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?

Yes thank god for WPUK. All I've done is just sit and carp about other women on the internet. Oh, wait

Ah, so the type of keyboard-warrioring that means writing blog posts about other women?
Or is that only okay when it's certain people?

X post 😄

😂

Oh that's just precious!

"I think it is very easy for the keyboard warriors here to tell them to 'do better' (this is not aimed at you), but what have these people done themselves?"

Did you skip all posts in this thread in which individual women mentioned what they have been doing, sometimes for years?

Are you unaware of the initiatives that came straight out of discussions on Mumsnet and were carried out by women who post here, such as:

Man Friday
manfridayuk.org/
We Can't Consent to This
wecantconsenttothis.uk/blog/2020/7/6/thrilled-mps-voted-to-end-rough-sex-defences-in-the-dabill

• a campaign which achieved a change in UK law to get rid of the "rough sex defence" by men who murder women

To quote one of the favourite instructions of trans activists: "Educate yourself!" before you come on here with your lazy assumptions - and Read The F@cking Thread!

I was part of Man Friday. We were explicitly not feminist or political.

How on earth you managed to even tie up your man-boot shoelaces without a good grounding in feminist theory and Marxism will be a mystery to some! 😂

Name changed for this as have no desire to be labelled as involved in this particular battle.

I haven't read the whole thread as very long, so apologies if this has already been said umpteen times.

I have no idea why some on here and Twitter (not seen the Facebook group referred to so can't comment on that) are so keen to bicker publicly on this. I thought it had long been agreed that purity spirals were a Bad Thing. Hardly as though there were so many feminists/GC women/whatever we want to call òurselves that we can afford to split off into separate little groups? Since when were more threads arguing over doctrinal difference between the Judean People's Front and the People's Front of Judea a useful use of anyone's time?

I get that people are upset that some left-wing feminists attacked Posie (she's somewhat marmite). What I don't get is why if you object to those feminists creating division among women that you'd think the solution was to start yet another thread to extend the division yet further??!

I'm a feminist. I'm GC. ALL THESE WOMEN are my heroes - I admire and am grateful to them all, for being much braver than I have been or probably could ever be. I don't want to attack the left-wing academic feminists, who have also suffered hugely at the hands of TRAs. I went to the WPUK conference a couple of years ago and found it great - really inspiring. I think it's really important - particularly at a time when it's looking increasingly likely we'll have a Labour government fairly soon - that left-wing feminists are inside the tent and fighting to influence Labour from within.

At the same time, I think Posie is fabulous, I'm so grateful to Maya etc. I am definitely further left than them on the political spectrum, but I don't need to agree with them on everything to agree with them strongly on this.

I don't wish to have to choose which 'faction' to support. I support all of them. We're all fighting for basically the same thing, on women's rights, even if individuals may have differing ideas of how best to achieve that. I would never dream of attacking any of these brilliant, passionate women, who are all playing important roles to move the dial across the political spectrum.

All of this bickering harms our ability to work collectively, wastes time and energy that should be being spent addressing the important issues we all care about, and gives ammunition and presumably much joy and amusement to those seeking to dismantle women's rights.

Please stop threads like this. Stop extending the argument - even if WPUK did say something in a meeting a small number of women had paid to attend, that is no excuse for starting a bunfight about it on social media where it can and will be viewed by people who hate women and will use it to attack us.

Please stop with the bickering, stop with the factionalism, stop with the purity spirals. Ordinary women trying to hold the line on our rights don't need this.

I have to say I am increasingly suspicious of anyone who starts or piles on to threads like this, seeking to harden divisions between women. Cui bono? Not women, that's for sure.

Signed, a bored moderate, A Woman.

Normally I'd broadly agree, Judea.

But yesterday I'd had enough of being obliquely insulted or insulted by association and seeing the same happen to women whose work or friendship I value. I also think dissent and disagreement is natural, healthy and necessary. To an extent.

Sunlight is the best disinfectant, as ever.

I think it is very easy for the keyboard warriors here to tell them to 'do better' (this is not aimed at you), but what have these people done themselves?

Fuck me.

I've also name changed for this post for exactly the same reason.

I agree with the last post. The factionalism seems to be getting more and more extreme to the point of enforcing echo chambers who cannot or will not open themselves to different perspectives.

I was at Filia and deliberately spoke to lots of different women with lots of different views. I left feeling that we had more in common than that which divides us to paraphrase the late Jo Cox. Social media makes it harder to hold on to that for sure.

And I spoke to loads of women too, women whose names I don't know, who I may never see again. The problem is, some of those women may well have been the kind of women that WPUK would not approve of us talking to. Women from TransgenderTrend or Fair Play for Women, for example.

I think JudeanPeoples, that you're doing posters on both sides of the argument
an immense disservice by dismissing this as bickering. And it's a shame you didn't read the whole thread before posting as you've probably missed some really good insights into what's going on.

I found Louise Perry's article (posted by Imnobody4 · 27/10/2022 15:48) particularly helpful, because for me it nails how and why this is much bigger than a left wing or even a feminist movement. And that this represents both a strength and a danger.

I think the idea that WPUK have become an irrelevance is silly. They do great work and incidentally I think they're entitled to run their events any way they choose. But I don't believe they represent the majority of women in this fight. I can see how that's hard for them - and indeed for all socialist feminists - to digest, because the left has grown accustomed to having this battle field pretty much to themselves. But they need to get to grips with it. We all do.

Do you know what @JudeanPeoplesFrontOrPeoplesFrontOfJudea, if you can't be bothered to read the thread before typing out a very long reply, I don't think your post deserves to be read either.

What a rude and dismissive thing to do

Hmm, now let's see... who else has come to the thread and lectured that we are wrong/Bad Feminists to discuss this? 🤔

I see it as much worse than bickering as well. I also believe groups can define how they wish and can set their own audience.

What I have seen here on this thread is plenty of dismissal of some women’s reactions to the session and the fact they felt unwelcome.

And I have seen language used that is undermining and derisory towards those women. I have then seen women responding to that language and tone.

There has been a few too many posts that follow the ‘they are the real feminist’ line and the implication that posters on this board are not worthy of being called feminists.

Quite frankly, if that is your (general your) opinion then I guess that you must be very fucked off at all the regular posters you believe are non-feminist (ie in your eyes - again general you). I never realised the depth of that resentment and I guess threads like this really make it clear.

So thanks for that at least.

I never realised the depth of that resentment and I guess threads like this really make it clear.

100%. It's been eye opening.

For what it's worth, I couldn't give a fuck about being called a feminist or not. Have it, it's just a bloody word. I'm not interested in tribalism or purity or factions.

I think it is very easy for the keyboard warriors here to tell them to 'do better' (this is not aimed at you), but what have these people done themselves? WPUK have helped to shift the Overton window back.

www.transwidowsvoices.org/

committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/36734/pdf/

www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/3101834-trans-widows-escape-committee?flipped=1

makemorenoisemanc.wixsite.com/mysite/post/a-plea-for-help-for-feminists-from-a-trans-widow

uncommongroundmedia.com/which-side-are-you-on-girls-trans-widows/

Is the above enough that this particular Mumsnetter has done? I could provide more links but putting them all together is (as we say around these parts) outing.

Yes, it's really not worth outing oneself in order to settle some stupid spat.

Many women have very good reasons to stay anonymous on here.

What was it Sarah Ditum said about women who have to stay anonymous? That we're just not brave enough IIRC.

The possibility that women can be both 'out' in some places and anonymous in others also exists.

Yep.

None of the parent activists can be real-name public while their child is still in the genderc**t, same for trans widows who share children with late transitioning males. Going public would destroy our children’s right to anonymity, as well as their right to privacy re: their own narrative.

Feminism has never really wrestled with it’s motherhood problem.
We see it over and over again on these boards, which are unsurprisingly largely used by mothers due to being a subforum on a parenting site.

Not that non-mothers aren’t welcome, just pointing out that they are the minority here.

Yes. And listing some of what I've done wasn't me having a "do you know who I am?" moment it was making the point that I'm not unusual amongst mumsnetters in having done all that. We've all worked to shift the Overton window and we're just as entitled to an opinion as anybody else.