Who‘s coming to FiLIA?

[lanadelgrey]

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

I’ve not mentioned KJK?

Sorry not you it was from Iwanttoretire- no offence

If I hadn't already laid out £500+ on tickets, trains and a hotel I'd certainly be seriously considering not going. But I have and I'll use my time there to ask difficult questions of various people. I've met Emma before and she is doing great work, but I take real exception at Tinsel being sidelined. So if during questions and answers after Emma's event someone stands up and says how bloody annoyed she is that Tinsel has been excluded, that may well be me.

I do have an inkling of how difficult it must be to organise an event like this, and it must be a nightmare trying to schedule new voices, new projects and keep a decent balance between all the issues. But the political discrimination is now so clear that my sympathies are being stretched to breaking point.

I've been going to feminist events for many, many decades, but this is the first year that I will be attending FiLiA. I'm really looking forward to it. Will some of it piss me off? Undoubtedly - I don't think I've ever, ever been to an event where I've agreed with 100% of their choices. But that's the thing: if I want to have influence over an event, then i offer to volunteer, and if I want control over an event then I start my own. If I don't agree with too many of the choices then I don't go, as some posters here have said they wouldn't, and that's ok, too.

I've been an event organiser for many decades. People offer themselves as speakers all the time, if it looks like an interesting event, and there's lots of reasons why you gently turn people down beyond "I want to no-platform and silence you, and negate the years of work you have done". Nobody is owed a place on a panel organised by someone else, however great they are, and I think it's a real mistake to treat it like a snub.

I have no idea why this panel was set up like that, but it's not the first event on transwidows and children of transitioners, nor will it be the last, and it's not the final word on anything. I'm going to attend, because I really want to hear Emma speak, and I'm going to accept the panel for what it is, not what it could have been.

There’s nothing like ‘faux reasoning’ of the unreasonable. Tinsel’s exclusion was deliberate & handled appallingly. Tinsel has said she’s been trying to get Filia (and other orgs) to platform trans widows for years. Filia took her entire idea for this years panel & specific details from Tinsel’s suggestions, and then did exactly as she’d asked, to then not only exclude her from the event that was her idea, but didn’t even tell her they’d done this before announcing it. Do you have any idea how many people then contacted tinsel, angry at her exclusion & expecting she knew what had happened, when she was deliberately kept in the dark?

All the good intentions of many women volunteers tainted by the petty vindictiveness of some within the org who could do with having some decency & integrity given the responsibility they choose to take on.

It’s beyond pathetic to realise some women don’t move beyond the petty mean girl squabbles of their teens when they get a taste of power over other women. It never should have been the case that it took this long to even have a panel on the subject, never mind showing the level of disrespect evident towards the grassroots work Trans Widows Voices have done & continue to do. To not even have the decency to tell Tinsel they’d organised a panel and excluded her, before announcing it, is about as far from decency as it gets.

If anyone has any actual quotes from Filia to explain how this all happened, I’m all ears. Until they can explain how they came keep the trans widows subject at arms length for years only to turn round and use the specifics of Tinsel’s suggestions & exclude her, keep her in the dark & leave her to field questions on what happened, I’ll repeat my absolute disgust at what they’ve done here.

Thank you for saying this. I do hope you get the chance to ask a question of Filia & not the panelists themselves, as to their appalling conduct over this.

Surely at the very least it’s simple courtesy to tell somebody you’re using their idea for a panel (on a topic you’ve been in correspondence with them about for six years) but are excluding them from it, despite panellists asking for them to be on the panel?

As previously said, I’m not blaming Emma, Vaishnavi or Abigail and I hope the workshop is a success.

I'll do what I can, @GrumpyMenopausalWombWielder.

@ArcheryAnnie , Tinsel is a legend and has been very badly treated by the Filia organisers. If you have never attended Filia before you won't be aware of the half of it.

Is anyone travelling over from NI?

I agree with pretty much everything @ArcheryAnnie has said. I'm very experienced at organising conferences, and there are all sorts of things that one has to juggle. @TinselAngel has told us she has refused to engage with FiLIA in the way they have requested. There are other women who are knowledgeable & active in this area (eg the latest podcast by Louise Perry which features Ute Heggen & Emma Thomas), which is one sub-field of resistance to gender extremist ideology - but it's by no means the whole of feminism! And posting /discussing things on FWR is also not the whole of feminism!

As @ArcheryAnnie says, the field is open for others to organise their own events. Kellie-Jay Keen & Let Women Speak are very successful at this; Women's Place UK, and Fair Play for Women did this when they were active; Women's Declaration International do it; Women's Rights Network has had public and more local private events. The wonderful women at UCL (including Prof. Alice Sullivan) ran a great event there a couple of years ago, with 1000 women of many different political views participating.

There's lots of room.

Are you suggesting that all I have done regarding trans widows is discussed them on FWR @ParmaVioletTea?

Of course I know Tinsel is a legend, @Pluvia! I'm not questioning her work or her expertise at all. I'm just saying that on many an occasion when organising events I've turned down legends in favour of other voices, and on other occasions the legends are just what I'm looking for. (On completely different subjects from this, of course, but the the principle stands.) You build a panel differently each time, with a whole load of factors feeding into each choice.

Tinsel, I understand that you are angry about this and I think I understand why. I was just trying to say there isn't aways the most nefarious reasons for why X, Y or X isn't on a panel. Unless its been stated baldly, I wouldn't ever assume that someone not on a panel had been snubbed for it.

Yes I gave them the benefit of the doubt on the previous three occasions that I suggested a panel (and was turned down for three different reasons), but this time when as I’ve said, the panel was my idea, it’s on a topic that I’ve built up virtually from scratch, at least one of the panel requested I be on it, and it’s about a film that I was instrumental in bringing about, I’m afraid my natural tendency to think the best of people’s intentions has worn out.

The more I hear about what's been going on, the more unsettling I find it. I'm an organiser myself and I cut organisers some slack, but I see a certain direction of travel here, beyond the Tinsel issue, and all I can say is that it's not a direction I'm interested in going in.

What are you seeking in the discussion here? I clicked on this thread because I am going. Do you think women shouldn't go?

Like other events, it‘s a free choice whether to go. I look forward to meeting other MNetters down by the sea

I can’t decide whether to cancel going and miss out on the chance to meet up with like minded women and further my understanding and activism on the issues which concern me, or draw a line under the money I have spent already and not add more to it. It feels a bit of a lose/lose which Filia normally doesn’t

I’m going! I think I might have met Tinsel at another event, and would have liked to see her at this, and to hear her speak. But I’m still going. On my own. Although I’ve not bought my train tickets I do have a place to stay. It’ll be nice to meet some of you there.

@Seriestwo you say that you'll gain "the chance to meet up with like minded women and further my understanding and activism on the issues which concern me"

That seems to me to be good reason to go.

I'll be there on my own, but it's easy to chat to other women in various seminars, talks, and workshops.

For example, in a session on feminist activism in Portsmouth (I think?) the leader of the session asked us simply to talk to the woman sitting next to us and find out about her activism. I was overwhelmed with the amazingness of the women in that session - former Greenham Common protestors, a founder of Vancouver Rape Relief, and so on. My "oh I teach Women's Studies" seemed very pale by comparison, but it was accepted together with everyone else's far more amazing work. And I then had ways of talking to women in that session as the conference went on, because we'd already talked in this session. People are very friendly and want to connect with other women.

Also, I recommend women join their local Women's Rights Network (there's usually an "onboarding" meeting via Zoom to make sure you're a woman - appalling that that has to happen, but that's where we are,. Still, grrr.). I think there's a posse from my local WRN network going, and we'll meet up at some point during the weekend.

I just go around smiling like a loon because it's so relaxing being in the space & energy of over a 1000 women.

Hello - keen to go to Filia this year but I can’t seem to see a conference agenda. Only want to go for one day so want to pick the day I go based on who is speaking, topics being discussed etc has anyone else found what is happening on each day - can’t see it on the website….

I don't think they've published the schedule yet. I'm arriving late afternoon Friday & have to leave early afternoon Sunday, so resigned to missing some good stuff!

The schedule is always out quite late.

the party is on the Saturday night.

if you look on socials they are putting out info re speakers but I don’t think session times are included

They publish the programme nearer to the date, and the easiest way to get it is usually via the Whova app. It's one of those scheduling apps (like Sched) but also offers the ability to introduce yourself, and arrange meet ups.

The programme is now available to those who’ve already bought their tickets. It’s jam packed with some great speakers and a broad range of topics.

I’d say Friday or Saturday are better if you can only do one day rather than Sunday when it finishes at about 4.