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...