Have you heard about 'Sisters Uncut'?

[AWholeLottaNosy]

I just read about this and really like the idea of it. It's a direct action feminist group based on the principles of UK Uncut.

"Sisters Uncut is holding its first women-only protest against cuts to domestic violence services on Valentine’s Day in central London, and members are currently in the process of building a website of resources so that women around the country can set up Sisters Uncut groups of their own. I asked a Sisters Uncut founder, Frida, what had inspired the women to form the group: “We were horrified that domestic violence services were being decimated by austerity, and felt it was a result of the fact that women are generally treated as second-class citizens whose needs are relegated. So we decided the only thing to do was to organise ourselves and go out onto the streets and make ourselves heard.” A simple message, then: women are important, our lives matter – and feminism just got interesting."

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/29/2014-feminists-sisters-uncut-domestic-violence-direct-action-feminism

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/29/2014-feminists-sisters-uncut-domestic-violence-direct-action-feminism

I feel so heartened by this and I remember some time ago when we were discussing how the cuts were affecting Dv services, what we could do about it.

What's nmp3? ( ha auto correct kept wanting to type BNP!!)

They didn't support No More Page 3? What were their justifications? I guess for some people it makes sense to pick the battles you feel are most important as we all have limited time and resources?

^This post is indended to make people aware that Sisters Uncut as a collective is not supportive of the No to Page 3 Campaign. Members within the campaign do however, hold different and changing opinions.
While this should not be seen as a suggestion that the issues facing women in the sex industry simply come down to feminist 'debate', it has become clear that a lot of people who have been supportive of NTP3 were not aware of some really important critism.^

With that in mind, please see the below articles which sets out the position of sex workers and allys/accomplices:

stavvers.wordpress.com/2015/01/20/and-theyve-replaced-page-3-with-something-far-worse/

desiredxthings.wordpress.com/2015/01/20/a-few-thoughts-on-the-demise-of-page-3/

This was the FB post, I lost interest when I saw it. It just seemed to be jumping on the "other feminist doing it wrong" band wagon (which I suppose I am doing now)

Also they quote stavvers [eurgh]

Yeah,. not too keen on stavvers......

I hate it when feminists argue against each other! There's so much for us to fight against and we all need the support of each other. All the issues are important as they're all part of a continuum. It's not like there's so many of us that we can afford to pick and choose. Splitters! As the saying went in 'Life of Brian'. It's just a waste on energy to me.

I am another one who was really excited by this - seemed right up my alley. But if you've only made a couple of statements, and one of them is trashing other women's campaigns, then it isn't a good sign. And they'd have to be exceptionally clueless not to realise that approvingly linking to a stavvers piece would be really divisive, so that looks like a pretty deliberate, goady act, too.

Like I said, I had been quite excited by it - and I hope they go on and do good things - but I wouldn't now want to turn up myself and join in as I clearly don't have the approved opinions on things like prostitution or No More P3.

Hmmm. I just went to poke around twitter to see responses to this, and it's getting a lot of coverage, which is good. But the woman who wrote that guardian article seems to respond to even mild/polite criticism of the group with snappish, dismissive defensiveness, which is less good, and doesn't bode well for how the group tolerates any dissent from the party line on stuff that isn't DV.

Oh my GOD, have just had a really thorough look at the Sisters Uncut facebook page, and they are associated with Wages for Housework. This is the signal for anyone who values their time, energy and safety to RUN RUN RUN, RUN FAR AWAY, AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE!

Bloody hell. That lot always turn up eventually, like a bad penny.

...I don't know where to start. They sound wonderful in theory, but in practice? Imagine an entire organisation made up of stavvers-alikes.

(They've been operating for a while, and movements since the 70s have been littered with people who took their excellent statements of principle in good faith, and were horribly burned.)

You are a lucky, lucky person, is what you are, HouseWhere.

Think Rik, in The Young Ones, House. Middle class performative armchair anarchist, more-revolutionary-than-thou, smash-the-system, and make sure never, ever to let other women's successes go by without writing a takedown of why it's all rubbish and why the other women are also rubbish for doing it. But never do anything positive or practical yourself.