Selina Todd has been disinvited from "Women's Liberation at 50" because of association with WPUK

[stumbledin]

Have just seen this on facebook and am totally taken aback. She is listed as a speaker here www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/womens-liberation-at-50-tickets-75905313837

Everyone of the other speaker if they go ahead and dont protest should be totally ashamed of themselves.

This is her tweet twitter.com/selina_todd/status/1233456777057964035

Some of the women speaking are those I have told I should and I do admire.

This sickness that is dividing women is so upsetting.

Not sure where or how we can show our disgust at this and make sure they know they do not speak for women.

^When the Regime commanded that books with harmful knowledge
Should be publicly burned and on all sides, Oxen were forced to drag cartloads of books o the bonfires, a banished writer, one of the best, scanning the list of the Burned, was shocked to find that his books had been passed over. He rushed to his desk on wings of wrath, and wrote a letter to those in power: Burn me! He wrote with flying pen. Burn me! Haven’t my books always reported the truth? And here you are treating me like a liar! I command you! Burn me!^

Bertold Brecht

TippexMe!

Not sure who is asking questions from the floor but they arent giving up!

Words from Pragna Patel's #WomensLib2020 speech that are in the video but not the text version: Let's own free speech .

This is why.

Good. Let them own this shambles. I’m going to Oxford tomorrow. Wish I had some stickers on me

"Women's Liberation at 50" - some men got cross with a woman so we made her shut up and wouldn't let her talk in public.

Stop digging, dear organisers. This decision was a massive fuck up. And now your conference is going to be completely derailed.

Is anyone live tweeting? There are no mics on the women in the Audie.

Audience

I don't know how anyone can pretend what happened is "feminism" or "women's liberation."

I feel like I am staring into a warped looking-glass.

Selina is an extraordinary speaker and a proper class and sex warrior.

Her speech at WPUK was superb,

This is a dystopian joke.

Anyone got an email address or website for the puppets, sorry organisers? I’m not allowed on twitter.

We need a Free Speech Union that is not Toby Young's.

Whether it's appropriate or not, the figurehead of Toby Young and other people akin to him make me feel at one with Jodie Ginsberg-Adam Wagner exchange. (iirc, it concluded that you'd end up spending your entire time with nuanced discussions of the distinction between approving free speech not being an equivalent of endorsing the content of that free speech.)

Yes, even people in my local Labour Party who think I am a bit too tervey respect and admire Selina. Her work is outstanding.
I hope this shit show makes the news.

I suspect that Laura Schwartz, who is chairing one of the later sessions, is one of the no-platforming ringleaders. She is involved in Feminist Fightback and her PhD student is one of the event organisers. I hope that the session she is chairing on "Feminisms Today" (ha! the irony!) has some very robust challenge from the audience. And if she has put pressure on her PhD student to no-platform a speaker at the last minute, that is an absolutely disgraceful abuse of her position.

This is now actually depressing the shit out of me.

How we are supposed to calmly listen to what women go through whenever we need to organise anything for ourselves, have our own point of view, advocate for our own rights, exist as WOMEN separate to men?

At a "celebration" conference where they couldn't let a woman speak for 2 minutes.

Because some people objected.

Does anyone else think there is purposeful confusion around the meanings behind:
de-platformed;
no-platformed;
disinvited;
invited as a participant but asked not to speak (some version of participation there).

At present it isn't at all clear if any of the other missing speakers are absent in solidarity with Selina Todd or because she had originally been invited. Or because they've been persuaded of the merits of the argument that inherently the conference is celebrating second wave feminism (that's the reality of history for you) and is therefore inherently transphobic which was the argument put forward by objectors at the time of the invitation.

They were always going to stage this and make it about them and their agenda. And it's massively successful.

I think it's Julie Bindel questioning if I remember her voice correctly

Absolutely, Arran

This is deliberate obfuscation of language, as in all areas, and it's very interesting to watch the organisers try to explain themselves in convoluted ways.

How in the hell I am listening to "we need a language of our own," "we need to break silence," when women's words are being aggressively colonised and destroyed of any specific meaning. And women's voices are being suppressed at events that are meant for THEM.

This is so dark.

If the purpose of this event started out as feminism and women's liberation it most certainly hasn't ended there.

Such spineless behaviour. The organisers of this clearly couldn't liberate themselves from a wet paper bag.

They were always going to stage this and make it about them and their agenda

Yep. From what was said it sounds as if there was a coordinated last minute threat to pull out if Selina wasn't cancelled. The organisers chose the course that resulted in the loss of less speakers (the wrong course imo)

Lots of people commenting on the live feed, Anya Palmer, Karen Ingala Smith, Jane Clare Jones

This is one of the most chilling images I've seen

Christ. What is wrong with these people? I don't know what is worse - their cowardice, their stupidity or their incompetence. I would say that they ought to be ashamed of themselves, but the ability to feel ashamed requires a glimmer of self-knowledge and a basic moral compass.

The irony of holding a conference dedicated to women's liberation and then deplatforming one of our finest feminist historians and speakers because she doesn't centre men enough.

I do hope that somewhere, dimly, in their tiny little brains they are cognisant of how much contempt they are held in by right-thinking people.

Selina on the live chat:

I'm the person who was no platformed. A lot of what the organisers are saying here bears little relation to what they said to me.

Tracy Walsh spoke to me months ago and I explained that if they wanted me to speak or facilitate they might get trouble. She said ok we are fine about that.

I asked yesterday they let me know what they were doing by 5pm so I could alert my head of dept. They didn't.

The other organiser who claims she left door open for a longer discussion did not. She left a voicemail asking me to contact them to confirm a man would speak rather than me.

I asked her if she could at least thank me for offering support and helping them to get funding. She did not.

They originally contacted me at 3pm yesterday to ask if I would no-platform myself and in fact not turn up at all.

The organisers say I was uncommunicative. I told them I couldn't contact my head of dept or do much for personal reasons after 6pm. I was constantly in touch with them up til then. They obfuscated.

I didn't tell the organisers I needed security back in Oct, I said there might be trouble. They said ok, fine, we want you to come, bring students, support us.

The organisers told me Feminist Fightback and trans activists were threatening to protest and pull out.

Tippexed out? Wankers.

At least have the guts to add a note as to why Todd is no longer speaking - likely women bought tickets BECAUSE she was on the bill.

Selina's given her account of the situation just now on the live stream:

I'm the person who was no platformed. A lot of what the organisers are saying here bears little relation to what they said to me.

Tracy Walsh spoke to me months ago and I explained that if they wanted me to speak or facilitate they might get trouble. She said ok we are fine about that.

I asked yesterday they let me know what they were doing by 5pm so I could alert my head of dept. They didn't.

The other organiser who claims she left door open for a longer discussion did not. She left a voicemail asking me to contact them to confirm a man would speak rather than me .

I asked her if she could at least thank me for offering support and helping them to get funding She did not

They originally contacted me at 3pm yesterday to ask if I would no-platform myself and in fact not turn up at all.

The organisers say I was uncommunicative. I told them I couldn't contact my head of dept or do much for personal reasons after 6pm. I was constantly in touch with them up til then. They obfuscated.

The organisers told me Feminist Fightback and trans activists were threatening to protest and pull out.