Let Women Speak Norwich - 08 Jun 2024, 13:00 – 15:00

[IwantToRetire]

Norwich War Memorial, Market Pl, Norwich NR2 1NE, UK

Join us in Norwich!

At Let Women Speak we foster a community in which all women feel empowered to speak. We achieve this through our free speech events, they are free to attend. We are so proud that women across the world are using the #LetWomenSpeak hashtag as a rallying cry.

All Let Women Speak events are held in outdoor public places. Places are chosen so that they are as accessible as possible and not far from public transport.

There are no tickets, anyone can turn up, and anyone can speak (but we ask that men wait until the end). You can speak about whatever you like, these are free speech events.

As always, it is completely free to come to our Let Women Speak events, and no one will ask to see a ticket! However, at Let Women Speak we are very lucky to have an extraordinary team of stewards who give up their free time to enable women to speak. They are all volunteers, but we need to ensure that they’re not out of pocket. Each UK event needs a £2000 steward and security fund to make it possible. Thank you so much for your contribution to Let Women Speak! If you cannot contribute, please select £0, as this will give us a rough idea of numbers.

https://www.letwomenspeak.org/event-details/let-women-speak-norwich

"They wore masks and shielded themselves with umbrellas to protect their identities from protesters, who shouted out threats and abuse and tried to photograph them on their phones."

Really? The masks and brollies sounds familiar, but is the paper suggesting the LWS lot were shouting threats and abuse? They're usually heading in the opposite direction, on past evidence.

I attended a Londonnevenr last year and made that comment to a police man. I was standing holding hands with other women facing the angry protestors about 1.8 m away and the copper was in between . He asked why and I explained. He didn’t say anything of course. But the slogans the ran through were ridiculous in that there were not reflective of the what the won men were speaking about or campaigning for . At all.

Several women tried to point this out, but with all the noise nobody listened. Even when it went relatively quiet they just replied back with more falsehoods. Many genuinely don’t understand the issues or what women are campaigning for.

LWS is bigger than KJK, those of us who have attended don't necessarily agree with her on everything. I disagree with her on that and some other things she's said but still support LWS.

I've been reading and rereading this comment since you posted it, and I just can't get my head around your seemingly honest confusion at why people are reacting to LWS events in this way. So I wanted to reply in good faith and hope that my reply is taken in that way.

I would also like to preface this by saying this is not a personal attack, I don't not know you and I totally believe that you do not hate groups of people and that you are well meaning.

However, the leader of LWS is denying the existence of and advocating for the removal of rights of a certain group of people, this is a main tactic and characteristic tenet of fascism. This is why some people (rightly or wrongly) are calling LWS fascistic or even Nazi. This is why far right organisations will continue to turn up to LWS events because they share a central belief that there is are certain groups of people who should be treated differently than other people and have rights taken away from them. If you are not comfortable with this, it may be worth considering if you wish to continue to support LWS.

Here's a handy list of the far right organisations (with scene shots) that showed support for the LWS rally in Glasgow. https://transsafety.network/posts/glasgow-far-right-standing-for-women/

That link is shocking. I doubt many readers on this thread will click on it however

Great quotes from the fantastic Dr Em, in particular, in that local news article.

I clicked on it and read it but it didn't faze me. It would be like if I went to an animal rights rally and some far-right thugs turned up as well, doesn't mean I agree with them or that I'm going to start eating meat as a consequence of this.

Its a bit like turning up on a thread on FWR and finding there is a hard core of posters who have no interest in women's sex based rights.

But it doesn't stop we checking in!

Your analogy doesn't work, animal rights are not a central belief of the far right/fascism

Are women’s rights a central tenet of fascism????

Maybe not. But friends of mine used to picket the pet market in Brick Lane , they were vegan animal rights activists. Quite often neo nazi types would try to cosey up to them. Sometimes they handed out literature about cruelty to animals. But it always revolved around halal and kosher butchers etc. They will try to exploit any situation.

Any issue where you can appeal to emotion not fact, generate "fear of the outsider" and hyopthesise "a plot" has potential to be a central tenet of fascism.

The GC/trans debate has all those features so not surprisingly is attractive to fascist groups and politicians as well as voters with genuine concerns.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur-Fascism

CassieMaddox Any issue where you can appeal to emotion not fact, generate "fear of the outsider" and hyopthesise "a plot" has potential to be a central tenet of fascism.
You had me worried there for a moment! Fortunately the central tenet of GCism is an appeal to objective demonstrable biological fact. Phew!

Yes, I agree.

The morphing of that into a broader set of concerns about "safeguarding", "mutilation", "ideological capture" etc are all emotive topics that will appeal to fascists.

Clearly some are happy to work with anyone regardless of their political approach, affiliations or background. Others don't want to be associated with fascists in any way. Each to their own.

Those bloody fascists, doing safeguarding all over the shop. How very rude!

🙄
It's not "safeguarding" to try to reinvigorate section 28. It's censorship. It's not "safeguarding" to dictate to teachers what information they must share with parents, regardless of if there is a risk to the child in sharing that. It's dangerous.
Moral panic never was a positive way to approach a societal issue. Luckily we have the Cass review advocating for evidence led approaches rather than authoritarianism.

Yes for heavens sake don't use words to describe what is actually happening less you fall in with the Nazis.

Really, you don't think there are less emotive, more appropriate ways to "describe what is happening"?

Well like all these things we will shortly see how well these phrases go down with the general public. I'm predicting like a bucket of cold sick, given I've talked to lots of people about GC issues over the years and been called all sorts for using far less emotive language to discuss GC concerns.

Clearly some are happy to work with anyone regardless of their political approach, affiliations or background. Others don't want to be associated with fascists in any way. Each to their own.

CassieMaddox would you be happy to work with anyone affiliated to the Communist Party?

No.

I was at that LWS event in Glasgow.

It was only a couple of months after the Adam Graham horror show and our collective clown car of a government had voted the amendments to the GRA bill through.

I did see the guy with the "Gaystapo" sign, at one point he was stood behind the speakers. At that point the folk I was with and those around us were all saying that his sign wasn't acceptable and it should be taken down which it duly was.

I have no idea who that guy was. I have no idea who anyone was who chose to attend, or what their affiliations were. I'm unsure what else could be done about that guy other than what was done at the time as the event was open to anybody that chose to go along - no tickets, no vetting for purity of intent.

At the other end of George Square from the LWS was a group of TA protestors, "Cabaret Against Hate", holding a disco to ward off the evil terfs and organised by Pickle Bee iirc.

I wandered over to have a look.

As you'd expect it was the usual crew of mostly young folk, with a contingent of older men and an unexpectedly or maybe not large amount of furries.

Here's a pic I took of one making friends with a child that was crossing the Square. Probably drawn to the "cute" animal costume as many children would be...

Yes it's interesting that everyone is responsible at LWS when apparently no one in the Labour Party was responsible for MPs sharing a platform with Sarah Jane Baker, a convicted torturer, or SNP MPs for men with placards about decapitating TERFs.

Its almost inevitable now that when you see a thread suddenly restarts, it isn't in fact taking the actual issue of the thread forward.

It is just the usual suspects turning another thread into a boring mantra about how women who think for themselves are wrong.

Talk about groundhog day.

Maybe MNHQ could starting by adding a marker that thread not derailed.

Gosh eresh, why would they let symmetry come into their discussion points?

Thank you for answering my question.