We heard the voices of a group called Women’s Voice in Hastings soon after the Judicial Review came out.

I am writing this to anyone in Women’s Voice Hastings who still listens to ‘all women’, and to reassure the many women Women’s Voice do not speak for that people who support women’s rights are not necessarily right-wing, anti-abortion, or any of the other things they say they are. You might as well say you’ve seen a daffodil, so you know all flowers are yellow.

Well, Women’s Voice, you are right to note that some Conservative people have ‘rejoiced’ at that High Court ruling — women across the political and social spectrum have stood up for their rights, including socialist, Marxist and trade unionist feminists, and all manner of people have come up to me in the last few days to say they’re pleased. Are you slandering all of them as regressive, conservative types?

The funny thing is, I don’t see you as feminists, a lot of the time. If you were, you would have had something to say about all the males out there threatening violence against women after the ruling. Feminists do not see females as a privileged sub-set of women, and therefore do not call them ‘cis’ or ‘cishet’, and when women are threatened, they speak out.

I do, however, number the original founders of Hastings Women’s Voice amongst my very good friends and comrades, and have had friends amongst your active members all down the years. I have been concerned when women have told me they can’t safely voice their feelings in your group. I can understand why, because I experienced wrong-headed wrath from a couple of your active members who were also involved in the Labour Party when I was.

The incident that really sticks in my mind came in the last days of my association with the Party, when one of them was chairing a meeting with a trans rights motion on the agenda. Before you jump to any conclusions, I hasten to add that I was not there to oppose the motion. I was, though, aware of the anxieties of several VAWG survivors amongst our membership, and of the fact that they would never voice their fears anywhere near ‘Women’s Voice’, because you automatically associate a desire for all-female groups with right-wing bigotry.

My own concern about that motion was that no-one had defined what they meant by ‘trans rights’, and we had already seen incidents where males had taken it to mean any man can say he’s a woman, even ‘be’ a woman part time, and crash in on any women’s activity on his say-so alone.

I asked, on behalf of women who had confided in me, that we add a sentence to that ‘trans rights’ motion reaffirming women’s rights, because we needed to maintain a parallel right to all-female spaces and services in certain circumstances. It was, according to those Women’s Voice women, a ‘provocative’ and ‘unnecessary’ intervention. This was a zoom meeting, as we were in COVID rules at the time, so the Chair then took advantage of that medium to allow a woman I do not know to literally screech at me for several minutes from behind a black screen, and then cut short the member who spoke next to try to tell her that she was misreading the reason for my intervention.

While that was going on I could feel, and later confirmed, another tranche of women, who had been silently watching, giving up with the Labour Party. A lot of women have also given up with Hastings Women’s Voice, too but I guess that doesn’t worry you as another lot with different views are joining — how very fashionable you are! — but don’t you see how destructive it is to encourage such bitter divisions, when women are so hard-pressed in so many ways?

I still go to your events occasionally, and I acknowledge that some of them are good and useful. My all-time favourite was that suffragettes march along the seafront, with the magnificent singing, my most recent was an event for Palestine, which included some superb speeches.

Cisheteropatriarchy

That meeting however, was where the word ‘cisheteropatriarchy’ was inflicted on my ears, and I want to use that word to explain where I think things are going badly wrong.

As you no doubt noticed immediately, the header of this article is a cut out from your statement on the Supreme Court ruling which reaffirmed the law as regards the Equality Act exceptions.

I am convinced that we have failed to talk sensibly to each other for all these years because of a deliberate ‘queering’ of the language about women, a post-modernist strategy born in the USA and perpetuated in this country by the likes of Stonewall. Let me try and untangle one example: You say ‘Our feminism is trans-inclusive’ – I have a feeling that what you mean is ‘our feminism includes trans women’ – am I right?

Because the people you think you are giving the cold shoulder to with that statement are those whose feminism is for all females – which includes trans men — do you? Or are you actually trans-exclusive? The people you are rejecting also include VAWG survivors whose bodies tell them when there’s a male in the room, whatever you exhort them to believe, and it includes non-binary people whose biological and psychological needs as females are neglected by Stonewall-influenced organizations because they don’t say they’re women.

One way or the other, all feminism includes trans people, so your statement does not do what you think it does.

Why does this matter so much? The answer to that lies in that monster of a word ‘cisheteropatriarchy’. Traditional feminism sees patriarchy as systemic. Everyone brought up in a sexist, rapey society like ours is infused with the ideas and symptoms of patriarchy. No-one is exempt. That’s why there are so many women who have a knee-jerk reaction against real feminism. Deep down, they fear being perceived as challenging men. The way to counter that is though a socialism that combats the oppressions of sex, race and class. It cannot be countered by an individualist, neoliberal, corporate-friendly American way of looking at the world that produces a detailed hierarchy of oppressions, blames individuals rather than systemic prejudices, and exonerates trans and gay people on the grounds that they are lower down the list than so-called ‘cishet’ women.

In other words, US-born gender ideology is anti-socialism and anti-feminism. It is extremely divisive and I believe in the long run, it is bad for trans people and lesbian and gay people too.

It was me, along with another left-wing Labour Party woman, who stipulated that we should have a left-wing trans activist on our panel at the Hastings Women’s Place meeting, so we could demonstrate that it’s perfectly possible for trans women and lefty feminists to talk together and look for solutions. We had trans, gay, lesbian and straight people in the audience at that packed meeting, and many were Corbyn-supporting Labour Party members. Whilst we didn’t agree on absolutely everything, and we acknowledged some yet-to-be-solved problems, no-one was accusing anyone else of being anti-abortion anti-autonomy, or any of the other daft things you’ve said.

It has been a long road from that Labour Party meeting where women of yours told me talking about women’s legal rights was ‘unnecessary’ and ‘provocative’ and at no stage on that road have you appeared to understand that the women who founded your organization intended it to be, as all feminist organizations should be, for all women. They paid particular attention to women who tend to get isolated in Hastings. Immigrant women, women from the estates a long way from the town centre, women of cultural, ethnic or religious minorities. I think of them and wince every time I see you prancing about with your banner on Pride marches, celebrating all the highly sexualized, often misogynist stuff Pride specializes in, and foregrounding the corporate-friendly, TQIA end of Stonewall’s alphabet.

Please think about who and what you are supposed to stand for, and about how badly we need solidarity and open arms for isolated people in these terrible times.  There is nothing in the Supreme Court ruling that forbids you to specialize in trans rights, or even TQIA carnivals, if that’s where your main interest lies. It simply requires you to be honest about it, so would you please stop slandering women whose main focus is women’s needs and women’s rights. If you go under a name that implies you speak for all the women in this town, you need to learn to not just tolerate difference of opinion, but to accept it as normal and healthy, otherwise you are further dividing and isolating women.

********************

Dear Reader,

Times are hard, and so the articles on this site are freely available but if you are able to support my work by making a donation, I am very grateful.

You can make one-off or monthly payments by BACS to Mrs K Green, Sort: 07 01 16, Acct No: 43287058, Reference: blog

Or via Paypal…

Click here to donate via Paypal

Another great way to support this, and other independent blogs you read, is liking and sharing on social media, signing up for email updates, or by emailing a link to friends.

Cheers,

Kay

********************