Anyone else seeing LWD Director Viv Pointon’s posts about Sonia Sodha?

[IWantToMakeTea]

Did anyone catch the comments LWD director Viv Pointon made about Sonia Sodha? She’s getting massive backlash online for explicitly targeting Sonia’s heritage and ethnicity.

Just to be 100% clear, I am and remain completely gender-critical— but I did end up leaving the LWD and WRN groups a while ago simply because of how some people, like Viv, were behaving behind the scenes.

The group chats just felt incredibly messy, bitchy, and unmoderated. Instead of being a supportive or organised space, they were frequently filled with general nastiness towards each other, a bizarre amount of hate directed at former Labour MP Rosie Duffield, and some shocking antisemitic comments. Viv herself was often a central part of that unpleasant atmosphere. A lot of the time, it was just constant chatty bullshit rather than anything actually relevant to GC campaign work. There were some bitchy LWD messages that got leaked to a newspaper a few months back. These are grown women behaving like playground bullies. I was going to go to the conference and attend the fringe group, but I decided not to go, though I might watch the videos on YouTube later.

Being in those groups was really eye-opening because it showed me the GC movement isn't 'love all around'. Maybe I was just a bit naive! Even though the core beliefs are massively important, seeing a director behave like that online to Sonia Sodha just reminds me that some people in the movement can end up doing more harm than good with their behaviour.

What does everyone else think?

Viv is categorically not racist

If she thinks brown people (born in England) aren't English, she is the categorical definition of racist.

Probably better to fact check before talking so confidently about an LWD director

I think you misunderstood me @BackToLurk as I was simply trying to say that getting people to respect women's sex based rights was obviously their main focus but they often weren't extending the same respect themselves to other protected characteristics. I do see people being horrid on twitter a lot too, and as I say I guess I joined the movement a bit naive about sisterhood and all that.

Actually it's quite an interesting question. If your "country you live in and feel you belong to" is A and your "family origin" is B, what words would one use for each of those things?
And likewise, what words would one use if both your "country etc" and your "family origin" are A? If you are an AB, is B your "ethnicity"? If it is, then if you are an AA what is your second A?

That does not seem to be what she IS saying.

She is saying that people whose family have lived in England for hundreds of years are 'ethnically English', just like my family which hadn't had a non Welsh member since the French Revolution would be termed 'ethnically Welsh'. Even though I was born in Canada I would never have been 'ethnically Canadian' but I am nationally Canadian in terms of I could apply for a joint passport.

I see. I thought you meant the Labour Party more generally, although racism isn’t my experience of those I know involved with LWD. Some of those who aren’t involved with it are racist, antisemitic and/or ableist. Maybe you were ‘too naive’ to notice them.

I see there's two sorts of bring English , my dh has a Spanish father and Brazilian mother. He was born in England , to all extent he is English , supports England football, thinks the UK is the best place to live . etc so genetically not English but culturally he is English and would be very hurt not to be described as English . Similarly our children have been brought up doing generic British pastimes . They would count themselves as English , even if one of them is ethnically ambiguous

I certainly can't define my ethnic group as anything other than British.

Is there really a clear distinction between people who live in Hay-on-Wye and Hereford? Apart from football team and the tax and administrative implications of actual national boundaries, what connects somebody from Truro to somebody from Basingstoke that they wouldn't share with somebody from Pembroke?

Don't most people with ancestry in the UK have ancestry from all over Britain? From a genetic point of view, wouldn't it be rather worrying if they didn't?

This English v British argument is confusing.

English IS an ethnic group, despite what PP have said. It is used by the census in collecting data and on government forms (White English is a box you can tick, Brown English and Black English are not boxes you can tick).

However, it is also a civic identity e.g. Saka playing for the England football team. Noone would cheer for him and then turn round and say he's not English.

As with most things, it's nuanced. Sonia Sodha identifies as English due to her upbringing and that's absolutely fine.

I'm considering that.....Would you say Scottish, Welsh or Irish are ethnicities, or not?I think 'British' tends to be the national identitity that can be embraced by everyone, more so than 'english'.

How far are we going back to determine who is genetically English? Go back 1,000 years and everyone with European ancestors is related. Is there a sweet spot about 500 years ago? Nigel Farage's name is supposed to be Huguenot, so is he on the right side of the line?

Not everyone in the UK has a mix of ancestors from all over the UK. People in cities often do because of migration for work, around the Industrial Revolution particularly, but there are people all over the country whose ancestry is much more specific to one particular area.

Genuine question: how many generations do you think it takes before the descendants of immigrants should reasonably be able to classify themselves as English? (Or is the answer 'never'?)

Quick Q...do the Chinese and Indians and Nigerians accept a child born in their country of foreign parents to be Chinese or Indians or Nigerian etc?
I'm second generation of WW2 stock Polish and Estonian parents, and back in the day when there was no need to even think about such issues, I didn't make any discrepancy between being English or British. I was bullied quite a bit in school in the 70s over my Polish surname, but didn't feel anything other than an English boy, just a put upon English boy, lol.
But actually, as the England and Britain of my youth becomes something somewhat different, politically approaching sectarian tendencies, foreign nationalities and religions politically advocating all.the the time for their mother country, culture and religion, I have revisited what I consider myself to be, and tend towards Braverman's position, that I'm more British than English, yes, seeing a big part (not the only part) of the English ID as somewhat ethnic.
What does this mean in reality?
What it means is that if it's fine for the Chinese and Indians and Nigerians to have an ethnic ID that children born there of foreign parents can't have for themselves, and there's no controversy on that, then it's hypocritical to say this can't apply to the English.
In practical terms, me and Braverman have no legal distinction applied between our Britishness and Englishness, but I don't believe it's unreasonable to have the debate.
Remember, it's the open borders left who feel it's racist even to say a migrant coming here can't become English, let alone any discussion of second generation children.

Strictly speaking the English are a combination of Pictish, Celtic, Anglo-Saxon and Norman; as are many Scots and Irish too......throw in a bit of Danish ( for the vikings who were all over the British Isles)

yes this is why I don't think there's any real point in discussing it as we will all have our own individual definitions, none of which can be correct or incorrect - I have european ancestry but born and raised mainly in England and Wales and I very much define myself as British because I feel the whole point of being born on this island means that we are all a melting pot. At the end of the day being a sex realist doesn't automatically preclude you from being immune from having questionable beliefs or saying stupid things about other protected characteristics (equally I may disagree strongly with someone who believes TWAW but we may agree on other cultural debates ). Culturally English versus so called ethnically English is definitely something people will think about but there can't be a real definition of either.

And how consistent and homogenous ethnically has that line been in the last 1000 years?

I don't think we need to. Until migration as we now recognise it started after the second world war, the British Isles were overwhelmingly white and many of these people could trace their families back generations. People didn't move around much, often never leaving the UK. Yes, there were migrants coming and going, mainly into cities but the numbers were small.

These sorts of arguments are modern ones, caused by an increasingly global world and movements of people. It doesn't mean English isn't an ethnicity and it's not racist to say that it is, and that those will people will be white. That's just facts.

I think you'll probably find many people from migrant families brought up in Britain or in any of its nations will also retain a susidiary ethnic identity alongside their British identity.

Are you British but unable to vote in the NI, Scottish or Welsh elections?

No - then from a legal point of view you are English.

Would you be eligible to play for England?

Yes - then you are definitely English.

Have a thought that may horrify many GCs here.
I aware of many ethno-nationalist groups who look at how the female ID is being fought by GCs tooth and nail to be protected from TIMs, and wish they had the same energy and sense of purpose when it comes to borders, expelling illegals etc.

i have lived in both england and wales, how does that work? Living in a country and having voting rights doesn't confer any form of ethnic or cultural identity. The whole mass of Europe has frequently had its borders re-drawn , parts of Belgium and Italy speak German . The Cornish might argue they are distinct from other peoples of England. This is a debate that will really not get anywhere.

Are you an English TIM excelling at football, and consider yourself a female, you have the possibility of playing in the England Ladies team.

Nationally English or Ethically English?

Being born in a country as I've already said, makes your Nationality either the country you were born in or the country your parents were born in, hence the dual passport system.

Ethnically is about your ancestry which would definitely need to be multigenerational and more difficult to parse. But if your family was multigenerational in a country that went back several hundred years then you have much more 'claim' to be ethnically from that country than people whose parents arrived 50 years ago.

Should your 'No' be 'Yes'? It doesn’t make sense the way you’ve written it - "No, I’m not unable to vote in those elections therefore I’m English"…