(in case you’ve forgotten, ‘nowhere’ is ‘the real world’)
Today, the BBC published an article about lesbians, about how same-sex attracted people feel when pushed to accept ‘gender’ instead of ‘sex’, and see their clubs, social sites and groups filling up with members of the opposite sex as a result.
Objecting to that, according to the misogynists over on twitter, is just transphobia. They are *terribly* upset over on Twitter. They say all those women came out of nowhere, that they must be a plot by MI5, or funded by … some rich mysterious person.
Well what else could possibly explain it? Consider the growth of the Labour Women’s Declaration. A couple of years ago, it was a group of 20 Labour Party women, sitting in a circle, planning a statement of women’s rights. Those women contacted their friends, particularly any fellow Labour Councillors they knew, and ‘from nowhere’, 20 women became 300 founder-signatories to the Declaration. The signatories told their friends and now, 2 years on, the Labour Women’s Declaration has, including the founders, over 7000 signatories.
( Here is the LWD’s open letter to the BBC, about that article. )
There is also Lesbian Labour, and groups in the Green, Lib Dem and Tory parties and also (because women are good at networking) a group co-ordinating those party groups; there’s Women’s Place UK (founded by TU women) and Fairplay for Women (sportswomen), For Women Scotland, Merched Cymru, groups for uni staff, for parents, and dozens of others, local groups linked up via the ReSisters Network, all growing and thriving. Out of nowhere.
(If you’re not a woman and you agree that sex-based legal rights matter, not to worry – you can join the LGB Alliance or follow Sex Matters ).
The women’s movement didn’t come from nowhere
If a movement is popular, it will grow. All the women’s rights groups started as small circles of women that quickly and easily grew into hundreds, so that those combined groups are now a huge national force.
Now we see that women’s force breaking through – as we knew it would, because it speaks for a large proportion of the women in this country, and as a result we are seeing increasing numbers of programs, speeches and articles in mainstream arenas criticising the organisations, including mainstream political parties, that have been trying to silence women. Today, something this country has been sadly lacking for decades, the BBC made room for an article about what many lesbians think.
“They came out of nowhere!”
And over on Twitter as the misogynists throw up their hands, wailing that the journalist who wrote the article must have been nobbled. One of their number is offering a private ear to the journalists he assumes have been secretly coerced into talking about lesbians. No guys, it’s just women, standing up for their legal rights, and demanding better safeguarding for their children. Perhaps the reason you didn’t see us coming is that you don’t like seeing women’s views, so you all signed up for ‘terfblocker’ or some such thing, as so many Twit-people do.
Can you imagine being so naïve as to allow someone you don’t even know to ‘protect’ you by blocking, on your behalf, all the social media accounts of your political opponents, and then forgetting they exist?
One of them set up a poll, to prove no-one really believed that article…
If you are laughing now, good for you but, when you’ve finished laughing, do some serious research about how media, including social media and search engines, actually work because in some ways, we’re all being shielded by ‘blockers’ of one kind or another. That’s most likely why the Labour Party didn’t see the Corbyn movement coming, too.
I sometimes think being a politician or being a journalist is the most efficient ‘blocker’ ever. Never mind. We’re all out here in the real world, getting on with politics and stuff while the mainstream political officers and the rest go up their own er… … and I really don’t think many of us work for MI5.
( By the way, if you want to find out more about women’s movement, there is a bookshop called News From Nowhere that probably has some books that’ll help )
Kay Green 