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?

*posted

Ditum had an inadequate understanding of how the spousal exit clause cannot be fully replaced by no fault divorce, but she wouldn't have made this mistake if she'd spoken to women affected.

Isn't Ditum a journalist? Pretty basic part of her profession to check one would have thought.

“Distance” is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.

More of a columnist I think.

I don't recall WPUK 'performatively distancing' themselves from PP.

They wrote a clear statement saying that local women had recommended PP and they decided not to host someone who had made recent tweets which they considered to be racist.

Fair enough.

Oh, sorry. I thought we were talking about the situation a few years ago, not Cardiff.

No that's my mis-reading of posts.

I'll get that post withdrawn as I'm mixing separate things up.

Thanks. I'll have a little look at what's already out there. I think prob more main feminist chat - although motherhood penalty is one of the many ways that sex based oppression becomes v real! Something men larping womanhood will never know. ;)

Local women wanted Kellie-Jay to speak at Truro, but they pulled out.

I don't think the 'local women asked them' claim holds.

I assumed the "local women asked them to" comment was about WPUK platforming transexual "allies".

If it is the case, these local women should also reflect on the damage done to trans widows.

Indeed.

Clearly WPUK did make a stand over who spoke in the case of K-J, but could see no problem platforming everyone else they showcased. You, and many other women, were collateral damage.

It was a very low bar to denounce someone as racist.

1. Saying she thinks hijabs on little girls are disgusting (I think that was the word)
2. Mentioning the ethnicity of the rape gangs - I can’t remember whether it was Rochdale or Telford.

Even if they were bluntly stated, they were both feminist points. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought even Pragna Patel is critical of people using cultural sensitivity to excuse the oppression of women and girls.

WPs denouncement was excessive and did not cover them in glory and has caused KJK loads of grief since.

So in my opinion it was not ‘fair enough’. It was cowardly, strategic and unfair.

The KJK meeting in Truro went ahead independent of WPUK.
Local women organized it. I went.

Jean Hatchet was there too as a speaker (this was before she outed herself as terrified of conservatives and started a massive public denouncing), and had a rather surprising experience at an air bnb.

This goes back a long time!

I don't agree. From what's been posted here it's pretty clear that KJK ignored the jibes from what I'll call the socialist leftist feminists for a long time, and so did most other women here and on other platforms. They sucked it up until it reached such a volume that KJK cracked and responded. Why do you expect KJK to keep silent while other women abuse her? Why do you require a higher standard of behaviour from her than you do from, say, Ali Ceesay?

It does.

And it was fair enough for WpUK to put boundaries around who they platform.

May not be ones that everyone agrees w ith, but that's true of other groups too.

I don't think PP does that sort of messaging any more, not sure.

I don't. I'm merely offering my experience that she makes frequent jibes at other women which was why I stopped watching her.

Not recently, a year or more ago.

They could have deplatformed her without the ritual shaming.

Even if they were bluntly stated, they were both feminist points. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought even Pragna Patel is critical of people using cultural sensitivity to excuse the oppression of women and girls.

Yes, I heard two speakers at Filia reminding us not to use cultural sensitivity as a way of turning a blind eye to the suffering of women and girls.

They could have but chose not to, for whatever reasons.

That's fair enough.

People can either support them or not.

It’s not ‘fair enough’

its unfair fgs

Pragna and Feminist Dissent have written some great stuff about how cultural sensitivities have been used to further women's oppression, exclude girls from sex ed etc.

Their panel was really strong.

Why is it 'unfair'? They considered her tweets racist. She or someone else could have defended them.

They can host who they do or don't want. Pp was spending plenty of time criticising WPUK last time I watched her.

Btw, I think her tweets were from her days of being a lone motormouth, before she got a visit from West Yorkshire Police at the behest of Suzie Green, before she was kicked off all the platforms and before she started up SFW.