#167 Julie Bindel Leads the Feminism for Women Panel at FiLiA 2021
This is a recording of the #FiLiA2021 panel discussion led by Julie Bindel. She discusses her book Feminism for Women, invites women from the audience to join the conversation about feminist issues across generational divides, and Zemzem Mohamed speaks about the unfolding crisis in Tigray.
In her searing and ground-breaking book, Bindel deconstructs the many pervasive myths about feminism – Do women really want what men have? Can men be feminists? Are women liberated by sexual violation? – assessing whether feminism has achieved its goals and debunking theories that second-wave feminism is irrelevant and one-dimensional. Feminism for Women presents a clear-sighted view of why feminism is a proud social movement that every woman on the planet benefits from. Join Bindel and guests for a lively discussion on why Feminism must be for Women.
"Timely, necessary and important."
J.K.Rowling
"Enlightening, infuriating and hopeful."
MARTINA NAVRATILOVA
"Whoever gave away feminism, look out, because Julie Bindel wants it back."
Cordelia Fine
Listen Here (Transcription below):
Transcription:
Julie: I must start by saying that modern-day academic teaching is a disgrace.
Except for all our national treasures, Jo Phoenix, Selena Todd, Kathleen Stock and others.
And one of the big reasons I decided to write my book was because of the swathes of young women who wanted to be feminists in a way that they know will actually benefit them, instead of the beards, were saying to me and other feminists that have spoken out, we can't take any more of this ‘sex work is work, choking is empowering, pole dancing is for exercise’.
And they are speaking in this way because they have seen us speak out. But the thousands of young women that are looking for this feminism, that feel uncomfortable about it, are merely being emboldened by their elders. In other words, the idiots like Alison Phipps and others at universities that are pushing the line, which is an anti-feminist line. And they call themselves feminists in order to speak with authority about things that are deeply bad for women in particular young women.
And the thing about Kathleen Stock, which for me, is kind of come half circle is an investigation that I've been doing on and off since 1999, about a man called John Davies.
Dr John Davies, who I mentioned in the book, who is a ‘sex work is work, legalise prostitution’ proponent, and who, as it happens, sue me now, is a former baby trafficker and a pimp, who has caused multiple young women to hide in the shadows, so scared are they of him. But who has also invaded his way into public policy through his academic teachings, then guess where he was, guess where he did his MA, guess where he did his PhD? Sussex!
He was in what we call the pimp department, the department for Migration Studies. And he, along with others, Nick Mai, Jo Doezema and others that are pimps, but they push this line, that sex work is work. That only blanket decriminalisation will suffice and only the police are a danger to prostituted women.
John Davies, the baby trafficker, the pimp who thankfully is now in prison, but only on an Al Capone for major charity fraud. They formed a front for him. They were a smoke screen for John Davies. He was able to operate in plain sight. And when I tried to speak to the academy to his PhD supervisor, who had, by the way, signed off the ethical approval of him doing his research, interviewing traffickers, who he called his friends, interviewing trafficked women who were simply migrant sex workers.
When I spoke to his PhD supervisor about why so many pimp apologists were in that department, by coincidence, not one PhD study, looking at the problems inherent to prostitution. He passed my message on to John Davies and he tried to sue me, which led to me digging even deeper.
That's one example. Sussex University is but one. The entire academy has been captured by anti-feminist rhetoric. I will no longer use the term liberal feminism because it's not feminism. As we often say to ourselves, don't believe there are hundreds of ways to be a feminist, but most of them are wrong.
The only kinds of feminism that is effective is the feminism that benefits all women starting at the bottom. The feminism that we have that passes as feminism in the academy and elsewhere, because this is a class issue also, one about inherent privilege is a feminism for men. And the best thing that we can do when we're trying to measure whether something, be it celebrating the full face veil, saying the prostitution is fun, whatever, the best way that we can actually measure whether it's feminism or not is: who does it benefit?
Do men like it? Do young men clap on the sidewalk when slut marches are going past? Because if they do, and they're not all newly knitted sandal wearing anti-sexist men, then we're doing something wrong.
By the way, you've noticed I have no guests.
My guests have de-platformed themselves from this event. But actually the brilliant Rosie Duffield was supposed to be here today with me so we can send a message of solidarity to her now. [lots of applause]
I want to read just a short extract from my book from chapter eight, which is ‘Saying it as it is: Dare to stand up for women's rights’. And I want to read this because I think it kind of wraps up a little bit of how we are today at the absolute, what I would call, fuckery of the ideology that twists itself in its own thong, I can’t work out what on earth it is.
So I'll start with a quote:
“If sex isn't real, there's no same-sex attraction. If sex isn't real, the lived reality of women globally is erased. I know and love trans people, but erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives.
It isn't hate to speak the truth”. J K Rowling.
Blood, pain and resistance. Reporting on issues all over the world has its peaks.
Flying back overnight in economy class is certainly not one of them. And I've plenty of grim tales to tell about mice and cockroaches in ramshackle hotels. Watching the sun rise in the desert more than compensates for all the dirty sheets along the way as did my entire trip to the village of Umoja, a women only dwelling in Northern Kenya in 2015. Umoja was founded in 1990 by a group of 15 women who were survivors of rape by British soldiers.
The women and girls I met during my week in Kenya had all endured, the most extreme male violence and control. One woman barely out of her teens told me she faced reprisals from the men in her family for fleeing the village of her birth to escape, forced marriage. I asked what gave her the courage to act.
“Is there an alternative”? She replied. “I was dead inside and I knew that if I didn't resist my life and the life of any daughters I might have would not be worth living”. Umoja is one of thousands of examples I've encountered in which women refuse to accept their subordinated status and male dominance.
The day before I left for Kenya, my commissioning editor called me. I'm so sorry, Julie. But we had a call from the Umoja village elder, who said they cannot accommodate your visit due to allegations of transphobia against you. And it took be a full 10 seconds to work out he was joking.
I asked Rebecca the village matriarch, if there was anything I could bring as a gift from the UK. Sanitary products, Rebecca replied, as many as you can carry. And so I boarded the flight at London Heathrow airport, carrying an oversized hold, all crammed with sanitary towels and tampons.
As I settled down for the journey, I had the most visceral memory of school. I was 11 years old and had recently become menstruating, which meant I had to wear thick sanitary towels which I hated. This is going to divide the room, age-wise.
These were the types with no adhesive tape to keep them in place. And I was bleeding heavily. Unable to get permission from the teacher to leave the classroom and too embarrassed to tell him why I needed to go regularly. The blood soon leaked into my pale grey school skirt. During break time.
I tried to scrub out the blood, surrounded by other girls smoking and laughing at me, but the stain remained just as bad. I had no choice, but to turn my skirt around and haul my bag over the stain. The boys were soon told by the girls. who'd seen me in the toilets. And for the rest of the day, I was followed around with ‘look, who's on the rag, she's on the blog’ ringing in my ears.
I went to all the way home, hoping my mom could get the bloodstain out of my skirt. She couldn't. The mark of humiliation remained until we could afford a new skirt the following term.
My time with the women in Umoja swept away my bad memory. And I left Kenya feeling inspired and amazed at the resistance of the women. I'd got to know.
My article was published in the observer magazine on the 16th of August, 2015 and two days later, an opinion writer in Australia named Clementine Ford used my investigation as a peg for an opinion piece on female separatism, she wrote:
‘the profile on the Umoja village was written by a columnist Julie Bindel, and it would be remiss at this point, not to reference her exclusionary views on trans women, statistically speaking, approximately 50% of transgender people experienced sexual violence in their lifetime and trans women of colour in particular face an increased risk of this form of violence. If the point of communities like Umoja is to provide safety and self-determination to women, who've been stripped of it in dehumanising and violent ways, then they have to be inclusive of all women, no matter their race, physical ability or chromosomal or makeup.’
I emailed the editor who had joked about me being accused by village elders of transphobia prior to my trip. Parody is dead. I told you.
So the most important thing that we can do as a movement, I argue, is that we cross that generational divide. See it as an ideological divide, rather than something that's innate and natural.
And I say this not because it's not completely common for young women and all of us have rebelled against our mother's teachings, but because that doesn't happen in feminism because feminism naturally evolves. Only a few would say, let's go back to the old days. Let's not use the internet.
Let's adopt the practices that we had then in that context.
We know that we move forward in the context of today and we have to do that in order to keep the movement as multi-generational as possible. But I know when I was 17 years old and met feminists and at least one of them, two of them in this room, they were about 15 years older than me, if not more, they mentored me. They slapped me around the head when I was a particular idiot, they taught me things. They'd all read books, feminist theory. I haven't. Some of them had written books on feminist theory, which I read the first page of and the last page.
But we understood that as Pragna Patel said at my book launch in London, we came together on the basis of need. And that need was one that is the thing that unites women and girls all over the world. The fear and reality of men's violence and our resistance to it, of course.
So the huge gap for many young women that are being indoctrinated with anti-feminist feminism, is the lost opportunity to speak of the things that's happening to them as male violence and as a symptom of patriarchy and male supremacists.
Which is why we've got to look to how this has happened, as opposed to necessarily blaming those blue fringes outside with the trans flags. Much as it’s irritating. We need to look at how those young women have been failed and what we can do to stand in support of them, to take the bullet for them. For that reason, I'm going to ask how many women in this room are under 30.
I'm not interested in the baby by the way.
Okay. So would two of you please come and join me on this panel? And we can have a conversation. I'm 59. So we're talking cross generational conversation about how we reach young women and what the issues are that are urgent today. Come on.
Amber: My name's Amber. I’m 29
Caroline: My name's Caroline. I'm 21.
Julie: So what are we going to ask Amber and Caroline? What are the most pressing questions that we need to deal with today? Is there anybody here that wants to start off or do you want us to do that?
Audience: Pornography
Julie: Okay. So let's, let's just have a conversation about the role of pornography and you can be as personal or abstract as you like. Nobody's asking you to say anything that you're uncomfortable with.
But the role of pornography in my life as a young woman was literally my brother's Playboy magazine. And then as I got older and became a feminist, it was looking at Hustler magazine and the picture on the front with a woman going through a meat grinder. What we're talking about now is differences. It’s digitalise.
Tell us what you know about the role that it plays in young women's lives.
Amber: So at the age I am, I think it's going to be slightly different for you. Guys at school would find lads mags in the woods and then a few years later like having access to the internet. I think since the access to the internet has become such a thing, everyone in here will have, well, pretty much everyone in here will have a device in their pocket where with one Google search, you could find any amounts of porn of varying extremes.
It's a weird one because it's, don't hate me for what I’m about to say. In theory I understand why it's there because everyone has things that they're into, but in practice, I don't think it works. I don't think it does what they originally set out to do.
Like now it just completely messes with, particularly young men's interpretations of what sex is and what sex should be. and I think that obviously then has the detrimental effect on women. Okay.
Julie: So eight years is a big gap when you're in your twenties, isn't it. So what would you say.
Caroline: So the first time I ever saw pornography was I was 11 and the boy was playing it in our ICT class which was pretty much the experience at any time that we didn't have a teacher in the room in the ICT classrooms.
I don't know why there wasn't more restriction on those computers, but I remember that when we were allowed to set screensavers. The same boy tried to set a pornographic image as a screensaver, when the teacher wouldn't let him, he chose a pic of Hitler instead. He wanted to get a reaction.
And in that way, I think pornography has just been completely normalised in my life that I am so used to friends dipping in and out of only friends accounts and the way that they see porn as an entirely positive thing. And there's no conversation and no nuance in my social circles about whether pornography is damaging to women. As long as she says yes, then it's great.
It does not matter if she is being choked. If she's being abused, it doesn't matter if, you know, if it has rape and it's plentiful, there was no nuance and no awareness of that. And I got in trouble with some friends because I retweeted, Rose Kalemba. Rose is a native American woman who was kidnapped and raped as a child and the rape was put on Pornhub, and it's still uploaded to this day and Pornhub profits from it every time it's re uploaded and every time it's viewed and she protests against Pornhub and against pornography that does not use consent and age verification. And I got told that I was anti-sex for re-tweeting a lot of things that she said.
Julie: Tell me why you're here today. And tell me a little bit about your feminist activism, because what I'd really like to know, and I'm sure we all would is what you think older feminists can bring to your struggles and vice versa.
Amber: So I'm here as I'm starting a Master's next week in inequality in society, I'm here predominantly as a sex worker who wants to learn more. I do not agree with decriminalisation. I think that's possibly the worst thing that could happen. In the fact that people will sit there and say decrim, decrim as long as everyone's consenting, it's fine.
Not looking at or taking into account the negatives that come with the industry is where I think a lot of the issues come to. I definitely would align myself more with radical feminism then liberal feminism. So I'm kind of here to learn that and kind of my plan following on from the Masters would be to go and do a PhD.
So that’s why I’m here to learn and speak to people that are more politically aligned with myself, to help me inform my decisions and what I do.
Caroline: So I volunteer at a rape crisis centre. I've been doing that two years, started volunteering when I was 19, and if I'm honest, the part that I feel like most people in this room would disagree with that I found the hardest is, is actually speaking about, or having a view on being trans exclusionary. Because so many of my friends identify as non-binary, so many of my friends are trans and I really, I feel like we should be able to have spaces that are open to women and spaces that are open to everyone and spaces that feel more comfortable.
And that, that shouldn't be controversial. But I wanted to come and hear you. I came a month ago to a WPUK meeting and I heard you speak then, and I heard you speak very well about, you know, all of the work that you did in seventies that was being done for lesbians, hotlines and help funds and support spaces and social spaces for lesbian. I'm a 21-year-old lesbian. I don't think that exists anymore.
Julie: For me, it's a real privilege to have these conversations because you could be outside with the trans flag with the ‘sex work is work,’ you know, like saying denouncing feminism, denouncing this conference, and you're not you're in here despite the difficulties that you navigate in your own friendship, groups, studies, whatever and that's really refreshing because what I found when I put a call out to when I was first researching this book, I put the call out on social media saying, does anyone, you know, between the ages of 18 and 30, want to talk to me? You can disagree with everything that I stand for, but we can have a conversation, I'll show you the transcript before anything is published. And loads came forward.
And some of them actually said to me, in fact, five at that stage said: by the way, I'm really sorry, I was one of the crowd that de-platformed do from X university. I was one of those that were in the LGBTQ plus group that said that, you know, you were a Nazi, a fascist and a bigot and you were dangerous to have on campus.
And many more of them came to my book launch in London and said, ‘we still might not agree with everything that you say’ that's called the women's liberation movement to everyone, by the way. 50% of our time is spent fighting. But that was okay because what they realised was that there were gatekeepers, that were keeping them away from even engaging like this.
So tell us if you would either or both about any kind of hostility you've encountered, if at all, from people that don't want you to have these conversations or come to this conference.
Amber: Personally, I haven't experienced much in the way of hostility. I've always been quite open with what I do, who I am and everything.
I think the hostility is part of the problem. It keeps us from being able to have the conversations that need to be had when realistically we're all fighting for the same goal and we just have different opinions. But if you can, if you can work together, then why not? But the people that are just like, no boo, SWERF, TERF, or you know, all the other bigots and fascists, like you said. All those name callings, it's just keeping us all down essentially. And that's I think, think is absolutely anything whether it be racism, anything like that. It's the people that with the power, keeping the people without the power separate because they don't want us to work together.
As long as they can keep us all divided with little things. Like we can’t work with this person because they're a TERF. We call work with this person because they’re this, and without us having, being able to have those conversations, it just keeps us down and that's all they want to do.
Caroline: I don't know if I call it hostility. I experienced a lot of gentle warnings that I was sharing things from people who you were not allowed to share things from, usually Karen Ingala Smith, because she was on all the block lists as being a TERF. And I was sharing the femicide census and trying to get people engaged in that. I don't think I've had people sort of be confrontational with me. I used to have a circle of friends my age, and I can now count the number of friends that I've got on one hand and that's because they're not online, so we don't talk about politics, and if they knew that I was here, they would be really offended and they would jump on the ideology. Right?
The same thing was said about Kathleen Stock. They would say she's a TERF, so she wants trans people to kill themselves, so she wants me to be dead and it absolutely breaks my heart that my friends, who I really, really care about could believe that because they disagree with them on single sex spaces in refuges and prisons.
Julie: Clearly much work to be done, which is what we know. We're in the midst of the worst backlash I've ever seen. It's the modern day men's rights movement, whatever you want to call it, but what I'm going to do now, don't worry. I'll go through right up to 100.
Two women in their thirties please volunteer to come and do the same as our friends here.
Thank you so much.
This is great. I know that I personally know someone who's in her nineties in this room, so we really are going to have long session.
What's your names?
Lucia and Freya
Julie: Thank you very much for joining us. So tell me a little bit about why you're here and what you hope to get out of the conference. And, and also just as we've heard from our other sisters, what difficulties you can see generationally, facing you at the moment as women in your 30s?
Lucia: I'm here because I needed to feel that I'm not the only one with my views.
I volunteer for nia, an East London rape crisis which is an amazing organisation. And gives me a lot of sisterhood. An International NGO children's rights and girls' rights charity. Terms like people who menstruate and so on and so forth it is heart-breaking. And I just struggled so much with the conversations that we are not having or the conversations that we are having in a way that is just heart-breaking and makes me think that what am I doing there without really addressing the issues that I have, but we worry about our work, worry about our livelihood.
So sometimes it's hard to stand up for what you believe and as I said to have that sense of solidarity. And I feel like, because as you can probably tell I'm a migrant, I'm not British. And I feel like I’m alienated from other women who are trying to fight for women's liberation.
I'm really active in the movement with Polish women who fought for the abortion rights in Poland. But I don't feel like I've got that sisterhood in here, in the UK yet. So I'm here to connect with other women and feel the nurturing and positive power that we have because all I've been feeling for the last four years, ever since I started to get involved in the anti-women movement in a conversation is desperation.
I am desperate. I am so sad and heartbroken. So I need you all.
Freya: I'm here because I got into feminism and politics a few years ago now. I'm a domestic abuse survivor and I wanted to help other women when I found my own confidence, I actually was a member of the Women's Equality Party. And I finally resigned not so long ago. And I bought my ticket for this conference, like the day after.
I’m really fed up with not being able to talk about male violence against women and what it is and being told that what is true and what is real is hateful and the generation thing. I was warned off you when I was a 1990s teenager.
I'm really glad that I found you again and I read your work, I think that women of my age, I owe so much to women like you, and we’re told that you're hateful people we should stay away from and it's just wrong.
Julie: It's interesting, isn't it? Because we focus very much on male violence towards women and girls. Because as I said previously, not everybody will agree on this, but it is the only thing that women have in common. And yet we're told all the time what divides us as opposed to what brings about solidarity.
And that's the theme of this conference. And definitely, I hope the theme of my book, not to ignore difference at all. I think the women's liberation movement has always been extremely good at recognising difference and structural inequality that intersects with the status we have as women and girls, and yet the new foe intersectionality as is presented, you know, amongst your age group, amongst younger women is very much an anti-feminist approach and not what Kimberlé Crenshaw ever meant to put forward as the theory in the first place.
Intersectionality does not mean favouring, posh, white men over women.
Again, there'll be dissented the room about this, there’ll be disagreement, feel free. I think quite frankly, it's only my business to look at the issue of transgenderism and trans people, in relation to what it means in terms of women only spaces, single-sex laws and provision and male violence.
I wouldn't have been interested. I would have been bothered by the extremely conservative, deeply misogynistic diagnosis that you can be trapped in the wrong body and there's a pink brain and blue brain. Of course its basis is, is problematic sexism, but I wouldn't have been interested or bothered particularly had this not been an issue that puts us in danger of male violence, excuses, condones male violence, provides an opportunity for male violence.
Look at the Spa in LA. Look at that Guardian newspaper and others bending over backwards to say, first of all, the woman of colour who reported the flasher, the sex offender in the women only spa in front of her daughter, was just a lying transphobe, a Christian right-winger. Then the other women that came forward were all liars as well, just transphobes then of course, it turned out the flasher was a convicted sex offender. So what did they do? What did the Guardian reporters do? And the trans activists do. And I make that distinction of trans activist as opposed to trans people. What did the trans activists do? They said, ah, but he wasn't a trans woman.
And it reminded me of a book I read, which was utterly staggering about the crimes of Peter Sutcliffe, the so-called Yorkshire ripper, who like Steven Wright in 2006, who killed five street prostituted women, was a punter. Of course Sutcliffe was a punter. I mean, these men commit all kinds of crimes against women and girls. And men that hate women tend to actually pay for sexual access to someone who isn’t consenting. We call it rape. So they were punters.
But what this particular theme in this book written by a pro prostitution activist said was ‘Peter Sutcliffe masqueraded as a punter in order to get access’.
What the actual fuck? And this was not a trans woman. Well, we didn't say that he was. I mean, we said that this just was a bloke with a stiffy in a sauna. So for me, it comes down to male violence otherwise it's not my business.
And I get really concerned about some of the kinds of the anti-trans for anti-trans sake. [audible shouting from outside]
Just as an aside, the favourite placard about me in a protest ‘Bindel is not peer reviewed’.
And I remember saying to the organisers, ‘I hope my mother never sees this’.
Anyway, is there a pressing question either to our friends here or a point that you want to make about the way forward in terms of solidarity across the generations and something that you’re doing or that's occurred to you during these conversations or feel free to speak, if there's anything you want to say.
An older woman
This is partly a contribution, partly a question because how do we get off the ideology, and I think you were saying the same sort of thing, working together because to me there are risks for trans women from what, in terms of violence from men. And that there are things that we do have in common. But it seems to me when you have one-to-one conversations with people who are trans women, and you say, well, why don't we work together on what the practical solutions to your shared spaces to prisons, to changing rooms and start imagining actually fantastic services. Men in prisons also shouldn't be subject to male violence. So you start unpicking the structures of our society by working together on how we actually create a society where everyone can be safe and live in dignity. That’s my spiel and always goes down well and ‘trans women are women’ because I don't agree all the other things I say, they’re not willing to work with me. I’m very happy to work with anyone.
So I guess I'm asking if that resonates at all?
If someone says, transwomen are women. There's never going to be agreement. We can surely no one in this room wishes any harm to trans people. There are protections against discrimination et cetera, et cetera, so how do we get those conversations going and cut through the flak and actually start creating the society that isn't about divide and rule?
It is about what do we have in common? What do we not? How do we protect everyone, everyone in this country?
Freya: I've had a very similar conversation with some friends of mine and we always go back to the words, deeds, not words. I'm just going to carry on doing what I'm doing. I'm being a good person. I'm being open and showing people what I am or what I believe and what I want to do rather than getting involved in big ideological debates.
I have a trans friend who came out to me not so long ago. He lives abroad and I'm going over there together and stay with them. He's not fully out yet. So I still say he, and go shopping and chat and have fun and just be friends, even though we are so ideologically opposed at the moment.
And, and that's what I'm just going to carry on doing deeds, not words every single time.
Lucia: I think that. there was an issue there that we are also exhausted in this fight that we assume that, you know, what trans activists are presenting as their ideology is what trans people feel and think, and their attitude towards ourselves and feminists is the same as that of trans activists. And I think we just, you know, as you said, you know, young and older trans people will have so much in common with us.
And I think they are our allies quite often, and we are allies of them as well. It's just that fact that I cannot look past the hatred in the trans activist movement. And that's a barrier for me personally. So I, because I take it so emotionally, so personally I react very quickly and it's hard to manage those emotions.
So obviously, you know, it would be hard for me to probably sit at a table with someone who's a trans activist. It would take a lot of time and effort from my side to really be able to have an open-minded conversation. So I don't think it would happen easily and quickly. I think it would be, you know, a joint effort to really have a constructive conversation.
But that is the conversation that I would envisage in my head with a trans activists. The conversations I had with non-binary people, especially the young, non-binary people are completely different and they really truly they want to have that conversation. So I think they really do want to have the conversation and we can make an effort to talk to them, especially understand why they feel that they are non-binary.
Why, when I say that I'm gender critical, they feel that they should be afraid of me. Why is it? Why they are choosing certain ways to describe themselves? What's underlying under those decisions? Is it about looking at human being as a human being. I am terrible because when someone sends me an email and they put she and they in their signature, I instantly judge them.
And the other side is judging me the same way I judge them. So it's about breaking down. Okay. Why do you have those issues? Why do you have a she her in your signature let's have a conversation? You know, what do you think about male violence? As a person not representing a certain position.
Just you as a human let's have that conversation. Let's get angry together. Let's muster the power to make a change and you can make a change for your people. I can make a change from my people. You know, there's so much space in the world that we should really start talking about third spaces, but that just my personal opinion, that the third spaces is one of the things we could sit around a table and have a conversation about.
Julie: I'm going to take some more questions but I don't want to focus on transgender issues. I want to look at feminist resistance to male violence, and also like to think about, and of course that is highly relevant, but we've had that conversation in this session and there'll be other sessions.
But I also want to think about is the, as I write at least one and a half chapters in my book, I talk about sexuality, being a lesbian, what that means, and that it's not actually something that we're just inflicted with chromosomally at birth, and that there is actually a political stance to this, which is the most misunderstood term on the planet.
Of course we'll get back to that in a minute. But also with that comes a critique of heterosexuality. That doesn't mean a criticism by the way of heterosexual women. And the two are often mistaken and conflated. It means we did have a very important politics of looking at what heterosexuality does under patriarchy and therefore what lesbian resistance to that actually is.
Yes, of course you can also fancy women, like I'm not suggesting that this is something that you do for the movement. There are enough. Right now we're not recruiting.
If somebody would like to make a comment or ask a question about those themes, I would really welcome that. I think I saw you had your hand up. Do you want a mike?
Audience member: No
[Question not very audible]
I wanted to ask, was it a normal trend for a generation to go against the generation before and is this now worse than it’s ever been?
Julie: That's a really good question. And it's a much worse. And in fact, for me, and maybe I was lucky, I happened upon Leeds when I was 17 years old, where in 1979, there was a vibrant, vibrant women's liberation movement. And of course it was partly in response to the growth of mainstream pornography or pornography being mainstream.
And of course it was partly in response to Peter Sutcliffe, the botched police investigation, the misogyny that uncovered and the media reporting. But it was a brilliant, brilliant time because there was no generational divide. Except for, as I say, I was an idiot. I didn't know anything. And my sisters who were older than me taught me the ropes.
There is no other feminism that makes any sense, except for there's patriarchy. Women are oppressed under patriarchy, male dominance isn't innate boy babies aren't born to rape, girls aren't born victims. This is a system of oppression. This is about being privileged to be born with a penis, and we need to fight it whilst united, a feminism for all women, even if not all women are feminists.
So it just made absolutely total sense. And of course there are differences within that. I remember making a deal with the then anarchist women, that if we went round with them blocking up the fur coat shops, locks on the fur coat shops, they would come and break the windows of the porn shops.
I remember the conversations with the animal liberationists where we said animals were abused in porn too, ‘right we’re on it’.
But there was no hostility. There were arguments and differences and debates. And that's what conferences were for. And those of us, my age and older will remember the interminable plenary, where all the issues came out at the end. And it was a massive bun fight. And there's a friends of mine who says that her worst nightmare. In fact, I think she had this nightmare was that she was in an eternal plenary and that was her forever.
So what's happened now is, and this is my take on it. And I'd love to hear your take on it: is that men on the left, we know about men on the right, they don't want equality, blah, blah, blah, they’re bad, some are nice people, but they don't want women to be liberated. So men on the left, of course, this is not a good look, is it?
Because when we got past the real kind of dinosaur stage, not those dinosaurs, and we got past the beer and sandwiches, stage of sexism, blatant sexism, then men started to recognise that the women's liberation movement was, well, we were right and we were also very influential and it wasn't good for them to call us birds and tell us to put the kettle on.
So they learned to walk the walk and talk the talk and actually some of them are genuinely decent and agree with our aims and objectives and are feminist allies, not feminists, feminist allies.
But what this stuff has done is it's given them permission to call us cunts and bitches without using those words to stay on the right side of history. By just saying whatever SWERFs, TERFs irrelevant. Oh, the ageism coming from the young beards is unbelievable right now. And so actually I blame them. I blame those men. I've struggled to not use this word because I don't think it's a good word, but they are handmaidens because they're not feminists. They're too privileged to need feminism they think. And so they give them kudos. And so these men have been able to become so deeply misogynistic while still appearing to be progressive. And what they've done is they've told our sisters that have been up here now, and so many of you in this room, that this is liberating. It's pro sex, it's be kind and this is the way forward we’re just all of a sudden, weirdly, so many of us have changed from being human rights advocates who've spent decades fighting for the rights of women and girls who are firmly on the left. All of a sudden we’re Nazis and bigots. Isn't that funny? What a turnaround. So, so that's, that's my view. No, it is a whole different scene today. Young women have been kept from older feminists. There's an invisible barrier, but it's a very, very high wall to climb.
Audience member: I certainly in my life feel that I get more feminist as I get older, because I think the for some women, especially more middle class women in the cities. You can have this pretence when you're younger, things are okay. You do the job, you go to work, you get a driving license. You feel kind of cool. You go out with your mates.
For me when my friends started experiencing domestic violence after I had children and I realised how unequal that makes you and you just start to put the pieces together. And I think also the sexual violence debate, I think sometimes when you're younger, we do still think that it's an isolated incident and you get a bit older, you realise that everybody's had it, that accumulation of, of understanding of what the patriarchy does as you kind of see where it comes up in your life bit by bit. I think you can be a bit insulated from that, or you think you're insulated from that and that's a problem as well of why it doesn't dawn on people till later how important the feminist movement is.
Julie: I completely agree completely.
A very recent tragic example of this. I recently met a young woman she's 29, called Louise, who was married to Sam Pybus. He killed a woman called Sophie Moss. He was sexually exploiting her. I will not call it having an affair with her. She was desperately vulnerable. She was a hugely problematic drinker, very, very physically ill, mentally unwell. And he was sneaking off from his marital home to have sex with her and he choked her to death. And he said that she had asked him to choke her to death. And of course the CPS are great friends with the women's liberation movement!
They didn't even charge him with murder and take the case before a jury. So Sam Pybus didn't have a trial. It was decided that this woman asked to be murdered basically. And that she had asked for all she'd got, because she was no better than she ought to be. So he was sentenced to four years and eight months.
And of course we all went berserk about it because there's the brilliant campaign group started by young women ‘We can't consent to this’ doing brilliant work and actually did achieve getting the rough sex defence, as it’s euphemistically called, struck off the defence, whatever, there’s lawyers in the room, who know better than me.
It was no longer there is a potential defence and that was in the Domestic Abuse Bill 2020, and then along comes Sam Pybus, and when the police nicked him, they went around to Louise's house and didn't tell her what had happened, but ask her if he choked her during sex. And she said yes, without asking without consent. And when I told him I didn't like it, he stopped doing it.
Now they use that not to put forward a case to the CPS to put him on trial, but they used it as part of his defence. And he was very, very drunk when he killed Sophie Moss, way, way, way over the limit. And had he killed Sophie Moss by driving his car recklessly, he would've got longer in prison than he did for taking her life.
And by coincidence, Louise grew up from where I grew up in Darlington in the Northeast of England. And so we met and we've become good friends and colleagues and she's come to feminism. I mean, she's always known what's what, but has come to feminist activism and campaigning and she's really extraordinary because she spoke out in extremely personal terms, that must have been very, very hard for her. We interviewed her for a national newspaper, and I did an interview for Times, radio with her. So have a listen, if you can. She's extraordinary because she's fighting for justice for Sophie Moss, despite the fact that it puts her in the limelight and she has friends coming to her now, and I know she doesn't mind me telling you this, all her friends are coming to her now saying, by the way, he spat at me when we were having sex, not this particular tosser, other tossers. He choked me. He slapped me to the point of where she does not know one woman, her age, who's having non-violent sex, not one.
So, so I think what you said about young women and how difficult it is to be fed this line of what is actually good for us, when it's so difficult to speak out against highly personal things who wants to go public and say what men have done?
Many of us do, but it's really hard to get young women to say that when they've been told it's liberating and its fun.
Audience member.
[The following question mostly inaudible]
She reminded me of a conversation I had with my Mother. I was explaining to her. What should I expect? What makes a relationship acceptable?
As a young woman, I need older woman experienced with women to tell me that. I know what is wrong, but I need to know what is right.
Julie: So in five minutes, I'm going to introduce a very good friend who's going to talk about an atrocity happening in Ethiopia. Which of course is about male violence against women and girls. But who could deny Fiona the floor.
Fiona Broadfoot: I run a project called Build a Girl and I work on estates with working class girls and I talk to them about feminism and celebrate feminism and these girls, seriously Just talk about everywhere. Last night outside my hotel, just having a bit of fresh air. And there were two young women and they were saying, come to the conference. We have to just go in there and have these difficult conversations. And I'm a really proud working class woman, but we're still at the bottom of the heap where feminism is concerned and where opportunities are concerned.
I'm a sex trade survivor. So there's been a lot of barriers in getting employment and education, I’m in my 50s. We just have to get out that and do this, not keep talking about it just get out there and into communities, get talking about feminism, everywhere we can have difficult conversations and important conversations. You know, this young girl saying I can’t I am a lesbian because I'm in this non binary, blah, blah, blah world and all this stuff.
Julie: Fiona Broadfoot is the founder of the modern day sex trade abolitionist movement in this country.
Fiona: I just thank feminism so much. It saved my life.
Julie: Fiona has changed more lives than could fit in this room. I want you to announce the HOPE project, if you would Fiona I know you don't need a mic because you've got a big gob but so everyone can hear -
Fiona: Criminalisation happened to me at a very young age. I was criminalised on the streets. I was reduced to worth less than the pavement. I mean, I'm from Yorkshire, Yorkshire stones are worth a lot. I was worth less than the fucking paving slab that I was stood on but I were criminalised for it.
A few years ago, Harriet Wistrich after many, many attempts to get this in to a court of law. We managed to hold the state to account and women who are criminalised no longer have to disclose a history of prostitution.
So the next fight is the HOPE campaign. We're going to the European Court of Human Rights. We want the whole of this country standing in solidarity with us women, men, children, alike. HOPE stands for History of Prostitution Expunged.
There is going to be a session tomorrow on it that can you kind of talk a bit more about but please chuck in a couple of quick. We’re skint we've got no money, the amazing Julie Swede.
We're going to take this to the top and we're going to free women, change the law because women should not be criminalised for abuse. It should be the man who are criminalised for buying and selling women.
Julie: Thanks so much at Julie and Fiona.
For the final part of this session, I want to give the floor to the wonderful Zemzem Mohamed, a very dear friend. Zemzem and her husband was staying at our home. They needed somewhere to stay. Your husband came to us first and you were traveling back from Newcastle I think having done your accountancy course, and I could hear some shouting in the bathroom. I was off with tonsillitis. So what’s all that shouting? And it turns out it was Zemzem telling the husband to clean the bloody bathroom. ‘How could you have been here for two days and not actually cleaned the entire house’ she said to him.
So that was my introduction to Zemzem. So over to you and to Harriet to introduce the topic and Zemzem the floor is all yours.
Harriet Wistrich: Zemzem I think this is your first feminist conference, isn't it? And hopefully not your last.
Zemzem just wants this opportunity to talk about a terrible situation that's happening in a country near from where she grew up and is asking for your help with her campaign.
Zemzem can you tell us a bit about what is happening in Tigray region and why you want to campaign around that and help the women and children there.
Zemzem: Okay. Hello everybody. First of all, I just wanted to say thank you for all of you who are listening to us and thank you for Julie and Harriet go? Have I already told them in the beginning, what I want to do, and they suggested me to come over and share it with all of you.
First of all, let me introduce myself. My name is Zemzem as Harriet and Julie said, I'm originally from Eritrea. A country is near to Ethiopia. I came to this country about 2005, and I found this wonderful people who have been supporting me. I've been working since I got my right to work. I came for a political reason for my country.
I flew to the UK, I seek asylum and I was granted it thank God. When I started working, I start with Oxfam finance in Newcastle while I was a refugee before I was having the right to work. Then when I had a right to work, I start working in a care home. I say kitchen assistant, and then moved to do a few courses. And then I started working on the underground and I started with the Network Rail for last eight years. And recently I started my own business, which I'm doing, which allowed me to move around and do what I love to do. And so today the reason I am here is just to let you know, there is a genocide that is happening in the region called Tigray.
I don't know if you heard about it. It's inside Ethiopia it is ethnical cleansing, and that unfortunately they are using rape as a weapon. And it's really terribly, terribly, terribly way of raping women. I've got all the links for feedback as well from the Amnesty International for the CNN report.
And I know and understand that there's small children's around. I wouldn't go much in details about what they do with the kind of rape to women. It's really heart breaking, but you feel free to check it out. We have a hashtag, Tigray genocide as well as a hashtag, stop the war on Tigray.
I've got leaflets which has got all the links for the CNN and the Amnesty International, basically.
Why is this happening? That is some of you might be wondering, well, why has genocide has happened? Well, only a population 7 million so they are the minority in Ethiopia.
There is like 100 million populations. So they just try to cleanse the region and officially the government of Ethiopia, announced on the 4th of November to clean the ethnical cleansing. And then when they come the way that they concentrate on the genocide, is women to be raped and also to be damage their womb so not to give birth and officially done a video of what they take out of the women's vagina.
The CNN has done, lots of work of them doing this, and this is independent investigation that has been done. And as well as they focus on very young children's and you know, like men or women, whatever, and killed them badly. Again, I just warn you, if you go to those Amnesty International or CNN, please mind that there is very disturbing videos that you will be seeing, the graphical and all that.
So obviously for the last 11 months, it's not one month or two months, it's 11 months and there is not any access to humanitarian help. Still the government, even the British government is doing really well of pushing the Ethiopian government to gain access, to give humanitarian, but it's still not possible in Tigray until today for the last 11 months. No water you know, they just dig on the floor and get some water. There is no phone services, no bank services, even those who are in the middle class can’t help the poor people. They can't get access to their bank accounts. And then at the same time, the Ethiopian government has invited the Eritrean government to participate in this war. And they did.
And obviously, because they did all this damage, the Eritrean government has looted all them, you know, the hospital things. And it's all been on the report on the CNN and AI as well. So hospitals are empty. There is no any medical help or services. So the people are desperate, desperate. it's been confirmed full genocide with a manmade famine.
You know, and I personally went. Every single day I sit in my sitting room and go home and think about this. I can't even do my business. Every day I'm staying awake until almost two, 3:00 AM to think about what can I do? I just feel like nothing.
And I give you this example, Harriet knows about it. My mom lived in Tigray and I had a phone call a couple of weeks ago.
And I was being told my mom is in a critical condition where she had a stroke on the side because she couldn't get her diabetic medication, blood pressure medication, no food to buy for her and I can't send money because there is no any access. And I felt so badly because at the same time I have ability to do whatever I can do to save her. But there is no way I can go and get in person to do what I wanted to do. It makes me more like, you know what, don't just sit down and watch what is happening in the world, do something.
Then I decided to say, okay, if I can’t reach my mom, but there is people who have luckily escaped to the Sudan refugee camp and I needed to reach out to them and see what their need is, their essential needs. Let's put it that way. And I say to Harriet, I have like 3 Grand that I have from my children saving. And I'm going to Sudan to visit the refugee and give what I can give. At least I, if my mum passed away, I will feel I gave somebody else instead of her. And Harriet said to me, why can't we share it all of us so that you can reach to as many people as you can when you go there in person.
And I said, okay, that's fine. And that is how we start to come up here. So what I wanted from all of us is first of all, first of all, spread it. The awareness, be the voice for the voiceless. Please check all this when you get your own free time and just help us on Twitter, help us to make it a way that to be aware in any different way that you think that the voice can be heard.
That's the main thing that I wanted for all of you. The women there, ladies, girls suffering there so badly. And the other thing I wanted to do is, as I told you, I do my own business. I can go anywhere and do whatever I want to do with my business. So I decided to give my time, my effort to where to go first started studying of what the need is, and also give the aid that is available to the people who are in Sudan, the refugee, as well as, as soon as the access being granted in Tigray, I wanted to work on women's and children who are affected with this conflict.
And the other thing is the women who are raped, unfortunately, They are always been by their own family member. They are not accepted anymore. Nobody understand it's not their fault. I will give you this example. When I was in Eritrea, I did in the radio of with Harriet, I was raped and I was having two miscarriages. None of my family member were understanding where the cause is because I was forced to go to military and I was forced to be raped many times, and I was having two miscarriages. So I know how these women are feeling out there. And I know they can't speak to themselves. And I know that it's the dark around them, but I want to give them hope that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, they can do much things.
And I went to just to see what, how, and where they can start and how we can all give them that hope that they can still have that life the way I have right now. I thank you for listening.
Julie: Thank you. And we'll do everything Zemzem, we are inspired by you and it's interesting how long it took to get through to our mainstream media and how it was through your efforts. And then because Harriet and I have contacts at Woman's Hour that your, your friend was able to have a slot on Woman's Hour and why didn't the researchers it know about this?
Why weren't they coming to Zemzem? Or to other women that are Eritrean or Ethiopian settled in the UK that have spoken out because that just wasn't proactive. So that's why we're a movement so that we can do this. And thank you to Helen Thompson and her friends for helping get this leaflet together that Zemzem drafted and then was put into a form that, you know, we have got as a resource. And so again, you know, it's collective working, isn't it? And that's what we're here for.
Zemzem: The leaflet, it's free to take it so that we can create the awareness. It's just the #Tigraygenocide hashtag. And as I say to you, even though I'm not from Tigray, I support humanity need to women's, especially and children.
Even my own family member. They not happy for me to fight for this because I'm originally from Eritrea, which I'm accusing my own government of killing and looting and raping Tigrayen women so it's a kind of challenge, but I do stand with it and I would never give up.
Harriet Wistrich: Oh, one other thing which maybe haven’t emphasised is that money is needed to support the project that Zemzem is doing. And she's created a Gofundme page and it's on Facebook as well. And I think it's all on the leaflets and we'll put it on the Whova app as well. So if you've got any spare money just to donate a bit and spread the word, that would be brilliant.
Zemzem: There isn't any small amount, you know, every little, make lots of difference. And that, to be honest with you now, for initial things that I wanted to go and do the assessment and reach out to give the aid is simply for those women who can't even ask for pads for those women who can't ask even for food, because there is no much food in the refugee camp.
They can, I saw the pictures is all ripped off because of the rain has fallen. And also the children's and there's also lots of people who are very ill, but they don't have any one to pay for their medical bills as well. So I'm trying to do the assessment, but at the same time, I want to give the aid that it's necessary, which is the more essential needs, So, okay with your generosity. Thank you very much.
When you go to the Gofundme you find all the links that are related to the matter.
Julie: But take a leaflet when you go and thank you Zemzem and Harriet. It’s now my job to just wrap up this session and to say thank you to everybody who's spoken, who asked questions.
There are, there are many themes that we could delve into in terms of what a real feminism for women looks like as opposed to a faux feminism that benefits men. And, you know, Zemzem speaking about this particular atrocity has reminded me of just to state, always about that intersection between imperialism, colonialism, racism, poverty, and class prejudice, which of course is so prevalent in the sex trade. And yet the left seems to support it, but also atrocities that I've written about and investigated such as the breast milk trading Cambodia, which might not on the surface of it look like violence against women, all the global surrogacy trade, which again, may just look like something so nice and kind to do.
But when you dig down into it, this is about rich privileged people, often men mining the bodies of black, brown and poor women. And that intersection that the interface between capitalism and patriarchy, racism and colonialism is what we understand happens to women because we're a global women's movement. So I'm just going to end on saying, obviously we're all brilliant.
We will prevail. And it's so great. Lisa-Marie and her colleague, Sally, all of the organisers, who've put this conference together. It always galvanizes a new wave of our current movement. Doesn't it? I just feel that so strongly here. So sisterhood, solidarity. Thank you everybody.