PETITIONING & OTHER SUPPORT
This month we emailed our MPs, calling on them to contact the Chief Constable of our local police force and ask them to withdraw a new policy that permits police officers to strip and even intimately search suspects of the opposite sex if the officer self-identifies as the same ‘gender’ as the person being searched. Join this WRN action and email your MP through the the WRN website.
We also emailed our MPs a summary of the new Sex Matters report Women’s Services: A Sector Silenced, requesting that our MPs write to the Minister for Women and Equalities (Kemi Badenoch) and ask for the government to clarify the Equality Act and protect women’s services. You can send the report to your MP through the Sex Matters website.
Following the removal of a number of books by ‘gender critical’ authors (all female of course) from shelves in libraries across Calderdale, we took part in Calderdale Libraries’ consultation on their proposed new Stock Management Policy. The consultation period ended on 31 January and we are keen to read the results of the consultation soon.
We also made a small donation to a group of 23 women and men from across the UK and the ROI to take a pub to court. The group was denied service and one group member was assaulted as a result of their beliefs following a Let Women Speak event in Belfast. You can find out more about the case and donate here.
#LetWomenSpeakLondon
On 28 January some of us attended #LetWomenSpeak at Hyde Park in London. Kelly-Jay Keen’s first 2024 London event had a good turnout and we estimate there were around 130 attendees at the peak. The talks included the North London Fawcett Society newly-elected chair announcing an upcoming talk on pornography, a refutation of Foucault’s historical distortions of Victorian sexuality, some poetry and discussions of recent media coverage, a legal win for same-sex care in hospitals, a woman’s account of desisting from trans-identification, an announcement for a monthly meet-up for gay men who reject gender identity ideology and the extreme difficulty of establishing lesbian-only events safely. One attendee was arrested during the event though his near-immediate de-arrest/release luckily meant that he could join everyone in the pub afterwards. You can watch all the talks here.
PRO-FEMINIST DISCUSSION GROUP: ROBERT JENSEN – GETTING OFF: PORNOGRAPHY AND THE END OF MASCULINITY
Four our first discussion group of 2024 we chose Robert Jensen’s hard-hitting 2007 book ‘Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity’, the PDF of which is freely available via the link. You can read the write-up of our meeting here.
NEXT DISCUSSION GROUP MEETING
The next group will take place on in February and we will be reading Sharron Davies’ ‘Unfair Play‘. Keep an eye out on our social media to find out the exact time and date.
To find out more and to join our discussion group, please email us.
