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.

Catching up on this. I don't know how you deal with these ground rules when no one agrees exactly what transphobia is.(from the event)

... and did you notice which 'phobia' comes first in the list?

Maybe just co-incidence, but I think that I'd have put sexism first considering what the event is.

During the break, they don't seem to realise they're mic-ed up and can be heard on the livestream.

Their musings turn to discussing the clothes and the look of the conference attendees

Interesting, and tragic. A lot of young women subscribe to genderism because they think that woman = someone who performs femininity.

A lot of young women subscribe to genderism because they think that woman = someone who performs femininity.

Which, to be fair, is what they are being taught in school:

SunsetBeetch Naomi Wolf then goes on to demonstrate her astonishing ignorance about the context of the UK debate. She doesn't know anything and isn't even willing to entertain the idea that she might be wrong. (Can I remind you where that leads, Naomi? To having your latest book pulled and pulped because you based the entire work on your flawed understanding of UK law.)

Yeah noticed that too. Though I think their point was, after watching the rest, that they invite anyone to query exactly what might be transphobic. (Laying down there gauntlet so to speak, challenging anyone to find anything transphobic in what's said. And basically not there). So it's possibly deliberately first...?

(Or am I being naive?!)

US rules vary from state to state. In lots of places you have to physically go to a court house and stand in front of a judge just to be allowed change your name.

She’s chatting shit.

(Oh, and that applies fo everyone in the state, not just trans people)

The last two tweets in that exchange.

Link to the first one:

mobile.twitter.com/AudreySuffolk/status/1233798514297262083

And she's been digging in since. Posting lots of links to articles blaming feminist criticism of transgender ideology on right wing groups, but not one of these has any links to the UK.

And then a thread about how it's wrong to police people's gender expression and how it's wrong to say that gender identity and sexuality can be fluid.

I'm sadly coming to the conclusion that she seems not just to have zero clue about the situation in the UK (in the US, there is almost no feminist activism, especially not left-wing feminist activism against enshrining self-id in law), and a poor grasp of the radical feminist position on gender and transgender ideology and legislation, she actually seems to be a fervent propagandist against women's sex-based rights.

Regarding Naomi Wolf, she means Professor Todd, not Dr Todd. As someone who has no chance of getting near a professorship, I think that achievement should be acknowledged. Naomi Wolf means Professor Todd.

I don’t think the US is doing fine with trans rights, surely if it was black transwomen wouldn’t be at eye poppingly high risk of contracting HIV?

David Oliver has tweeted a comment to Janice Turner in support of Selina Todd. This is a big deal. He's a very senior NHS consultant who regularly writes for newspapers as well as the BMJ etc.

what an utterly ridiculous decision! Someone whose entire academic career has been about highlighting both socio-economic disadvantage and womens' rights labelled as "transphobic" and stopped from speaking at an international university famed for 700 years of ideas? WTF

twitter.com/mancunianmedic/status/1233833156278734848?s=20

Janice Turner's thread: twitter.com/VictoriaPeckham/status/1233727483272409094?s=20

What an absolute fucking shambles, but Julie is excellent.

Womenslib_50 appear to have deleted their twitter account

Lola Olufemi and the young woman who read her statement.

This might be an infuriating consideration for them and wholly unwelcome but is it possible that their privilege makes them even younger than their years? And that they're being used as a living shield for Feminist Fightback and senior figures who are deploying them cynically?

I felt as profoundly sorry for those young women as I've sometimes felt for toddlers being walked around in the rain, door to door, and cynically deployed by [insert relevant religious group]. Said toddlers being used to give some statement over which they stumble while their soaked mother stands there knowing how she is using her child.

That is fascinating pombear.

No wonder they edited it out.

And Lola's statement about us all being white and middle class.

See, that's just shit, isn't it? What about Linda Bellos? Allison Bailey? Lucy Masoud? Among others. This Lola person, like her MRA pals, clearly doesn't give a damn about the facts.

Have they taken the whole video down now?

Naomi Wolf then goes on to demonstrate her astonishing ignorance about the context of the UK debate.

Wolf is clueless. Quite aside from the debacle with her getting an important historical fact completely wrong in her latest book, after the general election she got terribly agitated about the BBC's exit poll supposedly influencing the result, even though several hundred people explained to her that the exit poll was announced only after voting had closed.

So have only just had time to come back to this, and from reading this thread not one woman speaker stood up for Selina?

The only person who supported her was her male colleague??

All those big name feminists - what a joke. I certainly wont be paying much attention to anything they have to say.

The invited speakers were known for months. This has to be a stunt to do this at the last moment.

And the organisers should have said we are sorry you dont want to come, but we will carry on. As far as I can make out from the Feminist Fightback facebook page only one woman raised it (Lola?).

So one woman, the Feminist fightback which is basically Laura whatsit have turned this whole thing into a fiasco?

Thanks for the link to the other video. JB was great. But also like to thank the woman who identified herself as an historian who stood up and made so many good points.

I think the organisers were awful, and so obviously not telling the truth.

But still shocked so many stayed. they could have left and had an alternative meeting.

Shame on all of them.

The only person who supported her was her male colleague??

Samira Ahmed expressed that she was very uncomfortable with it.

Also I believe some of the tippexed out names pulled out in support.

WtF?

The live stream video has now been made private and it isn't possible to see any of the comments.

I had really hoped to watch some of the actual talk and see responses to it.

On reflection though, it is hard to see how so many women who clearly aren't part of what was WLM being given such a prominent role to begin with.

Maybe it was all just a front and a few 70s feminists got caught up in the idea.

Shame on all them. As feminists and academics.

This might be an infuriating consideration for them and wholly unwelcome but is it possible that their privilege makes them even younger than their years?

Laura Schwartz is not that young. She said she was at university in the late 90s / early 00s. Which makes her around the same age as me - i.e. middle aged. But I agree she came across as young and better equipped in jargon than real perception. I really cringed at some of the things she said, e.g. about wanting older feminists to provide her with some comfort (perhaps you should stop monstering them, then - just a thought?).There is an deplorable tendency in this country to treat middle class people as if they were children until their mid 20s at least. It’s one of the things (many of them at the moment) that makes me uncomfortable about working at a university - we constantly reproduce social inequalities by treating our largely middle-class students with every indulgence, while out in the world, young people the same age are not protected against their own actions in the same way.

Yes the live stream videos have been made private on you tube and the Facebook page also gone.

Laura Schwartz is not that young.

Ah - I thought it had been read by Laura Schwartz's PhD student (I completely mistook the age).

Agreed that I don't like the infantilisation of privileged people. I recognise that many of them have been so coddled that they don't have a good grasp of:
the realities of life for others who are not as privileged;
how their obvious lack of life experience undermines their claim of right to instruct others how to conform to their sense of entitlement;
how they can be manipulated by cynical others (I still feel like this about the young men who were used as human shields in the horror show of Cambridge Analytics etc.).