I stand with Lisa Muggeridge

[womanformallyknownaswoman]

Just that. Lisa has been scapegoated from all directions for being the truthsayer about austerity and it’s unconscionable impact on the lives of the marginalised, particularly lone mothers and their children. She talks with inside knowledge, as an experienced social worker, about how the systems established to support them have been decimated over many years by financialisation. In other words, putting money ahead of people has deliberately undermined the user design focus and purpose of those support frameworks, including the safeguarding of children. This has resulted in the re-creation of Victorian workhouse conditions, where poor and sick women and their children have no rights in practice and are subjected to handouts at the whim of kind benevolents, cementing their place as the underclass. Many women have been consigned to economic deprivation by such combinations as:

1. leaving adult male violence perpetrators and abusive relationships of all types (coercive control, financial/physical/sexual/economic violence)
2. being estranged from families that perpetrate family violence and don’t acknowledge their victimisation of children and adults
3. wholesale financial abuse enabled by divorce courts, that lead to women not getting their fair share of combined assets
4. being continually forced to compromise their own economic wellbeing for the safety and protection of themselves and their dependents
5. no secure housing tenure
6. frequent disruptive relocations
7. being sexually victimised as children and/or adults
8. being re-victimised by aggressive systems such as family court & hostile exes who never give up/weaponised welfare/ unjust judicial and law enforcement that protect abusers and harm victims
9. inadequate health systems

10. unaffordable quality child/elder care up until the age of majority/death 11. unreasonable demands and expectations on those with no/few support systems 12. being forced to live week to week, below the poverty line, whilst in the front firing line from many hostile bodies listed above

In other words, instead of getting what they need to get back on their feet, women and children experience 360-degree withholding from opposed systems designed to keep them in their place, at the bottom, as punishment for daring to stand up for their rights. These are the women and children who should be getting wrap-around, caring support but who experience exactly the opposite. And what makes it worse is no-one, but no-one, is seeing things from their perspective and making a no-holes-barred, informed stand for them-never mind about having the unique informed, lived-experience, insider view of a social worker as well as a user. But Lisa does and is wilfully discounted and ignored, as her views take no account of wokeness or of social standing. Her sole focus is advocating for mothers and children against exploiters – ranging from sexual to financial to reputational predators who use the marginalised for their own ends.

Lisa pulls no punches in her condemnation of the wilful blindness of all the people who have enabled this – whether from academics, politicians, professionals, media, service deliverers or the like – she takes no prisoners in her advocating for fit-for-purpose safeguarding. Like many other brave women, her speaking out against abuse has made her a target of many – including those whose professional, personal and ethical competence she questions. Lisa, like all of us, is not perfect. Maybe her delivery could do with some refinement. Irrespective, she wears her heart and her outrage on her sleeve. She has neither backup nor family “bank” to support her. Any income she gets has to be declared and taxed and adversely affects her below poverty line welfare subsistence. She has a child to care for and protect as well as try to find income. She has been harassed from a decade's long stalker, who operates outside of the law. Why the disparity between her treatment and that of those able to evade taxation, afford PR, “finishing” coaching plus bring lawyers in to invoke the misnamed justice system?

I find it especially distressing and angry-making that women who have the public platform to speak out about these effects on mothers and children choose to stay silent. One wonders why. Is it for the sake of their woke reputations, confining their support only in so much as it bolsters their “good person” image, protecting their own reputation by supporting the wilfully blind line of whatever party or body they align with? All sides of politics, academia, media and service deliverers have been complicit in a gross failure of care for vulnerable women and children, most of whom are there through no fault of their own, but from the unacknowledged, covert guerrilla warfare of the hostile forces mentioned above. These women and children need the support of the herd and particularly of other women.

Why do so many people, including women, with a public platform to do so, choose not to condemn austerity, all of those complicit in it plus its dire adverse effects on mothers and children? Why do so many, including women, choose not to speak out about the safeguarding frameworks undermined by austerity that anti-women forces seek to exploit? Why do people, including women, attack Lisa publicly, knowing her back is to the wall, instead of seeking mediation if they have a gripe? That’s the elephant in the room.

I stand with Lisa.

Please ignore any personal attacks of Lisa that may occur in the thread (past behaviour of a few being a good predictor of future action), in order to keep the conversation going about austerity, the ongoing wall of silence and lack of advocates. Otherwise, it will be derailed and the important conversation about the complicity from all sides deflected. Please play the ball, not the person. If someone has a personal gripe with Lisa, they can take up elsewhere with her.

Her understanding of narcissistic pattern abusive behaviour was (& is) pertinent to understanding the ways in which FWR and women standing up for Safeguarding and Women's Rights were being attacked

I'm just listening to her again talk about the narcissistic rage responses from the finance, media and political sectors that were projected at the welfare and support systems that were already at breaking point after the 2008 GFC. This narcissistic rage came about because the brokenness at the heart of the neocon ideology was exposed in the GFC and as narcs do when exposed, they project their rage onto their target of blame - in this case, to reshape those institutions like health, education, welfare etc.

Her identifying austerity as a collective Cluster B response, whilst the latter not new as a concept to me, had this enormous bell-toll of truth about the complicity of all persuasions of political parties. So all of them who had collectively bought into neocon, plus their enablers of finance and media, when caught with no clothes on raged at the social support systems.

As an individual Cluster B will rage at his ex-wife, and in revenge hide assets offshore and other dirty tricks, so she can't ever get her fair share of the combined marital asset pool. Then keep her bogged down in the expensive red tape and guerilla war of a financial settlement through the legal process of divorce where at the end, the woman and her kids are deliberately destituted and left to survive on welfare, often in insecure housing and then blamed for her demise by him and society as well as those welfare systems. She can end up easily losing her children, her home, her career, her health and her sanity - even if she's left standing.

It has been very disheartening to see how Lisa was attacked by some (I presume middle or upper class) women on the Left who are apparently blind to class and have attacked and vilified Lisa for not shutting up about being sold down the river as a working class woman by 'the Left' with their acquiescence to austerity.

This. I stand with Lisa.

As a disabled single mum who escaped a controlling abusive marriage, Lisa’s videos have been invaluable in helping me understand the continuing financial and emotional abuse from my unfortunately still not yet xh’s behaviour. Being able to pull back and see the bigger picture has helped me join a lot of dots. Unfortunately this knowledge has not brought power, but then that’s her entire point.

I stand with Lisa, a bit too close for comfort in fact. I hope she’s ok.

Lee Lakeman's inspirational speech at Vancouver Library resonates here:

current thread OP SignMeUp wrote
tradfem.wordpress.com/2019/01/12/lee-lakeman-speaks-at-the-vancouver-public-library-january-10/

Listening to the live-stream I couldn't hear all her references. Here are her notes. I'm kinda genuflecting. Thank you Lee"

(extract)
"it is also important to put this achievement and discussion in its proper perspective:

the murder of women, that is mostly the murder of wives and prostitutes, by men continues even as we speak

the violence done to women and even more often to impoverished or racialized women continues to be without social consequences to those men as continues the harassment by men up to and including murder of women especially Aboriginal women who are forced to live in the public realm by poverty and lack of social supports like public transit and local public schools

as does continue unabated men’s harassment of women who try to use their legal rights and privileges to take their position in public institutions and political life… what Hannah Arendt speaks of as the very nature of public life; the recent campaigns led by women victims of male violence and their feminist advocates to hold men like Ghomeshi accountable are still at their very earliest stages and so far have been stunted rather than assisted by legal procedures, by the police and courts as well as by the commercial media and by the social media.

The fight for equal pay is not achieved much less the fight for equal distribution of wealth and resources.

The right to welfare and social services,health services and education services has been so undermined as to barely exist for the poor women, for the immigrant women and for the Aboriginal women. To be among such women is to be criminalized for trying to get by.

Women do not have proper access to legal aid much less to adequate protections of the law and to security of our persons.

Childcare, the care of the sick and the old are still loaded on women even if more and more it is the loading on to immigrant women at low rates of pay and with insecure citizenship.

Women’s sexuality is under constant assault so that young women have even less sense of the entitlement to autonomy to sexual pleasure and to body integrity than my generation had won. Instead, from childhood on they are fed a constant diet of pornography in every media form.

The international talk of women’s rights is just that: talk. Unless women measure, protest and demand, nothing happens to ensure women’s rights as written on paper.

No political party and no public institutions have distinguished themselves as fighters for the liberation of women. Nor have they defended those who do fight for that liberation. I am old enough to remember the Montreal Massacre and what the governments did at that point and in this year of Me Too and various campaigns they have done the same… nothing of pro-woman effect

International studies now confirm that it is only in the presence of an autonomous women’s movement that policies and practices of the state start to reform toward the advancement of women." (continues)

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3479722-Lee-akeman-Vancouver-Jan-2019

Badstyley

I hope you get your freedom soon

Unfortunately this knowledge has not brought power, but then that’s her entire point.

This is so fucking true.

for you, my friend.

Badstyley apologies for posting under such an important comment.

RO That extract from Lee Lakeman's speech encapsulates what I have been trying to capture which in turn Lisa's analysis contributed to as does everybody here.

I will also cross-reference RO's comment on the Lee Lakeman thread as the extract there is equally powerful. Like you RO, I'll have to re-listen to her - I am so moved by her and her words each time I hear them - I feel it captures my life history - work hard, got ahead, making excellent progress, economically independent, standing up for myself and other women, fucked over by male violence, have nearly most everything that's important to me stolen away except my soul and some hard learning and am still under attack. Irrespective, I am proud to be at what feels at times like the bottom, looking up at all those stood on top of my body, whose income is paid on the back of my suffering at the hands of injustice and rampant male entitlement.

Really pleased to see this thread.

I also stand with Lisa.

Lisa is inspiring for her knowledge of safe guarding and her "Cassandra" like ability to identify the problems that we would (are now)be facing due to its guidelines being diluted/ignored.

I miss her insights, but that's me being selfish, first and foremost is that her and young sproglet are safe.

I found some people's attacks on her confusing. I really couldn't understand why that was happening. What made her become a target? I could only eventually conclude that her criticism of of certain political parties made some uncomfortable. I really don't get it, this blind allegiance to one party.

Thank you Woman Lang and R0

This is where I’d write some chipper reassurance that all is fine, but it’s not, so I won’t. That is all.

Dana many of us have asked that same question. It does seem as though many feminists are aligned with those very bodies that are part of the problem not the solution - eg all political parties/ academia/ media/all service deliverers are all complicit in austerity which deliberately targets disadvantaged mothers and their children.

Rather than owning that and their reliance on those compromised institutions, they prefer to retain their public profile and ignore the elephant in the room as it would mean speaking out against those that fund them. So literally class analysis is a dirty word because if so called feminists et al acknowledged their own and their institutions’ role in creating and maintaining austerity, it would bring conflict for them- both inner and with their income sources.

So the working class women get used and exploited for others reputations and discarded when the chips are down.

Class is now a dirty word. That’s why Lee Lakeman’s recent speech at Vancouver is so important - she’s talking about the same issues in Canada and how only those 2nd wave feminists who fight independently from outside of the system are actually on vulnerable women’s side. She acknowledges she went unpaid for years because of her stand. So it seems more women have to stand up and fight and perhaps sacrifice their own economic well-being for the sake of other women being killed and maimed by a totalitarian infrastructure of coercive control that targets disadvantaged women. When the chips are down it’s women like Lee who really work for other women and I haven’t seen many in the UK names willing to give something up of themselves up for other more vulnerable women to the extent she has. She’s a force of nature that’s for sure and we need more like her and Julie B etc that’s for sure.

Most women seem to have been neoconned and there seems not to be an uncompromised body to centre the plight of disadvantaged women - which means we have to start again from grass roots

Re Lisa - she names those bodies and people complicit and part of the problem - some don’t like it nor have enough empathy for her plight as a marginalised and vulnerable mother. They have never been there and don’t seem to want to acknowledge or comprehend the profound stress it places on women like Lisa. Stressed animals can react in many ways, some with hostility.

My take on it is when one’s back is to the wall, one is like a wounded bear - the bear need some slack cutting and to be fed and freed ideally - but some prefer to kill it.

But let’s not dwell on the individuals as that’s not what this thread is about ...

So the working class women get used and exploited for others reputations and discarded when the chips are down.

1000x this. You've nailed it Woman.

I say this as someone that now would be described as comfortably middle class. It wasn't always like that though I was raised by a single mother in what is my country's equivalent of a council estate. I've seen this so many times it's become boringly predictable.

A lot of the support is conditional. We have your back, we'll raise your voice... wait... What? No you can't express that opinion. How very dare you attempt to rise above your station.

What those women fail to grasp is that for them it's an academic/philosophical exercise, but for working class women and those struggling below the poverty line it's reality.

Well done for getting out Dana

I was thinking about your comment - thx for sharing your experience. Above all else, the support of vulnerable working class women is conditional on their compliance and deference to the “good women” and of course men

Thanks Woman. I don't share my story to beat my own drum as it were. I know full well that circumstances could very easily change (death, divorce, illness etc) and I'd find myself right back where I started.

I always thought that was the case Dana and your success against the odds still deserves acknowledgement

Yes unless has been through a personal disaster not of one’s own making, or born there, one doesn’t understand life at the front line at all

I also think Gen PB (personal brand) have a brittleness not seen before

Text saved from a deleted twitter thread, 14 March 2018:

Statement from Working class community workers from Deptford. We are attending the women’s meeting at the House of Commons today. We would like to offer an explanation as to why this is necessary. See below

After many years of working at grass roots within our community we have recently been made aware of an issue that directly effects the working class and women in our area.

You must understand we are not graduate activists or or women’s rights campaigners. We are community workers and our concerns regarding changes to the GRA come from a lifetime of personal experience and having worked with some of the most marginalise people in our area.

The majority of our recent projects have been working with rough sleepers, the homeless and those that have been excluded from society. The issues they face include: unsupported/ mental health illness, sexual violence and prostitution, childhood trauma and abuse...

domestic violence, poverty, ex care system issues, addiction, prison,rehab,homelessness and austerity.

The people in our community that we represent are the most likely to access/ be placed in sex segregated services.Some have and will access all of these services.

Our local political and community organisations have been infiltrated by a group of well meaning white middle class goldsmith (uni) students. These people although well intentioned have rail roaded many vital projects by introducing identity policies and intersectional thinking. They do this without truly understanding or experiencing working class issues.

Meetings we have attended for the purpose of discussing community housing projects and women’s wellness etc have been used as a platform to re educate working class people on the new academic language expected within our organisations.

As anyone from a working class back ground will tell you, these theories and ideologies rarely translate into working class communities.

The extremely small number of transsexual (I use the old term as this has a very different meaning to the university umbrella term currently thrown about) members of the community are and have always been excepted and protected by community organisations.

We are now informed that transgender people are being routinely abused (mis gendered) and should be protected above all other marginalised groups. All that has changed is privileged students have adopted a set of gender identities that allow them to be considered marginalised.

The people we encountered were far from marginalised. In fact they were highly educated, openly classist and aggressive.

This new politics doesn’t equate in our community or for the people we support. We are dealing with working class issues with severely marginalised people and the trans lobby is a gentrification of working class social and political movements. Note the difference between trans lobby and trans people who we support.

No one will discuss our concerns regarding self id. Our local Labour Party has refused to comment or debate with the working class people.

We are attending the meeting this evening as this is only place that is willing to discuss theses issues.

When we are being verbally abused and called fascists because we are concerned about the effects of policy change on marginalised people it is a direct attack on working class women and grass roots organisations.

when sharing information about this event and attempt to shut it down be aware that you are complicit in the silencing of not only women but working class people who have not afforded the privileged of a safe space or university education. Thank you x"

Meghan Murphy interviews the author:
(extract)
"Lucy Mcdonagh grew up working class, raised by a single mother. Her life as a young woman was marked by addiction, abuse, poverty, and mental health issues. She managed to escape a relationship with an extremely violent man at 32-years-old, after being partnered with him for 10 years. “My experience of being a working class woman and the level of trauma carried by many working class people has been my driving force since I was young,” Mcdonagh told me.

“All I have ever wanted to do is to try and empower working class people into supporting ourselves and, in doing so, empower our community. Being working class isn’t just about poverty. It’s about resilience and an unspoken understanding of violence. We don’t talk about our struggles because that places us at greater harm.”

That reality is suddenly of great interest to those who wish to coopt (or “parasitize,” if you will…) the struggles of oppressed groups as a means to gain social, cultural, or political leverage.

Mcdonagh had been forced to close the holistic wellness centre she was running in Deptford after leaving her then-partner, due to the trauma and subsequent breakdown she experienced during the police process. Once back on her feet, Mcdonagh co-founded The Deptford People Project, which not only feeds people, but, in her words, “created a family for those who were ostracized from the community.”

“We eat together, we played music, laughed and talked… We were not offering a service, we were offering an opportunity to become part of a community again. There was no ‘helping the poor’ — we are all poor and ran the project together. It was amazing.”

Not long after this project took off, Deptford was gentrified, and working class people like Mcdonagh were no longer welcome. “Working class people can be quite scary to white middle class people not from the area,” she explained.

“We shout and swear and take the mick out of [tease] each other. We speak a different language. One that is often mistaken for aggression. We’re not [politically correct] because most of us have never really believed that politics is anything more then a rich man’s game to get richer. But we’re not unintelligent — we’re just not academic.” (continues)

www.feministcurrent.com/2018/03/23/leftist-women-uk-refuse-accept-labours-attempts-silence-critiques-gender-identity/

The extremely small number of transsexual (I use the old term as this has a very different meaning to the university umbrella term currently thrown about) members of the community are and have always been excepted and protected by community organisations.

I remember that post - because of this very passage.

Working class people can be quite scary to white middle class people not from the area

I swear this is because politically active working class people do not use obfuscating language and are very clear about what they think and why.

(It even goes like that here at MN. You can say the same thing in a straightforward blunt way with no euphemism, or coded with obfuscation and polysyllables. The former will get deleted and the latter will be left to stand. Class cues of acceptable discourse, y'see.)

I swear this is because politically active working class people do not use obfuscating language and are very clear about what they think and why

I get that with my students. I have to take a deep breath sometimes both because of the delivery and because (if verbal) their defensive posture and look of anger. I work with them, and indeed they are often my favourites, but often middle-class staff persecute these students.

I swear this is because politically active working class people do not use obfuscating language and are very clear about what they think and why.

I think so, too. I have grown up in a rural, economically challenged area, where for kids and youth there was not much of a palpable class divide, one school for all, and popular were those who knew great games and hangouts. We all did the same stuff and talked the same way.
I had to leave for 'the city' for university, and it struck me, what a massive barrier there was. I swear, some of my fellow students were outright incapable of just simply talking to the cleaning staff or the university's handyman. It was bizzarre.

(It even goes like that here at MN. You can say the same thing in a straightforward blunt way with no euphemism, or coded with obfuscation and polysyllables. The former will get deleted and the latter will be left to stand. Class cues of acceptable discourse, y'see.)

YY

Happens often on this board which is being monitored and moderated differently to the rest of the site.