Slide show on "How to Deal with TERFs"

[OlennasWimple]

Vimeo file embedded in this Twitter post: twitter.com/Gay4Plants/status/984358165075628032

Warning: do not watch if you are prone to high blood pressure, as it will send it rocketing

I'm not sure what's the worst bit of it TBH: the likening of TERFs to fascists, the fact that this was used for training at the NUS conference, the appalling spelling and grammar, or the downright lies it contains.

[thebewilderness]

Not authorized to see it, message.

[R0wantrees]

www.slideshare.net/RowanDavis4/how-to-deal-with-terfs-93651217

[cromeyellow0]

Rowan Davis is/was a student at Oxford.
www.oxfordsu.org/elections/manifesto/190/

Heavily involved with trans issues and on the NUS Women's Committee.
www.nusconnect.org.uk/liberation/women-students/campaign-committee-2017-18

[Foxglovesandprimroses]

God, it's so badly written. How the hell did he get into Oxford?

[TerfsUp]

I agree, Foxgloves. But it's of the standard I have come to expect from TRAs.

[coleridge]

I'm blocked by this Gay4Plants fellow despite never having even posted a tweet. I suppose it must be from the awful crime of following some gender critical women? Sheesh, I can't imagine blocking someone who doesn't even post anything - you would never even encounter them on Twitter because they're simply inactive! But if this is how he needs to 'stay safe, then fine, I guess.

It's a real shame though because I like plants too :'(

As for the slideshow...sheesh again. What terrible quality and what a pack of lies. The NUS is in shambles these days.

[MrGHardy]

Tbh it's not as bad as some tweets you can read. It's just really, really stupid and factually incorrect as well as making baseless accusations (e.g. TERFs are "fascists", the irony of the similarities between them sending thugs to shut women down and the SA must be lost on them).

[thebewilderness]

That was some of the saddest mansplaining I have ever read.

[OlennasWimple]

Is the request for women to put themselves physically between "trans people and TERFs", as seen at recent protests and events, now a standard TRA MO?

And did you notice the shout out to MN (as a "place where TERFs organise" on slide 18)?

I looked up the other presenter - a transwoman women's officer at Sheffield Uni. So under the radar, more and more women's spaces are being taken away. In fact, both of the presenters have seats at tables reserved for women, as RD is on the NUS Women's Committee

[SeaWitchly]

Yes,who is this chap... a blue haired teenage SJW and young man who somehow feels he has the right to speak on behalf of women and take up space as a delegate on the NUS Women's Committee

I mean, I get some of it... I had a bright red spiky hairdo when I was a teenager at university and was into self righteously campaigning for Greenpeace and refugees. However I didn't have the arrogance to take a place at a table reserved for someone who had actually experienced the reality of being a refugee.

How on earth does this arrogant and ignorant young man think he can get up on a national platform via his position on the NUS Women's Committee and tellothers how they should deal with TERFS? What a complete and utter knobhead he is.

[TerfsUp]

It's penis power, SeaWitchly.

[VirginiaComet]

Is it too much to ask that people at least identify someone they way they ask to be? If they're on the women's committee they clearly aren't 'he'.

Perhaps it's a generational thing but I've had self-defining trans women around me as friends and in my women's spaces since I was a teenager and I just don't see the issue.

As for context - a slide show tells you very little about someone's writing style or education level because it's an aide-memoire not a peer-reviewed journal. The odd typo is hardly grounds for expulsion from Oxford ffs. (I'd never have completed my degree if it were!)

[AncientLights]

Is it too much to ask that people at least identify someone they way they ask to be? If they're on the women's committee they clearly aren't 'he'.

VirginiaComet are you new to these parts? I feel you must be to write the above. If you'd been here any length of time at all you'd know that it is indeed very simple for a 'he' to get 'himself' on a women's committee. They do it all the time. They keep women out. Then they have the temerity to speak for us. They are doing this now, in the UK in the 21st century. Shocking, isn't it?

[OlennasWimple]

Virginia - I wouldn't be that sloppy in writing notes to myself that no-one would ever see, never mind something I was putting onto a projector and then sharing with the world online as a professional training tool

[thebewilderness]

It is reminiscent of old time men's explanations of how to beat women into submission.
Virginia We are discussing women's rights.
Just this past week a woman was instructed by a judge while under oath to refer to the person who assaulted her as a female in spite of the fact that he is legally and biologically a male. Being instructed to lie under oath about the sex of your attacker really set alarm bells off with regard to violence against women laws and how they will be interpreted and applied.

[transwomenarewomentoo]

Hey AncientLights, not having spent time on mumsnet doesn't make virginia's point any less correct? Just because lots of you believe trans women aren't women doesn't actually make it true, it just makes you all wrong together. The same goes for spelling and grammar - a badly written truth is worth far more than an eloquent falsehood after all. The idea that intelligence is the same as perfect spelling is also nonsense - lots of highly intelligent people struggle with spelling, and many have conditions like dyslexia which make it more difficult.

I don't think you really appreciate what it's like to live as a trans woman - the threats of street harassment, the rejection, the inability to even use the bathroom or have someone you call you by your name? The idea that it's simple or easy to ID as a woman to claim positive discrimination is just a lie, and a mean and nasty one at that because it ignores how much these women struggle to be recognised as themselves. The idea that trans women are opportunists trying to take opportunities from cis women is also totally naive in relation to the workings of these organisations, which you'd know if you ever actually worked with trans inclusive groups. It's quite clear you don't know what you're talking about when it comes to how women join these panels etc.

[transwomenarewomentoo]

Love the idea that:

• spending time on mumsnet = enlightened about the truth of how easy it is for men to get themselves on women's committees
  
• actually working on women's panels and having significant experience of the things you so furiously rant on the internet about = can't have any idea what you're talking about at all
  

turns out the fact that you all agree and waste your lives grouching about it on the internet is more important that... how these panels actually organise?

[CoCoCoconut]

Just because lots of you believe trans women aren't women doesn't actually make it true, it just makes you all wrong together.

What is a woman?

[OlennasWimple]

No, I've never ever ever been subject to street harassment or rejected or called the wrong name or been prevented from accessing a bathroom ever in my 40 odd years . This never happens to women. Ever.

[MargoChanning]

Hmm...

[HelpTheTigers]

Ahh, we are all wrong together! Now I know, then...

[thebewilderness]

That is pretty standard internet MRA stuff.
We are adults here who do things on and off the interwebs.
My question is this:
Can you mandate belief?
Can you codify into law the idea that some people can mind over matter themselves out of material reality and into the opposite sex, and must be treated accordingly?
It is like transubstantiation. A belief that no one actually believes.
Will you allow people to drug and mutilate children based on this belief that no one believes?

It has been done before many times. It has never ended well for the citizens.

[LangCleg]

Ahh, we are all wrong together! Now I know, then

We're all in the Wrong Club! We're wrong 'uns! I think we should get Philomea Cunk on this issue. She'd set us right.

[AssignedPuuurfectAtBirth]

Someone in convo says they have a pal at MN who can get the thread deleted? Hopefully BS.

Anyhoo...

So no, transwomen are not women. They are male.

Scarey to think what goes on at Oxford these days. But assuming reading humanities rather than science. Gender studies perchance?

[AssignedPuuurfectAtBirth]

I just caught a glimpse of Philomea Cunk asking if pigs became cows as part of the evolution process. I think we could use her skills. Or at least some undergrads at Oxford...