Sunday, August 26, 2012

A Fun New Group For You To Have Fun With

They are called 'Feminist Avengers' and have a Wordpress blog site, so that's enough for you to Google them and visit if you wish. They claim to be 'radical feminists taking guerrilla action against sexism, misogyny and rape culture'. Their spokeperson, Clara Zetkin probably has a made up name, because as far as I can tell Clara Zetkin was the organiser of the first International Womens Day in 1911 and has been dead since 1933.

They launched their campaign recently when they objected to comedians telling jokes about rape at the Edinburgh Festival. It seems that Jim Jeffries, Chris Turner, Chris Dangerfield, Paul Revill and Jimmy Carr all received a courgette and a letter with the advice to 'go and fuck themselves'. I find what they did to be quite amusing actually and lets face it, the people targeted are about as funny as cancer as are their rape jokes..

Now it seems as though they might be based in Scotland, but have already had an enquiry from someone in London about joining in as you can see below.....


Not sure what 'Clara' means by 'similar actions' because there has to be a limit to how any courgettes you can send in the post, so I guess she means similarly radical actions. Now as lap dancing clubs have been in the firing line for about 5 years now and no feminist group has had any real success in closing them down, I guess it means that club owners can look forward to some action in the coming year. Why do I say this?

Some years ago I became aware of Object and guessed that they could be problematic. I told no one about them because I didn't think I would be taken seriously. I will not make the same mistake again. This is why..

Despite what Object and media say, before the SEV Legislation became law, there were about 260 clubs in Britain. Object assumed that by 2012, the striptease and lap dancing industry would decimated. Today, we have about 260 clubs in the UK and I know this because I have a database with their names and addresses. Yes, there have been some closures, but only because those venues breached their licensing conditions and would have been closed under the prior regime. Yes, some boroughs have implemented 'Nil Policies', Enfield, Haringey and Merton are good examples, but they didn't have any clubs to begin with so it was hardly a big deal.

Four years on, Objects campaign has largely been a failure. This a problem for clubs, because it is my view that every activist group has on its fringes people who are happy to take things further than their compatriots. We know from reading the 'Feminists or Fascists' posting on Moronwatch that Object have been linked to campaigns of abuse and intimidation against a number of dancers. With 'Feminist Avengers' we see a group for whom standard campaigning methodologies are not enough and they want to become perhaps a little more radical. I find this worrying because they might inspire those who are happy to go much further. Who remembers Club Redd?

It opened in Burgess Hill in 2008. It was a lap dancing club and initially it was very successful. Local residents however were up in arms over it, largely it seems on moral and religious grounds. Three weeks after it opened, someone decided to take action against the club.....


A maniac, almost certainly from the local community, set the club alight and caused a fire that took six hours to bring under control. It could have lead to the deaths of two fireman and could also have devastated a local shopping centre. This happened because of someones 'morality'. Local residents were delighted though. Anne Jones, a Liberal Democrat councillor, said: "I do not think there is a local resident that would go to these lengths." But she admitted: "Since the fire the general feeling has been a sense of relief. I know that is hard to explain. But in a sense it was like the thin end of the wedge to have a lap-dancing club."

I was deeply disappointed that the local fire chief didn't drag Anne Jones through the wreckage of the building and maybe for good measure ask her to explain the 'sense of relief' everyone felt to the two fireman that risked their lives looking for people that may have trapped in the building. The arsonist is pictured below...


The person has never been caught. It was speculated at the time that our pal may well have been suffering from smoke inhalation and may been burned as well. This means that the following day that someone didn't turn up for work or maybe did in some degree of pain, but everyone kept quiet about it. My best guess is that he/she was sheltered by the local community.

Now, please understand where I am coming from. I am absolutely not saying that anyone associated with Object or Feminist Avengers is going to do anything as rash as arson or was in any way involved with what happened at Club Redd. But I do think there are people out there that are prepared to let their beliefs drive them into activities that could be dangerous or at least provocative in order to satisfy their need to express their issues/beliefs/rage.

If I was a club owner I would start to review my security policy very carefully, because we don't want another Club Redd. Lap dancing and strip tease clubs abide by the law, there is no excuse for their opponents not to do likewise.

9 comments:

  1. If I were a resident of Burgess Hill, I'd be very worried about having someone like Anne Jones as my elected representative in local government; crass doesn't even begin to describe the opinion she's voiced.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I remember it all very well and had been looking for an opportunity to blog about it. Anna Jones came as close to approving of arson as she possibly could without getting into trouble with the law. Incredible that the arsonist was never caught....

    ReplyDelete
  3. ...Or suspicious, depending upon one's perspective.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I wasn't aware of the story about this club burning down. It's pretty scary that people will go to the extreme measures of arson to get their own way. The loss to the local economy and disruption caused would have extended far wider than the club that was targeted.
    The comments from the lib dem cllr were shockingly bad. Even though she was probably rubbing her hands with glee when she heard the news, a person with any common sense would know to keep quiet about it to the press. She was lucky she didn't get questioned by the police. Once again the Liberal Democrats are proving not to be very er liberal.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I became aware of it when I first started doing research about Object. It scared the living daylights out of me. I hate to say this, but I think we can expect direct action in terms of pranks, stunts and other stuff as the year progresses. The fire at Club Redd could have spread far and wide and their could have been fatalities, so I agree with you all about the comments of Anna Jones, she came as close as she could to supporting the act of a criminal.

    ReplyDelete
  6. This is what I wrote on another forum at the time (July 2008), after it had been confirmed that an arson attack had been the cause of the fire:


    "Well, I have to say that my own gut feeling on hearing the story was that it was probably arson, although I don't usually like to jump to conclusions in this way.

    If it's discovered to be the work of religious/political fanatics (the second most likely scenario, after 'business rivals'), they'll have scored a massive propaganda own-goal by exposing their anti-democratic agenda in their actions."


    Four years on, I'm now inclined to think that a religious and/or political fanatic is the MOST likely culprit, from what we've seen of the organised anti-striptease brigade and their inflammatory rhetoric.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Seems one bunch of loonies want to burn "fifty Shades of Grey".

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2192527/Fifty-Shades-Grey-Domestic-violence-campaigners-plan-burn-copies-raunchy-book.html

    Rather over the top I think.
    After all, we never burnt the Lilith Report.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Book burning, eh? Now, remind me - in which 1930s central European dictatorship did that activity feature heavily...?

      Delete
  8. Slight flaw in their argument as i have yet to meet a bloke who has actually read this book. I am still waiting for my other half to read it so she can fill me in with the juicy details. If I am honest i am a bit lazy when it comes to novels and can't be bothered reading it. I take it there is some S&M involved?

    ReplyDelete