[Alt-sheff-organising-group] No Platforming of Radical Feminists - A talk by Julie Bindel

[Chris Croome]

Hi

The contribution from the other supporter of LaDIYFest at the meeting
has been partially transcribed in an article in the Morning Star today:

  A younger audience member managed in a few minutes to encapsulated the
  crux of this debate. At first she spoke uncertainly: “I turned 30 last
  week, I am one of the youngest ones here. None of my peers know that I
  am here, I would be vilified,” she said.
  
  “(When thinking of) people who are my peers and younger, when you talk
  about language, it is a completely different scenario. This
  conversation we are having is almost missing the boat, because among
  the circles I walk in, even talking about biological sex is considered
  transphobic. You cannot talk about pregnancy as a woman’s issue, you
  cannot talk about periods, we do not talk about the menopause because
  no-one is thinking about that yet.”
  
  There was a brief, uneasy laugh, then she continued: “Obviously I
  don’t want to cause violence to or harm to anybody, but we’re throwing
  the baby out with the bathwater when, for example, you’re talking
  about the developing world, where girls don’t go to school because
  there aren’t toilets or provisions to deal with their sanitary
  facilities. Well, that can be taken as being transphobic because
  you’re talking about menstruation as a women’s issue, so how can you
  talk about the body, or gender and the body, in a way that is not
  hurtful?”
  
  She was asked to explain where these rules were coming from.
  “Feminists, young people who use the internet, people who are very
  vocal about rights for trans people not to suffer violence,” she
  explained. “Sara Ahmed has said ‘when we try and define what womanhood
  is, that’s when we run into difficulty.’ If body parts, biological
  sex, doesn’t determine what a woman is, if it is all down to identity,
  then what are the boundaries? Do we have boundaries? Are they useful?
  
  “I think they are useful, because you can’t talk about perpetrators of
  male violence if a man doesn’t exist. So what is womanhood? Is the
  essence of womanhood just oppression?”

  https://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-4a40-OPPRESSIVE-SILENCE

All the best

Chris

On Fri 12-Jun-2015 at 10:00:54AM +0100, Chris Croome wrote:
> 
> On Fri 05-Jun-2015 at 08:57:38AM +0100, Karen wrote:
> >
> > I will ask friends on the feminist network what they think about this
> > speaker when I next see them. 
> 
> There were several people from the Sheffield Feminists Network at the
> meeting and also two supporters of LaDIYFest, one of whome has posted
> to twitter: 
> 
>   The no platforming of radical feminists: A talk by Julie Bindel
>   http://feministcurrent.com/12196/the-no-platforming-of-radical-feminists-a-talk-by-julie-bindel/
> 
>   https://twitter.com/NellStockton/status/609238640724717568
> 
>   For the record: I didn't find one thing said by @bindelj toxic,
>   triggering or offensive. I hope she can come back to Sheffield.
> 
>   https://twitter.com/NellStockton/status/609239713300541441

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