Women's Place UK: Filia event: the elephant ignored yet again

[pattihews]

I attended the WPUK event at Filia yesterday and came out feeling disturbed by what struck me as a very heavy-handed event designed to avoid talking about the elephant in the room. For what it's worth, I've voted Labour at every election since 1979. I imagine 90% of the audience had a similar track record.

Put briefly, we had 90 minutes of:
Feminism=socialism and if you're not a socialist you can't be a feminist and if you're not a feminist-socialist you're the enemy.
The right is sly and will lie and try to draw you in (illustrated with a video from the US about the right-wing origins of many apparently liberal groups, including the Heritage Foundation) and you must resist any temptation to get involved with them.
The way to do it is to join unions and change them from within, hold socialist women's salons to recruit and inform and get involved at grass roots level.

There were also regular warnings about racism, which seemed odd and extraneous because WPUK is all about gender ideology.

And then the penny dropped. Though her name was never mentioned, I suddenly realised that the whole tightly-managed event (no talking unless you're holding the microphone) was a warning not to fraternise with Posie Parker.

At lunchtime I encountered several other women, all of them furious about what they'd sat through. Furious in particular because of course the elephant in the room was the fact that the Labour Party, to which WPUK is loyal to death, is the biggest threat to women's rights in this country. And they'd used PP to deflect from that.

I'm not a Posie fan. Posie's clear she's not a feminist. She says things that make me cringe. I have doubts about her motivation and we wouldn't be friends in RL. But I went to one of her events when she came to my area and she can mobilise women the left will never reach and for that she's important and valuable. When I go canvassing for Labour I meet working-class as well as middle-class women who vote or have voted Conservative. They include aspirational minority ethnic women. They have their reasons, and some of them I can understand.

A woman I've never seen before and may not see again joined my table for lunch and explained why so many women were feeling really disturbed. These are TRA tactics.
The huge issue that concerns so many of us (should we vote Labour?) was avoided and we were instead lectured on how to be good socialists and feminists.

Was anyone else there? What did you make of it?

If you have indeed read this thread @KatherineMAcosta are you closing your eyes and ears to the many and varied criticisms posters have made against you, WPUK, the general superior attitude, the name calling and dismissal of those you deem beneath you?

We know not everything is about KJK but members of WPUK certainly seem to have a fixation with her and never let an opportunity to name call and criticise her and those who follow her pass them by.

KJK is on the advisory board for WoLF isn't she?

I'd like to have heard what Jo Brew, Kate Graham and Kara Dansky had to say.

She may loom large in the eyes of her followers, but not everything is about her.

Who is a 'follower' of KJK, what does that actually mean? Because it comes across as diminishing, patronising, and sneery. Which presumably you didn't mean.

Yes, this is the crux of the problem with Labour and the left. (my politics are left-leaning).

Tribalism. Them and us-ism. Self justification. And most of all an apparent inability to listen.

It seems to me to be so deeply rooted in a sense of superiority I actually don't know that it's fixable.

Yep Arabella - just seems to be the sneery attitude day after day.

Not surprised more and more women are getting thoroughly fed up with it.

Fascinating.

It's quite something to imagine in your own head what your presentation will be like & how it will be perceived. It's something else entirely to read how it comes across & think regurgitating that imagined presentation was how it actually went.

Again, why are WPUK affiliated people on permanent blast with no capacity to receive?

Women posting here did not experience the event in the manor anticipated by those involved in it. Regurgitation of what the aims were & summaries of intent still don't change that.

Right now, whatever message WPUK & their supporters are trying to get across is completely lost in the repeated condescending displays showing that criticism just doesn't register. The increased fury (currently still playing out on twitter) isn't honing the message any better.

I'm going to be frank here. Your comms are piss poor, your inability to see that your comms are piss poor increases the negative impact of your failed comms, and unless someone somewhere within these leftist circles can get a grip on comms, I'd be surprised if there will be many women left willing to either keep funding your activism or buy tickets for your meetings. I'm sure there will be some, but you've lost 'the room' and you don't even know it.

I honestly cannot stress enough how off putting it is to see yet another WPUK contributor plop onto a thread (setting up a new account to do so) and think lecturing instead of engaging is a winning formula.

Yep. Looking down their noses at the plebs is how it comes across and is ignored when pointed out which does indeed tell one everything one needs to know.

I would urge anyone who hasn't already, to go look at the Actual Gender Critical Left FB group (it's fully public), to see what is being said, and to get a sense of what some lefty women think of other women (lefty and otherwise). From what I can see, basically, any group who is not WPUK is on the wrong side.

For example:
www.facebook.com/groups/904109420071073/permalink/1475243479624328/

Yes. This.

Thank you Arabella.

Fuck me, they are attacking Transgender Trend?

I mean, I can see why one feminist group might not see eye to eye with another feminist group but attacking an org that exists to protect children is just reprehensible.

ALL children are at risk from this, regardless of how their parents/teachers/grandparents/neighbours vote, no matter what ethnic or religious background they are from.

Utter fucking bullshit.

I’ll work with anyone who recognises that encouraging my teen to cut her tits off to ‘cure’ her body hatred is fucked up.

And right now, that ain’t Labour.

>>>You signed up purely to comment here, after all, and to dispute the account of various established Mumsnetters…

Yes, I did! Looking at facts and different perspectives is not allowed here? Only the word of established mumsnetters is to be given any credence? What have I stumbled into here? LOL

I was there, I was a presenter, I know what my goals were in making my video. Some posters here were inaccurately describing the q & a - in fact, it was not "tightly controlled." Anyone was allowed to speak, and for however long they wished. These are facts I politely reported. But if intellectual discussion is not allowed here, I am in the wrong place, and will see myself out.

My understanding is that the transcripts of audience statements will be published. They didn't video the audience, I think to protect the women's privacy. Some, like Jo Brew are public figures. Others are not.

Clearly what you think you are communicating and how it is received by average Mumsnetters are completely at odds.

Both in person, at Filia, and here online, after the event.

it’s up to you to decide if you care about that discrepancy or not.

FWIW, I, increasingly, do not care what WPUK think about me, which is just as well, because they say I am a ‘Domesticated Zombie’.

This makes no sense to me. Defense of what? I'm happy to criticize KJK at any time, but that was not the point of my video. I was describing the organizations with whom Wolf and WDI USA, after the arrival of Kara Dansky, have worked, and how that affects policy outcomes in the USA. KJK was not the point. She may loom large in the eyes of her followers, but not everything is about her.

I'm sure your video would have made a lot of sense to an American audience but to a UK audience it seemed largely irrelevant. I've heard of WoLF, of course, but the details of who WoLF works with isn't of much interest here in the UK. And just because most of us at the meeting were aware of KJK doesn't mean we're followers of hers — and I think you knew that when you wrote it.

Is it a cultural difference that I find ‘peace out’ to be ultimately patronising and condescending?

I am very happy to be told that mine is a reaction because I am not originally from the UK. But even reading on this board over the years, the people who use this or end their posts with ‘Peace x’ are not on the board to ‘discuss’ anything.

I'm a bit baffled what the purpose of making an MN account was. To explain things to us, vaguely sneer at anyone who won't join in the condemnathon of KJK, berate us all, and then flounce?

Well, it happens quite a lot, I suppose. Just not usually from feminists.

>>>to a UK audience it seemed largely irrelevant.
Alliance Defending Freedom has already expanded to the UK and is behind "free speech" challenges to protest buffer zones around abortion clinics.

Interesting observation.

It’s usually used by posters who have decided we’re too stupid to learn from their superior intellect - generally that’s anonymous TRAs…

… but then again, we do have at least three whole 40 page threads of The Real Feminists of Be-Right-On demonstrating that certain behaviours aren’t confined to TRAs.

Oh god. Not another anti free speech poster!
Authoritarian speech policing works out SO WELL for women 🙄

But if intellectual discussion is not allowed here, I am in the wrong place, and will see myself out.

What 'intellectual discussion' were you having? You didn't engage at all in any discussion. You simply plopped into a thread & regurgitated what WPUK hoped (and failed) to get across.

You came & lectured.

After it's been stated many times that WPUK & it's supporters lecturing comes across as off hand, condescending, belittling, gaslighting.

And yet you came along & thought you'd just repeat that.

Maybe I'm of the more 'thick' variety of domesticated zombie, but repeating the same mistakes & expecting a different outcome, over & over, doesn't strike me as particularly bright. It's about as far removed from 'intellectual discussion' as its possible to get.

But thanks for the suggestion that we're too dim to 'intellectually discuss' how disconnected WPUK are from what their intended message is to how they come across.

That FB link seems to indicate that the poster believes Fair Play for Women, Sex Matters, Standing on Women, Transgender Trend, WoLF, WHRC are all associated with the US far right/ religious right.

What shit this all is.

Regarding this thread, in the actual GC left group. We, mn, are not actual feminists. 🙄

(what's particularly interesting to me is who posted the initial thread there too...)

Mad, innit, Patti?

"Peace out" winds me up too, yanbu.

If it was perceived as tightly controlled, it may as well have been tightly controlled. You are judged by your audience perception not by your goals. Stop kicking off and change what you do if people are consistently 'misunderstanding' you. The only response needed from you is 'Im so sorry that's how it came across. We'll think about how we can do it better in the future '