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Rebuttal

*Guest post by anon* Refutation of a False Allegation of Spitting at Filia Conference 2025 At Filia conference a false allegation of spitting was made during a filmed session. A woman claimed she had been spat at in the face in the queue to the venue, in retaliation for making a critical comment to another…
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A cascade of burning books

Three books, a short film and a talk This morning, I read somewhere that Israel has a huge mental health crisis to deal with after all the tormenting and killing of Palestinians the IDF have been doing in Gaza and across the West Bank. It made me think about what kind of trauma must be…
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How do you salve a guilty conscience?

Well, one way is to point attention away from yourself – spread the guilt around as far as you can. This weekend saw protests like these all over the UK – five of our own in Hastings were arrested. Our local activists have been on pretty friendly terms with Hastings police, especially those who have…
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This is what we mean by erasing women

‘Your Party’ have chosen the delegates for their first conference ‘by sortition’. They said this would ensure that a genuinely representative cross section of their supporters would be present. I suppose as we’re aiming for a ‘bottom up’ democracy, the fact that this has ruled out some of the natural leaders who’ve been working for…
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A litany on ten years of TRA activity

[TRA = trans activist. Please note, TRAs are not necessarily trans people, and most definitely not all trans people are trans activists — trans friends of mine have been hounded for being ‘off message’ every bit as badly as I have. Similarly, lefty feminists, Woman’s Place UK for example, are not anti-trans and have not…
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FiLiA – across the divide

A feminist response to the ‘feminist response to the silence around October 7th‘ I was going to write about this event. I watched the video, I took notes, I asked for help and a friend with better ears than me gave me her notes. I thought about the sisters sitting there, about the sterling work…
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Why are we ‘obsessed’ with Palestine?

Quite a few of the attendees of the recent FiLiA conference in Brighton have been asking this question. Women I know and have great respect for have asked this question, their tone suggesting we were being unsisterly imposing our concerns on this, our annual, internationalist conference. I was told waving flags and chanting wasn’t the…
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Viva FiLiA!

It’s three weeks now since I got my hands on a copy of Rahila Gupta’s ‘British Feminism Through a FiLiA Lens.’ I’ve been reading furiously ever since, and have only just emerged. 384 closely printed pages about all that FiLiA has instigated, inspired or been a part of over the last ten years. To say…
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Artificial Ignorance

So, today it happened to me. I saw a Facebook ‘friend”s post, which was making a political point, based on a photo. I got the point, although I suspected her motivation was a bit odd (all that stuff about what’s feminism, what’s racism and how the heck did I get lost somewhere between the two).…
