The Labrys and The Trident
This list is also part of my "ongoing" FH worldbuilding project, Wheels of Heaven! Checking out the link in my sig...will probably not clear a whole lot up, but might be worthwhile.
Main Organisers of Femina Urbe:
2093-2097:
Jo Morris (WomansForce)
2097-2098:
efforts suspended due to legal judgement
2098-2105:
Roxanne Keene (WomansForce)
2105-2107:
Hippo Tay-Butler (WomansForce, then Pan-Feminine Tendency)
2107-2108: efforts suspended due to internal disagreements
2108-2109: Roxanne Keene (Labrys)
2109-2113: efforts suspended due to financial irregularities
2113-2115:
Gretna Danforth (Labrys)
2115-2115:
efforts suspended due to legal judgement
2115-
X115: Roxanne Keene (Independent)
Undersea Hideout: The No1 Aquatat Discussion Forum
>Wait, hold on, what do you guys mean by "Literal TERF Island"?
u:BeyondBio-dome: Sorry, new member. On the fora frontispiece, it says "discussion of all kinds and sizes of aquatats, from mega-cities out of Jules Verne's dreams to poorly scrawled sketches of a Literal TERF Island". What's the second one?
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u:jon: Use the search engine, asshat.
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u:OreganoInsectLegislator: Dude, don't be a dick.
u:BeyondBio-dome, I hope you're ready for a
wild story.
Right, so, for a bunch of historical reasons I won't be getting into here, the UK was the centre of the TERF movement for, well, most of the period they were a thing, and they remained an existing force well after the Deluge, unlike most countries. Hence the phrase "TERF Island". Ofc, movements that end up sidelined start to get a little crazy, and TERFism was no exception. By the 2090s, the biggest remaining group were WomansForce, who'd embraced radical misandry, of the kind where men would be wiped out
conceptually. I think they were big on parthogenesis? At least I hope so. Otherwise they were just Anti-Natalists with extra steps.
Anyways, physical force TERFism had failed largely thanks to being outcompeted by, well, groups that made an effort to get military knowledge, so
despite the name they started moving towards peaceful seperatism from male society. The problem was, they weren't able to get seperated
enough for some of the radicals, who were more onboard with "creating a new phallus-free society" than "hanging out in a weird campsite in Staffordshire".
Now, as I'm sure you're aware, the UK has some pretty loose regulations on aquatat planning. Like,
super loose. If you put up the cash to the
North Sea Planning Board, you can pretty much always get your way, even if your plans are just a screencap from
SeaQuest with all the non-white people edited out of it.
I'm sure you can see where this is going.
Amazonia, the first effort to start the new women's civilisation under the sea, actually got struck down, because the New Khalistan Murders meant that the Board decided it was a good time to take the non-discrimination clauses seriously for once. This also meant that WomensFoce's leader stepped down from heading the project directly, and instead gave the role to an ally, Roxanne Keene. Oh boy, Roxanne Keene.
Keene is...well, I'm not going to beat around the bush, she's a grifter. One of a very special breed of grifters that you get a
lot in fringe politics and religion, the kind who never seems to quite make the connection between their actions and their consequences, or erase the connection between their causes and their bank accounts. The ones who
really think Jesus
wants them to have that Cadillac. What set Keene apart from that crowd, though, was her sheer dogged bloodymindedness. Femina Urbe (the new name they chose for the second attempt; Amazonia apparently caused some issues with the Deep Greens), was actually properly researched, properly planned, and properly costed, even if said costing was...a little out of whack with the actual pricing guidelines. We'll get to that in a minute.
Now, while Keene was busy under the sea, her party was getting up to some interesting stuff on dry land. Morris had stepped down and was replaced by Hippolytia Tay-Butler, who, as the name suggests, was pretty much born into the movement. The problem with people born into the movement is that they tend to start reasoning from the ideology they're in, as opposed to starting from their own personal prejudices and slapping the ideology over it, so Hippo decided 1) she was going to start letting trans women in, since, well, they'd abandoned the masculine, right?, and 2) it'd be better strategically to merge with the Left United Front (not that WomansForce were paticularly anticapitalist, it's just that the Front collects tendencies with all the discernment and parsimony of a 9-year-old in a sweetshop). Either one of these would mean civil war.
Once the dust settled, Keene, who sided with the old guard for reasons that'll, again, become clear later, had a major problem. Apparently one of the people who left with Hippo was the person who gave WomansForce architectural advice, and now the rebranded Labrys movement had no way of drawing up a structurally sound aquatat. The obvious tack to take here was, of course, to seek another expert's advice, and Keene cast her net far and wide. Very far and wide.
On the 1st of July, 2109, the following thread was posted in the Planning and Engineering subforum of UnderseaHideout.co.uk:
>>Aquatat planning help--BIOLOGICAL WOMEN ONLY PLEASE
In case you don't feel like reading the whole thing, I don't blame you--the thread lasted for over fifty pages. By page 12, Keene had been banned, unable to handle the outrageous demand of "please do not call people who dislike your post slurs". By page 25, we'd moved onto tearing apart the actual submitted designs, at which point
u:Vinch752 noticed that Keene, based on the numbers, was being absolutely bilked on the price of carbon fibre. By page 33, we'd managed to tot up the money missing on the plans compared to the amount raised, and then someone compared it against the price of houses in the Basildon area. By page 37,
u:daucus_Smithson sent a screenshot of the thread to his boss at the Serious Fraud Office. By page 42, the Labrys Party had officially announced that Keene would be stepping down as head of the Femina Urbe Project and as party treasurer, "pending further review". By the time the thread was locked, we'd officially caused the end of the whole project, something Keene let us know via a sockpuppet account the next day.
The remnant of the project was revived by Labrys in 2113, only to get struck down again by the North Sea Planning Board--this time, for lack of an adequate administrative plan, and considering the debacle that was Psi-Fort Three we can only imagine how hideously loose said plans were. Keene started a crowdfunder last year to get her original plans (which are, in fairness, solid, if you ignore the budgetary holes of the exact right size to pay off her mortgage and buy a nice new lamp in the bargain) funded, but given that the Board no longer take private individuals' planning permits, that's not going to be going anywhere. Officially, the dream of an all-female settlement under the North Sea's waves is doomed--and, considering the relative size of the movement elsewhere, it might be dead everywhere else, too.
We have "Literal TERF Island" on our frontispiece for the same reason big game hunters have moose heads over their fireplaces. To commemorate the time the nerds on this forum Ended Female Seperatism Forever through the power of Noticing Mortgages.
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u:daucus_Smithson: oregano next time u @ me pls remember I've got an eye chip now, nearly crashed bike, not pog moment
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