Not sure if this has been posted yet but just read this in an email from SFW.
Standing for women statement
“Bristol Speakers’ corner” event,
College Green, Bristol
19th June 2022
Standing for women organised a women’s free speech event “Let Women Speak”, not a protest or a rally. It’s an event aimed at combatting the silencing of women’s voices on the erasure of our rights, our spaces and our language posed by the totalitarian transgender promoting ideologues.
We are not afraid to take this issue to the wider public who are covertly being kettled into this pernicious and dishonest ideology through national and local government, the justice system, global corporations, our NHS and schools.
Our attendees are peaceful law abiding concerned citizens, they are mostly women. We invite ordinary women to speak, we are a broad church. Standing For Women is apolitical, all women are welcome. We even fight for the rights of women who disagree with us.
We refute the claims made by some media and the Avon and Somerset police that there was bad behaviour on “both sides”. Aggressive and threatening men, on the MRA/TRA side, were very close to our wardens and attendees. They shouted obscenities in the faces of women and they tried to push through the police line, there were physical confrontations by men in masks.
Our communications lead, Iris, had worked very hard to inform the police about the sort of male aggression and violence women may encounter. She was, frankly, ignored. This was particularly striking following our event in Manchester. The policing in Bristol was inadequate and dangerous. The male aggression and intimidation women experienced in Bristol was revolting. Women were told to die, get in the sea by threatening men in masks.
Women were asked by the police to go home, rather than enjoy refreshments in a bar we had hired. Apparently the police can choose to protect women on the basis of whether or not we are eating or drinking, as a senior officer told me that the police were not here to protect us in the pub. The Slug and Lettuce, St.Nicholas Street, Bristol decided to close rather than continue serving joyful and peace loving women due to the male aggressors surrounding the venue. The police did not disperse the agitators and maintained that they could not guarantee our safety.
Standing For Women will be asking Chief Constable Sarah Crewand, PCC Mark Shelford, Mayor Marvin Rees, and Minister of State for Crime and Policing Kit Malthouse to examine footage to see how better to protect women at public events.
No other group of people would be expected to bow so submissively to the whims of threatening aggressors. Women know that the police would have worked harder to protect us if we had been men calling themselves women, rather than the old fashioned adult human female variety.
Standing For Women would like to thank all of the brave attendees who faced the onslaught of violent misogyny and made their voices heard. We extend special thanks to those women who held the line as wardens and our Communications lead, Iris, who went above and beyond to try and facilitate a peaceful gathering.
Kellie-Jay and team
PS. Boys, we won't be quiet.