Feminist Fightback

@ALunerExplorer
You are now derailing this thread as you did yesterday with your confusing comments about your bi daughter. It transpired (after many many posts trying to clarify what on earth you were talking about) that you were unhappy about your daughter being bullied at her school by other girls. You were advised to start your own thread.
You were not responded to inappropriately. Your comments were unclear and confusing.

@Ereshkigal exactly. Growing up I was always told how wrong the things i was doing or wanted were because I was a girl. It wasn't the things in themselves that were bad(well maybe some were ,what with being young and stupid) it was me doing them as a girl. I found myself wishing i was a boy, found myself more comfortable with boys and trying to be one of the boys, the girls were all vacuous , insipid, boring and shallow creatures(did I mention young and stupid?) . I was convinced I should've been born a boy, that i had a boy mind. For years i was adamant that if i had a child i wanted a boy as I wouldn't have any idea what ro do with a girl. And many more bs ideas all born from you are a girl, therefore you must be x, do y, think z etc

I think the problem is that advocates of words meaning whatever an individual wishes them to mean find that no one can infer ANY meaning from what they say. Your words become meaningless.

You say 'abuse' and you may be referring to disagreement
You say phobic and you mean disagreement.
You say hatred and you mean disagreement

Once you redefine words to mean whatever you want you lose the ability to communicate with others because you've lost a common language.

“well if it was because she is bi that's bad, but if there were another reason it might be okay', ”

Bollocks did anyone say that.

When the response to:

'my offspring received bi-phobic verbal abuse'

is

'well if it was because she is bi that's bad, but if there were another reason it might be okay',

and other people find it difficult to grasp why I might have a problem with that, that has nothing to do with a failure of communication on my part.

It's a common theme, Bert...

"Voicing that is very clearly not popular. Still, free speech and all that."

Who knows? It might be incredibly popular. I might ageee with every word you say. The problem is, i don't know what it is you are saying.....

I listen to people, look at the evidence, and see that differently.

Voicing that is very clearly not popular. Still, free speech and all that.

A uterus in the vast majority of cases means you receive a female socialisation which is different to the one you would get if you had a penis.

A uterus does not define how a person responds as a child to gender socialisation does it?
You bet your bippy it does.
Half the population knows exactly what it means when they hear the other half of the population chanting "girls can't, girls can't, girls can't."

Battle. Please explain how wishing to get rid of constricting gender that has caused you yourself pain and problems and fight the exploitation of women for male pleasure and profit is "toxic". Prostitution and pornography affect all women. None of us identify with our oppression as females. It's not all about you.

No, it’s definitely not radical feminists. I’m sorry Battle for what you have been through, and I agree sex and gender are not the same thing because gender is a social construct which should be abolished - leaving us free to be who we want, wear trousers, no make up etc etc without feeling dysphoric.

Your hatred is misdirected entirely. People are asking for your story because they want to hear it btw.

Most children more or less automatically follow what other children are doing or expected to do, and especially follow 'their sort'. They very quickly work out which 'sort' they are by school-age or so.

Exactly. I had the luck to be raised fairly isolated, and with a mum who taught me maths from an early age, and a dad who had computers, but who both also taught me to knit, to cook, to do woodwork, but were rubbish at gardening, cleaning, didn't care about sport etc. - ie. were fully and obviously human with various strengths and weaknesses, interests and disinterests - ie. made it obvious that there wasn't one way to be a person. I actually also credit my sibling who is severely dyspraxic with a lot, because I could see that other people were down on him because he couldn't speak, was a immature etc, but I knew he was kind and clever - just in a different way to the way they wanted him to be.

in my turn, I have sons who have their own personality, and wrestle with society (the youngest is being told at school that pink is a girls colour, but it's his favourite, and always has been, so we're having to work with him on letting him be him, but not get a hard time from his peers).

And, in a small way, they have an influence. DS2 menacing the public in a fairy costume with a nerf gun, DS1 being the first to go and talk to anyone with a baby (he loves babies) or making sure little toddlers get involved at the softplay - but both knowing that they are boys, and that toys, colours, and interests are for everyone.

That is rad fem.

Oh please DO continue to tell me the hate and harassment I've experienced isn't really anything to do with radical feminism. Thanks for that, really. Christ.

It really isn't. If they called themselves radical feminists, they're really not.

One of my friends aunt calls herself a feminist. She's very vocal about it. She called my friend's son a misogynist when he was 3. That doesn't mean all feminists think that or spend their time putting toddlers under a microscope to check for any signs of misogyny or patriarchal entitlement.

“Oh please DO continue to tell me the hate and harassment I've experienced isn't really anything to do with radical feminism. Thanks for that, really. Christ. ”

I’m sorry, but yes, I will tell you that. That is not to minimize the hate and harassment. But it was nothing to do with radical feminism. I don’t know who did it- and whoever it was they are utterly despicable. But it wasn’t radical feminists.

Hemlock-yes-there has always been pressure to change the person to fit the stereotype, not the other way round. Any attempt to challenge the stereotype is met with derision

I vividly remember the derision and often (mild) physical violence from males at school who liked to make sure that girls conformed to their stereotypical ideals of femininity. Thank goodness for feminism. It wasn't just radical feminism in those days either.

Oh please DO continue to tell me the hate and harassment I've experienced isn't really anything to do with radical feminism. Thanks for that, really. Christ.

Sex and gender are not the same thing, rinse, repeat, ad infinitum, ad nauseum. Shut up.

I'm sure other victims of abuse really appreciate being asked to re-traumatise themselves to satisfy folks demanding justification for claims made against the toxicity of trans exclusionary and sexwork exclusionary radical feminism. I certainly don't. I know the difference between the abuse I've felt from men, and the abuse I've felt from radfems under the above categories. So no, I'm not going to sit here and go into the hows, wheres and whys, I did that with my friends and the therapist after I almost killed myself.

Me too, Hemlock.

My parents had a worthy sort of Reader's Digest tome when I was little, called 'Great Lives, Great Deeds'.

It contained, IIRC, two women - Marie Curie and Mother Teresa. All the other hundred or so were men. So, given that I was going to be the next Einstein/Leonardo/Fleming, in my own juvenile opinion, being a girl was obviously a poor bet.

(I can remember the actual shock I got aged about 7 or so when I realised that I was expected to identify more with the Anne role in the Famous Five than with Bill Stubbs or Alf the clear-sighted fisher boy. Humph.)

Hemlock-yes-there has always been pressure to change the person to fit the stereotype, not the other way round. Any attempt to challenge the stereotype is met with derision-you only have to look at about a million threads on Mumsnet about how baby girls are instinctively drawn to pink and dollies and baby boys to blue and trains to see that!

When I was young I loathed pink, would tantrum if anyone tried to dress me in either pink or dresses, I felt like an outsider amongst other girls, I longed to play with the boys, I saw other girls as alien and unrelatable, during my early teens I got mistaken for a boy a lot - and I liked it.

I was the second girl in my year group to start puberty, and I hated it, I felt uncomfortable in my body.

Here's the thing, there was a point where I'd have been very easily convinced that I was actually a boy trapped in the wrong body. It wouldn't have been a leap at all. There's video somewhere of me telling a friend I wanted to be reincarnated as a boy, and if I could choose to be born again I'd choose to be a boy.

Luckily for me I instead found influencers who showed me that being a girl didn't mean I had to fit in with girlie stereotypes. I could be a girl who wore trousers. I could be a girl who wore blue. I could be a girl who played with computers. I could be a girl who didn't like baby dolls and fashion.

Feminism then taught me that while society insisted girls had to be objectified and sexy, that we were more than that. That we could change society instead of ourselves.

Agree Lancelottie

It's obvious though that 'adaptability' and compliance with rules are coded female by some posters though. Instead of been seen for what they are - human characteristics possessed in various degrees by both sexes.

Actually, Barracker, I suspect the overlap with autism comes in there. (I know more about autism than gender issues, really.)

Most children more or less automatically follow what other children are doing or expected to do, and especially follow 'their sort'. They very quickly work out which 'sort' they are by school-age or so. The ones who sit there clueless, wander off in the opposite direction or don't realise the social 'rules' apply to them start to raise that niggle in your mind about ASD.

Or they grow up to be gender-critical feminists, of course.

Are you male? Is that what you meant?

Yes I'm a man. I wouldn't dream of prefacing a post with 'as a man' though. :o

Transwomen, of course, must have rights and the means to promote them. They are just not the rights of women

I agree 100%.