Helen Joyce & Julie Bindel: Should TERFs unite with the Right?

I know. But I really want to know what @Dicedcarrot does for women. I'd like to know what a "campaigning feminist" is up to.

Also wanted women reading here to know that you don't have to put yourself on the frontline to be of value to the fight for women's rights. Everyone's voice is important.

Do you have to be a "campaigning feminist" in order to make a difference? I think that's quite shortsighted.

I have raised objections to TRA ideology at my work which has "marked my card". I have spoken to our school about resources. I have raised awareness amongst friends and fellow parents. I have contributed to many, many fighting funds over the last 5 years.

And that's just from a "TERF" perspective, I've done far more for accessibility over the years as well - actual tangible differences like ramps and changing spaces. In all this I have focused on practical changes I can make and stayed away from political infighting. But apparently that's sneerworthy because like the PP I'm not a "campaigning feminist" but just someone on MN trying to make a difference in her own way without pledging allegiance to some grand idea.

beastlyslumber worth remembering there are plenty of people who are only here to try and discourage women. Slurs, sneers, and snidey bullshit are generally safely ignored. 😊

I'm not a feminist or an activist. I have a job and a family. I go to meetings and events when I can. Sign petitions. Donate money to fundraisers and buy merch to support the campaigns. Talk to people about my opinions. Leave stickers around the place.

I'd say that's reasonable. Do you think I should give up my job and become a full time activist? Or don't you agree that it's the case that a movement is largely made up of people just like me, who do our bit when we can, who can be counted upon to swell the numbers of a protest, or lend our voice to a campaign?

Why do you find it necessary to denigrate the efforts of women in this campaign? What do you do that makes you so superior @Dicedcarrot ?

Helen Joyce in the debate discusses how small and insignificant their (ADF) UK branch is.

Of course HJ downplays their significance, her partner at Sex Matters has been working with them.

And the very last thing that 'terfs uniting with the right' will achieve is winning over Labour, I think it's fair to say. On the contrary, it would make it even easier for every misogynist out there to point the finger and label anything pro-women or pro-reality as 'far right'.

I mean, it sounds like you're admitting that Labour is full of misogynists. In which case, we're not going to win them over at all. Oh and idiots who can't tell the difference between 'right' and 'far right'.

I just find this line of argument weird. If women get a wider audience by talking to or "working with" the right, then more people understand what's at stake and start asking the right questions. This means that Labour, if they want to win votes, have to understand the issues and be able to answer the questions everyone is asking. If they can do that in a satisfactory way, they'll win votes.

They're not going to win votes by calling people fascists for understanding what a woman is. So it would be a stupid, self-destructive tactic.

I'm not a "campaigning feminist"

Ah, just another FWR keyboard warrior then.

Apologies! I see what you mean.

I'm not a "campaigning feminist" and no, I haven't followed events in Northern Ireland. Not embarrassed about that - why would I be? I'm not in NI. Until recently I was based in Scotland, and there's enough going on there to keep me occupied. There's only so many hours in the day.

More embarrassed about my typo. Obviously meant 'had' not 'hear'.

WPUK are like some sort of bogeyperson on MN. Portrayed as either completely ineffective and having achieved nothing or more powerful than the leading Christian rights organisation in the world (still stunned at that one, tbh).

As I say, I've been to some WPUK meetings and they were well-attended. There were protests outside all the meetings I went to, lots of noise-making and men in masks. I thought the women who spoke were brave and it was a powerful experience for those who attended.

So I'd never say they're completely ineffective. My issue with WPUK (and I obviously can't speak for anyone but myself, but this would also be my general impression of others' issues) is the way that they treated KJK, and their divisive identity politics.

I appreciate that you think the ADF are some kind of hugely powerful organisation in the UK but I've never seen them written about in a mainstream newspaper, never seen them on television, never heard about them on social media. Helen Joyce in the debate discusses how small and insignificant their UK branch is. We live in a secular country and we just don't have the religious right here in the way they do in the states.

*live and move

Identity politics isn’t really about being able to identify as something you’re not - that is the added confusion of ‘trans’ ideas/Queer Theory. When I think of identity politics, it is more about navel-gazing and narrowing down who you are according to all the sub-classifications. Like in the 80s when people used to take the piss out of lefties announcing themselves as ‘a disabled Black lesbian’ or whatever. With ‘trans’ ideas, a straight, able-bodied, white man can now ‘identify as’ a disabled Black lesbian. It’s ‘trans’ identity politics.

I think the confusion we’re getting in this thread is the conflation of the ideas of ‘classification’ and ‘grouping’. With ‘classes’ you are thinking “how are we going to slice things into smaller parts so we can see how it works?”, with ‘groups’, you are thinking ‘how are these individual elements/people, working together and interacting as one group?’.

So you can stand on the corner of the street and classify people by height as they walk by, and classify people as ‘below 5’2, 5’2-5’10” and above 5’10’ - although there maybe some commonalities about the way these three classes navigate the public space, they can’t be meaningfully ‘grouped’ together, because they don’t interact or work together, they are just the way you decided to slice the pie when you were gathering your stats.

So you can analyse the commonalities of, say, ‘white men’, but it will only give you the broadest, sweeping generalisations to work with. A first generation Lithuanian man in Lewisham can’t be meaningfully grouped with King Charles, since they live and more in entirely different social eco systems.

Yet, shinyredbicycle, when JB has legal evidence of harassment from one of her own crowd and at least six reports, what does she do? Why, she says she believes privately but says nothing publicly and the women who spoke out are branded liars by some very influential self-identified feminists. To this day, the legals and reports sit in a folder. Some people are very good at building a brand and credit must go to her for that. As a feminist concerned with abuse? My only response is black, hysterical laughter given who looked the other way when it was reputationally convenient to do so.

Yes ^Shinyredbicycle*. Click on the three dots at the bottom of the comment you're responding to and press quote.

Yes other women and groups. But we were talking about JB.

My point was in response to LangClegsInSpace's comment about JB's attitude to mothers and motherhood and I said these women are an untapped resource. Which, if I understand you correctly, you say JB has no interest in garnering support from.

It's an explanation of why there's not more support. If you don't ask for it, you won't get it.

ADF likewise, no one hear ever heard of them until feminists started speaking about them.

Wow, it's pretty embarrassing as a campaigning feminist to admit that, have you not been following what's been going on in Northern Ireland?

@Shinyredbicycle could you quote or make it clear which posts you are replying to? There's a few in a row upthread and I'm not sure which posts they relate to. Thanks 😊

Well, except those things are happening as they're a focus for other women and other groups.

Indeed. And I think most women here have nothing but admiration and gratitude for the work she does.

And of course, if she doesn't view popular support or the delegation of campaigning tasks as of any interest, then it's understandable why those things are unlikely to happen.

I don't think JB is interested in popular support tbh, nor delegating other women tasks!

She was extremely unpopular, dismissed as a bigot, non platformed, slurred for years by the left, right and most feminists for years.

It's organising and working against male violence towards women and girls, especially those 'at the bottom' as she puts it that motivate her.

The prostituted, the groomed, the sexually assaulted and raped, the survivors of domestic violence and abuse, the poor and the disenfranchised.

She does a lot of work with other women around these issues - see this week's fab news about JKR's women-only service in Edinburgh.

At the Nottingham library meeting held in the car park she did speak about how she had been doing this work for ages and would still be doing it when all these Johnny-come-latelys had moved on. (Paraphrasing)

I know it's annoying when the thing you do goes in and out of fashion but surely any campaigner should always welcome new faces and give them tasks to do to get more involved.

I thought twice about using that word 🙄. But if women's oppression isn't improving and is getting worse in terms of gender ideology, then you need all the support you can get.

KJK is going directly to the women affected. Mothers. All fourteen million of them. Many of whom make up the twelve million unique users of mumsnet.

But JB seems to dismiss them. And has nothing but contempt for KJK.

As a strategy to increase support, it doesn't work.

Ruth isn't involved with WPUK now and hasn't been for a while.

Most of the women running WPUK come from TU backgrounds. They built the organisation from grass roots, as has every other women-centred or feminist organisation that's developed over the last few years.

WPUK are like some sort of bogeyperson on MN. Portrayed as either completely ineffective and having achieved nothing or more powerful than the leading Christian rights organisation in the world (still stunned at that one, tbh).

That's nice of you to think about me, but understanding that some social groups have more power than others is the opposite of identity politics.

Male violence towards women and girls, lack of access to abortion care, poverty, unpaid caring work are the material realities which feminism organises against.

Identity politics is pretending that you can identity in or out of a social group that you are not. In this world, men can become women, structural power and oppression are irrelevant.

Not sure where being an avatar fits in, but your word not mine.

I don't think JB is interested in 'capitalising' on anyone.

She did mention the work that she'd done with mothers of some of the girls exploited by grooming gangs in the interview.