A TERF Day Out in London

Lo! God looked down from heaven and saw that all the tiny TERFs - except JK Rowling - are as poor as church mice. So God created Kellie-Jay Keen to entertain them for free.

I went to the Standing For Women meeting at a spot called reformers’ tree in Hyde Park last Sunday. They happen on the last Sunday of every month. Kellie-Jay Keen (KJK) started them nearly three years ago to provide a space for women to discuss controversial ideas in public - things like: women don’t have a penis, men can never change their sex, encouraging a girl to cut her breasts off is child abuse, an old man dressed in a girl’s primary school uniform is disgusting and wrong, etc. The first time I went - a year ago - I was on my own and there were only about 30 women at the event. Last week I met up with two other women - friends I’ve made thanks to these meetings - and it was attended by around a hundred people, including a considerable number of men. And on a freezing cold dreary January day!

Kellie-Jay is compere and host and always opens with a few jokes, a silly song (her singing voice is good) and catchphrases: “I’m not a vet but….” It’s like Bruce Forsyth at the London Palladium but there's an edgy ambience because anything can happen. Anyone can rock up and say absolutely what they like. KJK encourages women to get up, stand up, stand up for your rights and especially speak up. She encourages any woman who wants to speak and it’s first come first served - there’s no preferential treatment for celebrity TERFs who wait in line like everyone else. Men have to wait until the end of the event - after all the women have finished - if they want to speak.

Women come from all over the country to listen and to speak. There are regulars who bring their own chairs and sit in the front row smoking fags and petting their dogs. There are lots of lesbians and the older ones make the best and most interesting speeches because they’re knowledgeable and they’ve been activists for years and years. One of them lived at the women’s peace camp at Greenham common in 1983. She told us they were constantly being arrested by the police and in those days there was no crowdfunding so they represented themselves in court. Then she broke into one of the songs they would all sing when they were holding hands around the fence - it was quite moving!

Between 11 and 25,000 women from all over the world watch the Hyde Park live stream on YouTube feed and make comments in the chat like:

“women from all walks of life appreciate the women who gather and expose the idiocy of 'gender ideology'”

and:

“Fabulous speeches so far! Wish I was there”

and:

“Thank you ladies for fighting for women's rights.”

Some speakers put on puppet shows or recite limericks to lighten the mood - necessary because subject matter is so grim - and last Sunday a woman made a very serious speech wearing a Groucho Marx wig and glasses; the contrast between her hilarious appearance and the gravity of what she was saying somehow made one listen more attentively. Perhaps MPs could try to incorporate these stand-up routines in their speeches and interviews? I would love to see the Prime Minister do PMQs wearing very large fake ears.

Free Speech Nation

Then in the late afternoon God said: “How can I provide free evening entertainment for my darling terfs?” And so God created Andrew Doyle and his show Free Speech Nation on GB News.

You can get free tickets for this show which goes out live every Sunday Night from a TV studio near Paddington station. So after the rally and then after the pub and after the pizza we got the bus up to Paddington which is just the other side of Hyde Park.

It was almost as if Andrew Doyle had put on a show especially for us: he had three excellent women guests who were funny, knowledgeable, articulate: Kate Coleman on men in women’s prisons (she said men have been put in women’s prisons since the 1980s), Peymana Assad on women’s rights - or lack thereof - under the Taliban in Afghanistan (she said the Taliban live in and send their daughters to school in Pakistan), and finally a nice jolly woman whose name I can’t remember. Andrew Doyle lets them say what they want to say and he seems to care a lot about women’s rights but not in a boring-know-all kind of way. The best joke came from Tony one of the TV crew whose job is to chivvy the punters into their seats and keep them happy: “Yesterday I was driving along by Pentonville prison and I saw a rope thrown over and then a dwarf climbing down and I thought: “That’s a little condescending.”

And God saw everything He had made and, behold, it was very good.

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