problem in feminist thought can be that by focusing too closely on women, it can miss that some issues are actually reflective of much larger social problems, and by only looking at certain parts of the problem it is misunderstood. Maybe even made worse, which I think has happened with the question of work - looking at women as workers just like men hasn't really done much to solve the problem of alienation from our labour. It's just dehumanised us all the more.
But I also think the identification of women's rights with the left may be a problem. The dismissal of women who are apolitical, or see themselves as on the right, is a problem for feminism. There are as many women there as there are on the left, and you can't claim to represent people's interests when you dismiss them.

Looking forward to watching the video! Sounds like an amazing crowd.

I just wanted to chime in on this:

About Posie Parker, Julia Long and a few others speaking at an event in the US hosted by a right wing organisation.

and this:

It's a shame that Posie had her event in a right-wing building.

There was much confusion at the time, and the history still seems to be getting mixed up (even by those who support Posie & Julia). To be clear, the event that Posie moderated during the week of action in Washington, D.C. was at the PUBLIC LIBRARY. On a different day, she sat in the audience for a different event hosted by the Heritage Foundation but organized by parents of ROGD teens and featuring US radical feminist speakers and others. I wouldn't have blamed her (or Julia Long) one bit for speaking at that event either, but the fact is they didn't.

I don't know any of the women involved, but I was really impressed with and grateful for their week of action in my country. I tried to keep track of the events in this thread:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3490776-Women-Stand-Up-in-Washington-D-C

I don't think there's enough wiggle room for dwelling too much on political divisions. We have plenty barriers as it is without creating bigger ones for ourselves. One common goal. There's more than unites us than divides us.

Yes, I realise this is probably naive but that's how I feel about it at the moment and focus needs to be on achieving objectives and the bigger picture. We need cross party support in any case, or as much as we can realistically get anyway.

Also,

Meghan Murphy has had rape and death threats from the left wing. What is she supposed to do? Curl up into the fetal position and be at their mercy?

The left wing have advocated violence against us. I am pissed off with them.