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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Sisters Uncut

41 replies

OrderOnline · 18/02/2018 22:06

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5406353/Protesters-wearing-Times-T-shirts-BAFTA-red-carpet.html

What do we know about them?

Are they anything to do with the protesting last week in London and Edinburgh?

OP posts:
hackmum · 19/02/2018 09:29

"My local group had some members who were also very active in the revolutionary communist party."

That's interesting - when was this? Didn't the RCP disband and then reform as Spiked (right-wing, libertarian, lots of front organisations)?

I sometimes find it hard to keep track of which left organisation is a front for what these days. But I think it's fair to assume that Sisters Uncut aren't a spontaneous grass-roots expression of feminism by ordinary women. I agree with Saskia about the TRA movement being a front for MRAs, but having read about the extent to which Russia is meddling in democratic politics, I do wonder if they are behind some of this stuff too. Some of it is so outlandish and outrageous, and so clearly designed to sow dissent and discord and detract from other important issues, that it has the feel of having something bigger behind it. I find it hard to believe that MRAs on their own could have come up with something like this.

SaskiaRembrandtWasFramed · 19/02/2018 09:39

That's a good point about Russia, hackmum!

If someone had told me I'd agree with that a couple of years ago I'd have laughed. But recent events do make it seem very, very plausible.

AngryAttackKittens · 19/02/2018 09:46

It all hits a bit of a COINTELPRO note for me. Not sure who's behind the current transformation of the left into an alarming parody of itself, but it definitely doesn't feel organic, and governments have done this before.

hackmum · 19/02/2018 09:55

I agree, Saskia - it sounds ridiculous, but since I've been reading some of the stuff the Russians have been up to with fake Twitter and FB accounts, it no longer seems implausible. And I agree with Angry that it feels like COINTELPRO too. Some organisation with sinister motives is behind this, just not sure who.

Latinista · 19/02/2018 09:57

I thought they were just confused but reading these threads it sounds as if a lot of ppl think there has been something more sinister going on ... have they been taken over recently by TRA? Worried that new young generation of twenty-something feminist women buying their publicity are in for a shock.

LangCleg · 19/02/2018 10:02

It all hits a bit of a COINTELPRO note for me. Not sure who's behind the current transformation of the left into an alarming parody of itself, but it definitely doesn't feel organic

None of it feels organic. Social media in no way represents anything I see IRL.

Dramatriangle · 19/02/2018 10:12

No, the real world is still the real world, mostly currently blissfully aware of the impact of the proposed law changes being debated or the implications. A law change that would mean someone like Danielle Muscato or a TRA tweeting getting into Women's bathrooms and smashing their faces against the sink or any man with bad intentions can walk into vulnerable women's spaces.

Wisterical · 19/02/2018 10:15

hackmum RCP are still around. I went to sisters uncut meetings about 18 months ago. Although some members were active in RCP most were not and all seemed to have a background of feminist activism. Though some strongly disliked my type of feminism!

hackmum · 19/02/2018 14:17

Bloody hell, slug, that's terrible.

TheLegendOfBeans · 19/02/2018 14:19

Sorry not to RTFT but I get the impression they fancy themselves as the UK Femen or something

TheDayTheTerfStoodStill · 19/02/2018 16:22

They are pro prostitution as well as pro self ID (the two things generally seem to come as a pair).

TERFousBreakdown · 19/02/2018 16:40

I think they have an umbilical attachment to sections of Class War and the anarchist scatterings around London. And I say that as a lefty.

I won't be able to go into all too much detail here as this might turn out to be very outing indeed - but as a formerly active member of the so-called revolutionary left and as someone who still, to some degree, identifies as an anarchist and retains some contacts in the ... erm ... milieu, I can basically confirm that this is the case.

Sadly, and this was one of the major reasons why I eventually withdrew from hard-left activism and joined the International Brigades of Armchair Revolutionaries (IBAR), this is not particularly unusual for far left groups.

In my experience, they are made up of a mix of a) idealistic intellectuals, b) true believers and c) action seekers. Typically, you'll see some overlap between a) and b) and between b) and c) and c) will tend to start hopelessly outnumbering both a) and b) as the group grows.

My personal reason for leaving was not dissimilar to the current situation, though the context was different: I could not personally stand for nor was I okay with being part of a group that was refusing to condemn the Palestinian faction Hamas - not because I was not down with supporting the idea of Palestinian self-determination in principle but because I refused to enter unholy alliances with people opposed to virtually every other belief I personally happen to hold (and I don't mean this in the religious sense).

This is a bit of a tangent, but I thought I'd share in order to maybe give a bit more of a very superficial understanding of typical dynamics to those posters who have never been part of the revolutionary left.

TheLovelyHorse · 19/02/2018 16:49

TERFousBreakdown, that's very interesting.

I'm trying to contact a few of my left-wing old mates who were at Greenham in the early 1980s, to see what we'd have done back then if there'd been an equivalent of TRAs / sisters uncut trying to muscle in on our women's peace camp.

TERFousBreakdown · 19/02/2018 17:10

Having given this a few minutes' more thought, by the way, this may have implications for a broader strategy to tackle the issue:

In a nutshell, you won't convince true believers and you needn't convince action seekers. The former will either follow the intellectuals after a period of trickle-down time or will become rather irrelevant on their own. The latter tend to disperse as soon as another fun issue to rage about looks more attractive. They are the types of people you read about occasionally because they used to be in the EDL but then saw the light and joined an Antifa group instead. They're basically (and I'm sorry to say this about former comrades, but it's true nonetheless) followers.

You can and should try to convince the intellectuals. They're very often people who constantly struggle with their own ideological beliefs as they are already painfully aware of a whole variety of small and not-so-small inconsistencies in their own belief systems which they tend to try hard to reconcile. Offer them a more consistent alternative that does justice to their core concerns and they can and will be swayed. Conveniently enough, they're also the group most likely to trigger a bandwagon effect.

So much for authoritarian tendencies within supposedly anti-authoritarian groups. Any more questions as to why I didn't hold out long enough to embark on the professional activist career I once envisaged? Grin

AgonyBeetle · 19/02/2018 17:34

What TERFousBreakdown says sounds about right.

I’d also see a parallel in terms of tactics and the people involved with the hardcore animal rights groups of the 80s and 90s. They also harnessed the sympathies of liberals and young people for a cause that was, at root, valid and worthy of support, but basically turned it into a violent extremist movement with a strong undercurrent of anarcho-fight club.

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