Who‘s coming to FiLIA?

[lanadelgrey]

I‘m starting to get excited.
Are there plans for a MN meetup?

The pro Hamas chants and intolerance for those opposing women raising a divisive issue unrelated to feminism that will only cause discord at the conference puts me off going to Filia events in the future. all speakers should have been told to avoid Israel Gaza as a topic as it doesn’t change anyone’s minds and just causes fights

I was at the whole conference from Friday lunchtime onwards.

The stall with the photos of hijabs on - the hijabs were gone by the time I got there Friday lunchtime. Her stall was near the Free Betty Lachgar stall which had a nearly life size cut out of Betty in her Allah is lesbian t-shirt, and opposite the National Secular Society stall. The stalls were definitely not pro-religion!

I attended the solidarity for Jewish women sessions and I was really heartened by them.

At the party I saw a woman throw a drink on Lucy Masoud who then threw a drink back. The first woman I think was then thrown out, if she wasn't she should have been.

And all of this was peripheral to some really, really excellent speakers and sessions.

They managed to do due diligence when they refused to let Virago have a place to display their art because they didn’t like the tiny representation of KJK.

As I Am Sarah said, there were many sides to the conference. A lot of comments from people who weren’t o the room where it happened.
There is no ‘management’. I attended the lunchtime meeting. Views were robustly aired, no one was thrown out of that meeting.
The close of the conference was truncated but it included a live link with three women from Kokoma. That was important.
Ok women did not solve all the problems on the world and every woman’s experience of the conference was different because they went to different sessions. Women are not perfect, FiLiA is not perfect according to anyone‘s lights but it provides a space and an energy that no other women‘s organisation does. Get involved, change or influence by being in the room and doing the work.
And if you were there, I was a Sarah too.

I am glad Filia is being reported to the Charity Commission for platforming a terrorist supporter from the USA. They either failed in their due diligence or they knowingly invited a terrorist supporter to speak at their conference.

I think that is repulsive behaviour. Disagree all you want. Run your own conference. Please don’t report organisations to the charity commission because you disagree on politics. The world needs filia

Unfortunately I think this would be like asking speakers to avoid gender ideology because it sparks division and causes fights. Isreal Gaza is very topical, many women and girls have been affected and continue to be. Feminists will inevitably have strong feelings. FiLiA should be a place where those views can be aired and debated respectfully.

What actually happened couldn’t have been foreseen and was swiftly dealt with by organisers.

@IamSarah it wasn’t though and continued to be a problem over the weekend. That has been well documented.

Yes@lanadelgrey& @IamSarahI was at FiLiA from 11 on Friday and I agree all you have said.

I hope to see you all again in Blackpool next year.

I think it would be impossible for Filia to be pure enough to please everybody. There are a very few voices shouting on social media about how terrible it was and that they will never attend again. Hopefully Filia will listen to those voices and consider if they need to change anything for next year.

The important thing is that this is huge conference, literally thousands of women who come together to discuss all kinds of things. These thousands of women will go away more knowledgeable, more inspired , and some of them will do things that really change things for women.

I find it sad that some feminists seem to want to destroy Filia - with that amount of people of course there will be some with problematic views, there is at least one incident at the party every year, there is at least one incident of women walking out in protest every year. But to want to end the whole thing because of the actions / views of a few? Do you really want to hurt a few women so badly that you want to bring down the whole conference?

Terrorism isn't politics.

Terrorism is random bombings, death, injury, opposition to open debate. It's an attempt to change the route of politics through violence either aimed at unarmed civilians, or using those civilians as a shield.

Any organisation that knowingly invites a blatant supporter of terrorism to what is meant to be a conference would instantly lose my support. Any organisation that fails to do due diligence on a speaker should be brought up short and told to reconsider its policies.

The rules around charities are rightly very strict. If Filia wants charity status, it has to deserve it.

In which case Filia really dont have any excuse.

I was at Filia from first thing Friday morning to Sunday afternoon. I agree with everything that Hermiaxx, I AM SARAH's and ItsAllGoingToBeFine say. Two and a half thousand women coming together, hundreds of speakers, stalls all organised and coordinated by volunteers. So much joy, so my laughter, so much solidarity. It was a remarkable event.

Some individuals' behaviour upset others. Some individuals' behaviour was completely out of order. Some individuals came to provoke, and others chose to react to this. I'm not convinced that the individuals posting video footage on social media sought or obtained the consent of those in the footage - it's an assumption on my part, but I believe that these individuals did this to stoke their own egos and airbrush out their own part in events.

All the demands that Filia make an immediate statement are egotistical and abusurd. These women were in the middle of organising a huge conference - why can't they be permitted a few days or weeks to think about what happened, process it and issue measured, thoughtful words rather than be pushed into a corner to try to appease women who think it's all about them?

Thank you, Filia. Thank to the women who came in good faith with sisterly intentions and who want to build rather than destroy.

Oh you’re back on the thread. Care to clarify in what way I’m a “trouble maker”?

If you really had been there during the meeting on Sunday lunchtime (not morning) to bring together Jewish women and their allies, you'd have heard a FiLiA comms woman - clearly there on her own account - say that the woman who chanted from stage at the opening rally had specifically been asked not to do that, and did it anyway, and that the rest of the FiLiA team were really angry and upset with her for (as she put it) "taking a shit" on all their work bringing women together.

You say this meeting was in a "small room" as a "sop" - this is the third biggest room in the centre which takes up to 400 people. If you've ever worked in events (which for much of my life has been my day job) you will understand that finding and allocating a room of this size on the fly in the middle of a conference is quite a task. I'm very glad they did it though - the original call had been for us to do a 2-min silence in the auditorium - which i tuned up for, and then found we'd been moved - but this meant we could have a proper meeting with a lot of women speaking.

Be angry all you like, you won't be alone (as the comms person very clearly said), but it's important to be accurate about what happened.

Which lunchtime meeting did you attend? If it was the one in support of Jewish women, a young Norwegian woman was thrown out.

No filming was suddenly announced on the last day, so presumably there’s no video of her abuse, but it occurred.

“you'd have heard a FiLiA comms woman - clearly there on her own account - say that the woman who chanted from stage at the opening rally had specifically been asked not to do that, and did it anyway, and that the rest of the FiLiA team were really angry and upset with her for (as she put it) "taking a shit" on all their work bringing women together.”

I did hear that, because I was at the meeting.

Saying it, off-record and only to the women who went to that meeting, but not confirming to the wider audience that they condemned the chanting was cowardly and it made me doubt her sincerity.

So if you were there, @Pri0n1, you knew it wasn't a "small room", as you claimed? Why are you trying to paint everything in the worst possible light? What's your motive here?

And it wasn't an off-the-record meeting. It was being filmed, which was announced at the meeting near the beginning.

I’ve just been catching up on the awful antisemitism that FiLiA subjected Jewish attendees to at the event.

My heart goes out to all the Jewish women who had to leave, and to those watching on in horror who couldn’t attend.

What I’m confused about is why Aja and Jean Hatchet were thrown out and not JCJ and Lucy Masoud?

In what way was it dealt with? The speaker left the stage immediately afterwards as she had finished and the woman compeering ignored it. They made no public statement condemning her actions, but gave a weak response, in which they failed to name the problem.

I’m glad they found a space for those women who wanted to meet. It would have been better to have two minutes silence in the main auditorium or some kind of statement in the closing session as that would have been a genuine public action supporting those women.

It’s good that there are women here who managed to enjoy it. Unfortunately I and many others were left with a bad taste in our mouths with how it was dealt with, or rather wasn’t.

I’m angry. I spent close to a thousand pounds and some of my precious annual leave to spend time with other women and instead of an uplifting experience, I spoke to women who’d had to leave, who’d been spat on, and I witnessed shocking anti-Semitism in a space where all women should have felt supported.

I understand women have different opinions on this and that FiLiA had no control over what happened in the opening ceremony or of the awful Norwegian woman who chose to attend simply to bully those women again, but a robust statement condemning those actions would have (for me) sorted this all out.

It's simple, Jean & Aja don't support muslim rapists.

I agree entirely, @Pri0n1, about those two awful women (the Norwegian woman and her friend) who attended the meeting just to call the rest of the room "colonisers". Utterly disgraceful, and entirely appropriate that they were marched out of the room by security. They can have whatever opinions they like, however much I may disagree with them, but that was entirely the wrong place to bring them to - insensitive and cruel.

https://x.com/bindelj/status/1977668749944643703?s=46&t=70w6buc_cSBG0PVSa4d8fg