WPUK Brighton Meeting: Turning the Tide

I've just been 'outed' on Twitter by Mumsnetters too.

Because it is so bloody obvious.

I find it astonishing that barely anyone on here has noticed or cared that trans women have been legally women since 2004. All the objections about the 'change to the law' have already been law for 14 years. It's bizarre.

It's not bizarre, it's a disgrace. It's a disgrace that men are going out of their way to exploit the law. Targeting everything with the word woman in it. Including calling a patient a bigot for refusing a smear test.

If these exploitations weren't happening, everyone will still be unaware. Lack of awareness, doesn't make it right.

Most women are entirely unaware that rape was still legal within a marriage, in 1992.

That would have changed had extra men suddenly gone right, now I shall start raping you, because it's completely legal.

Lol LaSquirrel I've just been 'outed' on Twitter by Mumsnetters too. My Twitter profile links to my blog which has been going since 2011. Lots of pictures of the very female me on there. That would be a pretty elaborate way of hiding the fact I'm a man.

Why is saying over 80% of the audience was over 50 ageist? It clearly wasn't a representative meeting of women of all ages. I have nothing against women over the age of 50, in fact I'm married to one.

Every single woman was white too - I didn't hear the comment about identifying as black but it seems in poor taste considering.

I'm pretty sure that in 2004 most women confronted with an obviously male person wanting to do their smear would have felt perfectly comfortable saying "that's a bloke!" in a way they would not feel comfortable now. The pressure put on women to validate a trans person's beliefs about their gender has amped up massively in the last few years, which changes the context considerably.

Which of course everything in this conversation already knows, but why let that get in the way of a nice "but you let me/us/them do it before" implied threat.

To be fair daimbars had a face like she smelled a fart when she checked in so I think her claim she came with an open mind is spurious to say the least

A women from the Quakers (FMH) spoke and apologised for venue cancellation. She said they would have a further discussion about this. Too little too late I'd say

She wasn't from the meeting house. She was just a local Quaker. I mean she wasn't representative of the meeting house or involved in any of the decision making

Haven't yet rtft, but I have to respond to this:
they had a rainbow haired trans / non binary security person inside monitoring the queue which I thought was a stroke of genius. Never seen so many uncomfortable women.

Wot r u on about?! Absolutely nobody was uncomfortable at all! The queue was practically a party.

Daim I think you must have been at a different meeting to me.

Cool story about the security guard bro.
I thought EXACTLY that. Ridiculous.

Why was 80% of the audience over the age of 50?
Nice ageism there. Consider it screenshotted. Oh yeah, there it is!

Followed by a very nice 'suck it up about TW doing smears'. Rather threatening actually. With a side serve of creepy. Got that one too.

You see, I have been arguing online with all the various pro-porny/prostitution types for years (as have others). We pick the 'voice', the inflection of the posters. We could always pick between the male and female posters. That skill is not lost.

The AMA thread pretty much confirmed what we thought. Not female, TW. Adding the creepy smear comments, again, just more confirmation.

You do not 'pass' as well as you think.

I was quite happy for the final, male, audience person to have a voice. There were a number of men there, this does affect men, some more than others, and I think his voice as a gender critical cross dresser (if I understood him correctly?) was interesting to hear, for me.

Good points Mogleflop.

What still gets me is that the TA found the comment what if I identify as black' to be so racist that they felt traumatised to the point they had to leave the room.

When a woman says "my actual rape left me traumatised to the point I don't want to go to a rape crisis centre with a man" she is a bigot.

It is obvious why POC don't want their race to be used a trump card in these debates but the parallels are so obvious it is difficult not to make them especially when people don't accept "transrace"

Legally you can do many things, that doesn't mean they really happen in our society.

• Wear anything you want (but we don't, especially if we're dressing to avoid looking like we're "up for it")

• Study anything you want - (but we don't, engineering and maths are undersubscribed by women compared to others, probably because of gender stereotypes and precedents)

• Apply for any job you feel like (but we don't, there's a big pay gap because women end up in the lower-paid professions)

• Challenge any medic for anything - (but we don't - read any thread on any issue but especially gynaecology ones)

• Challenge any man for anything (but we usually don't tackle that drunk man on the train because he's twice or size; or when we call out sexism we're told we have no sense of humour)

• Challenge any group of men for anything (we usually don't, because there's even more of a threat)

• Challenge anyone on anything or say "no" to almost anything (but we usually don't, one or the reasons people here keep trying to say pithy little phrases like "'no' is a complete word" or "stand up for yourself").

In real life, most women don't and won't, even if they want to. That's because of society's rules which have shaped them; or because of intimidation; or because they've been taught to be nice and accommodating.

How do you not get this daimbars?

You didn't even dare talk to a small group of women about something you're passionate about, even when you apparently were on winking terms with the security team!

This comment is clearly not meant to be reassuring in any way, and its made by someone who is unaware of the death rate cause by cervical cancer, or the efforts made to support women who are unhappy about screening.

You mean there's a wider context outside of some people's identities that needs to be taken into account? Perish the thought.

daim did you ask the security guard with the beautiful rainbow hair whether she was trans/non binary?

Oh and I could only see his top half but he didn't appear to be in women's clothing or look anything like a big man so I don't think he was called for that reason.

Medical procedures are based on consent. you can object to any member of staff performing a procedure on you if you are uncomfortable, and vice versa.

EXACTLY!!!

Oh and it was important to call on the women there as I think one problem with the talk was that it was not going over anything new for people who are already interested. And I think it would have been good to go more in depth from the already interested radfems.

The woman security guard was lovely, she said that some of the protesters were her friends but that she was fine working the event 'it's my job'. I'm pretty sure she didn't tell you she's non binary daim, do not sure why you are making that assumption. We requested at least one woman security and we got one.
The male security guards were having a joke with us and one told us that when one of the protesters tried to engage him and say we were fascists he wanted to tell him to fuck off (but didn't, professional)

The speakers were the speakers we could get for those dates who were willing to speak. We had a Muslim woman lined up but she had prior commitments.

The audience who they are. I don't know what to say to you about that. Nobody is excluded.

As to whether you believe that the young women asked questions - all I can say is that if you seem to think that you only need to believe things that make you comfortable and confirm your worldview no matter what evidence there is to the contrary so I'm not surprised.

Funny, transwomen weren't starting to dominate women's sports in 2004.

Or take up public women's jobs or scholarships.

Or telling us that they were 100% biologically female and that they were owed lesbian sex as much as anyone else:

You'd almost think something had happened between then and now to start making us all say "hold on a minute".

Probably all of us liberal feminists just thought "let's turn evil" overnight and started chuckling sinisterly, that, right?

Not only did they give extra time to the TA, but they also called on a man to speak when they didn't have time to answer all the women's questions in the audience. I appreciate calling on the TA makes it more of a debate, but I think men who made up a tiny percentage of attendees shouldn't have been called on.

The man actually started off with "as a man" and then waffled on about man stuff and transvestitism.

a trans woman now is legally a women. Therefore we are unable to object right now if a trans woman performs our smear and have been unable to object since 2004

This comment is clearly not meant to be reassuring in any way, and its made by someone who is unaware of the death rate cause by cervical cancer, or the efforts made to support women who are unhappy about screening.

Its made by someone who has no empathy, and who does not care if women in abusive relationships are prevented by their partner from attending a smear unless its carried out by a woman.

Its also factually inaccurate. Medical procedures are based on consent. you can object to any member of staff performing a procedure on you if you are uncomfortable, and vice versa.

Another note on demographics: I would have been there (30s), but I have young children who are shitty sleepers, including a breastfed baby, and I haven't been out in the evening for 4 fucking years.

When my children are older, I will have the opportunity to go to such events. When I was younger, I did not properly understand why I needed to do feminism.

I do now, and I'm looking forward to watching the recordings when they are uploaded.

Apologies my post was for daim

It did happen, although my opinion was that the "hugely emotional and sobbing" bit didn't last very long before she started yelling.

Thanks for the article, Kikashi. That's quite a good neutral piece of reporting.