The greatest feminist conference on earth

FiLiA 2022 was a joy to behold

On my way to FiLiA 2022 in Cardiff last weekend I was nervous. There has been a war raging in the women’s movement for some time, since many feminists on the left have taken issue with those who think that working with the religious right is fine during a misogynistic state of emergency.

FiLia is the largest annual feminist event in Europe, welcoming more than 1,700 women this year, many of whom would have come with a variety of beliefs… but I needn’t have worried that there would be any disagreements. What I found in Wales was a tidal wave of sisterhood and grassroots feminism, as if the downpour of recent misogyny had turned into sunshine and washed away the meaningless neoliberal feminism that has long invaded universities and the middle-class mainstream.

Joyfully, FiLia was no battleground and the entire conference was amazing. Feminism has come home. And by ‘feminism’ I mean real feminism, the sort that requires an understanding of the material reality of women’s lives, and which has a proper understanding of race and class and how it intersects with misogyny and the everyday sexism that women face. Not the blue-fringed version of superficial identity that bears no relation to reality or to feminism.

Almost everyone was polite, cooperative, non-antagonistic and sisterly. That’s why conferences matter. They show us what’s at stake and how important it is that we carry on as a liberation movement together, and not just as individuals railing against gender ideology.

As a member of the socialist feminist group Women's Place UK said in a session about the sexism of the left and the dangers of the right: “This is our movement. If we walk away, we concede that we were always visitors. We are certainly not. Policy is not either wholly won or lost, it is for us to fight for.”

I never thought I would say this, but I owe trans activists a debt of gratitude. They have brought more women into active, grass roots feminism than the misogynistic men's rights activists  of old. Those groups, from the 1980s and 1990s, were so blatant in their hatred of women that even the wet liberals came down against them. But this new wave of blue-haired brats have managed to peek a nation – or at least those of us with something to lose if they had won.

Of late, feminists have been batting off the tsunami of misogyny coming from so-called progressive men, dictating to us about whether or not our rights are worth preserving, and even attacking women on the street when we protest.

It’s also good to see that the ‘Lavender Menace’ is once again on the rise. That phrase was first used by Betty Friedan in 1969 to describe what she considered to be the threat that lesbians posed to ‘respectable’ mainstream feminism. Heterosexual women like Friedan feared that associating with ‘manly’ and ‘manhating’ lesbians would be a slight on the reputation of the emerging Women’s Liberation Movement. But they were wrong!

Because some 53 years after Friedan was worried about the Lavender Menace, the FiLiA 2022 conference was teeming with lesbians from all ages and backgrounds. For instance, I met a 16-year-old who was writing a novel based on her story of coming out to her religious parents, and also hung out with my 91-year-old friend Jalna.

The emphasis at FiLiA on lesbian liberation and the oppression we face on a day-to-day basis told me that what has come out of the fight around sex and gender. And that result is that many women have been galvanised into acting on behalf of those who have been told lesbians can have penises, and that ‘same-sex attraction’ is nothing but a dog whistle for transphobia.

We enjoyed sessions at FiLiA on lesbian literature, the legal definition of lesbian space (in the light of some trans identified men claiming to be lesbians), and lesbian consciousness raising, as well as lesbian communities and socialising. There was mass resistance to the ‘queer’ label and to trans ideology. The lesbians at FiLiA had clearly had enough of being told that some lesbians have penises and that we should not complain about being subsumed in a ridiculous rainbow alongside gay men who do not share the interests of women, alongside an assortment of male-bodied kinksters such as leather-worshipers and furries.

It is a long time since I have seen so many young women and new feminists of all ages at a feminist event. Some 67% of attendees were first-timers at FiLiA, having been brought to feminism by their mothers and grandmothers. Other newcomers were kicking against the sexist male leaders of their university LGBTQQIA+ groups and feminist societies. One group of 19-20-year-old Scottish women told me they were sick of being fed the ‘trans women are women’ and ‘sex work is work’ lines and had come to find out for themselves what the true liberation of women would look like.

Many young women heard of FiLiA on social media. I was wrong when I have said in the past that keyboard warriors should get off their backsides and go out onto the streets, because clearly they are doing both. Social media has been brilliant for these young women. Through it, they have found each other and this conference.

Being in that space for three days, immersed in genuine feminist theory and practice, made me feel like we had our movement back. When the cool kidz online accuse us of racism and of being white, middle class ‘Karens’ who care nothing about global women’s issues, it stings because it bears no light on our reality.

For instance, Iran was a big topic during the three-day event, and the hall erupted when the recently freed writer Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was introduced by broadcaster Samira Ahmed. The harms of religious fundamentalism were discussed by various panels, and the whole event was truly global and international with identity politics confined to the bin.

So I, and a number of other FiLiA attendees, were furious when the journalist Zoe Strimple wrote in her Telegraph column that: “Too many left-wing feminists have gone down a performative, narcissistic spiral. They bang on about imaginary things like ‘intersectionality’ (a web of oppressions) or ‘microaggressions’ rather than addressing the real-life problems facing women today. They remain conspicuously quiet about some of the worst attacks on women’s rights, autonomy and dignity around the world.”

To be fair, Strimple has made the same mistake as many others when she lumped us in with the interlopers – those who claim to be feminist when they are anything but.

In the 1980s, feminism was rebranded by misogynists as toxic, man-hating and mad. Today, pretty much everyone claims the label and yet much of what passes for feminism continues to be nothing but pandering to men and their needs.

Yet the authentic meaning and goal of feminism is the liberation of women from male supremacy. Patriarchy is real and tangible – and no woman, whatever her privilege or lack of, can avoid or easily deny it.  

There is even an emerging movement of men that has been peeked by witnessing the  misogyny of trans activism and want to do something about it. Interestingly, just a 20-minute walk from FiLiA was a gathering of pro-feminist male activists. I popped along to their conference In between sessions at the FiLiA, and found a genuine commitment to support women.

Feminism is returning to its roots and its fundamental principles. For a while, it has been out on loan, and co-opted by those who have men’s – not women’s - interests at heart. FiLiA reminded us what the Women’s Liberation Movement was originally founded on: the quest for liberation from patriarchy, male violence and sex-based oppression. Women’s sexual freedom and autonomy remains a key principle of the movement, which is why being told that some men can be lesbians if they identify as transwomen is so abhorrent.

I have felt in recent years that I’ve been clinging onto a life raft, desperately trying not to drown as the waves of woman-hating and anti-feminist bigotry got higher and higher. Trans ideology and activism almost finished us. But I now feel that feminism is firmly back on shore.