Category: women
-
I think women may still have a problem or two
I feel as though I’ve spent the last few weeks tumbling down a rocky slope of broken feminism. I’d been reading Hilary Mantel’s graceful memoir, finding out what it feels like for a writer of historical fiction when characters from a past you are researching finally come alive in the cellar of an ancient house,…
-
Sylvia, not Emmeline
Some thoughts on that far-right bookshop article’s bumpy journey round the world It is certainly a stereotype to say that a meeting of women is an argument, a stereotype that has a lot of evidence to keep it going. To my mind, it’s not really a criticism – I think it’s because women’s gatherings tend…
-
What if your union fails to represent you?
I’m very fortunate I suppose, that I stayed with Unite despite its political failures in recent years — I had been wondering about switching to a union that’s kept faith with socialism but this week, I found myself very glad I’m in Unite. Four unions – ASLEF, the Musicians’ Union, USDAW and Unison have stated…
-
The enemy of my enemy
I thought Magdalen Berns was our queen. Heroes don’t die just because they die. She gave her life for us. She did. She knew she didn’t have much left, but she used it – with stunning energy, to teach us to rediscover our voices, after the trans lobby thought they had successfully cowed women into…
-
Like a snowball
Or: what happens when your playbook doesn’t work any more This week, the big story amongst women’s and lesbian and gay campaign groups was that Amnesty report, that labelled some of our favourite organisations as ‘anti-rights’ groups. The report was very quickly withdrawn when the letters and emails from the slandered organisations started flying around…
-
Amnesty International: A growing threat
*** addendum to Amnesty post*** I wrote recently about the founding conference of a group I joined, called For A Materialist Left. It was all about how socialism has been defanged and led astray by identity politics. One of the speakers, Chetan Bhatt, spoke about how identity politics leads inevitably into division and hate, and…
-
For a Materialist Left: Photos and videos
I said I’d post again when the videos were released. Links below. Thanks to Ian McNee for a smashing set of photos here’s a selection… All the speeches will be available soon on the Materialist Left YouTube channel, for which, thanks goes to Inside Film. Here are the first two panel sets… Panel 1: Mary…
-
An Extraordinary Materialist Meeting
Actually, I had the cheek to wonder on the way home if the conference I attended on Saturday was unique. It’s certainly unusual in the current political climate… The materialist left That means people who profess a politics based on sound, evidenced analysis of what’s going on in our society. It means acknowledging the very…
-
Toilets, toilets, toilets. TOILETS!
In the EHRC guidance on sex-based provisions, this government (that has apparently sweated over this composition for a year) advises trans people to use the accessible toilets if necessary. Meanwhile, all the people you’d expect to be standing up for women are making a ballyhoo about how terrible this all is for trans people. I…
-
The table is a cow
The banner you see above was carried all the way from the US to be defiantly unfurled at a conference in Brighton last October — for the benefit of a group of women who had never, ever claimed rape was legitimate resistance. Bit silly really — how did such a thing occur? Like this: The…
Kay Green 