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?

You want to talk about the threat of the right? I want to talk about the threats coming from the left. We could try and address both, but right now, there's an awful lot of whataboutery going on to stop the discussion I'd like to have. Especially with those claiming to be in delicate negotiations behind closed doors with zero mandate to talk for women.

This ^

The bigges threat to women in the UK right now is seemingly coming from the left.

In the SFW Brighton threads we even did some research to find out the
extent of Fascism in the uk (the National Front has just 29 members as of 2022)!

It's a fight against the new misogyny, purely and simply.

@TheClogLady

And that’s what we’d like all of WPUK, their panellists and associates (and apologists) to do.

"Stop calling Posie a ‘pound shop le pen’ or worse than dogshit.

Stop calling us ‘domesticated zombies’.

Stop saying that feminism belongs to the left or that left wing women are all skint and anyone with a tenner for crowdfunder must be a Tory.

Stop pretending to not be talking about Posie when she’s right there in the presentation slides.

All of this has been mentioned over and over on the thread"

1. That was Sarah Ditum. Not a member of WPUK. Likewise "dogshit". Not WPUK ...or recent. Probably regretted.

2 the crowdfunder commenter Sian was an independent speaker to WPUK from the floor. I don't agree about that. It was an odd comment but it was her view.

1. Some women don't think men can be feminists and some don't think Tories can be. There is vast opinion on this and always has been. You can't just say "stop saying that!" Women will argue this always I'm sure.

The event was not about KJK. This has been said many times. But you think it was. At some point the thread will have to run out of steam or it becomes a bit pantomime. Still. It's nearly the season.

"Oh no it wasn't!"

"Oh yes it was!"

Just as a reminder, the event was called

Betrayal by the left, dangers from the right and the need for an autonomous women’s liberation movement

So it really shouldn’t be a surprise when lots of women want to talk about the ‘Betrayal by the left’ bit (which sadly includes a lot of left Women’s groups).

I totally agree about Ali Ceesay who is on twitter as hannoverhussy. Jean Hatchet is also another woman who is a detriment to the struggle for keeping womens sex based right. They think they know everything. Have they ever faced the agression or physical threats that KJK is experiencing in the US right now? Have they gone out and arranged any street gatherings of women? I don't mean from a partner or inside a buiding at a meeting, I mean from crowds of aggressors outside on the street like KJK is facing right now.

Working class women like me need women like KJK as she relates to everyone. She's not a snob like so many, of which the two named above and those from Womans Place UK are also snobs. Lets not forget Jane Claire Jones who is as bad as the above.

What have they achieved in the Labour Party over the last few years? Nothing. Rosie Duffield is the one taking all the flack but has Womens PlaceUK come out and defended her?

The warrior women in this fight is JK Rowling, Kellie Jay Keen and all the women from Standing for Women whether paid members or not, Maya Forstater, Helen Joyce, Allison Bailey, Stephanie Aral Davies, Rosie Duffield, Baroness Nicholson and Baroness Claire Fox. WDI is full of warrior women also. There are many other great women but too many to mention.

Those involved with the above are not warrior women as they have taken to the public space to defame anyone who is connected to KJK.

Julie Bindel is fantastic for all her work and has been going the longest of them all. I just hope she doesn't take a side as she will be a huge loss to women like me who are the working class women who she has never snubbed.

Those women letting women down need to rethink if they actually want us to win or whether they are going to continue to attack women like the tras and abusive men do.

Likewise "dogshit". Not WPUK ...or recent. Probably regretted

Jean. Please!

Claire spoke from the floor of the very event this thread is about. About the abuse she says she's received. Presumably from women? Who she says are racist? While saying not a thing about her own comments, or expressing regret.

Can we deal on reality here? Not in imagined happenings?

She doesn't regret what she's said. We know that. And it does no one any favours to pretend otherwise.

@TheClogLady

The National Front died off years ago. We all know this.

But the extreme right always resurface. As the EDL and now HoO. But the point we can agree on is that in and of themselves they have little political traction in the UK unlike the politically weighty and powerful organisations in the US.

But women have fought tooth and nail to gain valid political traction on this issue in the UK. We gain nothing by allowing the extreme right to graft on to all of our varied hard work. Robinson did it over grooming gangs. He'd more than happily do it over this. Not because he wants to help women out. But because he wants to gain relevance for his own extremist politics by any means necessary. We don't need him. He need us. Even KJK has said that. They are listening to her not the other way around.

These groups are desperate for political relevance and mainly advocate for causes antithetical to the rights of women.

We can quite easily ignore them, deny them any relevance and get on with opposing the left wing men who would smash our rights. Opposing all of these men is equally important.

Because it's overblown bullshit.

What happens then? You can scare each other to death about the right wing bogey man.

No-one here, absolutely no-one is unaware of the dangers of the extreme right. We don't need a fucking lecture on it.

Furthermore, through the relentless corrosive Pomo crap we’ve waded through, we have become a bit more savvy about how labelling people is an essential tool for censorship, cancelling and controlling what ideas, perspectives and evidence get an airing.

I’m pretty sure we’ve all had personal experience of being shut down and dismissed through being maliciously labelled.

‘Transphobic’’
’racist’
’far right’
… etc.

So I imagine I am not the only one who is sceptical when told to not listen to someone ‘because labels’.

’Far right’.
What does that even mean now anyway?

@Hepwo

A man just firebombed a migrant camp
at Dover.

Bogeymen or extreme right terrorists?.

There are graphics running around building in the US saying "Kanye was right about the Jews".

Katherine Acosta's video opens with very short clips, spliced together in quick succession, of specific women: Jo Brew; Sheila Jeffreys; Kara Dansky; Linda Bellos; Lierre Keith; Kellie-Jay Keen. It then jumps to an extended history of the rise of the evangelical Christian Right in the US.

So which of these women are extreme right wing and dangerous Jean? What was the relevance of their images to the event/talk by Katherine Acosta?

Nobody is ‘allowing the extreme right’ to ‘graft onto’ anything.

it’s a boogeyman, as Hepwo points out.

The real threat to women is the betrayal on the left. That’s what many of us want to talk about.

But women have fought tooth and nail to gain valid political traction on this issue in the UK.

And it's been absolutely trashed by WPUK supporters for the past few weeks. Using TRA tactics & accusations.

The irony here is frankly astonishing. I genuinely can't believe that no one supporting WPUK can see just how destructive it's been.

JCJ picked up a comment on twitter the other day incorrectly & swiftly deleted her response to it. It was a comment about how quiet the TRA have been for a number is weeks. JCJ read that as a sign that the efforts to 'maintain political boundaries' has been successful & their point about being very clear that the women's movement had successfully delineated between it & the far right & the silence of the TRA was proof of that. It completely passed her by what the comment was actually referring to - the fact that those trashing other women with TRA style smears were doing the TRA's job for them.

I have absolutely zero clue how to even start to unravel all of this or move things forward. Because no matter what is said, there is no stopping the train that a not-insignificant-number of WPUK supporters & affiliates have decided to hitch their strategy to.

Nothing on this thread will register. That's absolutely crystal clear.

’Far right’.
What does that even mean now anyway*

It means what it has always meant. It is the dangerous mainly male thugs with many rapists and domestic abusers in their number. That's who it is. isc.independent.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/E02710035-HCP-Extreme-Right-Wing-Terrorism_Accessible.pdf

Has this awful crime been committed by a member or supporter of SFW?

No.

Women are not responsible for what men
do.

I am struggling to see what point you are trying to make here Jean?

Are any of the women in the video at the start of Katherine Acosta's talk associated with either man?

We are well aware of far right extremists, why do you think we are all stupid and have to have it pointed out to us? Stop treating us as a bunch of thick plebs.

We can quite easily ignore them, deny them any relevance and get on with opposing the left wing men who would smash our rights

Is that right Jean! Oh my!

Make your mind up!

@TheClogLady

I'm well aware of that. But there are women saying the extreme right are bogeymen. And yet they are doing pretty dreadful things.

@VestofAbsurdity

I haven't suggested anyone is stupid or a pleb. I'm here discussing, according to points being made, which suggest no one knows who the far right is any more.

I think there's a whole lot of disingenuousness goes on about who is or is not involved in WPUK so you can say "they're not part of WPUK" when they say something you don't agree with eg Sister Outrider, just because they're not Judith, Ruth or Kiri.

The way some women act when WPUK are criticised leads me to think there must be an outer circle of WPUK that these women are involved in eg Outrider, that Daisy Foo woman, Jean, Sian, JCJ, KIS, Ditum, etc.

I had to block Ali Ceesay on twitter recently for trying to gaslight me that a conversation I'd had with Judith Green had never taken place.

IIRC Ditum made the "domesticated zombie" comment in response to something Ruth said and then they had a good old laugh about it.

Also the sheer dismissive rudeness of saying about Posie "she's free to buy a ticket"

@Hepwo

Yes. I don't see what is wrong with my point. Acknowledging the far right are sniffing around the same cause women have been working on for a decade or more and ignoring them is all that has been said and all that has been asked for.

It's not a hugely divisive thing to say "you lot get your coat you're a set of thugs we don't need". Have you ever been on an EDL march or in the pubs around one? Ever marched against them? You'd be asking the police to protect you pretty bloody fast I imagine.

Awful things that have nothing whatsoever to with SFW or any of the orgs being criticised in that ‘Real GC Left Facebook group.

Stop force teaming us with odious men.

This is exactly what women are protesting when they say that women in and associated with WPUK are using TRA tactics.

The ‘boogeyman’ referenced is the totally made up alliance of GC women and Extreme Right Wingers.

It seems to be used much more liberally these days - that’s what I am driving at.

@TinselAngel

Who died and made you head of Sports Day putting women into teams?

Nothing on this thread will register. That's absolutely crystal clear.

Sadly you are right @GrumpyMenopausalWombWielder it's all look over there, listen to my lecture, we are superior to you because we are oh so clever, never mind that you are just plebs, keep putting your hand in your pockets and giving us your cash, do what we tell you to do.

As someone else said on transmit and not receive, they are not in the slightest bit interested in anyone outside their strictly defined criteria, only to use them for money, they won't look at themselves and how they come across, they won't reflect, they are so far up their own superior backsides. As far as I am concerned they can stay there.