Terf Island by Fiona McAnena

Author:Fiona McAnena
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Spinifex Press
Published: 2025-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Julia Long and Venice Allan at the Millicent Fawcett statue in Parliament Square, London, 2019

Photo courtesy of Venice Allan

Thinking Differently — Julia Long

Julia is a feminist academic and a lesbian. She’s always had an absolute conviction that women-only organising is crucial. For years she had felt it was being sidelined by younger women whose approach was, bring your boyfriend along, you’ll change his attitude and he’ll change his friends and that’s how we’ll change society. As a counter to that, back in 2012, Julia had staged a women-only conference in London. But she’d got a lot of pushback about excluding men.

There was also, even then, pressure from trans-identifying males to be included in women’s events. Julia’s agenda in 2012 was mostly about male violence against women and opposing the sex industry, but a trans-identifying male called Roz Kaveney complained to the venue, Conway Hall, that the event was women-only and there was an invited speaker who promoted hate speech. He spelled out in an article for The Guardian that he meant Sheila Jeffreys, a feminist academic. Seemingly befuddled by this, Conway Hall management cancelled the booking, saying it was sex discrimination to have a women-only meeting, and also something about Sheila being a problem. So as far back as 2012, a women’s meeting had to find another venue, the police had to be alerted, and participants had to meet in a public place to walk together to the new venue rather than making its location public in advance.

Over the next few years, Julia was involved in ad hoc protests with a few others, giving out leaflets at Reclaim The Night and the Dyke March about violence by men who call themselves women, and generally getting a very hostile response. She organised the UK launch of Sheila Jeffreys’ 2014 book Gender Hurts: A Feminist Analysis of the Politics of Transgenderism. Alerted to the issue, she saw the risk in the political initiatives in the UK around trans demands, culminating in the 2015 trans equality inquiry held by the Women and Equalities Select Committee. In 2016, Julia planned another meeting at Conway Hall, again with Sheila. This one was called Thinking Differently. The speakers included Stephanie Davies-Arai, Lierre Keith, Mary Lou Singleton and Magdalen Berns. There was also Jackie, a ‘trans widow’.

Perhaps the management had changed because this time Conway Hall didn’t renege on the booking. Stephanie remembers this meeting as ground-breaking, even though she was extremely nervous, feeling that the others were accomplished speakers and she was a novice. Julia recalls inspiring speeches followed by a great night at the pub with songs from singer-songwriter Ali Bee.

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