Jane Clare Jones on purity spirals

[IamSarah]

Really insightful post on X the platform formally known as Twitter I feel it's worth sharing on here:

x.com/janeclarejones/status/1745760345954689255?s=46&t=NGJBRqkXgp1UazF5I8yjXA

Well that says it all, really. You are what women raising concerns feared you were and clearly deserve every bit of criticism/pushback and more.

Thank you @TrainedByCats for the support

Yes JCJs writing can be quite dense. The first paragraph sums up her point and the rest goes into specifics.

All-purpose translation guide to JCJ threads.

We, being female Labour members, believe that for us to get anywhere in negotiating with the Labour Party, we must be perfect, as they will seize on anything, even the slightest change in facial expression, in order to brand us as bigots. Unfortunately, the rest of the party are a load of sexists who quite literally see women as a monolith, so any time any woman anywhere says something they think is prejudiced, they hold us responsible for it because we are also visibly female

"We have decided it's easier to whip the rest of the adult female population of the UK into abiding by Labour Party expectations, than to challenge Labour Party sexism and force them to treat women as individuals, so sit down and don't talk to anyone we didn't pre-approve."

Sorry to go back to the playground but Wombat was incredibly rude to me first. I'm not about to grovel to someone who just flings insults at me when I'm giving up an awful lot of time and emotional energy to fight a court case I do not want to fight to secure her the rights she deserves.

@RapidOnsetGenderCritic i haven't misunderstood. she didn't answer my questions but said she didn't understand them, though they were clear (i did mistakenly think she was trying to open a RCC). she sidestepped and then made excuses for conveying her esteem upon an abusive man.

@IamSarah I wasn't rude, I was honest. I was asking you relevant questions you clearly do not want to answer. Why is that? Also, will you be advocating for the tone policing of all rape victims or just the women who irk you personally because we object to you conferring esteem upon our abusers?

I'm really struggling to understand 'feminists' who think males with a liking for Malaga Airport should be platformed, but right wing women shouldn't (particularly if they're also Christians). Can someone explain how this is feminism?

(edited to remove possibly unacceptable acronym)

I’ve learnt so much from the women here, many that have sadly been banned because they spoke too much sense.

TinselAngel posts and the transwidow threads have been an invaluable part of reigniting my feminism. Her uncompromising approach and focus on women and children is inspiring.

I don’t expect to agree with everyone here, I read/listen to the different views, think about it and I’ve moved from the slightly wet liberal ‘bekind’ feminist I was when I joined here.

I hear enough from the likes of Went (who I’d never heard of before today) to not be interested in them being platformed in anyway at a feminist event. I’m not calling for them to be cancelled I’d just prefer for them to experience what it’s like being a middle aged woman attendee at a predominantly male event and thats be largely invisible.

I am fighting a court case to secure single sex rape crisis therapy for you.

This does not mean I have to justify every action I do to you.

OK.

What I would like to see, not that it’s anything to do with me, is an admission that it was unhelpful to post that picture with that caption. But a lot of the rest of this thread is understandable reactions by people who feel hurt, and for someone on the outside of all this it’s just sad to see people with similar histories and objectives arguing. I respect and admire, for various reasons, people on both sides.

Thanks for taking the court case on @IamSarah. It's huge, but so vital.

And thank you, @TinselAngel for your strength, clear words, the boundaries you help us maintain. And to all the support you have given so many women.

Thanks Kelly Jay Keen, for all that you do, for standing in positions that are dangerous and helping highlight the violence of TRA's. For giving women a voice.

And thank you, Jane Clare Jones, for giving me the opportunity to use my thesaurus.

💐

That translates more or less how I’ve read the various scoldings that non-compliant women have been given by WPUK et al. It’s tiresome and very much a part of Lefty politics.

If JCJ wants to vote for Labour, even though they refuse to commit publicly to undoing the weakening of women’s legal sex-based rights and protections, that’s her right in a democracy. I’m a Lefty who won’t be doing that.

Your cause is supported by many women @IamSarah who also abhor the horrendous experience you went through, some of these women will be white, Christian, vote Conservative, read the Daily Mail, the issue is would you, JCJ, and the feminists in Brighton who take great delight in tearing down other women who don't or won't abide by their purity diktats separate the cause from the person if a white, Christian, Tory voting, Daily Mail reader was in your position?

I suspect the honest answer to that would be 'No'.

I find JCJ's always manages to rub me the wrong way, even when she is trying to be conciliatory. I don't really believe her claim that it's not regular conservatives she has a problem with, just ones that are Christian, or have qualms about abortion (statistically slightly more likely to be women than men,) or "white nationalists" which I have seen used for people who have issues with immigration or DEI approaches as well as the more conventional KKK or skinhead types.

I think maybe it's the problem of equating people who are critical of feminism as an ideology, with people who are anti-woman.

So, Jean admits that she invited herself on the trip. She admits that no UK woman was funded by any right wing group but that they did have lunch. Jean complains that she wasn't included in the organisation of a trip that she admits that she invited herself on. That she was unhappy with what the other women had organised for themselves so she pulled out. And that KJK was upset by this and didn't talk to her. And you call this 'shitty' behaviour from Kellie Jay Keen?

Add to that that Jean released the blog when the flight had just left, so it would be hours before KJK had a chance to even hear about it, let alone defend herself.

Speaking only from the female side (male gentry left are another species entirely, and now seem to be more like the far right than the far right themselves) and a personal perspective:
Women like I was in the early 2000's*. Academically qualified in what used to be called women's studies, (specifically, for me, Marxist Feminist literary criticism) probably active in academic circles/university teaching. Middle class, economically comfortable. Heavily left-leaning politically (with all the blind spots any thought terminating position entails). Very conscious of saying/doing the "right"/ most "inclusive" thing. Not in a position where trans identities threaten me - eg not sporting, not likely to go to prison, never raped, never needed a domestic violence shelter, haven't lost a scholarship/job/promotion that was supposed to be for women to someone who only recently discovered their inner uwu twu woman. Someone who can choose only naice transwomen to share my previously female spaces. Someone who doesn't have to confront the realities of the roll back of women's rights that is currently underway. Someone who can swan around dispensing my luxury beliefs to the plebs and getting annoyed when they don't do what I say/bow down to my intellectual and social superiority. /s

Also, but this never applied to me, someone who doesn't really want change/improvement because my career/ economic security depends on only the endless argument without the solution.

*but then I grew up and saw what was really happening, how women were being asked to give up their rights to afford some men extra privileges. For me the first nopenevernoway was the distortion of language, and being asked to lie, to deny reality. I won't say the earth is flat or the world was created in 8 days either. To quote the late and much missed Magdalen Berns:
"I'd rather be rude than a fucking liar"

Well, I must say I despite the MAGAS because I'm a US citizen. Mexicans can't vote in our elections, so not sure why it matters what they think about Trump.

This is how I feel as well. This thread was painful to read. I've been on FWR since 2020 to learn about how to deal with this gender issue so I could utilize UK women's brilliance on this topic for US feminism. So, to see some of my most admired posters get into a rude and overdrawn match is depressing.

I'm of the camp that Sarah apologized, so did JCJ so maybe let it go now. A reset is in order, I'd say.

I am very much in favour of a reset.
However, and at the risk of repeating myself from an earlier post, I also think that angry words are painful but necessary if the reset is to be real. Too much has happened and been said over several years for brushing everything under the carpet to be viable.

I'm also aware that it's arguably a bit presumptuous of someone like me to call for a truce when I haven't been the subject of so many of the attacks.

The ones that write long missives about purity spirals are the ones creating them in the first place, and then lobbing word bombs in and running away saying they are sick of the abuse for calling it out.

I mean, they could just stop.

From me too.

Although the first three as the writing for the fourth isn’t something I can understand.

Raising money is hard, it’s going to take a huge amount of emotional energy and time, it might look as though someone isn’t getting it all right but the person is often just someone with no training just motivation and it won’t be as smooth as a professional doing the same. Plus there are large gaps on the left who won’t support this stuff leaving women in a difficult place

Not directly to you op but generally I can also see those who are fed up of being told they support the wrong politics and it must be Labour or whatever. It’s too controlling. And some claims about FWR being anti vaxx etc are imagined and fairly ridiculous

Anyway thanks to those who care about single sex spaces and extra thanks to those who spend time and money

Thank you for the words of support.

I appreciate that taking on a court case doesn't make me immune from criticism. If my actions have upset somebody I will always apologise.

I don't have a huge Twitter following, about 12k, but I have never used the account to put down the campaign work of other women. I have liked and retweeted KJK, Tinsel and probably many other posters on here lots of times.

It doesn't sound like a truce is realistic. Too warm and fuzzy. All I really ask is that my campaign to secure single sex rape crisis therapy is not undermined.

When accounts with 100k+ followers accuse me and the Brighton feminists of platforming AGPs, endorsing mixed sex refuges, welcoming males into single sex spaces and being vile and toxic it undermines the work we are doing.

Criticism is fine, lies are not.

Criticism is fine, lies are not.

I agree. So maybe get someone in the Brighton crew to take that nasty page about KJK down, eh?

I disagree that a truce is unrealistic @IamSarah but I don't believe either that it's a warm and fuzzy process. I think hard words are partly how you get there.

Nothing said on this thread stops me from supporting your case.

If KJK would be gracious enough to correct the lies she posted about the Sisters Salon event last week I'm sure that could be arranged.