In wanting Mumsnet to help Judi Dench and Joanna Lumley

[GiantBranch]

Last week, Israel banned 37 international aid organisations from operating in the strip, including Oxfam, Save the Children and Medicine Sans Frontieres (MSF). MSF delivers one in three of Gaza’s babies, and experts warn that immediate action must be taken to prevent a catastrophe.

It has prompted more than 100 leading members of the arts, including Dames Judi Dench, Imelda Staunton, Joanna Lumley, Sienna Miller, Suranne Jones and singer Paloma Faith, to sign a letter urging popular online platform Mumsnet to join them in demanding urgent government action ensuring maternity care is accessible in Gaza.

www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/gaza-israel-baby-birth-judi-dench-letter-b2896981.html

Maternal health in the UK.

None of us would have had an issue with a private letter being written to Justine or a request for a meeting with Justine. What is so totally crass is the attempt to strong arm her with letters in the press. It just looks like bullying.

Yes perhaps people in the Uk should never have campaigned against Apartheid? I don’t get the look after our own type arguments it is possible to do two things simultaneously

Excellent post.

And me - quoting again for the people on the back!

*The First Rule of Misogyny is "women are responsible for what men do". Justine and the women of Mumsnet are not responsible for what the man in charge of Israel does, and it's misogyny to claim that we are or should try to be, especially when he is ignoring everyone

You are missing the point. The concern is about the mode of campaigning here . These women could have just written an open letter to the public at large or to our politicians. Targeting Justine personally was a wild decision that just makes these women look silly at best and bullies at worst

Again huge presumptions going on but if your dislike of virtue signalling (in more innocent times called campaigning ) outweighs what you feel for vulnerable pregnant women then I suppose don’t support their campaign, it’s a choice

Yes those solutions would ease the horror parents Gazan women are facing. But Justine has no power influence or means to make a) or b) happen.

Nobofy is saying that Gazan women should continue to suffer. It’s horrifying, of course it is. But sitting doing nothing but saying how awful it is is entirely fruitless. It needs a strategic approach that will actually work and these celebs and organisations don’t seem too interested in that - they want their names out there as supporters of an en vogue cause. They’re kicking the responsibility to someone else despite, as you correctly point out, their own wealth and power.

One can agree with the campaign and still call out the awfulness of the way they have gone about this

Well is the campaign not ultimately more important?

This isn't people in uk. This is demanding that the owners of a website will engineer their platform into an international lobby group to suit the interests of women whose commitment to the project is publicly limited to signing a letter that they should do so.

It's madness. Yes, MN does some campaigns, let toys be toys, I believe her, and to improve maternity services based on the personal experiences of their users. They are not a tool to leverage international change.

They are two distinct issues. And it's a ghastly kind of behavior to use this kind of bullying and coercive tactics to get someone to run your campaign for you

If the celebrities and actresses really care about the campaign they can use their substantial means and connections to run it themselves they don't need to publicly shame Justine into doing it for them

If they want the focus to be on the actual campaign they need to apologise for how they went about this and then roll their sleeves up and get on with actually targeting politicians

She's not being fucking "targeted", she's being asked.

As the owner of the most prominent parenting website in the UK (which is very frequently canvassed by politicians and which is generally regarded as quite influential), they'd be daft NOT to ask her to join them on a campaign about a maternity issue.

I think Mumsnet would be a great partner in this campaign and it is influential, I think you underestimate how politicians view it @Nyeaccident

Then they could have written her a private letter rather than the weird naming and shaming in the press

Then write to Justine a private letter and do a public open letter to Keir Starmer- or a female politician I guess if we are going down their slightly odd route of feeling like women are solely responsible for sorting this mess caused almost exclusively by men

That's not how mumsnet work. It's grassroots. Anyone can join as long as they abide by the posting rules. People are free to comment however they wish within those rules.

We don't have landed gentry here and these celebrities are like a load of landed gentry telling their gardeners and housemaids what to think and how to vote. Except worse because they're not actually paying us, just expecting Justine to be subservient to their wishes. Why? And if they're so important they can demand this, why don't THEY do something about Gaza rather than asking Justine. Why don't they go there and volunteer for the agencies who ARE still allowed in, filming it all, that would bring a lot more sunlight than this stunt. Of course it would also require them to get off their arses...

They're free to make an account and start posting and try and convince the rest of us of their views but they've gone straight to Justine to try and coerce her in an area she has no power and as if she's the boss of the rest of us, which she isn't.

I've rarely seen a more fundamental misunderstanding of what mumsnet is.

This letter shows an extreme lack of respect both to Justine and to the users of MN (not all of whom are mothers).

And the thing is, the average MN user has literally no power to do anything about Gaza. Many of us have suffered, and sometimes our children have suffered, extreme harm at the hands of maternity services in THIS COUNTRY which are often very piss poor and where women and children are still being harmed. I note these luvvies seemingly don't care about THAT.

It is nice for Justine that you are showing infinitely more care for her well being ( also a wealthy woman the horror! I am not for the record) than for the pregnant women who were being centred in this campaign.

I wonder if they're also chastising normal Gazan women for not getting behind the campaign for safer maternity care in the UK.

Oh stop being ridiculous. We are calling out the methodology- to me it wouldn't have mattered which individual woman these celebrities targeted in the press. Unless she was the foreign secretary it was a bizarrely inappropriately way to go about things

I think normal Gazan women are busy trying to keep themselves and their kids from dying of hypothermia

It seems as though you are focussing on the methodology to damage/ hinder the campaign but maybe not the case
personally think the campaign is most important

Where exactly is the shaming please?

Because all I've seen is "campaigners are urging MN to join" (words to that effect). That is not shaming.

Nowhere have I seen "Justine is a big old meany who doesn't care" (or similar). That would be shaming.

Hypothermia? 19 degrees Celsius atm