The “gender-critical feminist” movement appears to be falling apart at the seams. Here’s why
Linda Bellos, left, and Posie Parker at the WoLF event on Friday 17 January. (Facebook/WoLF)
Two of the most well-known voices in the UK’s “gender-critical feminist” movement made a trip to New York at the weekend, to speak on a panel about their feminism.
The event was organised by a “feminist” group that has directly worked with a religious anti-LGBT+ organisation.
Posie Parker and lesbian activist Linda Bellos were in New York to speak at an event organised by WoLF (Women’s Liberation Front), the anti-trans group that previously worked with conservative anti-LGBT+ organisation Family Policy Alliance on opposing the rights of trans students to use the school bathroom corresponding to their gender identity.
Meanwhile, another well-known voice of UK “gender-critical feminism” — the controversial columnist Julie Bindel, who set the standard in the UK for “gender-critical feminism” back in the early 2000s — tweeted that she thinks Parker is a “thick feck”, “a bigot” and “not a feminist”.
Parker told PinkNews these tweets were “nasty” and “defamatory”, adding that this doesn’t discount the “outstanding” work Bindel has done for women.
Bellos and Parker, who is also known as Kellie-Jay Keen Minshull, went to New York to speak on a panel of “five fearless feminists” that included Meghan Murphy, the anti-trans Canadian writer who was banned from Twitter for “hateful conduct”.
Bellos and Parker’s trip comes almost exactly one year after a similar visit that Parker made with Dr Julia Long, another of the UK’s prominent “gender-critical feminists”.
During their January 2019 visit to the US – at which they also attended an event run by WoLF – Parker and Long confronted and harassed Sarah McBride, a trans woman who works for LGBT+ campaign group the Human Rights Campaign, before attending an event organised by the anti-abortion think tank the Heritage Foundation.
It was this apparent link between WoLF and the Heritage Foundation that seemed to irk Bindel, who took to Twitter to distance herself from her contemporaries.
In a since-deleted tweet, Bindel accused Parker of having “taken the Heritage Foundation coin”.
“Posie Parker is a thick feck who is a bigot and not a feminist. She has taken the Heritage Foundation coin. None of the actual feminists I work with can bear her,” Bindel tweeted.
Bindel added: “I want to say how I despise the latest tactics of Posie Parker and disciples, and want no part in it. As far as I am concerned, they are motivated by narcissism, bigotry, and ego. They are causing harm.”
Posie Parker told PinkNews that she supports LGB rights and is pro-choice.
She also strongly denied having been paid by any conservative think tank or having been funded “by the right”, adding that “the privacy, dignity and safety of women and girls are too important to wait to find politically pure working partnerships”.
“It’s not the best optics to tweet nasty defamatory comments in the early hours, but that shouldn’t, in any way, discount the outstanding work Bindel has done for women,” Parker said. “I guess she just doesn’t like me very much!”
Bellos said that the “foolishness” between Parker and Bindel “would never interfere with the serious matter I had flown to New York to address”.
Calling PinkNews‘ questions for this story “childish”, Bellos claimed she and her contemporaries are being “silenced” and that they “are not allowed to meet together and discuss matters of joint concern”. She declined to comment further.
