Who‘s coming to FiLIA?

Good for them taking a principled stand.

That makes a lot of sense.

Yet still no statement from FiLiA.

Thank you for posting this, it did bring a lot of clarity to things.

"Personally, I had never before been in a space comprising 3000 women and near-zero men, a space entirely centring women, and it was, frankly, extraordinary."

However, so did one of the replies, from a woman who had a very different experience of the event. This is part of her reply:

I'm pleased you had a good experience. I recognise that feeling of being in space where, finally, being a woman did not mean being automatically dismissed, I was also an academic. I was there at Filia. My experience was very different.

[...]

I spoke to a woman who had been spat at, one who had been jostled, I heard a stall holder tell a small group around her that Jewish women were "weaponising" the rapes of Oct 7th "to make Hamas look evil" (!).

Sitting having coffee with two other women, talking about the issue of how to support Jewish women, we were joined by a fourth women who seemed interested - but then began to tell us that the Israeli military had changed the location of the NOVA festival a few days before "wink wink" - she said it made her "wonder". Yes we challenged her but I doubt it made a difference to her belief in a zionist conspiracy.

An old friend was at the disco, near the front. She saw the spiteful children with the Palestinian flag deliberately wrap it around the elderly, disabled, Jewish woman. My friend went for security and sensibly was not involved in the scuffles.

Large groups of women gathering to support each other is pretty powerful, I know how hard it to organise them, herding cats is easier. But if one ethnic group of women is targeted in this way then it de-legitimises that event as a Feminist event. The group behind this, who were selling antisemitic literature on their stall, have been tweeting since the weekend that their aim is to ensure the next FILIA is "Zio free".

Not having Kellie Jay at Filia
meh

Banning pictures of Kellie Jay at Filia
pathetic

Was any reason given?

oh sorry, I didn't refresh. That was in answer to making Virago withdraw due to the KJK depiction

and it's not a new agenda.....

so a trawl through the twix feed of the jihadi lovers collective, who were instrumental in activating the AntiSemitism, very quickly reveals that this was, indeed, their real agenda all along.

yes. Definitely true. I was due to meet up with one of the Virago women. She told me that they had all withdrawn, personally as well as their stall, rather than exclude the art of the member who had depicted a LWS event.

The work was originally scheduled to be shown at the FiLiA 2025 conference in Brighton. However, when concerns were raised about Fanny Graham’s piece Let Women Speak, Virago was asked to withdraw that particular work. After consultation with all of the artists, a collective decision was made: if one piece was excluded, none would be shown. In the spirit of “all for one, one for all,” the artists chose solidarity over compromise, withdrawing the entire exhibition and standing together — in sisterhood and defiance.

https://sites.google.com/view/outofhertinymind/home?authuser=0

It would appear so Datun, Virago Arts Centre decided to withdraw totally rather than have their work censored.

nor about the exclusion of artwork with KJK in it

Has this been addressed at all? Is it true that they said to whoever was exhibiting art you can exhibit your art, but not that one with KJK in it?

Thank you for posting this link - I was there (including the party though not the opening session) and this reflects my experience.

I would add that I did wonder if the irony of the TRAs activists joining in with the few (20 max?) pro-Palestinian women outside the conference Saturday lunchtime hit them? I’m really pissed that the few have undermined (and upset) so many.

I will not be deterred by detractors and I am going to Blackpool. As the article says, being with so many wonderful women was amazing and a handful of disrupters will not change that.

Regarding women from FILIA always thinking they’re right, it’s interesting you mention this as I was thinking about it the other day, and when I first started dealing with them it very much wasn’t the case. Back then I felt that they did feminism the way it should be done, by trusting women to be the experts on their own experience, eg they got something wrong in a consultation response about the Spousal Exit Clause and when I got in touch and pointed it out they allowed me to write the correction which they published as if from them, on their website, as I had the greater expertise.

If this has changed (and I agree that it has) I think it’s as a direct result of the soc fem take over. The gentry left always think they know better than us lessers. There are women who were formerly involved with WPUK who now seem to have greater influence in FILIA (the AGCL lot Iwanttoretire mentioned) and I’ve got direct experience when they were still WPUK of them thinking they understand the same issue better than I did (they didn’t).

Not dealing swiftly with Antisemitic incidents was indefensible and yes, showing a complete lack of leadership.

The deafening silence around the anti-semitic incidents is appalling and shows that the leadership either (a) agrees with those or (b) is too weak and cowardly to address them head on.

You have people gloating on X that the CEO of FiLiA invited them particularly because of their anti-semitism and support of Hamas, no action taken over the virulent anti-semitic pamphlet available at the conference and there is tumbleweed from the leadership/organisers. The only conclusion to draw from that is that the leadership/organisers are fully in support and on board with the above.

And yet the organisers/leadership went into full on over-drive of squeamish horror over ONE piece of artwork on a stall that featured KJK, which frankly I think is pathetic and childish in the extreme.

Those incidents show where the priorities of FiLiA and the leadership/organisers lie and I personally think it is dreadful and for that reason would never attend or support FiLiA.

I WAS there -that simply demonstrated organisational skills, not leadership.

Not dealing swiftly with Antisemitic incidents was indefensible and yes, showing a complete lack of leadership.

The thing is there is a pattern. The pattern is that women within Filia think they're always right and won't listen to outside perspectives in a respectful way.

It's happened with KJK, with Tinsel, with Aja, and on the Palestine situation. They don't seem to really have listened to Jewish women, nor made the link that there was only recently an attack on a synagogue in the UK and maybe describing Israel as a fascist state killing women without any balance at all or discussion of what Hamas have done to harm Israeli women is stoking the fire of anti-semitism. Using the platform of a speech at a feminist conference framing some women (the women on the other side fo this war) as less worthy of the attention of a feminist conference.

IMO it's just not acceptable to mention the suffering of Palestinian women in a war which has also harmed Jewish women without mentioning both groups of women suffering. It's not feminist.

Upthread I was told that I was wrong and should meekly listen to another poster on here, without any evidence to convince me to do so. This was written about me I point out where you have gone wrong, & you move on without acknowledging the harm YOU are doing by repeating falsehoods that is stirring things up really unhelpfully. This is unfair and fosters distrust.

I presume I was supposed to self flagellate at this point, who knows really. But as it turns out I wasn't wrong about the hijab stall nor about Tinsel's treatment nor about the exclusion of artwork with KJK in it, with quite a bit of evidence to support my thoughts on all of these issues.

This is just a dickish way to behave - and it is 'head girl' -like. But not a good head girl, more a kind of Pansy Parkinson head girl.

Anyway, compare and contrast with how Tinsel once told me that platforming men who identify as women but are also sex realists harms the women in their lives. A plea to consider the impact of these men on women and children. No insults, no out of the blue positioning of herself as superior (though she certainly has more proven knowledge and experience in this area). Centering of women and children. a respectful request to think about it. Which changed my mind for good.

I don't want to go to a conference run by people who are so convinced of their moral superiority that they won't listen to some specific groups of other women.

Filia could be great, but at the moment I feel it's not for me. I hope the organisers reflect, come back next year with Tinsel and KJK invited speakers and it grows from strength to strength.

I have, incidentally, also laughed my head off with Tinsel. She’s a bloody good sort & an amazing woman who’s done an enormous amount to support other transwidows.

Yes, same! I agree that sometimes it’s hard to see the funny side. But I think we all need to laugh sometimes or we would cry.

Ditto!

This.

I think Filia would do well to learn from her strong principles & boundaries. They could have done with someone like her to deal with the clusterfuck at the weekend. They should have given her the respect she’s earned through her hard work. What they did was poor form & and indication of poor leadership & even poorer decision making by those with that responsibility.

Were you at the conference @GrumpyMenopausalWombWielder ? Have you ever attended a FiLIA meeting or donated, or subscribed to their newsletter or podcast?

One could argue that FiLIA did exercise leadership in asking the speakers they asked, and organising the conference they organised. It attracted over 2,000 registrations across 3 days. That's not poor leadership.

But I sometimes think armchair critics call decisions "poor" or "wrong" just because they don't like them.

Could this have been handled better? Absolutely, yes. But Im also inclined to give a bit of time and grace to a small group of women who have spent two years setting this up, and who did deliver a lot of really good sessions for several thousand women in some really trying cirumstances, and who are, I'd bet, utterly, utterly miserable at how it's been overshadowed by all this. I'm not saying everyone has to offer them a bit of grace (and its clear from this thread women who weren't even there are angry about it all), but that's where I am at this point.

I try to go, when I can, to all kinds of feminist events, and I want as many of them as possible to survive. If I was thinking of setting up a big feminist event now, I'd look at how this has unfolded, and probably decide I'd not bother, because unless it's perfect, it's going to be torn apart.

@ArcheryAnnie I'm appreciating & nodding at all your posts. Your experience of FiLIA, and your reflections on it, are pretty much what I experienced. I was there. Many people commenting were not. There were almost 2000 women there at any one time, and there were multiple parallel sessions, plus a huge exhibition hall - maybe around 40 stands?

It's a volunteer run organisation which has grown almost exponentially in the last decade. This is wonderful, and a very welcome revival of grass-roots feminism. In the 1990s I remember going to seminars and reading articles on we felt was the disappearance of a widespread grassroots women's movement.

I am not connected to the FiLIA leadership in any way - I just donate regularly as a Friend of FiLIA. I suspect that part of what has happened is that the organisation has grown, and perhaps grown a bit out of control. It's a typical feature of most grassroots political movements: keen people feel that their chosen "haven" (FiLIA in this case) should cover anything and everything those members/activists feel should be covered. Hence the emphasis on the position of Palestinian women. The Jew-hatred was a most unwelcome and I suspect unexpected addition to that, beyond the current organisers' control.

There's a bit of rather sneering criticism of "headgirls" on these sorts of threads, but we do need leaders - if only to keep balance and stop interruptions such as the Jew-hatred events. Or, if those are sprung on the conference without any warning (as was this year with the pro-Palestinian chants) an acknowledged and empowered leading organiser can shut it down quickly.

But I've seen this sort of thing happen many many times before in feminist organisations. I think part of the issue is the very appropriate politics of trying to get rid of hierarchies and the concept of "leadership."

If we want to continue with that, then we have to learn to live with disagreement. And learn to live with our particular view maybe not being recognised or reflected. I've done enough organising of large volunteer events, and led enough volunteer organisations to know that these things are never perfect, and it's very easy to criticise from the sidelines.

Don't be a dick.

Understand everyone can disagree without sucking up.

My problem with your comments is the idea that transwidows are beholden to Tinsel. This is bullshit and obviously so.

This is true even if Tinsel is 'difficult'.

I suggest you step back and reflect.

Yes, laughter has no truck with principles sometimes.

But I've seen Archery Annie laugh her bloody head off, so I know it's not about a sense of humour failure.