FEM 11 Nov 12, London

[QueenOfAllBiscuitsandMuffins]

ukfeminista.org.uk/events/event/fem-11/

We?re excited to announce that UK Feminista?s 2011 national conference, FEM 11, will take place on Saturday 12 November in London.

Featuring workshops and seminars from leading feminist organisations, including: Rights of Women, Abortion Rights, Southall Black Sisters, Women?s Resource Centre, Platform 51, Centre for Women and Democracy, Women for Refugee Women and the White Ribbon Campaign.

Join with hundreds of activists, academics, politicians and pundits to debate the key issues facing women today and how the burgeoning feminist movement can build a feminist future!

Would I really be expected to debate or talk? Could I just sit at the back and listen and learn?

That is what I was wondering! I've booked up anyway, and hopefully won't be chucked out for not contributing anything!

Very tempted, feel like I know nothing about feminism and I SHOULD.

Just checking that DH can look after kids and will book place.

Got ticket!

Got ticket!

I booked my ticket yesterday.

I want to know what the workshops are too.

Oh goody.

Bea Campbell will be a guest speaker.

Perhaps she can assist in identifying more satanic ritual abusers to us.

Think I'll be skipping this event.

Could Fem 11 not find anyone else?

If you aren't interested in going, why bother to post on this thread?

Oh I'd love to go.

Yet regrettably. It is Ms. Campbell OBE's presence that precludes it.

If I thought she was going to apologise - to the children now-grown-up of Rochdale (news.bbc.co.uk/media/avdb/news_web/video/9012da680032970/bb/09012da680032b27_16x9_bb.asx) and Broxtowe, and Chris Lillie and Dawn Reed, and apologise for her collusion with religious fundamentalists and her well-documented obsessions that the UK was being overrun by satanists in the 1980s, then I wouldn't just attend, I'd cheer on her behalf.

If I thought she was going to apologise for her support of David Southall and the use of the MSBP false allegation mechanism, her support for the idea that women are easily prone to a plethora of crank-science mental illnesses, her comments about Karen Matthews, then I'd bring bunting and champaigne.

And if she was going to provide an explanation as to why she, a so-called radical feminist communist, somehow managed to accept an Order of British Empire (her effort at Why I Accepted My OBE - note the hilarious Comments section - just didn't do the trick) then you'd see me jumping up-and-down for joy.

But she isn't going to do that is she? Not too long ago she'd given-up with feminism and instead decided 'environmentalism' was her thing, standing as the Green party candidate for the not-very-working-class constituency of Hampstead. The Greens weren't too impressed by that. Now it seems she is scuttling back to us.

And this is it? After years of feminist campaigning the best we can get is a character regarded as a joke by none other than many Guardian CIF commenters? Is there just no-one else who couldn't deliver a speech rather than her?

Put in 'Beatrix Campbell' into Google and some of sites and quotes from her are pretty unpleasant. She's been involved in just about every negative event in British history going back to Cleveland. I have no evidence of it, but the canning of the WNC I reckon was in no small measure due to the fact she was on it. I noticed that the closing-out document from the WNC made no mention of any contribution made by her.

Put 'Beatrix Campbell ritual abuse' into Google and you might understand why her presence at any feminist event in modern times is an anathema.