Standing for women - Portland rally cancelled over violent threats

[ArabellaScott]

Not quite sure what's happened - seems there were credible threats to women's lives over these protests.

twitter.com/StandingforXX

Now it seems a few women went ahead and met up and were attacked. (Nobody seriously hurt as far as I can tell)

twitter.com/ReduxxMag/status/1585012546766966784

Hoping everyone is safe and well.

• in THEIR hand

I disagree. I think to say this does a great disservice to the women who Posie has given a voice and a platform. Not to mention her "be the billboard" campaign which allows us to find each other and spread the message. TRAs can show up and protest and show themselves up for the misogynists they are. But that's not who these events are for.

I also think that there would be larger crowds if there wasn't the fear associated with attending and that the messages would be clearer and easier to process. So, no. I think that Kellie Jay would make a large impact even without the violent protestors.

I have watched these in action. People stop and listen as they are passing. There is a natural spreading of the messages.

However, it is true that these protests will anger a whole lot of women who may even be more inspired to be braver than they were.

What is clear is that some of these posters, particularly those that are male, don't actually understand how women's movements work.

In fact, I suspect a number of them do not even understand females at all or mothers. It is pretty clear in their posts.

Here here.

Watch any video of the meetings Posie has organised. Ordinary women and girls who stand up and speak, and share their voice and their experience, to hear each other, to share in purely female experience together.

Not celebrated book writers and academics, ordinary female people focusing on female lives. Women who wouldn't speak publicly anywhere else. I can't be the only woman who has been unable to get to those meetings, but has loved hearing those women speak and those experiences shared and enjoyed what I used to enjoy 30 years ago when there were such a thing as women's groups. And felt heard and encouraged by them.

I found the women speaking in these frightening and intimidating circumstances very moving and inspiring.

Why can't women speak?

I thought the US was all for free speech?

Why are women being silenced? All they're doing is speaking. All they're doing is telling their own stories. There's no hate there. There's no aggression.

Just women speaking.

It seems the main problem is: it's the WRONG WOMEN (Grommet)

Couldn't bother waiting.

Let's see. I checked again, because I wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt that in my brain fog, I missed it.

I see many snide remarks, negative generalisations about the posters on this board, admonishments, some really patronising crap, posts keen to spread bad faith and false allegations.

You posted this:

'I am not defening spitting. That is wrong.'

after someone pointed out that you previous post seemed like you were condoning the spitting because people wrote mean and insulting things on the internet about the spitter. (I agreed by the way, there is never a need to shame someone for their body shape).

But no.... never a peep about acknowledging any of the violent acts apart from spitting.

Nothing. Not a one.

From someone who denigrated other people's feminism, started a whole new thread on 'who was a feminist' and used recycled allegations from feminists who have a personal hatred for Kellie Jay that you could not even evidence or articulate coherently.

And yes, you can accuse me of being 'rude' again. And tell me I obviously 'don't know stuff'.

But you have been caught out as being hypocritical.

Even @MargaritaPie doesn't go starting threads to show what a good feminist they are.

Yes. Arabella.

Shall we now discuss Chicago?

Strange how not one of these posters so keen to discuss Portland, Tacoma, and men carrying guns (otherwise known as a security firm!), have avoided Chicago discussions.

I wonder why?

Particularly since the accusations of affiliating with the Proud Boys has been now found to be entirely a beat up job. Any person actually watching the Chicago video can see just how many of the people creating any kind of boundary are the women themselves, and at least two police officers. No 'Proud boy security' in sight.

But fuck the mob mentality of the protestors was vile. And the reports of women being injured from behind while standing there to protect speakers is just as vile.

And no 'children' to be leveraged.

What a surprise that no one wants to discuss it here.....

Strange how not one of these posters so keen to discuss Portland, Tacoma, and men carrying guns (otherwise known as a security firm!), have been as keen to discuss Chicago.

Sorry.

I wonder if the series of current research gives posters pause. That showing the degree of intolerance in the age groups these students are and the 18-28.

I see Channel 4 seem to be releasing something about their research soon.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11378761/amp/Gen-Z-tolerant-peoples-views-elders-new-research-says.html

But this matches the research from YouGov last year and Dr Frank Luntz’ research last year as well.

Intolerance really does seem to be the new ‘tolerant’.

Absolutely. And everyone knows if you want to promote tolerance and inclusivity, the first thing you do is go and spit in the face of people you disagree with.

Okay then, I'll talk about Chicago and the tour in general.

With full awareness that I'll be jumped in because some sort of censorship seems to have developed around any sort of query or questioning of KJK... I still don' t fully understand how assembling scarily small groups of women at events that have been very widely publicised as anyone is welcome to attend,being protected by men and women with guns does anything to advance the rights of women and girls or prevent the medical harms that are being done to children.

Yes, I have watched the videos and the testimonies are very moving, but where do they g o? It doesn't seem to be influencing decision makers.

It looked like a gender conservativism in actiion to me

It looked like a gender conservativism in actiion to me

in what way?

I'm not disrepecting any women or Posie, in any way. What they are doing is incredibly important and moving.

My point is more about how the violent men behave shows just what a state the situation is. She says herself that it is the 'protest' that makes the local 'word of mouth news', and that people hear about it and want to know more, mainly why people don't want them to speak.

The people that do bring it up in conversations wondering what it is all about then learn the horrors that are being conducted under the 'be nice' bandwagon and that is what makes the impact. People will hear about the protest and might go and find out and watch the women speak on video and find out more. They also don't believe it and so do their research and that's when they find out what is going on.

I myself got called a conspiracy theorist and cult member for pointing out on twitter last night why people might be upset with Mermaids. People don't believe they are doing what they are doing. And so they attack the person that points it out.

Men protecting women.

Yes, I understand that they are protecting women from the aggression and violence of other men (and some women) and I am not criticising anyone for doing what they need to do to keep safe.

But how these events in anyway progress the rights of women and girls or counteract gender ideology and its regressive gender roles is beyond me.

Of course women should be able to speak in public. There are lots of things that women should be able to do like walk home in the dark by themselves without worrying, be paid the same men for the same work etc etc, but male behaviour and structural oppression make that not possible at the moment.

That doesn't mean that we stop trying to effect social change to make those things possible, it means that we have to increase our efforts.

I don't understand how countering male violence with the threat of more male violence furthers the cause against regressive gender stereotypes and gender ideology that's all.

Of course I hope that everyone keeps safe and that there are no more assaults.

Are many people listening to the women speak?

In my albeit partial cruises through social media, the footage and discussions seem to be about the behaviour of the men there.

I might not have seen all the discussions about what the women have been speaking about of course and I''d very happily be corrected and directed to some.

Fucking hell. So women shouldn't speak until they have created a world in which women can speak? How are they going to do that if they can't speak?

Of course people are listening to the women. That's the whole point.

But how these events in anyway progress the rights of women and girls or counteract gender ideology and its regressive gender roles is beyond me.

If you have any better suggestions by all means go do it.

The police were too scared to police a public event for fucks sake. The USA is utterly broken and the President would rather meet a guy spoofing womanhood than actual women. Any traction on this, bringing to the attention of parents what is going in, is worth it.

Can we stop with ‘you can’t say anything’ mantra

there are posters on here who range from very supportive to actually loathe, everyone can post and it’s impossible to stop anyone from posting

you can say exactly what you like….on some statements posters will push back

I mean, what even are those women running in front of horses even doing for women getting the vote. I can't even.

Yes.

Kellie Jay has 61K subscribers to her YouTube and this is steadily growing.

Her update live stream videos as of now have approximately 125 K views. The Portland video alone has 28K views.

She is not doing these only for women to get to speak themselves to the audience around them at the time.

She is allowing other women to speak to the world. Her phone in sessions are fine, but I expect that people will watch a video of someone speaking longer than listening to a detached voice.

Gender conservatism?! Eh?

The US is a few years behind us on this issue.

If you look back to around 2018, 2019, a bit earlier, women in the UK were meeting in secret locations, getting bomb threats, credible death threats. Millwall FC cancelled a meeting, ffs! Yes, these were 'scarily small' groups of women, for good bloody reason!

The atmosphere was terrifying. Zero media reported on the issues involved. Nobody knew about them apart from the canaries in teh coalmine - radical feminists, lesbians, the women working in prisons, in the NHS, who could see the problems starting to come in and could see how they would play out.

Women - very fucking brave women - still met. They made small, but eye catching protests. They kept going, despite violent attacks, more threats, endless 'die T*' threats, rape threats, etc. They stuck stickers, wore T shirts, wrote letters, met representatives, made connections, made networks, met up, kept talking, posted on here, found and shared research, evidence, testimonies.

And look at us now.

This is what has to happen in the US.

It's a bigger country, and a far more violent country. So it's doubly bloody scary.

But if women are going to protect their right to speak, to ask questions, to protect their rights, somehow there has to be a space for them to speak.

What these women are doing is making that space.

My point is that women are afraid to speak.

This is the problem.

We shouldn't need armed security to talk about women's rights.