Creating a historical artefact of women's stories

[Spero]

I had some positive feedback about this as a potential project, so keen to see if others find it interesting.

twitter.com/SVPhillimore/status/1457062694423605249?s=20

so much of the discussion is online and therefore risks being ephemeral - what about trying to gather women's stories about how and why they came to the fight against gender ideology, into an actual physical book?

I have suggested about 500 words to explain your 'awakening' - I think its so interesting that such a wide variety of women have engaged with this, many (like me) with no particular background of feminist campaigning. But we all recognised something very wrong was happening.

I would like to gather stories over the next few months and then see if its possible to get an actual publisher interested - if not, then self publish.

I love this idea. Every time I meet a new campaigner about this issue the first thing we do is exchange our stories as to what got us involved.

I'd love to.

Is there a time frame?

I work to lasts minute deadlines

That’s so interesting. I don’t have an exciting awakening story just mumsnet but I would like to read other peoples.

Brilliant. I would love to read this.

I will try and make my Peakening as interesting as possible!

Brilliant idea - thanks for doing this!

Please don't think it has to be 'interesting' or funny or whatever. The value of this is knowing your story. I would like to gather stories over the next few months with a view to making a 'pitch' early next year to a real publisher. If no interest, there are a variety of self publication options and I could hopefully crowdfund to raise the costs.

if you are able to tell me your age I think that would be interesting - there is a lot of sneering at this movement only involving older women so it would be good to see a spread.

I should imagine that people would be too afraid to out themselves.

Brilliant idea yes. Will compose something appropriate.

hopefully its possible to tell the story without giving away identifying details - if not exact age then age range? But of course, the aim is to publish so do not share what you don't want to see in print.

Ok. It’s just my path to transpeakery was by writing an article that had to be changed because trans activists demanded it. I realised then that not only were they anti-free speech but that they ran against the core principles of feminism.

That's a very illuminating story. You could just say - you wrote something that others demanded be changed, that's when you realised that this was essentially a free speech issue. You don't have to give details about what exactly you wrote or who you wrote it for. So many have had to face this I don't think there is a risk you would be outed on those details alone.

Good idea.

Important, actually.

Happy to help.

Just in case the book generates profit, it is probably a good idea to consider in advance where the money will go. -and include it in the project description.

-if only to avoid being attacked over it by gender ideologues down the line.

Fallingirl, I can see where you're coming from, but I respectfully disagree.

OP is going to be attacked by gender ideologists for publishing a GC book regardless - I don't think they're going to care whether it's for a good cause, and I doubt they would agree that any woman's cause would be a good cause anyway.

I also think that if OP wants to profit from her hard work in curating everyone's accounts, verifying sources, organising copyright releases, editing, etc, then she should.

Plus, most women who are prepared to put their heads above the parapet will probably need to crowdfund for legal fees to sue or be sued around this issue at some point, so it makes sense to plan ahead!

If there is any profit then I think it should go to a charity or legal fund. But if it's self published I think the chances of profit are fairly remote.

For those of us in Twitter jail do you have details of where/what to send/by when etc?

Send to me at Sarahvphillimore at gmail.com

I am going to gather stories over next few months and see where we are at in the New Year.

Fantastic

Great idea - would like to contribute and having a 500 word limit is helpful! Thanks for everything you're doing by the way Spero, it really is awesome.

I will post updates here and via Twitter using #GCOrigins.

I don't think its going to have commercial value to attract a publisher but if anyone knows any smaller independents who might be interested, or anyone who has self published before, get in touch! I would hope we could raise a smallish sum of money if needed to self publish. I would definitely like to have something tangible I can give to my daughter.