I’VE never had much truck with the ancient Sanskrit proverb ‘My enemy’s enemy is my friend’. It seems to me what while perhaps they can be a temporary ally or a strategic partner, a friend can never be a friend when the friendship is based on a negative. Kind of undermines the very concept, I feel.
The gender critical movement and I clearly part company on this because in their current stand-off with Féile an Phobail they’ve become besties with unionist parties who in chronological terms when it comes to women’s rights are currently hovering somewhere around the mid-1950s.
The DUP, the UUP and the TUV all threw their considerable and manly weight behind the Women’s Rights Network (NI) as they brought in m’learned friends in an attempt to have their cancelled Féile debate reinstated.
In their giddy delight at securing the backing of Loyal Ulster for their mission of keeping women’s changing rooms, sports teams and toilets free of imaginary bearded men in mini-skirts, the self-styled political ingenues of WRN(NI) have developed the sweetly-sad idea that the unionist parties have entered the fray on their side because of a deep-seated concern for the safety of women in public spaces. They haven’t. Unionism has hitched its wagon to the WRN(NI) horses because they really, really don’t like Féile.
That is not to say that the DUP, UUP and TUV are not fully signed up to the idea that the toilets in our restaurants, pubs, train stations and shopping malls should be free from the non-existent mob of hatchet-wielding sex beasts wearing dresses in order to attack women. They are. They are as determined to protect Our Wee Country from an imaginary plague of Trans-on-real women violence as the WRN(NI) is. It's just that they are considerably more interested in achieving their long-term goal of emptying the Falls Park in August and stopping kids from the Shankill and the Village pouring into West Belfast for the dance nights.
The Wolfe Tones are gone this year and it was looking dangerously as though Féile might pass of without the loyal klaxon being sounded. Then along come the WRN(NI) with their anonymous panel. Thank you, ladies. Loyal Ulster is forever in your debt.
I’m not going to rehash the unionist parties’ medieval record when it comes to women’s rights. Their words and their actions are in the extensive library of Professor Google in the unlikely event that anyone from the WRN(NI) is unaware of them. I prefer instead to point out that in the battle for the hearts of our toilets and the minds of our changing rooms the unionist reinforcements are not imbued with the spirit of feminism.
The Twelfth is not long over and the ever-longer marching season will drag on until some time around the beginning of autumn. Those unionists who have been taking to the airwaves and filling column inches with their oaths of fealty to the WRN(NI) have just finished marching on the Twelfth without a woman near them. The Orange Order, the beating heart of unionist culture, doesn’t admit women. Oh, sure, should members of the WRN(NI) be so grateful for the assistance of Loyal Ulster that they want to join the Orange Order they can sign up for a satellite women’s organisation dedicated to making tea and knitting poppy covers for postboxes. But the WRN(NI)’s new friends have sworn an oath to an organisation whose ruling body – Grand Lodge – bans women. In other words, the WRN(NI)’s new allies are members of a group whose ruling body has never once in its long and controversial history had a woman about the place.
I’d have thought this might be a deal-breaker for the women of the WRN(NI), and particularly for the Catholic women of the WRN(NI). Apparently not. As long as you’re with the WRN(NI) in their determination to prevent a repeat of something that never happened in the CastleCourt women’s toilets, you’re in. Never mind the fact that you’re a member of a post-medieval fundamentalist sect which segregates the sexes and locks women out of the voting room. You may be a bowler-hatted misogynist, but you’re our bowler-hatted misogynist.
I was on the radio on Monday with a member of the WRN(NI), and very nice she was too: Convivial, engaging, conciliatory. But I can only think that they have decided that that’s not the requisite vibe because the following day after a deafening wake-up call for the gender critical movement in the form of a quite superb Belfast Telegraph column by Allison Morris, the WRN(NI) had decided to subcontract spokeswoman duties to a combative southerner from a separate organisation with a curious take on the concept of sisterhood.
Loyal Ulster loved it, needless to say. Admirers of the Moygashel mosque boney took time out from expressing their legitimate concerns about Sharia law in Buckna to have their say on the exchange. Twitter egg accounts with fifteen numbers and union jack and Israel flags voiced their delight. Graham Linehan, the extraordinarily excitable poster boy of the Toilet Karens, got so extraordinarily excited that he's been told to expect a solicitor’s letter. Can a crowdfund appeal be far off?
It's a sorry mess and one which Féile must take a degree of responsibility for. Whatever the reason for the acceptance and subsequent cancellation of the WRN(NI) event it’s a penalty kick for Féile’s annual detractors at a time when they badly needed help from the ref. For me, the reinstatement of the debate is the smart move, perhaps with a mutually-agreed panel that reflects both sides of the argument. But with the gender critical movement basking in its moment in the sun and with JK Rowling having promised financial backing (which the WRN(NI) at this early and cheap stage say they won’t avail of), there seems little motivation for WRN(NI) to back down.
A piece of advice for the group, though, as Loyal Ulster goes after Féile’s funding and the News Letter and the Daily Mail go dizzy with excitement. As Theresa May was told in no uncertain terms by the DUP, there’s only one thing women need to know when they sit down with the unionist big beasts: It’s milk and no sugar.
