Mandy Clare at Chester Storyhouse

[Gettingmadderallthetime]

This video has been posted in the 'What are you doing for IWD2024' thread but I wanted to draw attention to this and the response to Cllr Mandy Clare from the stage when she pointed out. Quite reasonably that.

• The three women on the stage had been talking about freedom of speech but had excluded a group of women from the event and then complained that they were protesting peacefully (in the rain) outside. It sounded like what they were claiming could be defamation.
• Raised points about single sex care affecting disabled women and several other points about erosion of women's right - reasonably and factually and very clearly.

This is the response from the stage.

'When I say I agree with freedom of speech, its as long as you're not hurting anyone and what people are doing is being transphobic and perpetrating ideas that are dangerous and lead to trans people being murdered.'

So ... specific examples of real life loss of dignity, privacy and erosion of current rights and past practices to help women are being stripped away and three women on a platform. Because saying this is dangerous and could lead to trans people being murdered. Does anyone know who the person answering from stage was? I think (picking up from the slide) that this is Dr Rebecca Wright who is DEI Director at John Hopkins School of Nursing. She was the person who had been urging people to avoid talking to the protesters and saying quite hurtful things about them (from what I can gather).

Well done Mandy Clare and whoever recorded this. (Note that there was applause for the answer from the stage but not for Mandy. Also note that there are very very few people in the audience for this session - definitely not a case of no room for the women to be invited inside).

I honestly don't think the women on the stage could actually comprehend that they were in the wrong. Their righteousness has completely blinded them to how they are behaving.

Is what they did, evicting Mandy Clare, even legal? Have the University commented on the discriminatory behaviour of their employee? If I was working or studying there I'd be very concerned.

Patsy Stevenson is the woman on stage answering the question - I say answering, I mean dismissing. She is the woman who staged a protest at the Sarah Everard vigil and had her face splattered all over the press as a result. She has been exposed as having worked with other people to stage the protest at the vigil, making damned sure her face was clearly seen as the police restrained her. She is a MRA - truly believes men can be women, and that any disagreement over that stance is bigoted and transphobic.
She’s a real piece of work.

That would require self awareness BB. I think Stevenson is well known for her arrogance and ability to make everything about her and her activism. I doubt she has any wish to be self aware because she is all about building her profile.

I do wonder what drives some of these women. Why do they appear to hate other women so much that they are prepared to deny reality?

It’s just another variation on the theme of ‘influencer’.

Why do they appear to hate other women so much that they are prepared to deny reality?

Very few of the women I know who are wholeheartedly of this persuasion hate women at all - it comes from a very deep seated "be kind" impulse, which I know is heavily socialised into women. My friends who are TWAW are also likely to worry about child poverty, about what's happening in Gaza, about inclusion in schools, about cuts to public services, etc etc. They would also worry about FGM, VAWG, they probably went on take back the night marches and would unironically say they are feminists, fully supportive of women's rights, etc etc etc.

What they have done is bought fully into the heavily promoted idea (Dentons report) that transpeople are very very sad and hurt people who are the most marginalised, most transgressed against and most vulnerable and therefore need extra care, attention and concessions, and see admitting men to women's spaces as an "easy win" that helps these poor people without any significant loss to women (along the lines of the "equal rights for others does not mean fewer rights for you" trope).

So when they see women like these ones in Chester disrupting events and asking questions, they don't see people worried about women's rights, they see people being mean, cruel, exclusionary. And they are willing to engage in the cognitive dissonance required by TWAW in aid of what they think of as being kind and inclusive, and also because other people in their tribe/political persuasion hold the same view so there is a strong social bias in favour of holding this dissonance that doesn't involve hating women.

There are of course other cognitive dissonances required to identify as part of the ostensibly left-wing tribe, for public policy/inclusion/equity reasons eg:

• There is no downside risk to a small business in hiring a 30 year old woman who just got married who might take multiple maternity leaves over the next few years
• Inclusion in mainstream education is always better for all children and needs can always be met in full
• Consent is always easy and clear to recognise, people are always sober when having sex and women should always be believed and never ever lie/change their minds after consenting sexual encounters
• Diverse teams are always more effective in all circumstances
• It doesn't matter where someone went to university so we can take university off CVs in favour of widening access beyond elite institutions
• The outcomes for children are better if they grow up in a two-parent family
• There are no trade-offs in choosing something that might be better for society as a whole

There are of course masses of cognitive dissonances required to be part of the "right-wing" side too especially in places like the USA that have taken it further eg. ban/restrict abortion but also don't provide contraception or sex education or support for famillies after a baby is born, expect people to work to pay for health care but don't support them when too sick to work, cut public services and also expect people to do more with less, leave a huge trading block intended to reduce barriers to trade and expect a benefit to the economy, restrict immigration and cut funding for training and also expect domestic workers to seamlessly replace skilled workers from abroad etc.

You have put this very VERY well.

The drive is the attention they get from the people that they are seeking to use to build their audience.

I don't believe it matters to them what the reality is, they have their own reality and in it the very reasonable councillor asking the question to Stevenson is to be reviled and demonised. And there is a sense of power that Stevenson got from giving the instruction for Mandy Clare to leave or be ejected. That gives so much power to those speakers that I don't think it even registers with the audience that Mandy Clare was entirely reasonable asking that question. Any deviation from the 'safe' narrative needs to be removed.

I would suggest a contributing factor was the mood carried over from Alicia Kearns speech too. Alicia Kearns got many back pats for that speech. The same people will be giving Stevenson the same plaudits now.

Absolutely.

Patsy made the Sarah Everard vigil all about patsy, her aim was to get publicity for herself and to increase her profile

Why anyone takes her seriously is beyond me.

I remember listening to women asking protestors what they were protesting about while I was standing in a line of women to let others speak behind us.

The young women there simply repeated the mantras of 'nazis', 'fascists', 'hate trans people' and the list was endless. I looked at them and said, do you realise that you have just told us things that are not even remotely what people here actually believe? Do you ever think about what we do believe? The answer was just more shouting.

It is not really even 'no debate'. It is that to debate would actually require some knowledge of the positions on all sides, and I don't believe that those doing the ejecting out of theatres or protesting with loud hyperbolic mantras about nazis and hating trans people are even bothered. Because they don't need to.

All they need to do is to tell people to be kind and to stop causing genocide with their words.

I agree.

Yet she has been taken seriously and is becoming a recognised voice.

There's a name for this - Communal Narcissism.

I can’t remember her name, or his full one - the TV presenter Des something - his daughter was protesting at a Let Women Speak event at Hyde Park. She was right next to a woman with her daughter and she was jangling bells. The woman said this is upsetting my daughter who’s autistic and she just carried on, smiling.

I do think they hate women, they just don’t realise it.

The first thing I thought after watching Patstys tiresome performance was that the event was really poorly attended. Could they really afford to exclude sex-realist women, and then evict someone who spoke up so eloquently and calmly? Hasn't the penny dropped yet? The so-called (because they misconstrue the concept) intersectional feminists are the totalitarian minority; not the women who know that sex is real, immutable and significant.

It's all so performative and low personal risk for women like Patsy who speak from a place of privilege and entitlement and seem to crave the praise they will get from throwing more vulnerable, minoritised or marginalised women and girls under the bus.

I do think they hate women, they just don’t realise it.

I think they are motivated by being kind, inclusive, tolerant and want praise from their social groups (h/t @EnfysPreseli ) and are therefore willing to believe things that are not true and accept the cognitive dissonance.

TWAW people say we hate trans people and just don't realise it, and that's not true either.

Influencer crossed with religious fundamentalist.

You’ve summed it up very clearly, Xiaoxong, thanks. If only that ‘be kind’ impulse extended to other women …