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?

"When they threw that cartoonist at the Morning Star under the bus at the behest of Kristina Harrison - they made their position clear. Team Peen all the way. So depressing."

bloody hell, how utterly nauseating that they did that @EndlessTea I remember the cartoon- it was bang on.
If these women support the likes of Debbie Hayton/Kristina H then they are no friend to me or my daugter. It makes me furious- they clearly don't have as much to lose, do they? and they don't care.

Woolsy I think it's complicated. There are women campaigning against gender ideology and esp the harms being done to children that don't consider themselves feminist.

One of the take aways for me was Pragna saying that feminism that isn't explicitly anti-racist leaves her and others behind.

And the importance of grass roots activism as Ali outlined when she spoke about the work that women had done to support women detained as Calais when governments and NGOs weren't. Women collectivise and get shit done. Women in the UK can campaign and organise without permission or funding from any political party - that's what I heard 'autonomous' to mean.

Well clearly the WDI woman (sorry, didn't hear her name) and Kara Dansky had their reasons for making their statements. I could understand the Welsh contributor's statement and don't think it was disingenuous: the event was titled 'Betrayal by the left...' and the fact that not a word had been said about current Labour policy, which is being felt particularly in Wales, was galling. I think she also mentioned KJK — possibly because KJK came to Newport to support Jennifer Swayne. (No, I didn't go to that Newport event.)

I imagine the Scottish contributor was motivated by similar feelings/ thoughts. Those of you living in England have no idea what it's like for the rest of us faced with governments actively hostile to women's rights. I think Jeni Harvey was the only woman to address a question directly to the speakers: something to do with holding socialist salons. I remember Jeni from WPUK's Cardiff event years ago.

I know that some of the audience were just wondering wtf was going on. 'Betrayal of the left' without a single mention of Labour's current threat to women's rights...

I wish I had stood up and said this

• Left wing women can have money. Shock horror. I worked hard from nothing and now give. I always said to my kids - you first help yourself and then you give back.
• whether you agree with Posie or not in some things - she is ON OUR SIDE. She’s a woman. Give her a break.
• why can’t I vote Labour? Want to. But can’t

Anyone who starts with 'this is what I believe about what feminism means' is fine by me. We can talk about beliefs, learn from each other and we can agree to disagree. But that's not how it went.

Yes, Jeni was pretty much the only person who asked a question directly about what one of the speakers said.

I'm confused. I thought your problem with the event was what you heard to be unspoken warnings about not working with PP, but now it seems to be that none of the speakers spoke in detail about the current Labour party? Pragna said that currently the left were very far from supportive to women, Phillipa spoke about her ongoing battles within the NEU and Ali spoke about women organising separately from political parties or government agencies.

I'm not sure that anyone in the room needed to have how utterly shite the current Labour party are detailed. The tag line for the event was 'betrayed by the left'. That's pretty clear, isn't it?

And I would have cheered loudly if you had. I would also have wanted to discuss whether feminism= socialism. Not because I hold a firm opinion on the subject, but because such confident and unchallenged statements always bother me and I'd like to hear both sides properly argued.

Remember TWAW - no debate? I want to debate everything.

None of the panel mentioned PP. She wasn't there. Her interests aren't in building a feminist movement.

I didn't really understand why someone in the audience brought her up nor how anyone could have interpreted that panel as communicating unspoken warnings about working with her.

Pragna said that currently the left were very far from supportive to women, Phillipa spoke about her ongoing battles within the NEU and Ali spoke about women organising separately from political parties or government agencies.

I think a passing line about the left being far from supportive of women is scarcely discussing the situation or indicating the strength of feeling of betrayal by the left that some of us feel. Philipa's account of her work within the NEU, admirable as it is, begs the question of how many more years it's going to take to effect change — while our Scottish and Welsh houses are on fire right now.

I'm organising and involved on various fronts separately from parties and government agencies and so, I imagine, were most people in the room. There can't be many of us at Filia who haven't been involved in some variation of the kind of voluntary involvement that Ali described.

I think there was a subtext of not working with anyone who might be suspected of fraternisation with the enemy. I read the video and the mention of the Heritage Foundation as a warning about KJK — and I'm presuming that others did too and that's why a couple of women bridled and mentioned her. Some of us remember the saga of Jean Hatchet's trip to the US with KJK and there were echoes of that. It now seems that the subtext was actually aimed at others I knew nothing about. But it also applies to KJK.

So how many elephants do we have in the room? The Labour Party. Never mentioned yet looming large in the minds of many attendees, surely. KJK: possibly an unintentional elephant but identified by a number of women present. And apparently an elephant that others here are aware of but I can't see.

I didn't really understand why someone in the audience brought her up nor how anyone could have interpreted that panel as communicating unspoken warnings about working with her.

Then you haven't been listening. Heritage Foundation: warning video: right= bad, left=good — and a subtext aimed at WDI and Kara Dansky that pressed buttons with those of us who remembered KJK's trip with Jean Hatchet to the US and the fallout there over the Heritage Foundation. You think those people were plants/ disingenuous but I can see exactly the process that led to them mentioning her.

I'm really tired and I'm expected to cover for a sick colleague tomorrow so I'm calling it a night now — which I'm sure will be a relief to all.

Not a subtext, but very explicitly stated, that the feminism that the panel was talking about must, by definition, be built on socialist/democratic principles and that it's essential to maintain distance from right-wing ideology, practice and policy.

The video and a lot of Katherine Acosta's work is an analysis of how the right has co-opted groups opposed to gender ideology in the States and taken over and influenced them.

Of course people can disagree with this analysis. It would have been interesting to hear about that actually, rather than the Twitter quality of discussion from most of the audience.

So, Labour are shite. Right wing policies make women's lives harder and smaller (as Ali said about being a single mother) hence the necessity of continuing to build a women' movent autonomous from party politics but founded on leftist principles.

It was a shame that there wasn' t more discussion about how to do this, how to build on what women are already doing as you say from the audience tbh.

It is possible to criticise the Heritage Foundation without mentioning PP. You only have to look at the leadership team to question whether this organisation has women's interests mind.

I didn't say or suggest that anyone was a 'plant'. I did think that many of the audience'a responses were coming from somewhere other than having listened to the speakers.

Esp the woman who said that she didn't use Twitter or know anything about Posie Parker and then said that WPUK shared articles from the Telegraph etc on Twitter.

That sounded disingenuous in the extreme.

I'm interested to know how welcoming, or not, the Filia conference is to 'right-wing' women.
Would a Tory MP/councillor/voter be able to disclose this or would this make things uncomfortable?

It seems crazy to me that the 'left wing' parties are refusing to even correctly define a woman but it sounds from this thread that it would be Conservatives who would not be welcome at Filia.

I've certainly seen arguments on social media where Tories have been told that they cant be feminists, when for all we know they are personally doing lots of good for women and girls.

So how welcoming is the Filia conference to those on the right?

I agree that she made good points about the type of woman who can afford to come to Filia - and maybe it would be an idea for organisers to look at ways of donating to women's expenses as well as supporters' tickets next year. I would happily put in a few pounds to such a fund.

@Boadicea2 apologies if I've misunderstood, but FiLiA does provide an awful lot of assistance to women who otherwise wouldn't be able to attend.
You can buy solidarity tickets which are then given for free to women who can't afford it, there are also many other financial relief options FiLiA provides to women who can't afford to attend.

There was a conservatives women stall last year.
This year I spoke to women from all political parties, feminist issues is what brings so many women together at FiLiA. I didn't see anyone getting asked to leave because of their political viewpoint.

I was there. I found the whole thing bewildering and very off putting. I wish I’d attended a different session to be honest.

Yeah, I didn't think the way the discussion went was productive or relevant to what was said. It was a shame that alot of the points made by the panel weren't picked up and developed.

As well as solidarity tickets, Filia source local women who can offer a bed or settee, coordinate lift shares etc to make it as possible for as many women to attend as they can.

Not a subtext, but very explicitly stated, that the feminism that the panel was talking about must, by definition, be built on socialist/democratic principles and that it's essential to maintain distance from right-wing ideology, practice and policy.

Anything that must be built on certain political principals cannot by definition also be democratic

Also left and right are relative positions; the uk centre right sits to the left of the Democrats in the US. A left wing party will have people who sit relatively left and right within it. A determination to ‘maintain distance from right-wing’ will push you further left in a purity spiral that takes you to extremes.

It is possible to criticise the Heritage Foundation without mentioning PP.

But why would you? What is the link between the HF and UK feminism if not PP?

I was at the meeting. I didn't think it came anywhere close to using TRA tactics. But I did think it was defensive, and failed to address the issues dividing us at the moment. Maybe that was always impossible in a large meeting, with the audience sitting in rows and a panel of speakers taking most of the available time.

I have so much respect for WPUK and what they've achieved. I have absolutely no problem with them continuing to do their thing, organising brilliant meetings and working within the institutionalised left (of which they're rightly critical) as insiders. I do think, though, that they need to find a way to live with the fact that the broader GC movement is made up of feminists, women who are on the edge of feminism and don't see themselves as political in the same way, and women who aren't feminists and don't claim or want to be. The Filia meeting slid past that. No-one's forcing WPUK to work with Posy or anyone else, and it's fine for them to draw their boundaries where they want. As the movement grows, which it's doing and hopefully will continue to do, it's going to attract mostly women and a few men with all sorts of politics, and we all have to work out for ourselves who we want to follow and work with.

I know those differences can and will lead to tensions, but surely to goodness we can find a way to deal with that, without the spite and the backbiting we've seen in recent months. Don't like the way a woman works? Don't like who she chooses to work with? Fine, don't work with her yourself. But stay out of her way, don't spend your time undermining her. See a spiteful comment made by one woman against another? If you're in a position to talk to the commenter privately, and/or support the woman on the receiving end, do it. Don't endlessly repeat the spite on social media.

We have a common enemy and we need to remember that.

The meeting sounded pretty obviously from the description like a pious WPUK lecture about not fraternising with the likes of KJK. If I had been there, as several of my likeminded friends and acquaintances were, I'd have chosen a different session, which by all accounts were great.

I do think the conference is amazing and positive, despite the issues there have been over the years.

A fundamental problem, for me, is that there is much criticism of what NOT to do (e.g. liars doing things like posting libellous blogs) and little suggestion of what TO do. It's manifestly unhelpful to make statements about one woman whilst not offering constructive ways forward. This is why the feeling in my activist groups is one of moving on without WPUK, and indeed, that's what we are doing with our regular on the ground protests and other events.

Of course it's fine to draw political and other boundaries (mine, for example, include not aligning with women who cover up sexual harassment from one of their own "feminists" in the way that powerful men do), but a consequence of that is that you then lose the popular voice. This, I understand, is fine for WPUK who have a clear vision of what feminism is, or should, be. What I don't understand is why, having drawn those boundaries, some still feel they have a right to influence what others are doing. You cannot tell women they don't belong (e. g. Jane Jones made an inexplicable 98 tweet thread stating who wasn't in the "gang" and why like a teenage bully). As I said, some of us are moving on and happily engaged in our own projects.

When WPUK and friends offer a way forward, and when others sort their own precarious, hypocritical houses out, I'll pay more attention. Until then, many of us are out in the world, on the streets, and attempting in ways big and small, to raise public awareness of the wider threat to us all.

What she said

We need to be clear that there is a difference between the "right" and the "far right". WPUK has shown itself happy to work with people like Miriam Cates and Emma Nicholson, and they're willing to talk to the Mail and Telegraph. But there is a massive distance between the average right or centre-right Tory politician and the US Christian right, who hold an extremely unsavoury set of anti-women opinions, and have seen the trans issue as an opportunity to co-opt concerned women to their cause. We should be very wary indeed of being co-opted by these people.

I think it would be very welcoming. There's no need to disclose your politics if you don't want to. This was the only overtly party political event I encountered and I think somewhat controversial for that. And as the Labour Party wasn't mentioned, you could even say that it wasn't party political. Filia is a feminist conference: being a feminist is probably more important than your political allegiance.

And do you think anyone attending a WPUK meeting at Filia wouldn't know this?