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?

Sure, discuss what you like. Just do it with an awareness of the ‘naive’ OP’s intentions.

There has always been a big thing in Liverpool ( which i personally don't like) of saying 'Scouse not English'; of seeing themselves as separate from England. This is down to a history of large scale Irish migration to the city during the famine and again during the industrial revolution. Though Liverpool also saw widespread Welsh migration, and Scottish too. It was a boom city and attracted people from all over.

There were also migrant sailors coming into the port from all over the world and staying and marrying locally......though they and their children, grandchildren etc still tend to refer to themselves as of dual nationality/ethnicity.

I think her intentions were clear, it is just that the discussion that was sparked has led off somewhere else.

Seeing as race and ethnicity are both social constructs we could discuss how that mirrors gender identity but I’m not sure this forum has the energy to pursue both those discussions! We could just acknowledge that all humans evolved as being naturally xenophobic and leave it at that. There’s more than a few posters on here who would be happy to accrue any so called “evidence “ that GC’s are all right wing Christian racists rather than the highly diverse political ,cultural and religious/ non religious individuals that GC’s are.

A lot of this seems like people talking past each other to me.

Not entirely social constructs, as with biological sex 'race' characteristics and ethniciity ( to an extent) are also genetically coded.

In a similar vein, I have an old friend who has a Black grandparent. She has a lot of siblings. She has straight blonde hair some of her siblings have dark curlier hair. They are all pretty light skinned until it’s summer. Only some of them have ever had their ‘Englishness’ questioned.

The CED definition is a description of use rather than a prescriptive or principled definition.

"shared culture, language, history and set of traditions"

That definition could equally appply to the local gardening society or the House of Commons, but it would be ludicrous to claim that those were ethnicities. Perhaps it's better to look at ethnicities, gardening socieities and the House of Commens as being members of the set of groups which "share culture, language, history and set of traditions"

I'm not sure that "Nation" has a clear and uncontested meaning either. Actually, I'm sure it doesn't.

But, yes, I agree that Sonia Sodha is clearly English, for the reasons I wrote in my previous post.

There’s some scope to discuss constructed identities vs material reality. I think arguing that either race or ethnicity are as robust, materially real categories as ‘sex’ is fraught with difficulty though.

Well, obvs. How are we supposed to know what we mean until we've seen it written in a post? And there's more than one discussion going on, I think.

More seriously, there's actually a lot of food for thought here and I'm going to go away and think about it.

'Race' just refers to groups of people who share traits because their ancestors lived in the same geographical area for a while, and characteristics change as people move and meet different people.

However, sex remains constant.

Shared culture, language, history and set of traditions relating to place maybe?

However, that is obviously fraught when a group has been forced to move from a place.

Welsh people were discouraged from speaking Welsh within living memory, so I can understand why they would need a word to describe the thing they are trying to protect.

However, the odd thing about telling e.g. Rishi Sunak that he can't self describe as English is that Rishi Sunak's parents demonstrably valued English culture. (Not saying anyone on this thread is arguing this - just trying to think through what ethnicity is).

Don’t be daft 🤣🤣🤣

Until there’s a common agreement on what is meant by the terms ‘race’, ‘ethnicity’ or ‘nationality’, everyone will be talking at cross purposes and likely be offended by each other’s posts.

But what IS English ‘culture’ though?

I think the OP was simply starting a discussion? It seems to have hit a particular nerve with you though?

Cricket?

Nationality is the only one that has a clear definition.

What turn?

Are you surprised that Reform have strong views about nationality and ethnicity? I assume that's who you're referring to as the " movement generously supported by far right "Christian" nationalists", as it was Suella Braverman who made the original comment about ethnicity which Viv Pointon supported and Sonia Sodha challenged.

Is the problem with defining "culture", or "English culture', would you say? What about French or American culture, for example?

Perhaps it's a matter of the past, this country, all the parts of it, do have a culture, it grew organically over many centuries. Through fits and starts, through wars and reconciliations, maybe it's down to how much your ancestors contributed to making the culture what it is or suffered because of what it was that makes you a native.
Human rights are a Western construct, it came about because of the people in the west learned from the horrors they inflected on themselves, it was a cultural awakening, as was the determination not to let it happen again.
Racism is also a Western construct, there is no other ethnicity, race, culture, country outside the west that even recognises racism in the way we understand it.
Perhaps those who come to this country, or were born in this country to parents who were immigrants, who have embraced the concepts of human rights and racism can be considered British, but only those who's ancestors played a role in developing the culture that led to human rights etc can be one of the native tribes.
You can't belong to two places at once, if you have loyalty to a foreign land as well as the one you live in, you aren't a native too either land.

Could you describe to me the biological differences between a black person and a white person? How about if we throw brown people into the mix? Or Jewish or Romany?

So if the UK broke up what would those who aren’t ‘ethnically’ English be allowed to call themselves? Would it still be British?

anyway, no one has ever told me I’m not English despite having Irish born parents probably because I am white.

I do find it interesting, the waves of different peoples who came to the British Isles, sometimes completely displacing the local populations.

just had a quick google so take with a cup of salt, in 10th century the genetic makeup of England was 76% Anglo Saxon, Jutes etc and the rest was Celtic or Romano/British (that’s my DNA)

How far do we go back to say we have English ethnicity? What are the rules for inclusion? Nationality is the only thing that really makes sense - we can still have roots elsewhere or roots that go along way back here.

I am from London and went to school 50 years ago with a big mix of 2nd generation immigrants from at least 10 different nationalities who now have children and grandchildren, how can their kids and grandkids not be English?

I do think you can be two things at once - I am English and Irish as far as I am concerned, my teen is English though they like to refer to their Irish & Essex roots. If/when they have a kid how can it be anything but English?

My DP (from Essex) just said anyone after 1066 is a foreigner, I think he was joking, but if we draw the line there a lot of people will be getting their coats.

…and yet men still can’t be women 🤷🏻‍♀️

Inherited biological differences are certainly a thing, but what doesn't seem to be a thing is that they map neatly and exclusively on to particular ethnic groups.

For one example, the Basques are often associated with Rhesus negative blood because they have an unusually high incidence of individuals with that group. But there are many Basques who aren't Rhesus negative, and lots more people who are Rhesus negative but aren't Basques.

In other words, there's been lots of toing and froing from very early times and although there can be trends and tendencies in populations, it's generally messy.