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?

Welcome to Mumsnet OP.

A rather unusual issue for your first post. What are you hoping to achieve from it I wonder?

Go back far enough, and we're all related; go through history, and most groups have been in contact and mixed with other groups to some degree, so is "ethnicity" a thing? If so, why, if not, why not?

It seems to me that we can't cherrypick and have some groups of the ancestral sort being "ethnicised" and some not, without any logical basis other than whether it's politically expedient or not.

If we go back far enough all humans descended from one woman so why even have borders?

Congratulations to the OP who has managed to engineer a first post that has pivoted away from discussing whether people who call themselves GC have different views (well d’ur) to getting people to argue about English ethnicity with little reference to feminism.

As it happens I think it would help to both read Sonia’s piece and also to consider the wider context. The wider context being that the people who question whether some of my friends are ‘English’ but wouldn’t question whether I am, do so on the basis of their skin colour. That despite the fact one half of my family has no ‘ethnic’ link to England whatsoever, and the majority of my friends’ families have been in England for generations.

Very, I'd say. I know my DNA is entirely British Isles ( but include very small percentages of French ( normans/Breton), Dutch and Danish. I've predominantly Scottish and Irish type DNA - though also some that originates in East Anglia/Essex. Though If your family orginates in East Anglia the chances are you'll also have some N.W European too - from cross North sea traders .

Glad someone else noticed.

True! Most of my family ancestry comes from people who migrated to Liverpool for work ( from elsewhere in the British Isles) during the industrial revolution.

@IWantToMakeTea i think you have hit the nail on the head with your original statement of "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 Mother Teresa was considered racist with a white saviour complex in some quarters so there we go!

I think if you think any group of people is going to be "love all round" you are being naive, unfortunately. Human beings are only human.

My father's side of the family is predominantly of Scottish ancestry, though he and i were born in England. My two sons were both born in Scotland and this is on their birth certificate, but in Scotland they would be considered English. ( presumably not eligible to play for Scotland)

Borders aren't necessarily driven by ethnicity. Some are, but some are connected with collective interest binding a varied bunch of people and some are determined by conquest from outside.

People have always moved around within the British Isles because that is how you survive. I grew up with stories of my family living in a particular part of the UK, but that was just the part of the family that people thought was worth remembering. I have plenty of great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandparents. There is no clear genetic distinction between people who live at either end of the M4.

I'm sure that if Wales/Scotland left the UK a very large proportion of the now 'English' would be able to claim dual nationality. Ironically the people more likely to only have a family connection to a small part of England are the children of more recent migrants.

But if we are talking about recent ancestry, is Armando Ianucci allowed to call himself Scottish? Hugo Rifkind?

I reckon he would identify himself as Italian -Scottish, and Rifkind as Scottish -Jewish.

Who could possibly imagine that a movement generously supported by far right "Christian" nationalists would encourage people to take this turn?

And taxes.

LOL, nice try

What turn is that?

What movement?

What turn?

A discussion about ourselves? What is wrong with that exactly?

I went to school in the50s, many of my classmates had Polish parents. Most of the fathers fought in WW2. Their grandchildren seem to qualify as English. My late fil was black, he fought In WW2. His GC don't seem to qualify as English. The only difference seems to be skin colour.

It seems to me that we can't cherrypick and have some groups of the ancestral sort being "ethnicised" and some not, without any logical basis other than whether it's politically expedient or not.

To be honest, I don't actually understand the point of ethnicising groups, particularly in England which has a far larger population than NI/Wales/Scotland and where e.g. people from Yorkshire and Cornwall have a strong sense of identity that is distinct from just being English.

I feel British and I have have a strong connection to the place in England where I grew up, but my family come from all over the UK, and I don't why I would be expected to feel more affiliated to somebody in Liverpool than somebody in Glasgow.

However, I understand that other people do feel English, and if they live in England and are British, I don't see why they shouldn't feel English.

Isn't it MORE important to discuss this then to dispel myths than to ban or shame people from talking about it?

Yes, if they want to. See my earlier post on the matter.

Left wing union leaders?

Your main problem with this argument is that Christian Nationalists love the concept of gender identity.

Interesting discussion. So what makes you English? Not "you" - I mean "one" but didin't want to sound like the old Queen.

I've been thinking about this for over half a century and the only conclusion I can come to is that people see terms like nation and ethinicity differently. Maybe they can't be clearly defined. I know people who see the Union Flag as a symbol of an hegemonising elite trying to homogenise all the different people in Britain (and now the UK), and claim that the only flag for English people is the cross of St George. Such people often see anti-Englishness as a class issue. Some of these people are even still angry about the Norman conquest, which they see as the source of all evil. I know people who think that if you are English you can't be anything else. I also know people who are incandescent at the idea that they can't be English and, oh, Jewish for example. I know people who describe themselves as English and Greek. Not half English, half Greek, but completely English and completely Greek. As far as I'm concerened they're all right, because I can't see any coherent principles at work.

I don't agree with the idea of "civic" Englishness, as that would imply that your Englishness was officially recognised, but there is no document you can get to establish your Englishness as far as I know. I have a document saying I'm British (a passport) but nothing saying I'm Englilsh. Is it an ethnicity? I have a golden years travel pass ("Freedom pass") which is some kind of official recognition that I'm a Londoner, but nothing which says I'm English.

But I am English, of German, Scottish and English descent. I like being English, and I see no problem in celebrating Englishness. The Director OP mentions seems more to be annoyed at the idea that we shouldn't celebrate being English than anything else. I doubt she's actively racist in any meaningful sense. Also, Sonia Sodha (and Shabana Mahmood and Rishi Sunak) was born here, grew up here and say they're English. That's good enough for me.

"Ethnicity" is a very broad term, is it not? I'd assumed that it included some genetic element - normally when you think of an ethnic group (the Yoruba, say), they have a shared language and history, but also a geographical connection that means they share some genetic features.

According to the Cambridge English Dictionary, however, an ethnic group is a group of people with a "shared culture, language, history and set of traditions". So no genetic element at all.

Before I read that, I'd have argued that English is a nationality rather than an ethnic group, given that the English are descended from a range of people who have invaded the country over the years - the Angles, the Saxons, the Vikings and the Normans. But if we go with the CED definition, then English is an ethnicity too.

On that basis, I don't see anything that would bar Sonia Sodha from claiming an English identity.