It was, in the first instance a bullying issue for me. I was a Labour Party officer, responsible for membership in our CLP and was appalled at the way a small local group were being allowed to mistreat and slander women.
When I started talking to people, I very quickly realised that it was largely abuse survivors and women worried about their children who were speaking up and in both cases, they seriously needed back up. I was a ‘known terf’ by then and thought ‘oh well, I’m out there – may as well get on with it.’
I have written blog posts, and articles for newspapers.
I have attended planning groups for women’s organisations, and spoken at a WPUK meeting.
I spent as much time as I could spare visiting women’s groups in different areas, and having one-to-one meetings with people I felt could use more support and/or had something to teach me about the issues involved.
I did try to put a motion through my local Labour Party but, after my branch passed it almost unanimously, the LP withdrew it as ‘controversial’ after a man had a tantrum in another branch.
I have been extensively slandered on social media and in my home town – bizarrely, this has had positive consequences as well as negative ones – a colleague and I organised a WPUK meeting in my town which was an enormous positive overall, but led to members of the local Pride group sending slanderous letters about us to the council and to any venue in town they could think of so, I’m self-employed, and have probably lost business through being ‘controversial’ and have certainly suffered a lot of stress.
I was turned down by the local Labour Party as a council candidate. The stated reason was that there was a complaint about me in process but, when I went to an appeal hearing, the reason given was they didn’t like my blog.
Did I lose friends? Not really – losing false friends leads to finding new and more interesting ones.
Kay Green, socialist feminist, former Labour Party officer
The Gender Dissidents Survey 