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?

Well of course England and the English exist! So does not being English. So those two states are there.

English
Rishi Sunak
Boris Johnson
Rudyard Kipling
Winston Churchill

Not English
Nicola Sturgeon
Vladimir Putin
Cillian Murphy
Sanae Takaichi

But what Viv is doing is the equivalent of some random man (or woman) claiming that being a woman is having big boobs and being a bimbo and then screaming "erasure" when other people point out all the flaws in that definition and that it excludes lots of women.

Womanhood/femaleness is fairly easy to define and it isn't about clothes or hair. Englishness (or Welshness or Scottishness) is harder to define but I think it's like the famous quote about obscene material "I know it when I see it".

I suppose.what is being mixed up and conflated is nationality, ethnicity, and culture. Some of which are very clear cut - nationality. And the others not. And there is some overlap between categories that means its easy to confuse them.

Yes but English was never really an ethnicity. Anglo-Saxon might be and you could, at a pinch, argue people with a certain amount of Anglo-Saxon blood are English but then that doesn't make sense because Germans and Dutch and even (horror) some French are also (a bit) Anglo- Saxon. Maybe it's being a specific blend of Anglo-Saxon, Celtic and viking that is distinct in itd proportions to the blend of Celtic, viking and anglo-Saxon in Scotland/Wales/Ireland and Anglo-Saxon, viking etc found in Germany. But it's hard to think of a specific ethnic makeup which wouldn't exclude a lot of English people and include a lot of non-English people.

It makes more sense used to describe a culture, a language, a history, a former nationality (before the Acts of Union), or people from a specific place. Or a legal system. All those definitions/categories are different (though like you say some overlap) but they all make sense. English as an ethnicity doesn't and I don't think there was a point in history it did (as opposed to Celtic, Anglo-Saxon etc which all make sense as ethnicities even if noone is purely either anymore).

Can you come up with a definition for ethnicity that excludes English but includes all the other groups widely considered to be ethnicities?

Which other groups? Japanese? That's weird because there were different ethnic groups within Japan, some of whom were/are discriminated against by the majority and some of whose members might object to that identity being erased... But at the same time if Japanese people want to describe themselves as of Japanese ethnicity that's Japan's business. Likewise other groups can figure it out for themselves without my help, I don't really care that much about how China defines Han ethnicity. I'm English, I know about English history and it's history of identity. And apart from giants with advanced olfactory abilities, English blood has nevet been possible to define scientifically.

At the back of the "ethnicity is a thing but the English can't be ethnic" approach, there seem to be two assumptions. (Assuming that the argument is being made in good faith.)

One is that groups other than the English are ancestrally and culturally homogeneous in a way the English aren't (arguable in some cases, probably, but all cases need scrutiny, not assumptions).

The other is that they have a united collective opinion of themselves in a way the English don't, which can be accepted as how they identify. I'm wary of this. It's a bit like talking about what "the community" thinks, when you can bet your bottom dollar there's all sorts of dissent, articulated or otherwise, including some people who could have an argument in a room by themself.

Look even (or especially) in places where "ethnic" and religious identity really really matter like the Balkans, it would be impossible to do a DNA test on someone from there and say that person is Serbian, that person is Bosnian etc. Clearly there is some strong feelings there but it's a place where ordinary people have lived through multiple waves of conquest, reconquest and mass movements. This has meant both that identify and ethnic identity are very important because there ancestors had to struggle to maintain their identity. It also means actually there has been eons of mixing of different groups. However I would never tell a Serbian that Serbian is not a "real" ethnicity because frankly I don't want a ten hour argument and also because it's not my circus not my monkeys really. Let them be.

The idea of genetics only came about with modern science. The idea of distinct national characteristics that were based on inheritance are older, but even there it's something that only really solidified in modern times. The heyday for that sort of thing was the 18th and 19th centuries when you got all those cartoons of the countries showing their national characteristics and gradually a mania for trying to categorise all the different "traits" of Germans versus French etc. And then it's only in the 19th/20th centuries that ethno-nationalism became a real concept.

England is a very old country. It existed as a concept (even if it's borders changed) for at least 1000 years. I think it might also be significant that the acts of union happened at or before people began thinking about "ethnicity" as a pseudo-scientific concept (and union with Wales before that). That might partly be why though the concept of England, Englishmen, English culture was very strongly developed and had been around for a long time most of the people talking about it got confused when they tried to connect it to what we would call ethnicity or Defoe called a "Trueborn Englishman". When they did grapple with the concept it was usually to reject it. That doesn't mean that half the people in Tudor England were black or that in the past everyone was super woke and accepting of outsiders. People could be xenophobic and racist and weird about difference. That's a human constant. But Englishness as a specific ethnic heritage never got the chance to become as developed as other concepts of Englishness which are very strong actually.

I don't think I'm disagreeing with you.

What I object to is the have your cake and eat it, cherrypicking approach to ethnicity, indigenosity, culture, identity and all the rest of it, where one lot of people is an "ethnic group" or " indigenous" and another isn't, not on the basis of any rational criteria but just "because". ( Subtext: it doesn't suit our politics). Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

I agree that Englishness is definitely a thing, just as much as any other -ness.

Fair enough. I felt we were discussing not disagreeing. I guess for me though the "what about other places and other identities" doesn't work as a gotcha because I don't really care how they do things over there except that the places where "ethnic identity" and who is/isn't in the ethnic group are hot political topics don't tend to be happy places. So I would rather not import it here. I don't want that sauce it looks like a headache.

I'd rather not have it either, and carry on quietly knowing I'm English ( by birth and upbringing) and perhaps also by now Welsh ( by long residence and familiarity with Welsh culture). Now there's a question!

The trouble is, we've got some of it going on already, and if we don't think through how identity works, and what makes sense and doesn't, society is vulnerable to people with a 'heads we win, tails you lose" approach.

You plucked the example of Japanese out of the air and called me weird for the example you picked?

I'm asking for a definition for Ethnicity by which someone would reasonably say English couldn't be an ethnicity, but all the groups on monitoring forms, or all the ways people from around the world would informally describe themselves would be.

And I suspect there isnt a good answer, because if waves of migration stop a group having an ethnicity, then I suspect that would apply to most of the world - but I'm no expert on world history and could be wrong.

But it does feel to me like claims that English ethnicity or lack of it is unique in the world might come from a form of exceptionalism.

The Irish like to see themselves as colonized, but, like the Scots, they were also enthusiastic colonizers. Themselves displaced, they in turn displaced indigenous people all around the world, helping to form countries like Canada, the USA, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand.

Well, English isn't unique in not being a clear cut ethnicity. Lots of things are not Ethnicity. In fact far more philosophical concepts and physical things in the world are not ethnicity than are. In the same way far more things are not chairs than are chairs.

I didn't say you were weird for talking about Japan being an ethnicity. I just said it was weird, maybe complicated is a better word. But also that's something for the Japanese to hash out among themselves or not. In the same way that the finer points of Catholic doctrine are something Catholics can hash out. But it's stupid to redefine yourself in reaction to how you perceived other people somewhere completely different define themselves. Which is why these "well they are allowed to call themselves an ethnicity in XYZ so the English must be a clear cut Ethnicity as well or we are discriminating against ourselves" is such an odd argument. Especially when it means changing the definition of English so much lots of people suddenly stop being English that were before.

Well yes more things aren't ethnicities than are.
But of the things that are commonly described as ethnicities, or used as ethnicity categories on diversity monitoring forms, only one really gets singled out as controversial, where people are viewed as racist for even acknowledging its existence. It just gives actually racist people endless ammunition.

I'm a member of several GC whatsapp groups. They have all been quite horrible at times, eg I've seen a few anti semitic and ableist posts in some of them.
I think the problem is not so much the cause, but its the volume of people who post in these groups, and everyone will have differences of opinion on non GC matters. There will always be some problem posters amongst the decent posters - and the groups are not really well moderated (unlike here on mumsnet). That means these whatsapps could be produced as evidence in a court or something.

This seems close to Viv Pointin's position, as I understand it. I think I may agree with you. So the Pointon/ Sodha controversygate is based in vagueness, I think.

The term ethnicity doesn't have a clear, commonly accepted definition or characterisation, but it sounds scientific. It sounds like it's supposed to be objective, coherent and rationally supportable as a concept, but it isn't. It's not like sex, which has one clear and identifiable marker. It's more like gender, which is woolly and amorphous and anything you want it to be. Or perhaps it's more like phlogiston or the luminiferous ether - a concept which you need to have for your particular theory to work, but isn't actually real.

I prefer to use the term "people" because the term in meant to be flexible. The English are a people who are happy not to be homogenous, and to find contradictions and differences to be just "one of those things". The idea of being "pure blood English" is absurd, and most of us laugh at the idea. Most of us believe that where we come from is the best, but also, at a deeper level, know that this belief is actually also absurd.

There is no reason why people who do not have white skins cannot be English if they come from here ("here" being England), or become English if they move here and want to.

Method no.1: Consistency
Define what ethnicity is.
Then look at Groups A, B and C and work out whether they meet the criteria for an ethnic group or not. If they do, they are, if they don't , they aren't; either way, anyone who doesn't like it can lump it.
Then, if you like, you can argue about the significance or otherwise of ethnicity in society, and for identity, knowing that at least everyone is talking about the same thing.

Method no. 2: Expediency
Leave ethnicity undefined.
Let Group A call themselves an ethnic group because nobody (or nobody who matters) cares if they do.
Jump on anybody who suggests Group B is an ethnic group, because if they are, it will upset somebody who matters.
Switch from letting Group C call themselves an ethnic group to hasty denial that they are, if it starts looking as though somebody who matters might be upset.

I suspect method no.2 causes more trouble in the long run.

I think VP was being inflexible in not seeing that Englishness can be a sense of identity, and her critics are being inflexible in not seeing that Englishness can also refer to ancestry or heritage. Neither is right or wrong and it's not a good idea to ascribe sinister motives to either side.

I think that's true. I was going to say it's blindness and a refusal to listen and try to understand what the other person means rather than inflixibility, but on relection I think that inflexibility is a good term.

The problem with method no 1 is that we never actually do the first step.

But VP was responding directly to Sonia’s piece. I don’t think Sonia is particularly making the argument there that Englishness can’t refer to ethnicity, and VP herself conflated ethnicity and cultural identity in that initial response, arguing that ‘people whose families’ had recently moved here were denying her both.

No SS probably isnt saying that, but plenty of people here have, as well as on the other thread today on Suella Braverman. Sonia Sodha is usually pretty sensible on most things IMO.

I don't think this will help at all with the ethnicity question but it was a very interesting study
https://www.peopleofthebritishisles.org/population-genetics