Continuity Object

Object ceased to be a viable campaign group sometime before its dissolution in January 2017. It was about this time that TonyN and I decided that there wasn't much really going on and that the blog could take a rest. In some respects that may have been a bad decision as I failed to consider what might have been happening in the wreckage of Object. So lets do an update and see what happened...

Well sometime last year, they rebranded as ObjectNow and created a vastly improved website. There seemed to be an issues in the background that lead to the demise of the original company and happily Janice Williams, the new leader of Continuity Object explains what happened below...

Wow! They certainly had a torrid time and by the looks it Janice wants us to believe its all down to Anna and Roz, which somehow I doubt, but never mind. To be honest, I had forgotten about Object and then something happened to remind me they existed.

Good old Jan decided bung Sasha some money for her judicial review crowdfunder, which surprised me because I didn't think they had two pennies to rub together. Anyway, I decided to take a peak at their Twitter account and found it strange...

As you can see, Jan was very busy closing her accounts with the Co-operative Bank, because apparently they refuse facilities to 'all-women' organisations'.

Sorry? Can you run that one past me again please?

The Co-operative Bank discriminates against all-women organisations? 

The bank that markets itself as an ethical bank, that seeks to avoid investing in companies involved in the arms trade, fossil fuel extraction, genetic engineering, animal testing and the use of sweatshop labour, are you trying to say it discriminates on the grounds of sex?

Well that's clearly not true as I know that in 2005, the bank closed the account of Christian Voice due to its views of the LGBT community being incompatible with the banks policy on diversity and dignity. So to see what was going on I dug a little further and found this on the banks website...

So, perhaps unsurprisingly, Jan put some spin on this because it seems the group that were denied facilities were an all female group, but one that has 'issues' with the transgender community. I started to wonder if Jan and Continuity Object have the same views and found this on their website...

What Jan fails to define is what she means by 'more' and I believe she leaves this undefined for good reason. Nonetheless, a quick peak at their Twitter page and it is possible to get an idea of where they are coming from, but if you don't fancy it, here's a nice frame grab....

I cannot safely define where legitimate expression of opinion stops and hate speech starts, but tweets like the one above nevertheless make me ask the question. The key issue is, to what extent does this transgender exclusive activism intrude into the campaign against clubs and dancers? 

Well, we know that Jan and therefore Continuity Object made a financial contribution to the TimesUpForStripClubs crowdfunder and are listed as being part of the 'coalition and so that's interesting. Furthermore, if I was running a crowd funder about a particular issue, I would be disinclined to accept a donation from a party whose politics I opposed. So maybe we have the first sign of SWERF campaigners with TERF tendencies.

I decided to do some more digging to see what else I could find around various sites and found this nugget reposted on the NotBuyingIt twitter account. Its about SR Sheffield.

Just the name Posie 'Dangerous Thoughts' Parker intrigued me, so I decided to see just exactly how dangerous her thoughts really are...

Sounds dangerous to me... 

Really agreeing with the dangerous angle now...

In my last post, I made the point that I sensed a dark heart in the TimesUpForStripClubs coalition and I have to say that I am very uncomfortable with a lot of what I uncovered over the past few days...

The coalition includes Object and we can see on their Twitter account the kind of views they espouse, which kind makes me wonder how widespread these views are. NotBuyingIt retweeted Posie Parker and I am not remotely comfortable with what she has to say either. The point I am struggling to make here is that both within and on the boundaries of the coalition, there seem to be some deeply unpleasant people who seem to have moderate to severe issues with the transgender community.

Speaking of hate, the repercussions of the SR licence renewal are still being felt by anyone that dares to speak out against the SWERF agenda. See below and note the patronising comment about 'pocket money'. 

I suppose the question that needs to be answered is the one I want to ask Sasha Rakoff about how closely her views regarding transgender rights are in alignment with those of people such as Posie Parker and Janice Williams...

'Trashy Swerfs' in Licence Objection Failure

Spearmint Rhino's Sheffield branch has been the focus of repeated licence removal attempts by activist group 'Zero Option Sheffield' who work in conjunction with NotBuyingIt and a local grandmother, Irene Gladdison (although that's not her real name, but more of that later). As you probably gathered from the above frame grab, the besieged clubs most recent licence application was successful despite intense opposition from everybody with an interest in seeing them close. In fact I have to say that the anti club gang threw everything they could at it because they badly needed the win, but before we look at that issue, lets see what took place in Sheffield.

In The Begining...

There was a concerted PR campaign in advance of the hearing, with Sasha Rakoff blaming Sheffield Council for anything bad she could think of such as the explosion in local prostitution as the quote below illustrates...

The problem with the '400% increase in prostitution' is that is has nothing to do with the City Council, as you can see if followed the hyperlink embedded in the article...

So as we can see, the so called 'sex-industry bias' is not a factor, but austerity most certainly is and when you consider Sasha Rakoff highlighted this issue in support of an objective that would have left 40 dancers jobless...

A Tale of Two Hearings...

We are lucky here because we can view matters from the perspective of both the clubs supporters and those in opposition. NotBuyingIt sent someone along, I presume it was Nikki Bond who tweeted her way through the hearing. You can see the tweet thread below and for the sake of easy reading the first tweet is at the top of the frame grab and progresses downwards...

So as you can see, NotBuyingIt were keen for readers to understand that the council offices were well attended by objectors and we can see a photo of them below...

Sheffield UKIP Spearmint Rhino objectors in full SWERF mode

What they failed to mention was the group of supporters that were also there...

Dancers and their supporters turned out in force, much to the surprise of NotBuyingIt.

As you saw, the NotBuyingIts tweets hardly provide much of a flavour of what occurred during the hearing, so its lucky that local resident, Rosa Deluxemburg generated a far more detailed account of proceedings...

As you will see, Rosa's account is far more interesting because it includes the evidence free allegations of Councillor Douglas Johnson and NotBuyingIt Nikki. Lets look at what she had to say...

Rosa makes a very good point in that dancers were not asked for their views about whether or not they might be OK about losing their jobs. Given that a central plank of the NotBuyingIt argument is that dancers are exploited, you would imagine they would be very keen to support this belief with actual evidence, but they didn't bothering asking anyone, probably because they knew what kind of answer they would get...

So the Green Partys answer to Chris Grayling, Councillor Douglas Johnson, decided to make it up as he went along when he stated the dancers at SR were physically abused by the clubs management. He then launched into an impassioned argument that it as the clubs staff are employed and the dancers are self employed, surely it would be better if both parties were unemployed. 

Now maybe we start to see why no dancers were consulted, the objectors had already decided for themselves what the truth was...

Did you notice that in NotBuyingIts view, SR accused Sammy Woodhouse of lying about working in the Sheffield branch. Yet in the above frame grab, we see an alternative viewpoint and maybe as a result we can also see NotBuyingIt demonstrate the hyperbole that is the trademark of their sister group, Continuity Object. I like the fact that Ms Woodhouse highlighted the fact that dancers apparently exploit customers. But hang on, according to NotBuyingIt, dancers do not earn anywhere enough money, but now apparently they earn too much...

NotBuyingIt and Zero Option Sheffield managed to produce around 150 written objections to the granting of a new licence for Spearmint Rhino. Granted, most of the objections were standard letters, but one of the few that was written by someone that actually cared enough to write something original, was written in support of the club...

Sasha and Zero Option had managed to facilitate 150 letters of objection, that combined with what they hoped was compelling testimony from the objectors they managed to rake up, made them, it seems, feel confident they would prevail. The above letter was very important as it was written by a 22 year old female student at the university who stated the obvious - that closing a club that adheres to its licence terms and provides employment to 40 dancers, is quite simply 'not feminist'.

Anyway, as we now know the licence was granted. But our story doesn't end there...

An Unpleasant Aftermath

NotBuyingIt and Zero Option Sheffield were rather upset by the decision to grant the licence to SR because removal of the licence was tactically very important in terms of the their longer term aim of closing every club in the country. Because they were thwarted, they and their allies took their anger and frustration out on those that dared support the dancers and the club where they work...

Sasha pals, the Critical Sisters were very unhappy, but received an appropriate response...

Local councillor Sophie Wilson was similarly annoyed with the Sisters as well and made her views very clear...

Julie Bindel was also very angry and let loose with an astonishing array of childish insults aimed at 'bearded woke dudes', 'privileged neo liberal idiots' and 'student union clap trappers'.

No Julie, you are what 'Orwellian feminism' looks like and furthermore, how can you justify calling people who are about to get hit with £50k of student debt 'privileged'?

However, the best response comes once again from Sophie Wilson...

It was amazing to see students, Labour activists, local politicians and members of LGBTQ community come together to support dancers, amazing, but not necessarily unforseen. The feminist school of thought embodied by Rackoff, Bindel et al have just received an enormous shock as their 'wisdom' has been rejected by a younger generation of people with different values who are just as capable of managing effective campaigns to support what they believe in. So we can see a clear change in the landscape of thought around clubs and dancers. 

There was another change, the current anti club campaign seems to have a very dark heart, a stench that would have been noticed by the younger generation of activists and that is what I intend to write about next...

One more point before I sign off. Off the people that complained about the successful licence application, there was one that seemed to be missing - Irene Gladdison.