I didn’t know we had arseholes like this “on our side”.

A few years ago a well funded MRA organization encouraged its members to create faux feminist blogs, pages on Facebook, twitter accounts, to promote the MRA agenda under the guise of Feminism. They also organize mass reporting and sock puppeting. Many of the trans advocates are MRAs, as are many trans identified males. As a result much of what we now see on the internet from self declared feminists are false flag operations designed and executed by abusive males. Most of them are obvious but some will fool you for a while.

It's so helpful to think it all through, especially in the company of so many clear thinkers. The (external) gaslighting is confusing enough and for many of us there's an inner voice reminding us of the terrible shame of defying our femininity training to boot.

It's really important to talk these things through, I think.

This is a great thread - in spite of the provocative title.

Sandwiching two statements together changes the message, even if both are true. It implies some kind of equity which should not be implied.

Perfectly articulated.

Context is everything.

If I say 'rape is abhorrent' that conveys a message.
If I say 'rape is abhorrent. Look at these false rape allegations', my message has changed.

If I say 'the man hit the woman.' That conveys one message.
But if I say 'the man hit the woman. The woman was having an affair' the juxtaposition of those two statements implies a relationship between the two, even an implicit justification or causal relationship.'

Sandwiching two statements together changes the message, even if both are true. It implies some kind of equity which should not be implied.

It was crass and inappropriate to pair a statement about a woman's rights in an intimate examination with an appeal for empathy with the male nurse in that scenario.

It isn't that anyone disagrees with the appeal for dignity for TIMS. It's that the TIM in that particular scenario wasn't 'put into it' against his will. He wasn't an innocent pawn who should have been treated better. He was a callous dick who should have recused himself from attending a cervical smear of a woman who had asked for a woman. She should never have been in the vulnerable position of having to challenge him in the first place. And when she bravely did, he shouldn't have doubled down on the offence by insisting she validate him by letting him literally penetrate her vagina.

So i think to pair a statement about the woman's dignity with one about his betrayed the thought process that he had his dignity breached (he didn't) and that breach was comparable to hers.

That deserved a strongly worded takedown. Not a free pass because we should be grateful for any crumbs of sympathy any transwoman offers us as an ally.

Kristina may be generally great, but that was an insensitive whataboutery blunder.

On a side note, I can't wait for this meeting, Meeting up with other women who really get it is so refreshing.

It is.

Good point Ghengis

ladies are always more listened to when they are pleasing and dainty in a patriarchy

'Less silenced' doesn't necessarily equal 'more listened to'

I'm concerned that worrying too much about how we come across just imbues everything we say with a sort of 'I'm subordinate' marker which is what gives everyone permission to dismiss it

So I think the onus is on Kristina to brush up on the knowledge of male violence against women and girls.

YY. It's not always for women to be the ones to compromise. Kristina has had a lot of shit from TAs, I know that. I think that's part of why Kristina reacted like that rather than think about how the tweet could have been perceived by women who don't entirely trust Kristina and I can understand it.

Alliances necessarily require compromise to some degree and making at least some effort to get along.

I agree with this, but am aware also of how a history of 'give and inch they take a mile', means you are forced to be more vigilant and uncompromising when it comes to defending boundaries or else you lose more ground.

So I think the onus is on Kristina to brush up on the knowledge of male violence against women and girls.

And yes of course, ladies are always more listened to when they are pleasing and dainty in a patriarchy so it is worth considering when it is of strategic importance to be so, in order to further the cause.

I think, though I'm not sure, that it's run by a TA, Moth. They have coopted virtually all feminist sites and vaguely women oriented Facebook groups. And even the "brand name" as it were.

While woman centring feminists are forced to create secret groups because they're under threat of exposure to friends and family. It's erasure. Practically the only public gender critical page is Meghan Murphy's excellent Feminist Current.

Arguably women speaking with anger and passion about how violated they feel by some of these developments is the best possible refutation of the 'its not doing anyone any harm' and 'you're just being mean for no reason' arguments.

especially lesbian feminists who saw this coming much earlier than most people and see just how shitty the transagenda is for women every single day to toe any sort of party line

Also agree. A great deal is owed to these women by all of us.

I must ponder on a personal Twitter account so I can practise what I preach. I'm in the unfortunate position of having a professional one that I couldn't compromise because it would affect other people.

I agree. But you're not going to get feminists, especially lesbian feminists who saw this coming much earlier than most people and see just how shitty the transagenda is for women every single day to toe any sort of party line. It's politics. Politics gets heated and people disagree on the best approach.

I know Datun. And they've deleted the vast majority of the gender critical comments, even the completely sensitive and reasonable ones. Abuse by TAs and yes, the handmaidens on the page is terrible.

I think the priority is to build coalitions that will stop the proposed changes to the GRA to self-ID

I think this too. For the simple reason that if an MP is going to get letters of concern from a wide spread of different types of people they're more likely to think "hang on..." than if they just get them from a (perceived) narrow group with a particular perspective.

I agree it's hard/impossible to reach a compromise for both sides here.

It is. I think I currently find myself in a place where I think the priority is to build coalitions that will stop the proposed changes to the GRA to self-ID and the EA to drop the sex-based exemptions.

Therefore, I'd rather make the alliances with people like Kristina and Debbie (I'm more bothered by Debbie, to be honest, because they have been supportive of Mermaids in the past) and try to prevent these legislative changes. I think productive exchanges between these groups (radfems and so-called truscum) will do a lot to persuade onlookers. Reading all those tweet exchanges, I suspect Venice Allen has come to a similar conclusion, for example.

We can worry about the differences later on.

Ereshkigal

That feminist united page is utterly disgusting.

People actually advocating for the woman to shut up and get on with it.

Go on, love, be assaulted because otherwise you might hurt the feelings of the man who wants to assault you.

Great post Guardian.

We need to push for more than self ID. The EA already allows self ID in practice due to the way the protected characteristics are laid out. We can galvanise against self ID. It sends an important message. It won't be normalised further for males to be in female spaces. But we need to put public pressure on organisations to use the exemptions.

I notice there were also some friendly exchanges which challenged Kristina - one woman pointed out that she liked a lot of what Kristina had to say but that she could no longer get on board with TIMs ever using the word woman whether as trans woman, transwoman or whatever. Too much was now at stake to compromise on language in any way

That's my exact position. I agree it's hard/impossible to reach a compromise for both sides here.

Ack. It's all so tricky. But I do still think a lot of this is about playing to the gallery.

I notice there were also some friendly exchanges which challenged Kristina - one woman pointed out that she liked a lot of what Kristina had to say but that she could no longer get on board with TIMs ever using the word woman whether as trans woman, transwoman or whatever. Too much was now at stake to compromise on language in any way. Kristina acknowledged this although didn't agree. I thought the exchange was quite edifying - clear differences emerged but without an irretrievable split into tribalism.

I think the current fight is to find a way to prevent the situation for women deteriorating further. The current GRA isn't going to be overturned (I'd like to see it amended so that only people who have completed a physical transition are eligible for a GRC but I accept this is never going to happen now). The main fight is against self-ID. So I do think we have to amplify the voices of trans people who are also against it, while accepting that there will be areas of difference between us.

I don't know Kristina, but I think there was a fair bit of male-entitlement, what about the men and minimising women's oppression in that tweet.

Kristina is an ally, but it's neither the first time they've said something insensitive that I've seen nor the first time women have got into an angry exchange of this nature. Unless you're Miranda Yardley, I agree it is a difficult position for both sides to maintain.