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?

Gluten free biscuits over here please. GF hobnobs or oreos preferred.

I don’t even LIKE tea.

That is just wrong.

I know. Revoke my northerner status forthwith!

I’ll have a Nescafé with powdered coffee mate please (none of that new fangled barista rubbish)

(suddenly remembers Lang’s banana weetabix with a pang of combined horror and sadness)

Bourbons? Also famous Italians.

Bourbons? Also famous Italians.
Good point.

My device died and I had to recharge and I lost a post in the process.

I had a quick look at the document that @Jeanhatchet linked to and it says that ERWT (extreme right wing terrorism) in the UK tends to be carried out by lone individuals, not organised groups, that the UK is actually seen as a hostile place for ERW groups to organise - less than 30% of terrorist activity is classed as ERWT in the UK and although there is more activity, surveillance, etc around it, the thread is stable and not increasing. (Read pages 15&16).

Basically, the extremists we need to be worrying about right now aren’t the right wing ones.

That’s not to say we should be complacent, but the threat is exaggerated by WP, etc, imo.

What I think is a much bigger threat and worry is institutional capture by authoritarians.

On top of that, left-wing authoritarians are pushing left-wing, centre or centre-right people towards the extremes by labelling standard, ordinary views as ‘transphobic’, ‘racist’ or ‘far right’ in such a way that stifles frank discussion and makes people hardened, embittered and think ‘I might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb’.

@EndlessTea

This is a more relevant document about how the particular groups attempt to gain relevance. www.gov.uk/government/publications/modernising-and-mainstreaming-the-contemporary-british-far-right

@EndlessTea

I agree with the last part of what you say. The left are pushing some people to a state of despair and dangerous allegiance seems attractive. How do we counter it is the question?

This is the kind of thing I think about when I see phrases like, 'Betrayal by the left':
Annelise Dobbs: 'Labour is crystal clear: we would introduce a full ban on conversion therapy'.
twitter.com/AnnelieseDodds/status/1587119778921078785

This is the Labour Party today. No definition of 'conversion therapy' needless to say.

I would really like to hear what WPUK would say to a parent of a gender non conforming child who's agonising about how to vote.

I think it has to be about giving people a fair hearing, not dismissing them, not labelling them or ostracising them, appreciating that they have genuine concerns and experiences and not doing a ‘buttergasp’ because they are thinking or saying something verboten.

Once people feel heard, they tend to be more open to discussions, hearing other affected parties, weighing up competing interests, deciding where a good compromise, that they feel comfortable with, might be.

@EndlessTea

Sensible point and more tempered than some of the heated discussion today. That's all we need to do. Keep talking with open minds and an ability to disagree openly and walk away without wounding anyone. I'm not a natural at it either! Not by any stretch. My temper is "whoosht" at times. But I'm trying. I've tried here on this thread.

I can appreciate that.

That is F@cking HORRIFIC!! 😱

I notice that on Social Media everyone who is pretending that the only problem with the WPUK event was the audience is linking to Pragna's presentation, ie. avoiding exposing one of the things that actually had people wondering WTF was going on while at the same time implying that those who didn't "get it" were a bunch of ignorant bigots and quite possibly racist!

And the WPUK Panel are patting themselves on the back that they gave women from WDI ample time to speak from the floor? Un-fuckin-believable!

Somewhere I saw I dismissive comment that Kara Dansky was "busting a gut" to get called to speak. I bet she bloody was.

So this also means that everyone connected with WPUK has been lying when claiming that "KJK was never mentioned!" and rolling their eyes at the comments from women who were there who, for some unfathomable reason, made a link between KJK and a talk about the dangers of the US Religious Right?

Can we put Acosta in touch with that trans activist who drew a cartoon of For Women Scotland dressed as the KKK?

Meanwhile, this is the statement from WDI and WDI-UK in response to a defamatory article by Jayne Egerton in the Radical Notion that WPUK amplified by republishing on the WPUK website:

Statement from WDI and WDI UK
Our response to Jayne Egerton's comments about our work in her article in the Radical Notion

www.womensdeclaration.com/en/resources/statements-and-letters/statement-from-wdi-and-wdi-uk/

I wonder if Linda Bellos was included in the list of Thought Criminals because of this video she did with Sheila Jeffreys for WDI-UK, introduced by Jo Brew?

"Sheila Jeffreys & Linda Bellos Discuss Feminism Left vs Right politics"

So, I see no answer to my question about recognising that showing Katherine Acosta's video with names and faces of women might be considered polarising.

I too wonder if WPUK gave those women who featured in that video the opportunity to say anything. Because, that would have been fair wouldn't it?

Thanks for that video @Bosky - fantastic- bookmarking for later.

Excellent research @Bosky you may have whatever biscuit you wish.

Disappointing to read your post though, I had thought Karen Ingala-Smith in particular was better than that, oh well.

I notice that on Social Media everyone who is pretending that the only problem with the WPUK event was the audience is linking to Pragna's presentation, ie. avoiding exposing one of the things that actually had people wondering WTF was going on while at the same time implying that those who didn't "get it" were a bunch of ignorant bigots and quite possibly racist!

ahhh... I wondered at this too.

Because once you start to dissect the video and then what Ali Ceesay says at the end of her piece, you start thinking... hang on? I can see the issues.... why is there so much denial and no acknowledgement that maybe there is something to the posters saying they were uncomfortable.

It's all a bit look over there, no, don't look there isn't it Hellofabore which suggests that they know exactly what the issues are arising from the event but resolutely refuse to acknowledge them.

Seems a lot of demonising of individual women going on for a thread objecting to the demonising of individual women.

Ali Ceesay is a personal friend.
Karen Ingala Smith is a personal friend.

If that makes me a twat so be it.

They are good women.
Most of you are probably good women too.
Most of us are sick to death of all of this. Why don't we find some way to have proper open face to face conversation? I have no idea how.

Most of us are sick to death of all of this. Why don't we find some way to have proper open face to face conversation? I have no idea how.

Didn't women at this session try to discuss it there? there is no footage of the rest of the event, but people here have said that women tried to discuss it? Isn't what this thread is about?

@EndlessTea I'm with you in that there has to be a way forward that doesn't involve the constant sniping - I am not pretending to be an innocent and react, sometimes, unwisely (people weaponizing my wife's death and making bizarre claims about things I haven't done tends to do that). That said, I rarely argue so much in person and will speak to most anyone.

For me, I have zero issue with WPUK drawing boundaries. They are entitled to state what they stand for and, of course, "we denounce the right" is a pretty basic statement (the blog focusing on one woman, however, is, I think, wrong). My objection is the call for others to do so when they merely found themselves standing next to two (I think) men who have now been given considerably more publicity than they could ever have achieved on their own. If I knowingly find myself in the vicinity of the far right I'd just ... ignore. I wouldn't feel compelled to make a statement and that is my way of drawing boundaries. There is no-one right (oh god I really don't mean to make a pun) of doing so.

And ... the call to say "I am not associated with the right" feels, to me, like another demand. Who is it for? It cannot be for TRAs who, despite me being a left-wing working class lesbian, began denouncing me as a nazi in 2018. I have zero interest in appearing "reasonable" to them. So, is it for policy makers and politicians? Well, if someone thinks I'm suddenly right wing because I stood next to someone then they are too far gone to reason with.

Social media is a blunt tool and I use it differently from most (deaf). That leads to judgement, of which I am also guilty. But despite the noise, I'd have no problem sitting down speaking to perceived opponents over a pint (indeed, I sometimes do!). You're quite right that off-line is the way to sort this, and I hope those more publicly involved than me manage to find a way forward rather than us all having the same fight this time next year.

Being disappointed with someone is hardly demonising them Jean.

Neither is commenting on their behaviour on social media.

Hello and thanks to this really interesting thread! I think the opening post is exactly the type of questions we need to ask of ourselves and sometimes other women.

And as I know how shrewd commentators are on FWR yes I am a long time lurker and new poster. (For some reason I had to spend 24 hours in isolation after joining.)

What I had wanted to say has been rather over shadowed by Bosky's post on who (legally are part of WPUK) from the perspective of someone who is mainly on facebook where it has been obvious for some time that how WPUK is now acting seems a huge diservice to everything they achieved as a single issue campaign.

Earlier on someone talked about maybe WPUK should have been challenged earlier, but in fact there have been a few occassions on their facebook page that women have questioned them. Particularly about their so called "Women's Liberation" Conference which clearly wasn't a WLM conference but some weird combination of workshops by friends and re-statement of previous meetings, but was absolutely NOT something that the deluded fans who forked out money for tickets were in anyway allowed to contribute to.

But the most recent event, which probably caused some of the feelings at their FiLia meeting was their apparent adoption of a film that is a direct rip off of the work of PP / KJK work which they decided to promote.

Iniatially women were commenting this is great WPUK is acknowledging her work and maybe offering an olive branch. But no it seems a random group of "young" women, politcally "innocent"" had put together this feel using graphics that look like SfW's and included women how have publicly bad mothed her.

So the response was maybe they should change the graphics, include an acknowledgement, and so on. But WPUK stuck to their position of this unknown group of women had asked them to publicise it and so they were (they frequently do NOT share info sent to them).

And then it sort of peaked in terms of we dont care what you think, by them not only reposting the ad for the film but are now hosting the official premiere.

On one level this can seem quite trivial, but given the back story, and their extreme public antagonism to SfW and the individual woman who created it, even some of the more be kind facebook followers were saying, please think again, and how this will reflect on you.

This isn't just about appropriation but what could be seen as an attempt to erase the role that PP / KJK has played (and I say this as someone who isn't a particular fan of hers but can see the impact she has had).

This was also the thread when it became clear (even without Bosky's facts) that Actual Gender Critical Left, who popped up all over the place, were somehow linked.

The whole think left such a bad taste to those who were aware of it from facebook, would find it hard to take the FiLia platform as being in good faith. Especially the really stupid comment that she could have bought a ticket. Not only is that saying she shouldn't have a place on a platform, but just about everybody who knows about her knows she was in the states.

Any believe I had had in them as a group, disolved around the time of their rigidly controlled WL conference, but their delight in thumbing their noses at us mere followers was extraordinary meant I will no longer trust them to not be behaving in a dishonest fashion.