Feminists From England

"I think the insensitivity surrounding all parties' approach to asylum and immigration has a lot to say for the rise in not only anti-Semitism but any form of racism directed at immigrants. All parties have been responsible for not dealing with the issue in an appropriate manner."

"To my dismay, for all the talk about the values of equality, diversity and respect at last week's NUS conference, in practice nothing could be further from the truth, in relation to anti-semitism. A leaflet was readily available on the GUPS stalls at the conference for two days. The text was the typical anti-semitic work; the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Once again, complaints were met with unacceptable delays and silence. Many people claim that being anti-Israel/Zionist isn't being anti-semitic. But why does hatred of Israel lead them to turn a blind eye to the Protocols on a GUPS pamphlet? Furthermore, while the UJS has always preached a two-state solution and peace, time and time again we see others reject it. This is evident in the attack on a UJS peace stall at the European Social Forum. University authorities are also dismissive of these issues - look at the Israeli boycot motions put to this month's Association of University Teachers conference."

"I have to be very careful what I say here. I'm disappointed by the fact that they are playing to other parties' policies in order to discuss it all. Whereas the Labour Party in the past have been so strong and so active in combating and standing up for themselves, I'm surprised that on this particular issue, it's unfortunate that it's been played into."

"But as he also points out, time teaches you that fame is relative. In 1983, [[w:Robert Lindsay|[Robert] Lindsay]] starred as Edmund in a Granada TV version of King Lear. "Larry Olivier, who was very poorly at the time, was Lear." he says. "And there we were in makeup. At Granada, there was this huge makeup trailer. At one end there was Larry in his crown, and sitting down the other end was Doris Speed, who played Annie Walker in Coronation Street." At a certain moment, Olivier rose from his seat – in Lindsay’s memory, it was a throne – and made his way slowly down to Speed. The trailer was silent. Everyone was agog. "He stood behind her, and he leaned into her mirror," says Lindsay. "And then he said [cue a pitch-perfect impression of Olivier]: 'My darling, on behalf of the theatrical profession, I'd like to congratulate you on a performance that has given such heart to the nation. It's real, it's humorous, and we love you so much. Congratulations, my darling, and thank you." Olivier then made his way back to his own seat, at which point Doris Speed looked up at her makeup artist and said: 'Who’s that?'""

"How many more dramas like this will be made? Why don't film-makers write fiction any more? What is wrong with our culture that stories about abused women are served up, like so much supper on a tea tray, week after week, month after month?"

"I feel quite private about the fact that I have cancer. As a friend put it, while lavish presents are most welcome, I don’t want to be squirted all over with pity. But the trouble is that I’m a writer: like Nora Ephron (I wish), for me (almost) everything is copy. I will keep outing myself, and making inappropriate jokes."

"While I accuse no one of anti-Semitism, this year NUS has been a bystander to Jew-hatred [...] In the past three days, at the heart of our democratic union, to my horror, I have seen the events of the year replayed."

"The volume and toxicity of stuff thats come from the left for daring to speak out, for daring to address this, because it's so incongruous with the values that I'm supposed to share with people on the left around anti-Semitism. People believe that there is a place for anti-Semitism on the left, that's what I found particularly challenging and difficult over in particular this past year. Not that it hasn't occurred at all before but it's certainly been given oxygen and I only have to reflect on what I've seen and the volume of it and from those accounts that use the hashtag #JC4PM in their biography."

"And who can blame them? After more than 370 pages, I began to feel half mad myself. At times, the world Barnes describes, with its genitalia fashioned from colons and its fierce culture of omertà, feels like some dystopian novel. But it isn’t, of course. It really happened, and she has worked bravely and unstintingly to expose it. This is what journalism is for."

"I'm glad that I left the Labour party [...] Everything that has happened since then proves that I was right to leave. The great party that I joined is a shell of its former self."

"In its sights are those people who, even as they loudly proclaim their righteous politics, are apt to label older women as Karens and Terfs; who either roundly ignore or demonise the views of such women, however well-founded or based in experience; who write with open loathing of their bodies, their haircuts and their clothes; who struggle to acknowledge that they have benefited even the smallest bit from the legacy of those who went before them; who would, in effect, like women over the age of 45 either to shut up or to disappear altogether. It is, to be clear, a very good book, one that brilliantly and unrelentingly exposes all the weasel ways in which ageist misogyny enables regressive beliefs to be recast as progressive. In my eyes, it’s a future classic, up there with Joan Smith's Misogynies and Susan Faludi's Backlash. But it's also, I’m afraid, very painful to read. Like many women of my age and background, I feel myself to be approaching my zenith. How agonising to be reminded that, in some senses, this counts for nothing at all."

"Why do people with antisemitic views think today's Labour party is the right place for them? And why are so many people on the left still averting their eyes? The exit from the party of the Liverpool MP Luciana Berger is a case in point, bluntly summed up by the leftwing Jewish journalist Rachel Shabi: "A Jewish MP left Labour because of the tide of antisemitism directed at her and I don’t think the terrible significance of this has sunk in for chunks of the left.""

"It is almost four years to the day since you left our Labour Party. I say 'our' deliberately. You left because you were forced out by intimidation, thuggery and racism. Yours was a principled and brave move. But it was one you should never have been forced to take. That day will forever be a stain on Labour's history. I don’t need to explain to you the litany of failures that left you — a Labour MP with a huge future ahead of you — no longer feeling welcome in your own party. Instead, I want to once again apologise."

"[On Russell Brand and the allegations of sexual abuse made against him] And beyond this, the enabling. It seems clear that senior TV executives and many others knew of his reputation – you only had to have ears to know: his harassment of a BBC newsreader was broadcast live on air – and yet, no one ever stopped him. He had multiple chances. People – men, mostly – ask how this can be happening again. Operation YewTree, #MeToo: why isn't it time up, they ask? I share the weariness, though really, they've no idea: like most women, I've had decades of sexual harassment, of being talked over, and belittled, and patronised. But there's so much hypocrisy in play here; the same men won't listen – not properly – to women's concerns about their safety. Male indignation on this is extremely selective, and extremely limited. Dispatches found only one male comedian to talk about Brand and the way women on the comedy circuit have long warned each other about him: Daniel Sloss. (A hero to me now – and shame on any others who were approached and declined to speak.)"

"One of these stores is in Sheffield, where I grew up and where half my family still lives. It began its life in 1847 as a silk mercer whose proprietors were some brothers called Cole – the site of the original shop is still known as Coles Corner, a spot immortalised in the song by Richard Hawley – and thanks to this long history, people in the city are heartbroken at its imminent disappearance. (They are furious, too: it’s only six months since the council spent £3.4m buying its current building, the better that it might make its lease more affordable to John Lewis, which Coles became in 2002.) "Bad news," wrote my brother on WhatsApp after the closure was announced, a cue for us to remember its toy department, where as children we hankered after Lego, and its cafe, where we lived in hope of a vanilla slice (the cake stand rotated decorously, your hovering hand italicising your greed). On Twitter, the old photographs came thick and fast. My favourite, posted by the editor of the Sheffield Star, Nancy Fielder, was of the crowds at the opening of the store’s new building in Barker's Pool in 1963, the men in ties and flat caps, the women in cat's eye spectacles and mushroom-shaped hats."

"What you experienced was intolerable and unacceptable. The abuse you suffered was disgusting. You were left isolated and exposed. Shamefully, those who should have defended you stood by. The Labour Party — our party — has always prided itself on being a party of equality, collectivism, solidarity and anti-racism. But during those dark days we were none of those things. Before you were forced out of the party, you were an outstanding member of parliament ... Both the Labour Party and British politics are poorer places without you. I would be honoured to work alongside you in continuing to build a Labour Party we can be proud of again — a Labour Party that can win again."

"Forcing a vote [on the winter fuel payment] to make many older people iller and colder while you and your favourite colleagues enjoy free family trips to events most people would have to save hard for — why are you not showing even the slightest bit of embarrassment?"

"As prime minister, your managerial style and technocratic approach, and lack of basic politics and political instincts, have come crashing down on us as a party after we worked so hard, promised so much, and waited a long 14 years to be mandated by the British public to return to power. Since the change of government in July, the revelations of hypocrisy have been staggering and increasingly outrageous. I cannot put into words how angry I and my colleagues are at your total lack of understanding about how you have made us all appear."

"In the interests of full transparency, I should say that Rosie Duffield's a friend of mine. We'd probably have been friends no matter where or how we'd met, but we found each other as part of a group of women fighting to retain women's rights."

"The sleaze, nepotism and apparent avarice are off the scale [...] I am so ashamed of what you and your inner circle have done to tarnish and humiliate our once proud party."

"Someone with far-above-average wealth choosing to keep the Conservatives’ two-child limit to benefit payments which entrenches children in poverty, while inexplicably accepting expensive personal gifts of designer suits and glasses costing more than most of these people can grasp — this is entirely undeserving of holding the title of Labour prime minister."

"How dare you take our longed-for victory, the electorate’s sacred and precious trust, and throw it back in their individual faces and the faces of dedicated and hardworking Labour MPs?"

"It seems Rosie has received literally no support from [Keir] Starmer over the threats and abuse, some of which has originated from within the Labour Party itself, and has had a severe, measurable impact on her life. But she fights on ... because she feels she has no choice. Like me, she believes the stakes are too high to walk away."

"Today I have made the extremely difficult decision not to attend local hustings events during this general election campaign. Hustings are usually an enjoyable and interesting part of any political campaign, but sadly the actions of a few fixated individuals have now made my attendance impossible. The constant trolling, spite and misrepresentation from certain people - having built up over a number of years and being pursued with a new vigour during this election - is now affecting my sense of security and wellbeing. The result is that I feel unable to be focused on giving a clear presentation of the Labour Party's manifesto commitments."

"The Labour Party was formed to speak for those of us without a voice, and I stood for election partly because I saw decisions about the lives of those like me being made in Westminster by only the most privileged few. Right now, I cannot look my constituents in the eye and tell them that anything has changed,” she said. “I hope to be able to return to the party in the future, when it again resembles the party I love, putting the needs of the many before the greed of the few.”"

"[In March 2023, Duffield] dared to like a tweet by the writer Graham Linehan, who was responding to a tweet by Eddie Izzard claiming that, had he lived in Nazi Germany, "I'd have been murdered for it". Linehan – and rightly, so in my view – retorted with a sarcastic, "Ah, yes, the Nazis, famously bigoted against straight white men with blonde hair." You might well think Izzard was wrong to make that comparison to Nazi Germany in trying to score points in the gender war. But remarkably, in Labour land, it is Duffield who is being investigated."

"Most backbenchers I'm friends with are women and most of us refer to the men that surround him [Keir Starmer], the young men, as 'the lads' and it's very clear that the lads are in charge. They have now got their Downing Street passes. They are the same lads who were briefing against me in the papers and other prominent female MPs."

"There are some women who get involved and want to be seen to be very woke ... but mostly it is men, and the same men that have trolled me ever since I got elected. So it looks like, feels like and smells like misogyny, and this is just the latest cause they have latched on to ... The fact that I am blonde — they call me a bimbo. The fact that I don’t like antisemitism. There is always something, but it is always the same people who attack me."

"For the first time in my life, having been an ambassador for a gender-balanced 50:50 parliament, I would hesitate to encourage other women to come into politics [...] I would have to really think about what I was asking them to do, and putting people into this position when they are going to be on the front line of some pretty shitty abuse."

"LGBT+ Labour now seem to hate my guts and I feared they’d have a massive go at me at conference [...] The people who threaten me I don’t think are actually likely to harm me. They just say it often and very loudly."

"It’s ridiculous and nothing about me is a dinosaur. I’m angry at colleagues chucking me on the railway tracks. I’m even more determined. I’m not a transphobe, I never have been and I never will be. I simply want to use the word women."

"I don’t talk about trans rights because I think it’s not my place to talk about trans rights. Trans people have got some great organisations and they’re very good at representing their rights, and that is just as it should be. Trans rights are the same rights as everyone else, but what concerns me is that there is a slight conflict in some cases between trans rights and women’s rights. Women’s rights are why I came to Parliament, and why I’m sitting here, because women are now visible in Parliament. I grew up in a very strong feminist household, and what really concerns me are the rights of women to have privacy and space, and the necessity to be in women’s refuge – not shared with someone with a male body."

"[On the possibility misgendering might become a hate crime.] Is that a serious thing? Is that coming to Parliament any time soon? I hope not because you might as well arrest me now. I'm not calling Eddie Izzard a woman."

"Being shouted down in the chamber by Labour men who clearly don't want women to speak up for our rights to single-sex spaces. How very progressive."

"Is it starting to look like Labour has a women problem? It certainly is for the 7,000-strong group of women members, councillors and activists who make up Labour Women’s Declaration and had a stall at last year’s party conference refused. It is for Lesbian Labour, who were also stopped from exhibiting at last year’s conference. It is for Dr Karen Ingala Smith, the formidable feminist campaigner who compiles a list of women killed in the UK each year which is then read out in parliament by Jess Phillips every International Women’s Day, and who had her membership rejected after she made a few gender-critical joke tweets featuring kittens."

"It was just a big load of scary noise, this giant person. When you’re bullied your brain starts to shut down. It’s protecting yourself. And you can’t think of the words; you’re not eloquent. I would misspeak, stutter, and he would exploit that."

"He was totally withdrawing from me, to let me know that I was not to be spoken to, and I wasn’t to talk to him, or be touched, or anything, and that was really hurtful. But it was always my fault, always, always, always, without question. And that got established from day one, even when he was still trying to woo me and charm me. [At the end of an argument.] He’d come up to me very earnestly, very sincerely, and say to me, "Are you going to be my good girl, now?""

"Those patterns continue: reward, punishment, promises of happy ever after, alternating with abject rage, menace, silent treatment and coercive control."

"His tempers were very violent. I knew I had to be careful. There was always an underlying threat. He would drive incredibly aggressively, yelling at me when I was trapped in the car. That was scary stuff. Because the feelings are violent, the violence is there in the room with you. The raising of a fist or the hand is the next logical step. He didn’t hit me. He did other things that made me realise he was in control."

"They don’t threaten criticise, yell or exert their physical strength in increasingly frightening ways. Not at the start. Not when they think you're sweet, funny and gorgeous. Not when they turn up to your third date with chocolates, then jewellery."

"[T]he Farage approach, much like that of Boris, is not only fun for the man, it seems to be just as fun for the woman."

"You learn that "I’ll always look after you" and "You’re mine for life" can sound menacing, are used as a warning over and over again."

"Many of us know that self-identifying as a woman does not make a person a biological woman who shares our lived experience. But for obvious reasons, these views are not voiced outside of closed rooms or private and secret WhatsApp groups. Even there, the most senior MPs often do not post a single word; they know exactly what’s at stake and not many of them want to be me. So for now, they mostly remain silent."

"In a strange city his face changes in a way you are starting to know and dread. In a way that tells you, you need to stay calm, silent and very careful. You read a city guide … mentally packing a day full of fun. But he seems to have another agenda. He doesn’t want you to leave the room. He’s paid a lot of money and you need to pay him your full attention. You are expected to do as you are told. You know for certain what that means, so you do, exactly what you are told. It’s when the ring is on your finger that the mask can start to slip and the promises sound increasingly like threats."

"Anti-black racism rightly gets a lot of attention. But perhaps it's time to figure out where Jews fit into the picture because, as the Tuck report makes clear, our struggles are just as real as those facing other minorities."

"The America of my childhood was not a place where Jews had to brace themselves for constant invocations of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, where Jewish excellence in entertainment triggered public mockery laced with canards about Jewish control, as in Dave Chappelle's monologue. And, on the left, it was not a place where being pro-Israel was seen to be a position of "white supremacy" — a crime, in the new American progressive universe, deemed far worse than antisemitism."

"But increasingly "gender critical feminist" is simply becoming another term for members of the public who are not willing to put up with this madness."

"Now that the parliamentary security team requests the details of your daily travel plans – when you'll be visiting your local supermarket, or the pub – it's hard not to feel that something has gone very wrong. Indeed, my local council records me as a safeguarding risk to my own children because of the threats I face as an MP."

""[D]on't feed the trolls" misses the point: if someone is obsessing about you to the point they are seeking out those around you, ignoring them won't disrupt their behaviour before it causes more damage."

"[From an article on Kanye West's admiration for Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.] It's hard to believe that this is all happening in the country of my childhood — a place where light antisemitism sometimes marred small Waspy towns like the one I grew up in, or circulated within certain communities, but didn’t dominate the ether. On the contrary. Crucially, there was a sense, an awareness, that Jews were an indispensable addition to American showbiz — and America was lucky to have them. The idea that celebrities, from comedy to music and sport (the NBA's Kyrie Irving recently promoted a terrifying book called Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America) might weekly spew some new Goebbels-grade sentiment would have seemed dystopian."