WPUK with the help of AGCL have written an article to stop silly gender critical feminists thinking facists are pro women!

[IwantToRetire]

The resurgence of the far right
https://womansplaceuk.org/2024/07/08/the-resurgence-of-the-far-right/

WPUK = Women's Place UK
AGCL = Actual Gender Critical Left

I am sure many women whether feminist or not would welcome a pro-active movement by women to oppose racism and facism.

But this article, as always by what seems to becoming a clique, is just a vehicle to attack other women activists in the UK and USA who have chosen to work in different ways to them.

If, for instance KJK hadn't set up Party of Women and had chosen to attach herself to one of the parties entioned in the article would make sense to raise quesions. But she didn't, she set up an independent party with no allegiances.

WoLF in the US have worked with a range of groups and politicians in pursuit of their primary aims. Why keep harping back to the one occassion they were on the same platform as a group that also had concerns about the impact of trans ideology on children. Is a campaign group being bi-partisan unacceptable?

Wouldn't it be a relief if these two groups would just grow up and stop their endless vendettas and actually do something pro-active?

Think how effective WPUK was in their early days when they just focused on the issue and encourage other women to engage.

They seem to have got bogged down in this circle of virtue and less effective.

Instead of sighing about how wonderful women in France were, why aren't they similarly organising?

As usual its so much easer to blame women, rather than for instance challeging the male left to accept and work and support women who know that sex is a biological reality.

See thread from 2 years ago https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4662757-womens-place-uk-filia-event-the-elephant-ignored-yet-again

We have explained, it's because they hate her and have posted and reposted far right themed blogs talking about LWS events ever since she was dumped by them in 2018 or 19 from a speaking event for tweeting about the sexualisation inherent in making female children wear veils.

Criticism of Islam is prohibited by Labour and she has been smeared by them ever since for this.

A group of them in Brighton actually set up a we hate Posie Parker page on their website listing all of her sins, again mostly nonsense. I don't know if it's still up.

The trigger for this latest blog is a black lesbian exercising her free will in a democratic society.

This group of women have been a revelation in terms of the nasty bigoted intolerance of the left.

They even produced a whole quarterly magazine about her. It's still the only free version available to download.

Indeed @AlisonDonut

You know, I can just about understand one article setting out perceived concerns about purported right-wing allegiances but it's beyond anything that resembles genuine debate. So far, we have:

• Two blogs (WPUK)
• An entire magazine, conveniently free, criticising one woman
• Numerous tweets calling KJK a "thick feck", likening her to dog excrement, Nazi-barbie, and on it goes. Recently, a WPUK director has been sneering at the PoW (well, what have they done during this election beyond contribute to more TRA chaos?)
• A WPUK seminar, ostensibly about right wing creep, which reportedly degenerated into more trashing.

The we have the various ways in which KJK is less visibly bullied: trashed during seminars on the magazine editor's course (at least one woman has told me she found it an expensive waste of time but perhaps some have benefitted), trashed in private groups (the soc-fem Discord server being vicious), alts set up to hurl yet more insults they can't be seen to be saying as "professionals", and they wonder why many of us are saying: ENOUGH.

This isn't about "political disagreement" or "strategy": it's about trying to make persona non grata those they find objectionable, and, when you look closer, what's "objectionable" is often class driven. I was always too "common" to be accepted and that was made clear (ironic given I'm more qualified than most all of them) through being called things like "impolitical" and Kathleen Stock doing petty things like making a list of GC philosophers but omitting me the day after the York eviction (subsequent DMs to a friend from an Australian philosopher said I should remove "philosopher" from my bio since I wasn't one anymore).

For a long time I thought that I was the fundamental problem. But, whilst everything has forced me to reflect and acknowledge my reactivity was rarely helpful, I've navigated life without these dramas until I encountered these "feminists." They are a disgusting group of, in some cases fraudulent, lying, grifting, bullies whose behaviour deserves to be justly challenged

Whereas other editions of the same magazine are very expensive.

@DrLouiseJMoody What you’re describing is various instances where people have been out of order and attacking on social media, or instances where you’ve had fall outs with various people or not felt supported by them; or instances where individuals have said something negative; conflating it all together, and then blaming WPUK for all of it. You have mentioned Kathleen stock for example, and a “socfem discord” whatever that is. Why would these two be lumped together and blamed on WPUK? I think there is something odd going on where people are viewing WPUK as a monolith that can be blamed for every personal vendetta they have, rather than a small grassroots campaign group.

Portraying WPUK as so central and to blame for everything that when they then post a blog about the far right co-opting feminism you perceive it as an attack against KJK, which is just ludicrous.

There is so much hearsay in your comment that you’re attributing to WPUK. Someone said something in a seminar one time? Gosh pass the smelling salts.

And the hyperbole. There is a quarterly magazine dedicated to trashing KJK? Really? Left wing feminists talking about left wing feminism isn’t an attack on KJK.

What is really frustrating is when feminists question things like whether it’s a good idea to take the stance of ‘it’s ok to work with anyone and everyone as long as they agree with me on this one issue’, and that is also taken as a personal attack driven purely by “being mean girls”. It is really similar to TRA tactics because the substance of the argument is never debated, you just attack the person for being ‘mean’.

And so it becomes tricky to take your post seriously because of the many many instances of where reasonable questioning of tactics, or pointing out links to the far right, or pointing out examples of the far right or alt right co-opting this issue, is just labelled as “you’re being mean! You’re attacking kjk!”

I agree
KJK has written and shared things I perceive to be Islamophobic. I'm nothing to do with WPUK, but some of what they say regarding her views on Islam is fair enough I think.
Likewise I'm concerned about the forced teaming of far right ideologies and GC campaigns. There has been a lot of direct associations lately as posters on this board know, mainly at the Tommy Robinson march. I'm not sure why pointing that out is such an issue.

Posters can talk as much as they like about smears and bullying; it takes a very cursory scan of KJK/PoW posts to find quite a lot of material many people would find objectionable. And we are entitled to point that out.

I'm assuming you mean this page - it's hardly "hate".

https://womansplaceuk.org/2022/06/22/womans-place-and-posie-parker/

Criticism of Islam is prohibited by Labour This is bollocks, the majority of people find islamophobia unacceptable.

The trigger for this latest blog is a black lesbian exercising her free will in a democratic society. Let's not beat about the bush, a potential trigger is a number of prominent GC campaigners marching with Tommy Robinson, including a black lesbian. Not sure why black lesbians should get any more of a pass for attending far right events than anyone else.

And the hyperbole. There is a quarterly magazine dedicated to trashing KJK? Really? Left wing feminists talking about left wing feminism isn’t an attack on KJK

You can read that particular edition here.

theradicalnotion.org/gender-critical-disputes/

Thanks for sharing that. Rose Rickfords analysis is brilliant. Haven't come across any "trashing" yet 🤔

Thanks for sharing. Have you read it? And genuinely perceive it as being dedicated to “trashing” KJK?

This bit is very cogent:

“One of the principal reasons for that is the way identitarian gender-critical populism, which pits the tribe of alleged ‘ordinary women’ against the tribe of alleged ‘elite women’ is being used, just like transactivist identitarianism, to other and dismiss feminist women for making feminist critiques. One of the hallmarks of this operation is the apparent ease with
which women get allocated to the group of ‘elitist-headgirl-socfem-gentry-lefties’ on the basis of expressing a certain set of political opinions. That is, just like TRA identitarianism, gender-critical populism works by reading someone’s social position or membership of a particular social ‘tribe’ backwards from their beliefs. This has led to a host of manifest absurdities
in which women with big platforms or newspaper columns, or who are making a living from gender-critical work, are some-
how not ‘professional feminists’ or ‘head girls,’ while anonymous Twitter users are ushered into a clique of the ‘gentry left’ overladies because they say, ‘I’m not that keen on Tucker Carlson.’ The fact is this is not about class, or social position, or professionalism, or who is ‘book smart’ and who is ‘street smart.’ There are middle-class and working-class women, aca- and non-academic women, prominent and anonymous women, scattered on both sides. This is a political disagreement about whether you think this is a single-issue campaign against a trans enemy and we should take the help of anyone up to and including “the devil himself,” or whether you think it is just one battle in the whole exhausting campaign of protexting the material interests of women as a class and working for women’s liberation. And this is also about using identitarian othering to allocate feminist women to a caricatured group of ‘elite baddies’ on the basis of their beliefs, and thereby dismiss what they are saying without genuinely engaging with it.”

Yes, I agree with this. In real life I work with and get on with people of a wide range of political views. And I used to be a regular on the FWR boards a few usernames ago. And I hold uncompromisingly gender critical views.

But I’ve backed away from these boards in the last year or two because while I’m passionate about advocating for all women regardless of background or political views, I will not align myself in any way with the populist far right that is so worryingly ascendant on the internet and at the ballot box across so many nations. And I see far too much apologising for the far right and too much aligning with some very dubious views on here.

I still cannot see the source of the upset: if an individual, or group, makes a public statement that, according to them, is a political position, then others are entitled to respond, and in some cases, distance. No-one is owed an audience and, frankly, "head girls" (which I rarely see and seems to reflect how some perceive themselves) is hardly on a par with TRA death threats. I have no sympathy.

If it helps, I don't see anyone as "elite", "a head girl", or "book smart": just arrogant, condescending, politically ineffectual, and bullying. But no-one should be bothered by that given I'm a fairly modest Twitter account and don't go to their events. I'm not causing much bother.

Well again you are handing out personal attacks rather than engaging with the substance of the argument.

One more thing: why have some taken e.g. a lesbian attending a TR march to somehow reflect upon them? If, say, a WPUK member had done so, I'd understand the public distancing. What I don't understand, given that KJK, PoW, and supporters are very distant from left-wing feminist circles, anything needs to be said at all. The prominent self-identified left-wing feminist groups just don't enter my head when talking about this issue with people off-line or when I'm involved in an action: it's just irrelevant for my purposes, and so we should be with them.

I'm hardly going to respond favourably given how I've been publicly trashed and lied about which magnified certain distressing events. That said, I recognise that's a separate issue to the purported right-wing influence upon feminism.

I don't really care about 'the far right' whatever the hell that means. Similar to 'gender identity' there's never a clear definition. And I don't know when listening to ordinary people aka populism aka democracy became universally accepted as bad. I've looked up populism and it's just what the majority of normal people want. Why is it automatically bad? Surely it's actually democracy?

In terms of populism - normal women and mothers are trying to speak up to say safeguarding law is more important than rights law and that safeguarding is being seriously and catastrophically undermined. I'd like to talk about this rather than whether someone is right wing or not, or the 'rise' of the 'right wing'. It seems far more important to me and I suspect most normal people.

We have the ridiculous situation we're now in where we have a right to hold GC beliefs in the workplace, but the importance of biological sex for child safeguarding is being routinely ignored and already existing law about single sex toilets and safeguarding in schools is not being upheld, leading to a crisis in safety for children. Obviously it's better having GC belief as a WORIAD than having neither but safeguarding should come first.The safeguarding progress that has happened is largely down to Tory politicians like Sajid Javid, Matt Hancock, Kemi Badenoch and of course the beyond reproach professional excellence of Hiliary Cass, not from those women on the left with the biggest platforms who generally in my personal opinion don't really understand safeguarding (with a few notable exceptions of those who'll at least try and bother to listen including Helen Joyce).

Part of the problem is the sharp end of safeguarding does not affect the women with the greatest voice, generally speaking - it'd be nice instead of worrying about the far right that they actually gave a platform to women who do understand. That might actually help with preventing too many women moving to the right too.

There never seems any self reflection about WHY so many normal people are moving towards Reform etc and whether the left wing are driving them there.

I've looked up populism and it's just what the majority of normal people want

No. It isn't. Populism is saying what people want to hear, not necessarily with an intent to deliver it. It's about playing on ingroup/outgroup psychology to win power.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-43301423.amp

It's their irrelevance that seems to trouble them.

There doesn't seem to be much of a market for their weird far right bogey man obsessions.

I can only talk for myself, and there are two reasons:

1. as a GC feminist I've been told I must align with far right/nazi thinking by lots of non-GC people. It's a stereotype. GC people going to events upholds the stereotypes and harms us all.
2. On here I've repeatedly seen posters attacked, bullied and hounded off the board for talking about any links to the far right/American Christian Right. Those links are now indisputable. When one has been on the receiving end of a lot of hostility and aggression for querying certain things, of course it becomes of interest when those things turn out in fact to be true.

Much the same as you feel about WPUK I guess.

@CassieMaddox It always comes across that you want to find, amplify and exaggerate such links.
Surely only outcome of that can be for more GCs to get unfairly associated with the far right.

If you say so
I think its more likely there are different levels of tolerance for right wing activities and different thresholds about what is a concern

You have no idea who you are saying this to do you?

If anyone knows the 'substance of the argument' it will be Dr Moody.

It's not tolerance, at least for me. It's simply no more than the recognition that:

• In a group who share, broadly speaking, one view (to be clear: I do not share using "she" under any circumstances as e.g. Sex Matters seems to), some will hold others that I disagree with. It doesn't mean I'm in any way associated with those views.
• People are free to attend whatever public events they want. That e.g. someone from 'Hearts of Oak' might be next to me in a crowd has nothing to do with me. They are as entitled to attend as anyone else despite my own views on other matters.

For me, it's rather like condemning, say, Donald Trump for accepting evolution. I personally find the man contemptuous but he happens to share some, to my mind, non-controversial views. It's the fallacy of wrong association and I'm dismayed to see it repeatedly made.

There might be a debate to be had about why some have large, and sometimes influential, platforms but then perhaps those objecting ought to think about what they are not doing and why women who they should appeal to have gone elsewhere rather than dismiss them as "right wing" or, in my case (since they know that label is wrong), "mad", "a bad actor" and a whole host of derogatory labels.

This is random, but I did some (procrastinatory) investigation of the use of the term "populist" last time this came up in conversation on FWR.
I don't know why I landed on Germany as a good place to investigate usage, but looking as the Wikipaedia entry for German political parties "populist" is used of any party that diverges from the neoliberal consensus.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_parties_in_Germany
Certainly, when it started being used of Trump in 2016, he was talking about protectionist policies for U.S. manufacturing.
Here ends my non sequiter.