WPUK statement

I also remember Dittany warning about the dangers of the gender cult here years ago.

It's good to see Venice getting the credit she deserves, but let's not also forget the feminist work done before then, eg:

'Thinking Differently: Feminists Questioning Gender Politics’ a one-day conference held at Conway Hall, London, UK, on Saturday 16 July 2016.

Indeed.

It's something that Tinsel often points out. That people simply cannot help platforming men!

I guess that's down to a couple of millennia of telling women their opinions don't count. But once you notice it, it goes off like a klaxon.

But you have to notice it first.

Yes, I think it probably was about fending off accusations of transphobia. But as you say, this didn't work. And I'm sure I wasn't the only woman who was put off by their platforming of males in womanface.

I don't think Hayton was 'out' as an AGP at that point. I wasn't aware of that at that point, and I had no idea he had a wife and children (I think I assumed he was gay). But he was known to be a man pretending to be a woman, as was Harrison, which should have been enough for them not to be invited as speakers (multiple times).

I just couldn't get my head round how a group could be formed which took the view that women are female and need single-sex spaces, and people can't change sex, and then invite males pretending to be women to speak at their meetings.

I watched the video of Harrison's performance at one of their meetings, and I could see just how thrilled he was to be speaking there. It was all about him and it was extremely uncomfortable to watch. I don't understand how they couldn't see this and kept inviting him and Hayton to speak.

In fairness to WPUK, those were early meetings and they stopped platforming trans women after that. Back in 2018/19 a lot of us still made the distinction between the old-fashioned type of trans-sexual and the newer type of trans-identifying men. And also platforming trans women provided WPUK with a handy rebuttal to people who said they were transphobic. Not that it did much good.

And yes Venice Allan was the first to hold meetings, certainly on my radar.

Am I imagining it, or did she actually write down her phone number on here. I'm sure I called her on my way to work!

They didn't/don't understand AGP, or grasp the nature of it.

Hence platforming an autogynephile in feminist meetings, attended by hundreds of women.

Yes: I still have some of those Hands off My Rights leaflets on the premises, along with various others. I did have a t-shirt, too. No idea what happened to it.

Yes - I was out leafletting in my red t shirt with a group of women that I met on here.

I’m reminiscing about Fair Play for Women’s Hands Off My Rights campaign in 2018 now. Was anyone else out there leafleting in a red T-shirt?

Yes, and it was that event, and what happened to Maria, that prompted the formation of WPUK.

Ah, the fauxgressive left just arrived and told us to stop thinking what we're thinking and to shut up.

Yes, I have that quote here on my computer desktop. I'm also very aware that some of the most effective, and frankly nicest, women in my local ReSisters group and other groups I'm involved with don't share my political views.

IIRC, at the Filia event one of the speakers (was it Ali Ceesay?) talked about the need to include all women and not leaving any woman behind, while the event was aimed at attacking women like KJK, Kara Danksy, WDI supporters and any other woman who wasn't a socialist. Too much dissonance.

I'm so grateful for all the videos they put in youtube - free and informative and all starting just as I 'peaked' and was feeling lost - a bunch of us teens reading 2nd waves texts and wondering where it had all gone.

Agreed, which is also why I find those celebrating WPUKs end so aggravating too.

If we're respecting everyone's way if approaching women liberation (or, possibly just the gender ideology issue?? Depends whos talking I guess) then we need to respect WPs way of going about things

It was her treatment by the Labour Party following on from Madigan etc that made me leave.

Sorry, missed that.

Glad to see Venice Allen getting some credit here. She also organised a meeting at Millwall FC which was cancelled at the last minute. David TC Davies, a despised Tory politician, found a room in the HoC to hold the meeting and came and listened. I don't want Venice's contribution to be written out of all this. It was good to see her at the Supreme Court this week, with other top terfs.

I linked to a great Feminist Current piece from that time.

My feminism doesn't extend to attacking women who hold different views in the way WPUK did

Agreed. I like Dworkin's advice on this:

“Feminism is a political practice of fighting male supremacy on behalf of women as a class, including all the women you don’t like, including all the women you don’t want to be around, including all the women who used to be your best friends whom you don’t want anything to do with any more. It doesn’t matter who the individual women are.” - Andrea Dworkin

Glad to see Venice Allen getting some credit here. She also organised a meeting at Millwall FC which was cancelled at the last minute. David TC Davies, a despised Tory politician, found a room in the HoC to hold the meeting and came and listened. I don't want Venice's contribution to be written out of all this. It was good to see her at the Supreme Court this week, with other top terfs.

Or Jo Phoenix's.

Like so many others here I'll always be grateful to them for being the first women's organisation to hold regional events that attracted significant numbers of women and allowed us/ encouraged us to network and get our own groups and campaigns started. It was clear from the outset that they were of the socialist left and I don't really see that the far left has shifted on gender ideology. Certainly at Labour's conference in Liverpool this year I had no sense that the unions had moved an inch on their pro-trans stance. It's ironic that instead of being able to shift opinion on the 'progressive' left or the unions or the Labour Party, WPUK galvanised a more effective populist movement that did have effect. I imagine it's been both challenging and embarrassing seeing the Tories come out in support of women while the Labour's left and the unions still take the TWAW line.

I stuck with WPUK through the 'domesticated zombies' and other concerns, but I was one of those who emerged from their Filia event in 2022 feeling uncomfortable with the finger-wagging warnings that we needed to be socialists or their undercover attack on KJK and her followers. My feminism doesn't extend to attacking women who hold different views in the way WPUK did, and their handling of criticism on this thread brought my relationship with them to a hard and unpleasant end.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4662757-womens-place-uk-filia-event-the-elephant-ignored-yet-again

Yes, Hayton spoke at the Liverpool meeting in 2017, I think it was.

Early 2018 I think @RethinkingLife