Women’s Rights Network imploding

[NameChangedWren]

WTF is going on? There are letters circulating with members alleging bullying, and anyone who asks a question is suspended and comments deleted. The leader calling everyone to urgent meetings with bizarre messaging: ‘there is no letter, and if there is it’s full of lies, and you can’t see the letter just trust us, and ooh look, something shiny!’ Should I cut my losses, cancel my standing order and just follow Let Women Speak?

It is surviving though. In fact it’s thriving. 🤷‍♀️

Also, Alloa aren’t saying anything about this and that’s a change. There were fallouts before and that was all on Twitter. I wouldn’t not be pleased saying that I had cancelled a speaker if actually they’d dropped out a few days before the event.

I wouldn’t say it’s “thriving” when they’ve just been cancelled from speaking at a Women’s Festival for International Women’s Day 😂

Well we can only wait and see just how it continues to “ thrive” without the hard work , dedication and input of women, the Bucks women in particular. That list of all their hard work is very impressive which will be hard to replicate.

Nah they have just been cancelled by women with a similar mindset. They’re far better off moving on without them.

Yes, I believe if they survive this horrible attack then they will thrive in the future. However I also believe that this attack could fatally wound them

Denigrating other women’s work in this way is appalling.
”You can’t have done anything that worthwhile if they decided to get rid of you”.

Well that's a mature and grown up answer to a well argued post in good faith (not). Very telling language. I'd agree that the behaviour of WRN "leaders" suggests they do think ordinary women are 'mediocre bit part actors' even when they have benefited from the clearly vast amounts of unpaid labour put in. I can't think of many women who'd want to volunteer in a network which has that mindset.

I'm repeating this bit of @FairIsFairIsFair s excellent post

Try to imagine this: You’ve built a network of like-minded women around a shared cause. You chat with them daily in the group chat, pluck up the courage to travel and meet up in person, campaign side by side, and form genuine friendships. Then, one day out of the blue, the door is slammed shut and bolted right in your face. You have no way to contact them. Despite repeatedly asking the leadership for an explanation or the chance to rejoin, you’re completely ignored.
Some of the expelled women live in very rural areas, are isolated, elderly, or dealing with health issues. They have no one locally to discuss these topics with, and suddenly they’re left with nothing, no explanation, no recourse. They were simply cut off. And they did nothing wrong.

It's likely some of the women who were expelled are in abusive relationships which will have been mirrored by the actions of WRN, and WRN will have arbitrarily cut off a lifeline. Hopefully many of these women will have exchanged details with some of the other women and can get back in touch with others outside of WRN.

It's not ok to punch down on women in this way whilst claiming to be a feminist organisation that speaks for women. That's it.

I'm sure many of the women arbitrarily kicked out will carry on doing the excellent work they've been already doing.

Ah bless.
“Once were” – what a deliciously catty little slip from someone who’s “not connected at all, honest”. You’re channelling the leadership’s secret Zoom script word-for-word, right down to the sneery “they think they’re indispensable” line. Almost as if you’ve been read in on the purge briefings.
Funny how the women who literally built WRN from the ground up – the website, the leaflets, the logos, the entire politics database (personally funded, no less), the auto-letter system, the Canada & Australia branches, the hospital rapes FOIs, the single-sex toilets victories in Bucks schools and leisure centres, the Wetherby campaign that got girls out of a male young offenders’ institution, the parkrun challenge, the Wickes confrontation, the Olympics banners, the stalls, the YouTube channel, the interviews with Forstater, Joyce, Duffield, Phoenix… the list that made WRN actually matter – are now dismissed as “co-attackers” and “clueless troublemakers” who were just “getting in the way”.
Must be quite the achievement to purge your entire backbone and then insist the body will run better without it.
We all know the office colleague who thinks they’re the only one working. Turns out it’s the tiny clique in charge who’ve now lost Bucks, Wessex, Surrey, Camden, chunks of Wales and Scotland, the research groups, the Justice group, the Academics, the membership system, the security protocols, half the volunteers… and are still pretending it’s everyone else’s fault.
“Better off moving on”? Sweetie, they already have. WRN’s the one left bleeding out from self-inflicted wounds, haemorrhaging the very women who delivered every tangible win while the leadership perfected its “trust us, the letter doesn’t exist (but if it does it’s forged)” routine.
Still, chin up. I’m sure the remaining husk will absolutely thrive without its research, its database, its regions, its credibility and its soul. Bulletproof.
Sunlight’s still free, love. Open a window before the whole cult collapses in on itself. X

😂😂😂😂😂 yeah we’ll see 😂😂😂

more blah blah blah. Lies are not a “mature argument”. Pretending you’re the biggest bestest feminist that WRN has ever had is not mature. My six year old presents an argument more maturely. Yeah it is telling. It’s telling you that I don’t give a shiny shite. 🤷‍♀️

You'd need to ask the board. That was all definitely done by Bucks. They weren't 'just there'

“suggests they do think ordinary women are 'mediocre bit part actors'” I was referring to you lot. How dare you try to drag the good hardworking members of WRN into your slurry pit with you.

If you really are in the WRN and that’s an example of your approach to debate and persuasion then I don’t think any of your future campaigns are going to get very far at all.

We’re used to derailers filling up threads with goady shite to stop the topic being discussed. We know that means that the derailers don’t want us discussing the topic and they do what they can to fill up the threads with argumentative rubbish instead. Do you really think we can’t spot this technique from outer space a mile off by now? All it does is make the thread more active and draw the attention of neutrals like me. And we ask what you are trying to hide by this obfuscation.

No it means that you are all full of nonsense and as a member of WRN I’m tired of it. We get it. You don’t like WRN, you’ve never liked WRN, WRN would be nothing without you. So let’s just leave it at that and see how that big ole WRN cookie crumbles shall we? The rest of us that do like WRN will continue working our arses off to keep men out of women’s spaces. If you lot spent half the time doing that instead of hurling shit at other women (for a full 18 months!! Aren’t your arms tired?) maybe we’d get there quicker. You are distracting members like me who feel that we must push back on your lies, libel and innuendo. Anyway, unlike you, I have a full time job, caring responsibilities and volunteer work to do for WRN where we have an absolutely fantastic group of local women doing great local work. You should try it sometime. 👋

This is, of course, a pretty stupid comment. This entire thread has been devoted to denigrating women’s work. In this surreal online and anonymous world, however, certain women are more speshul than others

There’s @FannyLong really making the case for how WRN is a feminist and sisterly outfit 🤣

Quod Erat Demonstrandum.

It’s also likely @FairIsFairIsFair that the women you have slagged off have been victims of domestic abuse. How do you square that? Why do you continually pretend that effective women are wicked while ineffective women are virtuous? What’s that all about?

Yeah, the ones who are in WRN are SPECIAL, because they are all hardworking, multi-tasking paragons of virtue who have jobs and are taking down TRAs. The ones who have been kicked out are all useless, spiteful and vitriolic. Because you say so, despite not being part of WRN, honest.

lol @EqualiteaSpiller I’ll have a zoom with you! I’m definitely 💯 nothing to do with WRN. It’s your own Machiavellian mind that is convincing you otherwise. Isn’t there an old proverb about that- a suspicious mind is a guilty mind , is that it?

Yes that’s correct @TipsyKhakiJoker ! Not my fault you have difficulty believing the truth. It says more about you than me

If @unusualdog is not part of WRN, how do they know that only the productive members are not thrown out of the organisation? How do they know that the Buckinghamshire members didn’t do all the listed work? Why are they bothering to comment on this thread at all?

@FannyLong from your comments you seem to be in WRN Scotland.

When is there going to be an investigation into allegations that WRN Scotland members were told to make donations into a Director's personal bank account rather than into the official WRN Ltd. account?

Was the money just resting in her account?

They’re not just allegations. There was a PayPal account and a Monzo account with a person’s name on them. I am not suggesting at all that they were used inappropriately at any time.

If I was being really Machiavellian then I’d note that this thread has already attracted the attention of one well known TRA, and Fanny and Usual are employing the posting tactics of TRAs.

So, you could get someone posting here nominally to defend WRN but in such a poor way as to give weight to some of the criticisms raised about authoritarianism and lack of accountability and transparency. Ie Operation Make WRN Look Bad. Trouble is, I think the top level of WRN is doing that all on its own and doesn’t need any external help and maybe that Machiavellian theory is too clever.

I’d like to see a strong organisation with the aims of WRN, and it would be a simple thing for the leadership to acknowledge the concerns of some members and reply to their letters with some honest answers. But anyone external trying to bring it down should note that the majority of grassroots campaigners won’t shut up and go away, they will continue their excellent work under a new name as shown by the “women of” groups. And in fact it does us all a favour in the long run of rooting out poor leadership so we can focus on the core mission of women’s rights.