What it feels like

Having been bawled out of the Labour Party, union activism and a whole load of less important things over Palestine, the sex-and-gender issue or both, I have, like vast numbers of others, been trying to help set up locally to be ready for the re-birth of left politics.

When I sent a rather over-dramatic message to some of my comrades in this endeavour, trying to force a conversation to prevent the sex-and-gender issue stymying yet another good initiative, someone told me ‘it feels like you don’t want to get hurt again’.  That gave me a laugh. Would I have joined in at all, would I have gone to FiLiA this year, if I was scared of getting hurt again? I can and do live with getting hurt. Here’s how.

The slow-burning fuse

We started organising in Hastings in May, with the previous year’s experience of running assemblies informing our determination to focus on listening and outreach…

(If you follow my blog and find that hard to believe of me, please bear in mind this blog is for me to bang my own drum. Elsewhere, I believe local politics needs listening and outreach, and that’s what I aim for.)

…but then the SWP happened to us, and then Zara Sultana did, and the infuriating mix of vaguaries and bald pronouncements coming out of whoever or whatever ‘Your Party’ was at that point. Infuriating, but that’s what a large and complex group sounds like when it’s trying to find its way to being born. As in all women’s lives (and some men’s) my experience of this was all threaded through the usual overwhelm of work, family and my own and my friends’ many needs, that are no longer fulfilled by health or social care services.

I was getting very weary, and I knew many other women would have fought their way through at least as much of a political and social maelstrom as I had, to reach the annual haven of FiLiA.

I spent a long and complicated week preparing to be and being a part of the anti-genocide contingent at FiLiA – a conference that hadn’t found its way to a 100% agreement that Zionism is racism pure and simple, and therefore on the wrong side of its most important red line. The conference itself was super in parts, but required the usual lefty’s rhinoceros hide. Women who have high profile roles in feminism and an excellent track-record on some women’s issues glowered at, argued with, and generally insulted women carrying or wearing symbols of the #FreePalestine movement, and then had the nerve to get angry with those women for being ‘insensitive’.

I came home to find the usual suspects in the social media war against women’s rights had been slandering me left, right and centre over the weekend for daring to attend the ‘transphobic’ conference.

… and then the ‘quiet catch up’ day planned for this week suddenly became an early hospital appointment in a town miles away.  I was a bit tired.

The tantrum

The train was leaving in 20 minutes. I was at the door with my coat on, and heard water sloshing in the bathroom. Was Himself even dressed yet?

WENEEDTOLEAVENOWFORGODSSAKESYOUKNOWIGETANXIOUSABOUTTRAVELTIMESANDITFEELSLIKEYOUDIGYOURHEELSINONPURPOSEYOUALWASYDOTHISYOU’REJUSTDOINGITTOWINDMEUPWAAAAAAAAAAA!

He was – as ever – at the door with his coat on in time to catch the train – just not with as much leeway as I’d like.

“I did say ‘it feels like’, not ‘you do,’ I said sheepishly.

And that’s how it works, isn’t it – the horror and urgency of struggle against genocide, the urgency to reach all the women who need saving from so many horrors, the complete lack of uncertainty about how much we need to address environmental destruction, the parlous state of the Your Party project, the necessity of putting yourself in the path of so much aggression with head held high…

… all that stress and all that grief stored up until, in a safe place, something a bit annoying happened.

And that’s when I exploded.

Sadly, for many women neither home nor work nor ‘women’s services’ are a safe place. That’s why if they’re going to explode, those women will do it at FiLiA.

Oh, and a few women come because they like causing trouble. As far as I can see, there were three of those amongst the conflicts at FiLiA.

And that’s why there’s always a load of flak and gossip on social media in the week after a FiLiA conference, but this year, there was something more pernicious.

Red lines

Like most organisations, FiLiA aims to keep serious harms away from conference by having clear red lines and, for example, has refused platforms to women with a racist track record but also like most organisations, FiLiA has faults that need correcting – like many, many women I have detailed those at length in the feedback forms from conference. No prizes for guessing where I reckon the worst fault lay. We are currently awash with worldwide, professional class gas-lighting and propaganda by the capitalist, colonialist, genocidal world powers and, if an organisation allows a fault-line to show, my gods the predators will drive in a wedge.

There was racism there that did not know its own name, and there was conscious racism. Nowhere near as much as most organisations are facilitating at the moment but even so, my heart aches for the mostly West Asian women there who felt it. You can’t ‘both sides’ apartheid and illegal occupation against anti-genocide and anti-war campaigners if you want to remain anti-racism.

Nevertheless, thank your lucky stars — and the small army of volunteers who run FiLiA (really volunteers. It is a charity but there are no exec level ngo salaries). Thanks to all of them for FiLiA. The world would be a far, far harder place for feminists if FiLiA was not there.

FiLiA is the main place I go to learn women’s views from around the world and FiLiA is why my internationalism is exponentially better informed than it was before I found FiLiA. Just like the Corbyn movement in the Labour Party that was so loudly accused of so many things, it has faults – but not of the type or anywhere near on the scale you’d think if you read social media, or even the mainstream media.

I used to feel a bit sad and lonely when I walked away from FiLiA because of all the women who treat lefty activism as if it was a hobby for immature people. This time, I felt sad and lonely because of all the women who expected activists who’ve been working 24/7 for over 2 years now to try and counter genocide and environmental disaster to put their concerns on pause for the weekend so as not to hurt anyone’s feelings. That sentiment, from British women, from women who are relatively safe, should not have been indulged at all.

I will remember forever the comment from an Afghani woman, seeing the vandalism and protests outside. She said not to worry, this is the UK – women can have whatever kind of conference they want.

This time though, quite a lot of us felt we’d had to fight exceptionally hard to make that true. Making my way home, exhausted, I thought maybe this would be my last FiLiA – but, having had a few days to recover, and bawled at Himself a bit (he’s a really good guy – sigh) I expect I’ll want to go, next time I get the chance. I’d just stay away from the razzamatazz of the main hall, and get networking in that wonderful swirl of women of every kind from every place imaginable, that invaluable, energising, brilliant space for learning and linking that is made of the blood, sweat and tears of women volunteers and workshop facilitators, and those who battle their way across hostile worlds to reach us.

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 If you were one of those who asked this, please click to read Why are we ‘obsessed’ with Palestine?

Click here to read about our fringe event, Palestine Liberation is a Feminist Issue

Click here to read about Jewish not Zionist, the story of Marilyn Garson’s journey away from Zionism, and her battle with the IHRA.

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