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?

So what we have seen from this person recently is her normal character?

Just had a look at her Twitter and can't see anything outrageous? Just concern that a 14 year old girl was maced.

I may have missed something but there seems to be an awful lot of vitriol against women who stand up for their principles.

You can't have it both ways. Either I'm an ignorant outsider who just doesn't understand the tone, compared to all you MN grandees.

Or you're all just ordinary women, no difference between you and other women at all.

Irony overload indeed.

What?

Now I am convinced you are not reading the same thread as the rest of us, clearly there is a glitch in the matrix somewhere.

I've not engaged because I have no idea!

Just concern that a 14 year old girl was maced.

That's quite a disingenuous description. Was that the 14yr old spitting at women trying to retreat & who grabbed the women with the pepper spray? As part of the aggressive mob? That 14 yr old?

I may have missed something but there seems to be an awful lot of vitriol against women who stand up for their principles.

<sigh>

Here it comes again

I may have missed something but there seems to be an awful lot of vitriol against women who stand up for their principles.
Yes there's been a lot of that against FWR women on this thread.

Either I'm an ignorant outsider who just doesn't understand the tone, compared to all you MN grandees.

There is no such thing as a 'grandee'. It's an anon internet forum. It has conventions that regular users are more familiar with. Familiarity doesn't imply any sort of 'grandness'.

Or you're all just ordinary women, no difference between you and other women at all.

It's late. I really don't understand what you're saying, here, at all.

Have you not seen Hepwo's other posts in this thread?

Go back and have a look and it should all become clear.

That's quite a disingenuous description. Was that the 14yr old spitting at women
I've been here long enough to remember when WPUK supporters were accused by TRAs in Brighton, and on here, of spitting at protesters. Difference is those allegations turned out to be false.

Ooh have you actually bothered to read the thread now @JudeanPeoplesFrontOrPeoplesFrontOfJudea?

I want women to engage constructively with each other. I want this thread to stop.

Thank you for starting this thread @pattihews . It has clarified my thinking a lot.

I think FWR is a good, constructive place for these discussions.

My working theory? Those very delicate & important closed door discussions have a part in what's going on

Please don't. I wouldn't nominate myself for a position negotiating anything delicate in a million years, and my heart sinks when they proudly post about their delicate work behind the scenes. I have as little faith in them as I do in myself!

So disappointed in you, frankly.

Admitting - in public - that you missed the single post in a 32-page thread where I reported that I had, indeed, RTFT.

You'd better retire in shame.

You'll never live this one down, you know.

I remember that too. I believe the now very low key Dr Harrop had to pay a charity & apologise to the women falsely accused of having spit on others following those false accusations.

Answer: None of them! Nor was this section of the video screened at Filia.

It was part of the opener which begins with news stories showing that the Democrats and Labour are the ones pushing gender identity policy, then voices of women saying why we should not worry about working with the right, and then my discussion of powerful rw orgs in the US (now expanding to the UK) and why we should not work with them.

This is a very interesting question.

Have you thought about how your contributions come across to "ordinary women" @JudeanPeoplesFrontOrPeoplesFrontOfJudea ?

Including two very specific allegations about content that does not exist and has never existed on this thread?

Who are these "ordinary women" whose thoughts you are so attuned to?

You don't know who most of us are on this thread. However, it is pretty obvious that most of us are the "ordinary women" who sit in the room rather than on the stage. You however, you say you DO know some of the extraordinary women, who we have been talking about and learning about, that they are your friends.

Are you sure that you are advocating for "ordinary women" ? Or are you advocating for your extraordinary friends?

If I had been lurking on this thread with the same or less amount of knowledge that I had at the start of it, I think I would be very interested to follow the discussion. I have learned a lot along the way as a contributor as well as reading other people's comments.

Several people have mentioned that they hope "the WPUK women" read this thread so that they can better understand how the panel at Filia failed to meet the expectations of at least some who attended. They would be the "ordinary women" who were "out of the loop" and therefore disconcerted, puzzled, upset, disappointed, etc. - about the "elephant in the room that was ignored" and some unexpected content that was included and had an unsettling subtext.

The conversation has broadened but is still relevant and I think we are still making sense of what is going on "behind the scenes", at least I am.

Some of the information shared has been quite shocking. Perhaps you feel that it does not reflect well on some of your extraordinary friends and that it should remain hidden from other "ordinary women" ?

It has been, IMHO, an interesting discussion, exploratory and for the most part very agreeable.

When you first dropped in you were very polite, if a little patronising, and asked us nicely if we would please stop talking to each other about this.

Your rudeness and aggression now you have come back and found that we have not acceded to your request, along with the bizarre false allegations, is really something to see.

Has drink been taken? . . .

Did you confidently assure your extraordinary friends that you would sort out their "little problem" of ordinary women talking to each where they might be overheard by other ordinary women?

Is that why you are so angry? Not that we didn't do as we were told but that you do not have the influence and authority over "ordinary women" that you supposed?

But the FiLiA WPUK session didn't happen in a vacuum (though clearly there were hopes of an echo chamber) and some or even many women attending will have known your work, and the discussions you and your allies have about the women you have included in your film intro. It's naive to expect women to set aside what they know and to only focus on what's presented in the session, that makes it start to sound more like an NLP session than a discursive space.

"My working theory? Those very delicate & important closed door discussions have a part in what's going on"

It's a big question and it has certainly been on my mind since you first asked it.

I wondered about, "General Election on the horizon?" given WPUK's mission re the Labour Party.

Then the next question would be, "What are they worried about?"

If the answer to cui bono is "The Labour Party" then we know who they are prepared to sacrifice, because the answer should be "women and children".

If the answer is, "The Labour Party" then WPUK needs to recognise that it has lost the LP both members and votes by the actions of some of its members since Brighton.

Nor was this section of the video screened at Filia.

Well of course not! That would have drawn attention to the elephant.

That part of the video was not screened at Filia.

And why would I spend time on a thread where I was told off for making an account and offering a view of what happened at Filia that contradicted "established mumsnetters"?

There are far more posters than just me here, in case you haven’t noticed.

Although it is rather flattering that a little old anonymous domesticated zombie like me can have such influence.

@Bosky you have definitely hit on what's been niggling at me too.

It's clear to me why no one wants to address what's going on, in politically left circles. The prospect of power focuses minds & I doubt anyone wants to be transparent about what & who they've deemed expendable in those very important & delicate discussions behind closed doors.

I'm sure we'll all be enlightened when worthy enough to find out who gets sacrificed for the 'greater good'.

Are you able to tell us why you decided to omit the introduction in the version shown at the Filia session, @KatherineMAcosta ?