For posterity - start of Women's Liberation 50th anniversary conference, transcript

[pombear]

Because it was so gob-smacking, and I wanted to keep it for posterity, in case it disappears from the live stream. As much as I could make out from the recording:

Initials used :

Tracey Walsh (TW) organiser, at lectern
Cathy (C) organiser, at lectern
Dr Katherine Bradley (KB) at lectern
Julie Bindel (JB) (in the audience)

Part One

TW: The emphasis is this is a safe space for people to come and talk. Nobody has been banned from the event, nobody has been asked not to come, it’s open to everybody, it’s an inclusive…

JB: How about Selina Todd? Selina Todd was de-platformed less than 24 hours before this event

TW: OK..

JB: As someone who’s been de-platformed for 16 years because of this nonsense. I’m telling you this is cowardly capitulation. We do not do this to other feminists. Everyone in this room knows (applause) When we have a woman who is not a member of the National Front, she’s not a fascist. She is not Hitler. How can we do this to women who have given their lives to advocate for disenfranchised women, I do not know. It’s a disgrace, and I’m sick of this cowardice, and you should hang your heads in shame for giving in to this lot.

TW: OK, OK, thank you for your, and of course you are entitled to your opinion. And I just want to say that it’s a space for people to have…Selina Todd was very welcome to be here. She was asked to be here,

JB: No she’s not, she was…not when you’ve been told you’re not allowed to speak.

TW: I will talk to people if you want to talk about this afterwards but I don’t want to detract…

JB: No one wants to hear us…Selina Todd speaking

? : She was speaking on behalf of the History department, she was not a speaker on any panel.

JB: …she was on the programme

TW: She was, right so, just just to clarify Selina was here as a delegate and was, and asked if she could say something, say thank you on behalf of the er History Faculty, in a professional capacity.

JB: so why did you feature her on the programme?

Sorry should have made it clear that the video was filmed from the audience so it is much easier to hear what audience members are saying.

This is appalling.

Can I pass on thanks to pombear for the work that went into this. It has been widely read in another forum and greatly appreciated. The women who deplatformed Selina and accepted the nonsense reasons behind it ought to be ashamed of themselves

I'm clearly being thick here
Selina is a Prof at Oxford
she writes about the history of women and their rights
the conference was in Oxford
and some women thought she should be stopped from expressing her research based views
say what ?????

Does anyone know who the unnamed historian who spoke out is?

pombear thank you so much for transcribing!

I've been out for a few hours and hoped to catch up with the livestream/rewatch the opening, but it now appears to have been made private? I would also have liked to see Samira's section - did she stand up for Selina?

Pombear’s great work sent me to Twitter, which I avoid as a rule, and I was greatly cheered by Dr Jane Clare Jones’ inspired tirade against Lola Olufemi, who seems to have been instrumental in this and who then refused to attend herself but had her execrable undergraduate word salad statement read out at the conference in her absence. mobile.twitter.com/janeclarejones/status/1233770543377199105

Awesome work as always pombear

Samira's section - did she stand up for Selina?

She briefly said something about how the situation made her feel very uncomfortable (she disapproved)

As well as saying she was not happy about the treatment of Selina, Samira later stated very emphatically that her equal pay case was about sex discrimination and not gender discrimination.

Fascinating and appalling.

Thank you for the transcription.

Great work, Pom

The audience POV video is a shocker.
I would also love to know who the historian on the back row is, she was excellent. As was Julie B.

It’s quite clear from Selina’s planned speech (published on the Filia website) that it is not a ‘Thank you on behalf of the History Department’ and it would no sense for her male colleague to read a story from Selina’s mum’s childhood.
Well done to her colleague for declining (and I loved the shout out about (paraphrasing) ‘You tried to replace her with a man!’ The irony of a feminist event asking a male colleague to speak instead of his expert colleague!

What a squirming mess of pusillanimous academic numpties on display. Julie Bindel served them up on a platter as the damp squibs they are.

To invite a man to speak on behalf of a woman shows that they’re have no understanding of feminism at all and have no place organising a conference on the subject.

A major conference on feminism should not be a fucking “safe space”, particularly not a safe space, intellectually speaking at least, for men. It ought to make you cringe and cheer and burn with rage and contemplate your own socialisation with despair.

Thank you for the transcript OP - I reckon this will go down in the annals of feminism as the day a venerable university abandoned ethical scholarship to grasp at the cheap tinsel of wokedom.

Alas poor Harriet Vane.

I think the marvellous Historian at the back might be Dr Helen Rogers from Liverpool John Moore University?

twitter.com/helenrogers19c

The historian is Dr Helen Rogers. She is on twitter as @helenrogers19c. She keeps up with how many academics are out as GC, and is very knowledgeable about the situation in universities, re free speech and feminism.

Yes it is Helen Rogers.
Thanks pombear.

They couldn’t seem to decide whether they had asked Selina, or whether she had asked them, if she could speak.
I couldn’t take her seriously, getting irate that people didn’t understand ‘we didn’t say she couldn’t speak, we merely asked her if she wouldn’t and her male colleague would instead’
Rightio

Disaster

So depressing - and thank you pombear for recording it for posterity.

This is what Sheila Rowbotham stated the conference would achieve in her recent Guardian article:
The conference aims to bring older and younger women together and handing on memories is the purpose – in the hope that remembering can strengthen creativity for present times The irony.
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/feb/23/in-1970-driven-by-chaos-and-energy-we-felt-like-pioneers-in-female-protest

That is one of the saddest things I have ever read. The organisers failed to actually, you know, take a lead and organise. I stand in awe of JB: I could never have done that and kept going. I would be so angry I would have started crying.

That they needed to turn off their twitter and livestream says it all. Why make others erase us when we can do it to ourselves. Praise be for the brave women.

Yes it is sad although, like many sad things, it's funny too.
Courage came calling for WL50 on Friday, but no-one was home.

Thank you for this.

You would have thought that, given the context, the organisers would have been a bit feistier.

It is indeed sad. This is what happens when political space comes to be occupied by people who are cowardly (in the case of the organisers) or (in the case of the Feminist Fightback crew) vacuous and privileged. The whole debacle sharply illustrated how inadequate the frameworks, language and activism of today’s feminist movement are in comparison with 50 years ago. Academia has a lot to answer for in this regard. It is not geared up to support consolidating gains and moving forwards in incremental steps. It rewards thinking and outcomes that are novel and more dramatic, irrespective of whether they have a positive effect on society.

Fucking hell, I've just worked out who this undergraduate is who seemingly welded so much power and got as far as "umbrella term."

How offensive is that? How can she not see that this is offensive?

I do note that the organisers were not impressed that her withdrawal was last minute and over social media. I don't think this will actually work out well for her either.

If libfem types want to campaign for the right of men to invade women’s spaces and remove our hard won rights, that’s their prerogative- but they should bloody well stop calling themselves feminists of ANY description.
They certainly have no right to represent women at a feminist conference, and they should be utterly ashamed of themselves.
The pathetic giving in to bullying is ironic too. They’re supposed to be celebrating the history of the women’s movement - which includes suffragettes who suffered prison and force feeding for their beliefs. I bet Emmeline Pankhurst wouldn’t have caved in to TRA threats of violence!