We need to talk about the GRA - Glasgow

Yeah they don’t realise they’re actually helping our cause, they’re too thick. Keep up the emergency demos guys, brilliant way to peak trans people!

The good thing is that I've shown this thread, the blog about trying to organise the other meeting and Maria's blog about Hyde Park to a friend who has been pushing back at me over this stuff.

"Wait, what? To have a meeting for women it has to be all I'll be the one wearing a red carnation and carrying a copy of The Times? I can't believe it."

"Well, I have been trying to tell you. Lesbians have to have secret groups on Facebook now as well."

"I need to look further into this. Send me some links."

So, the need to organise in secret is something that can tip otherwise disbelieving women over the edge. Thanks, ACQuee, you did me a favour there.

however the managers remained complicit in their transphobia and took to hanging up the phone on people calling in

God help the poor sap who turned in for a late shift only to have these half wits pestering him/her on the phone

I think by bodily autonomy they mean the right to alter their bodies with hormones and surgery.

I wonder if they all go to the same newspeak classes?

It's like what that speaker said (I can't remember which one) about randomly flicking through a dictionary and chucking words together. It all sounds very lovely, but is meaningless

I think so. I think they imagine "bodily autonomy" means the right to go in whichever spaces they feel are appropriate. When I would use it to mean the freedom to refuse medical treatment etc. Which they, like everyone in the country, have.

TERFs are servants of oppression, for they privilege a rigid and oppressive gender binary...

sigh.

Does anyone have further info on the assaults they are claiming?

and believed that trans bodily autonomy should be respected.

What did they tell them? How was anyone proposing that "trans bodily autonomy" shouldn't be respected?

the sort of men who would go out of their way to not use the designated men's loos, and instead use the ones where women would be, are the epitomy of the type of men I'd wish to avoid.

YY.

I'm trying to work today, and keep breaking into ranting out loud about various aspects of the trans narrative. Fortunately, I work from home!

So many different thoughts in my head today, but just wanted to pick up on what terry (hello again!) mentions there about this not being about individuals but about classes and wider society. Stuart spoke about a similar change in the way we think about political issues, and he referred specifically to the push to change the voting age to 16.

Many years ago, I saw a young Charlotte Church on the Wogan chat show. She was 16 at the time, and she spoke about how it wasn't right that she paid tax (lots of it) and had no vote. She said that there should be no taxation without representation, and that if she was required to contribute financially to the state, then she should have a say in how the state used and distributed financial resources. She was looking outward.

Contrast that with some comments I heard a few months ago on a radio discussion about changing the voting age. There was no mention of taxation, no mention of having a stake in wider society and an interest in political decisions about resources. Instead, the comment was that if 16 years were old enough to have sex, they were old enough to vote.

It's not a trans issue, but it's a clear illustration, I think, of what was being said last night about people being turned inward towards themselves rather than outward to society, and the focus on the body rather than society.

Hello Lemon!

I can also see Stuart's point as I thought he was arguing that saying women's spaces should only be for women and that should be enough on its own is a good one - kind of like how "No" is a complete sentence and there doesn't need to be an explanation.
However if it's actually coming from a place of just not wanting to hear about MVAW because NAMALT then that's different.

I found what he had to say about the bigger picture in regards to identity and focussing on the self at the expense of examining class structures really interersting. It was beautifully illustrated by Joanna trying to make the Q&A about them and their individual experience as a TIM and then Heather BE trying to explain that it's not about individuals it's about classes and the wider implications for society as a whole.

Yes pretty. I agree, I think everyone does. A third set of GN toilets is the clear solution.

Except that transwomen (the loud, lobbying type who seem to have so much power) don't want to use the GN toilets. They specifically want into the women's.

Ds' school now has Male, Female and 2 "Gender Neutral" loos (they were the "Visitors loos). That seems to be an equitable way to do it.

I have been thinking a lot about what Heather said about the Barbican toilets (how they used to have male and female toilets, but they now only have male and gender neutral!!!)

If I was there, I think I'd rather use the men's than the gender neutral. Because the sort of men who would go out of their way to not use the designated men's loos, and instead use the ones where women would be, are the epitomy of the type of men I'd wish to avoid.

And no, not purely because of rape, but because I think men who would choice to use GN toilets instead of men's are doing it to prove some sort of point to women, and that's bad enough, and makes me feel uncomfortable enough in itself.

Hello Sonic

I'm completely confused now after meeting so many folk last night and trying to remember all the usernames, I'm afraid my menopausal brain can't deal with all the excitement!

I wish I'd had the guts to get up at the end and shout "who are the mumsnetters?" but I didn't know if that would be bad form and/or outing. Also I was still quite jittery after the "contretemps" at the beginning.

Myself and Seeing were speaking to Venice outside the venue and she said that's the first event where activists had actually managed to get inside the venue to cause trouble, let's hope it's the last.

I made the point that rightly or wrongly, it is useful to know that argument doesn’t work.

Hello Terry!