March 3, 2023 - Happy Friday! This post is being sent to all subscribers to this substack. It is free and shareable. For readers who don’t know, UK-based women’s rights activist Kellie-Jay Keen recently made a film called “Kellie-Jay in the USA: Let Women Speak.” That film aired on her YouTube
Thank you so much, Kara, for your work and highlighting how amazing women across the US are. (They are everywhere, but "KJK in the USA: Let Women Speak" takes place in the US.) Our strength and courage are inspirational and deserve acknowledgement.
I am the woman who flew across the country twice, to LA and NYC. It was a privilege to do so and I will do it again as opportunity presents. LA was tame, and in NYC the Antifa/TRA protest was off the rails. Almost all of the very few news reports misrepresented us and what Antifa was doing, with the Fox News interview with Jeanna Hoch being the most accurate.
Well said, Kara. I've been a great admirer of Jeni's writing but her many public attacks on KJK have appalled me and I was very dismayed by her response to the video, which I haven't finished watching yet because I've been so upset seeing what my brave sisters on your side of the Pond have had to endure. :-(
“ I also get that you and some other Brits simply like to dismiss all things American. I suppose this is a convenient and facile way of posturing as our superiors, and that might make you feel better about that embarrassing loss of tea in Boston Harbor (Harbour, if that’s important to you), followed by the embarrassing loss of the colonies, followed by the awkward loss of the Empire. Sure. But that cheap posturing is not new; it’s unremarkable. And I suppose I need to state the obvious - your posture is tiresome, provincial, and politically stupid, unless your primary loyalties are to something or someone other than the interests of all women as a sex class”
THANK YOU!!!
I’ve hit my limit with Europeans who do this (usually Brits). I want to say, tell it to all the immigrants, including my still British partner who has been here for 25 years and knows to go back to the UK is to return to a country with no future and little hope of doing well as climate and political disasters loom.
And in case the Brits or Europeans are unaware, YOU colonized this land and murdered indigenous people and created the USA. Then people here, who came to escape the shitty old countries that treated them so badly, kicked out the British Monarchy and won a war.
And as to the point of the ugly women (in spirit/values) who denounce women who speak for women, we have a name for that: Ball-palming handmaiden.
The same tragic women who fully do the bidding of patriarchy, when it is in a dress and wig or otherwise, are the ones telling young women it is “empowering” to be a “sex worker” (read: prositute, often groomed and trafficked). So they are so brilliant they think having some strangers dick (always a man’s even if he wears a dress and make-up) down your throat +power, and can’t see how backward that is, and that is indicator enough of how little we should value their opinions.
They can babysit the trans identifying mentals as their physical health devolves under the care of the medical industry, and they should remember to wear their red robes and not refer to themselves in any way that might trigger the men who are so much more oppressed because “identity.” I mean, someone is going to have to help the victims of the trans lie into their final identity as a statistic of a failed medical experiment, right? Let it be her.
Thank you for the Twitter handles of remarkable women to follow. Thank you for your passionate retort to a snide comment about your incredible sisters, who face obstacles and dangers that worry us on your behalf. Thank you for your rebuttal of an unnecessarily negative viewpoint. This is something we see too often, with women taking their eyes off the ball and criticising other women doing their best to combat the trans-identifying male ‘space invaders’ whose arrogance and entitlement are off the scale. Instead let’s uphold all the women, yea, even the ones we don’t like, working hard to restore women’s sex category, our name as women, and our rights to single-sex spaces, which really matter. We are slowly winning here on Terf Island, covered as we are by our Equality Act and our legal ability to exclude men in important instances. We hail each of your ‘law fare’ victories, in the courts and in the states that care to support you. You are all incredible women, whose “courage calls to courage everywhere and its voice cannot be denied.”
I have my political disagreements with WoLF and Kellie Jay Keen and certainly would not defend every word Kellie has said. Calling someone a “pervert” is not helpful. But the dismissing of all the work that went into the tour and on the whole positive protests for women’s rights she has organized on both sides of the Atlantic frankly sounds quite sectarian to my ears. Women’s rights fighters need unity in action, whether about traditional feminist issues like abortion rights or the ERA, or opposing sex denialism and defending women’s spaces, programs, language and status as a sex class in need of civil rights protection. My biggest criticism of the US tour is that more time and advanced notice and planning may have been needed on the ground to maximize participation. Building protests in the streets is a key way we are going to stop the encroachments of gender identity ideology or to win back legal abortion for that matter. If Kellie ever comes to San Diego I’ll be there and help organize an event and bring along the half a dozen local FIST members and whoever else I can muster.
Two words. Internalized misogyny. It seems common among women. And it must be eradicated if we have any hope of winning.
For that matter most men have internalized misandry. This culture produces people who hate themselves, their sex, each other. It's how this economy seems to function. We can't have all of us content with our sexed bodies, able to care for ourselves and our children without government, media or corporations directing us what to do. How would any corporation make money???
Being honest, she seems like a small woman typically classist -- thus she doesn't or even can't see the good that Kellie-Jay does. (KJ hasn't the right accent. She hasn't an Oxbridge degree.) And I wonder given how little attention the post got that you wrote this piece about her. She is after all unremarkable.
Incredible, passionate, thoughtful response! And nice jabs. Keep up the fight.
Powerful piece Kara. I have just followed those amazing women that I wasn't up until I read your piece.
Thank you so much, Kara, for your work and highlighting how amazing women across the US are. (They are everywhere, but "KJK in the USA: Let Women Speak" takes place in the US.) Our strength and courage are inspirational and deserve acknowledgement.
I am the woman who flew across the country twice, to LA and NYC. It was a privilege to do so and I will do it again as opportunity presents. LA was tame, and in NYC the Antifa/TRA protest was off the rails. Almost all of the very few news reports misrepresented us and what Antifa was doing, with the Fox News interview with Jeanna Hoch being the most accurate.
Well said, Kara. I've been a great admirer of Jeni's writing but her many public attacks on KJK have appalled me and I was very dismayed by her response to the video, which I haven't finished watching yet because I've been so upset seeing what my brave sisters on your side of the Pond have had to endure. :-(
Love this:
“ I also get that you and some other Brits simply like to dismiss all things American. I suppose this is a convenient and facile way of posturing as our superiors, and that might make you feel better about that embarrassing loss of tea in Boston Harbor (Harbour, if that’s important to you), followed by the embarrassing loss of the colonies, followed by the awkward loss of the Empire. Sure. But that cheap posturing is not new; it’s unremarkable. And I suppose I need to state the obvious - your posture is tiresome, provincial, and politically stupid, unless your primary loyalties are to something or someone other than the interests of all women as a sex class”
THANK YOU!!!
I’ve hit my limit with Europeans who do this (usually Brits). I want to say, tell it to all the immigrants, including my still British partner who has been here for 25 years and knows to go back to the UK is to return to a country with no future and little hope of doing well as climate and political disasters loom.
And in case the Brits or Europeans are unaware, YOU colonized this land and murdered indigenous people and created the USA. Then people here, who came to escape the shitty old countries that treated them so badly, kicked out the British Monarchy and won a war.
And as to the point of the ugly women (in spirit/values) who denounce women who speak for women, we have a name for that: Ball-palming handmaiden.
The same tragic women who fully do the bidding of patriarchy, when it is in a dress and wig or otherwise, are the ones telling young women it is “empowering” to be a “sex worker” (read: prositute, often groomed and trafficked). So they are so brilliant they think having some strangers dick (always a man’s even if he wears a dress and make-up) down your throat +power, and can’t see how backward that is, and that is indicator enough of how little we should value their opinions.
They can babysit the trans identifying mentals as their physical health devolves under the care of the medical industry, and they should remember to wear their red robes and not refer to themselves in any way that might trigger the men who are so much more oppressed because “identity.” I mean, someone is going to have to help the victims of the trans lie into their final identity as a statistic of a failed medical experiment, right? Let it be her.
Thank you for the Twitter handles of remarkable women to follow. Thank you for your passionate retort to a snide comment about your incredible sisters, who face obstacles and dangers that worry us on your behalf. Thank you for your rebuttal of an unnecessarily negative viewpoint. This is something we see too often, with women taking their eyes off the ball and criticising other women doing their best to combat the trans-identifying male ‘space invaders’ whose arrogance and entitlement are off the scale. Instead let’s uphold all the women, yea, even the ones we don’t like, working hard to restore women’s sex category, our name as women, and our rights to single-sex spaces, which really matter. We are slowly winning here on Terf Island, covered as we are by our Equality Act and our legal ability to exclude men in important instances. We hail each of your ‘law fare’ victories, in the courts and in the states that care to support you. You are all incredible women, whose “courage calls to courage everywhere and its voice cannot be denied.”
I have my political disagreements with WoLF and Kellie Jay Keen and certainly would not defend every word Kellie has said. Calling someone a “pervert” is not helpful. But the dismissing of all the work that went into the tour and on the whole positive protests for women’s rights she has organized on both sides of the Atlantic frankly sounds quite sectarian to my ears. Women’s rights fighters need unity in action, whether about traditional feminist issues like abortion rights or the ERA, or opposing sex denialism and defending women’s spaces, programs, language and status as a sex class in need of civil rights protection. My biggest criticism of the US tour is that more time and advanced notice and planning may have been needed on the ground to maximize participation. Building protests in the streets is a key way we are going to stop the encroachments of gender identity ideology or to win back legal abortion for that matter. If Kellie ever comes to San Diego I’ll be there and help organize an event and bring along the half a dozen local FIST members and whoever else I can muster.
Two words. Internalized misogyny. It seems common among women. And it must be eradicated if we have any hope of winning.
For that matter most men have internalized misandry. This culture produces people who hate themselves, their sex, each other. It's how this economy seems to function. We can't have all of us content with our sexed bodies, able to care for ourselves and our children without government, media or corporations directing us what to do. How would any corporation make money???
Thank you for all that you do Kara.
I love this, Kara. Absolutely love it.
American women are REMARKABLE.
Being honest, she seems like a small woman typically classist -- thus she doesn't or even can't see the good that Kellie-Jay does. (KJ hasn't the right accent. She hasn't an Oxbridge degree.) And I wonder given how little attention the post got that you wrote this piece about her. She is after all unremarkable.
Brava!
Righteous rant!