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?

We were clearly the wrong sort of audience, weren't we?
The gentry left have been disappointed with us lessers being insufficiently receptive to their natural leadership for some time now- see the loss of the red wall. It's never the left's fault for not listening to their natural constituents, it's the uppity lessers fault for being, as Gordon Brown put it "bigoted women". See also Brexit

"One speaker at the event assumed that working-class women have to be poor and that anyone with money is of the right. You were making similar assumptions about others' colour, income, class etc."

One speaker, Siân Louise - she actually gave her name - said the amounts of money pouring into these legal fundraisers is eye watering and it's not what happens when grassroots working class women ask for financial support. It isn't. She said more money indicates more right wing because very skint people typically have left politics.

There clearly is a shift in the women active in the movement with more women with more disposable income swelling coffers of GC legal challenges and CG businesses like t shirt sales.

These women are more likely to be of the right. That's what she said. It's true.

Look at the data of social class and voting intentions. People act in their own interest by and large. Some act from a paternal sense of care to others but not a majority. Hence as people get older and more financially secure they are more likely to vote conservative. As people become homeowners they are more likely to become conservative. This was the rationale behind right to buy. Thatcher calculated that a home owning working class would shift their values away from collectivism towards individualism and soon voting patterns would shift right.

Yet when a working class woman points out the same principle in relation to the obvious changes in who is driving feminist activism now you act like this is a crazy prejudiced assumption from no where.

And I'll be clear. I literally don't care if you decide to claim you are oppressed on multiple axis, if you're a Black, working class, lesbian, single parent with multiple disabilities. You can talk about how diverse your groups are and all the rest. I don't care. You're an anonymous mumsnetter on a platform primarily for middle class white mothers. And you choose to misrepresent women here when you had plenty of access to challenge their words at filia itself or on the whova app. You can where you'd have your tribe back you up and you know it.

She said more money indicates more right wing because very skint people typically have left politics.

This is such a crappy, tunnel vision take of the current political climate.

’left wing politics’ have been rejected by lots of very skint northerners because the left has shifted so much it no longer represent industrial working class interests.

personally I cannot afford to go to Filia until it’s back in the North and I can stay at home but I can chuck a tenner a month in a crowd funder (by cutting back on other charity donations and/or drinking less!) which is £120 a year. Bet there are thousands of women out there like me.

Sometimes I give that tenner to the grassroots services that have held the line on single sex exemptions but more often I give to legal funds, because the house is on fire and my daughter is inside.

GC businesses like t shirt sales? Poor women need clothes too!?

(signed, UC claimant who attended filia - I paid £36 for the three days)

(I also donated to various crowdfunders. I'm lucky enough to live in a cheap area so have some disposable UC left over)

On the subject of crowdfunders, I often look at the list of donors to read any comments and I notice that donations of £10 - 25 are very common and anything of £50 and over really stands out. It is the total number of donors that make the amounts raised substantial.

She said more money indicates more right wing because very skint people typically have left politics.

I'm really not sure it's possible to generalise like that. Voting patterns and party allegiances are much more complex than rich=tory and poor=labour. As we've seen recently in the north.

From what I've seen, having followed the crowdfunders from the beginning, a significant part of the monies collected come from a lot of smaller donations. If you've followed threads here you'll have seen how many women in poverty and precarious financial situations have been keen to donate. For some women, particularly those who are isolated, disabled, unable to participate actively in feminism, i.e. those more likely to be poor, making occasional or even regular small donations is their participation. Suggesting that the money raised is from wealthy tories is a great way to make those women feel shit and insignificant.

None of us have unlimited funds to donate so we have to prioritise. I choose to donate where I think my money will have the broadest impact, so I don't typically donate to projects hundreds of miles away, though I have and would again donate to Horton women's centre, even though I would never go there, as it supports women from anywhere.

Accusing women of being tories if they have spare cash (as if that's the worst thing anyone can be!) is such lazy thinking.

Oh! I also cancelled my Labour membership subs and redirected those funds to crowdfunders.

Too true. It's a depressing.

That's pointing at KJK again, isn't it? Which kind of proves the point of the OP.

I wasn't at Filia so have no idea what was said at the WPUK talk, but the fact that some of the usernames that are defending that it wasn't hinting at KJK are ones that have definitely posted that they don't like her due to being far-right/racist/blah is interesting.

I donate to crowdfunders, including Maya’s which has made a difference to me personally, Allison’s , TT and Keep Prisons Single Sex. I also have standing orders to Southall Black Sisters, the Orchid Project (FGM) & my local food bank & volunteer at FiLiA.

KPSS and Trans Widows Voices, in particular, are as grassroots as it gets and really deserve a lot of support.

I also have a wardrobe full of clothing from both Standing for Women & Wild Womyn Workshop, & I’m a regular at KJK’s London meetings, which I think are a godsend for GC women who just want to connect with others.

And those of us who were there, didn't really understand why someone from the audience mentioned her and don't have an opinion on KJK other than she's an irrelevance to feminism?

Something that I have noticed alot recently amongst feminists is this populist rhetoric, head girls, the gentry left etc positioned in opposition to uppity lesser beings, the rest of us etc.

It's really unhelpful.

You might get a diverse bunch of people (from left, right and centre) working together to stop fracking in a national park, for example, but they wouldn’t all be radical environmentalists and would probably disagree on almost everything else.

So why can’t we unite around the immediate ‘house on fire’ issue of ‘what is a woman/protect single sex spaces’? Those who want to work towards broader socialist feminist goals can still do that (and it might include actively campaigning against the people they allied to for this one issue!) Surely if we can’t define ourselves in law then everything else is lost? Or am I being hopelessly naive?

By and large its this. Large number of women all contributing relatively small amounts. Also, women have to be strategic with their donations, contribute where they think is best spent.

So is calling women "domeaticated zombies", "poundshop Eva Brauns", "dog shit" and "johnny-come-latelys". If we could move on from the bickering, that would be great.

It's really unhelpful.
Really unhelpful to those who don't want us to notice.

Aye.

'Populist rheotric'

🤨

Do you think it's at all possible that women are just sick of being lectured to on 'rules of engagement' by women setting themselves up as arbiters of who feminists are or should be or what women should/shouldn't do/say?

Women losing patience with the repetitive petty digs isn't 'populist rhetoric'. It's women getting more & more pissed off. That's it. It's really just that simple.

Why do women necessarily have to be helpful, I wonder and who is it we're obliged to be helpful to?

I agree, it is unhelpful.

But it’s reactionary! Great swathes of women, many of us ‘ordinary working class’ women (I’m starting to loathe that phrase) feel patronised and belittled by the women who either claim to represent us in Parliament (but won’t speak up on this issue) or who have taken up organising or media positions as part of the push back against trans ideology.

’Head girls’ is nowhere near as offensive or as divisive as ‘Poundshop Le Pen’, imo.
Being a Head Girl has both positive and negative connotations (Head Girls are usually clever, self assured, confident public speakers who win at both sports and popularity contests, for starters) and when we use it in a GC context we are referencing both that positive phenomenon, and also how the Head Girls of our youth tended to assert themselves by belittling other girls, or by ostracising them.
Those of us who use this term are largely the grown up versions of the girls who were ostracised, bullied and belittled in school. We’d hoped that behaviour had been left behind with polyester hand me blouses and free school meal dinner-money-tickets, and we’re really fucking sad (and/or angry) that it hasn’t.

I can’t think of similarly dual positive/negative take on ‘Poundshop Le Pen’.

The more I think of it the more annoyed I am at the assumption that skint people must vote left and the only people who donate to GC crowd funders are rich Tories.

IME truly skint people vote for no fucker at all because when you live life on the breadline there seems to be barely a rizla’s worth of difference between a cosmopolitan oxbridge grad in a blue rosette and a cosmopolitan oxbridge grad in a red rosette.

Neither comes canvassing on a shitty council estate in an unfashionable northern town.

It’s perfectly possible to be angry with the Tory government AND your Northern Labour control council.

Funding individuals who appear to be getting shit done, whether that be Maya or Posie or Allison or Keira or Sonia or many others (including some men!) is a fuck of a lot less depressing than paying your membership subs and voting on endless Labour branch/CLP motions that may as well be scribbled on a helium balloon and let off into the sky for all the difference they make.

Agreed, TheClogLady. If some women object to being labelled as "Head Girls", they should maybe stop acting like the head girls you describe.

It's not our terminology that is the problem.

Yes, I completely agree that the name calling is unpleasant and unhelpful.

I don't like it all and yes it would be good to move on from it.

Helpful to developing a feminist movement Tinselangel. I dunno, I sort of think that this is what WPUK are trying to contribute to.

Populist rhetoric causes divisions between a perceived intellectual elite and 'ordinary women'. Which is pretty patronising but hugely effective (judging by this thread).

'IME truly skint people vote for no fucker at all because when you live life on the breadline there seems to be barely a rizla’s worth of difference between a cosmopolitan oxbridge grad in a blue rosette and a cosmopolitan oxbridge grad in a red rosette.'

hear, hear

I've been told before that it's not certain behaviour that is the problem, but rather my perception of / response to said behaviour, and that the patterns I notice do not in fact exist. It's very familiar to me.