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?

It is. I've learned so much from this thread. I go from wishing I hadn't started it to feeling glad that I did because at least it's helped me — and perhaps others — work out what's going on.

I'm not on FB, I've been suspended from Twitter because I won't back down for a perfectly reasonable Tweet and I spend too much of my life actively fighting gender ideology to be looking for dirt on women's groups. I'm a WRN member, I belong to the local Resister group and I've been fighting my own particular little corner for the last decade. My MP's face falls when I enter the room. Ditto my local councillors. I've also until recently been a volunteer with female asylum seekers and I organise lesbian-only and women-only events at which we raise consciousness of gender ideology issues and feminism. I don't have time to trawl the net to catch gossip about women's groups or police others' purity.

Like so many people here I've spent hundreds of hours filling in consultation forms and persuading others to do so. I've written articles/ blogs for various lobbying groups who wanted a lesbian perspective. I imagine that loads of other women there are doing similar things. I imagine that some of them felt as talked-down-to as I did.

Normally after a session at a conference there's a debrief by those running the session to assess whether they hit the right tone, whether the material was appropriate and to look at feedback and have a think about it. But it's clear that WPUK doesn't work like that. They're happier instead to grumble about the quality of questions from the floor.

As I've said several times, I'm grateful for their early meetings which got a lot of us launched on this trajectory, but I'm out. Sounds as if I should have been out some time ago.

Respectfully, this isn't an angry comment. Unless you're reading tone into it that I can't see.

My MP's face falls when I enter the room

<salutes>

QED
That's what I was looking for. Bloody peri menopause.

Normally after a session at a conference there's a debrief by those running the session to assess whether they hit the right tone, whether the material was appropriate and to look at feedback and have a think about it.

How you know this didn't happen?

Well, seeing as Patti was there (which is pretty obvious, as this is Patti’s thread), if it did happen, it was so low key that interested and motivated attendees missed it happening.

Respectfully, this isn't an angry comment. Unless you're reading tone into it that I can't see.

It's part of the wider problem. Imagining & imprinting on people a particular tone or intent or sentiment to then argue with, rather than address what's said. It's far easier to imply I'm just a disproportionately angry woman than answer why it's increasingly impossible for WPUK & their most ardent supporters to self reflect & see that whatever their intentions, whatever message they want to get across, they're failing. Badly. And yet can't even acknowledge that. It's not WPUK's message that's the problem, it's all the domesticated zombies who are too thick to get the message.

I'll be as clear as I can in terms of my mood & sentiment when posting here. I'm very much 🤨 but mostly 🙄 & occasionally 🤦🏻‍♀️ with a side of 🤷🏻‍♀️. I'm definitely not 😡

HTH

If WPUK drop in again, I still have a message- "you don't get to decide how people perceive you".

I think mere domesticated zombie that I am that the word "exasperated" is what you were looking for? Angry is a very... thoughtless (simple, perhaps? That's assuming it isn't intentional for you to misrepresent intent) term for the kind of frustration, not anger, I can see in the same comment.

And... well... implying that someone is just a disproportionately angry woman doesn't look very feminist now, does it? "just your PMS love", "ooo time of the month", etc etc

Not very good optics 🤔 <ahem>

Interesting, considering which 'side' of this discussion is claiming the other aren't Real Feminists™️

Because there seems no apparent awareness that it went down like a lead balloon with a significant number of women. The fact that only one woman asked what they deemed an appropriate question would indicate that the majority weren't inspired by what they heard.

If they did had a debrief and decided we were the wrong sort of audience and everything else was fine, presumably a decision was taken to go on the defence and double down. Hence various posters here.

If there is a debrief, it's usually the panelists/speakers though, and not the audience.

If there is a debrief, it's usually the panelists/speakers though, and not the audience.

My mood 🤦🏻‍♀️
My tone 🙄

As one of the panelist's has signed up especially to tell everyone how fabulous the event was & anyone who didn't leave with that impression is misrepresenting the event, I'm guessing that the debrief went swimmingly.

<please note the sarcasm>

🤨

And if the debrief ignores the opinions of the audience why bother?

What is the purpose of it?

Most events include feedback forms because audience perception is the measure of success or failure.

Are you seriously suggesting that WPUK are just asking each other how it went in some isolated back slapping silo? Because if so, you’ve just literally confirmed all our criticisms.

Which is a proper face palm 🤦‍♀️

I have no idea what WPUK did. I'm nothing to do with them and I wasn't at FiLiA. I'd assume that FiLiA would have some sort of survey of attendees afterwards, it's not usual for speakers at a conference to do one for their individual sessions though, is it?

But WPUK just can't do anything right, can they?

It would be an interesting way for things like politics to work, wouldn't it - not worrying about the opinion of their audience.

What's particularly funny is that this is the reply to criticism of the session coming across as lecturing, "well the lecturers all thought it was okay" 🤦🏻‍♀️

They’d have a better chance of ‘doing something right’ if they listened to feedback from their audience, wouldn’t they?

This is turning into the Streisand effect, isn't it? The more this goes on & the repeated efforts to 'correct' opinion cos it's 'misrepresenting' what WPUK filia session was about, the worse this looks (and the more exposure it gets).

And we're supposed to trust that these people are experienced tacticians who have delicate negotiations ongoing behind closed doors with very important people?

My mood 🤦🏻‍♀️
My tone 🤷🏻‍♀️

My mood 😨😭
My tone 🌵

If there is a debrief, it's usually the panelists/speakers though, and not the audience.

I think it is a good indication that there is more than one poster on this thread feeding back that the take away points and intention may have felt unwelcoming to some who attended. Any conference session organiser should take these posters on board in their analysis of how the session went.

If that was the intention, to only communicate with a select group, then that has been achieved and people coming and posting on this thread can feel job done.

If the intention was not this. If the intention was to be welcoming to all women at the conference, to discuss the issues and leave people feeling that even though they disagreed in any way with the presenters, at least they were welcome. That may have not been achieved with a % of the audience.

If the group is comfortable that they don’t want to reach that % (however large) because they categorise that % as ‘not the audience we are targeting’, fine admit it and move on. It is valid. It might not be popular and women might push against it, but it is WPUK’s choice.

But let’s be honest about that and up front. The frustration I have seen expressed on this thread is clear.

So conference organisers have to read what people on Mumsnet say about presenters at their conference? That sounds like a bizarre condition.

Only if they didn’t gather sufficient opinions at the event (which they clearly didn’t, or they wouldn’t need to post on this thread).

My mood 🙄🤦‍♀️

my tone 🙈😁

So conference organisers have to read what people on Mumsnet say about presenters at their conference? That sounds like a bizarre condition.

No they don't have to read what people on Mumsnet say, but they clearly have hence appearing on this thread, they could have just ignored it without acknowledgement and seeing as they are ignoring what posters are saying that would have been the more intelligent move.