The New Misogyny

Dress it up all you want, but
womanhood is not a costume. It's a biological truth.

I was also playing around with the idea of 'dressing up' (just call me Dave and pass me the glitter nail polish, but only on a Monday) but then again we know the likes of certain non binary activists like to retain their 'outwardly male image' and beards oh and dicks.

So, grooming = dress it up that children need to be medicated and taught from a young age they are in the wrong body

Rape = dress it up as needing to access the spaces where women and children go

Misogny = dress it up that women need a new name and no voice with which to speak

Gynerasure is what they're doing. (Remember Shon Faye's 'Enjoy ur erasure'?)
Safeguarding is one of the things - probably the main thing - that needs protecting and promoting. But there is also the political angle: the need to be able to talk about oppressions suffered by a class of people due to common biology. And there's the social angle of having your own language policed and silenced.

Oh Ugly that's a slogan

'What it feels like to be a woman' thread sprung out

Not 'what it feels like to be a woman sprung out'

No cuntry, for old men.

I must go to bed now. But two words on the what it feels like to be a woman sprung out

No entry (insomniac musings from me, but wondering if that would work on several levels?)

Do girls and women have a right to say no to penis, or not? *

I think this does sum it up.
Reclaim is also powerful.

I also repeat the wording that a woman is an adult human female.

The problem with the media reports on the protest (calling them 'anti-trans') possibly arose because of a lack of clarity as to what was meant by 'transactivist' - this was the specific group the lesbians were protesting against, not trans people in general. And, I'm sure there are some perfectly reasonable trans-rights proponents who are not seeking to infringe women's rights. We encounter the same misunderstandings of 'TRA' on FWR but we aren't constrained to trying to convey a message on banners and a flyer in a short space of time.

The true nature of the protest was females defending their rights against male incursion.

Hard for the protesters to communicate this succinctly though - most rational people who've not heard of the 'cotton ceiling' phenomenon would look at a banner '"Lesbian is a female homosexual". and merely be puzzled why anyone would need to state the obvious.

LaSquirrel Given that a lesbian is a female homosexual, how can any male be a lesbian, please?

Also, this screengrab explains the ridiculousness of why a group of eight women stood up and protested this lesbian erasure.

The name of that Pride protest didn't help - what does get the l out even mean?

Rednaxela the L stands for Lesbian, the L part of LGBT. The protest was about the wider "LGBT" not being supportive of that first letter, the Lesbians, and redefining the word to 'anyone who identifies as a lesbian". One banner even said "Lesbian is a female homosexual".

The other part of the 'slogan' was a play on the expression "get the hell out".

All rather simple really.

RedToothBrush good points.

You actually have two problems here.

The first is more obvious to feminists, and that's about where power lies and that women are outside of that.

The second less obvious problem comes from within left and liberal circles, which are natural enemies to this power structure. The crux of that being three fold:

Privileged women who take their rights for granted.
A general misunderstanding of what rights are and where they derive from.
A lack of understanding of how rights work in practice and what their purpose is supposed to be.

You will never get a mass movement of women over this, without addressing poor understanding of rights and connecting that with the everyday life of women.

There are too many women who are under the impression that women's rights are solid and unreversable. They don't see a danger to them or a need to defend them. They don't see how the creep of politics in several areas is perilously close to undermining the entire foundations of all rights.

Rights are something that you have to understand in depth and be passionate about, even at times of civility and in a position of comfortable security.

Rights are only maintained through vigilence. We were all taught to be vigilant at school but most of us have forgotten the lesson.

@Rednaxela "The name of that Pride protest didn't help - what does get the l out even mean? I can't work it out."

A quick google would tell!

The LGBT etc etc is not a safe place for young and/or vunerable lesbians if it is arguing they must consider males as partners. No one can argue any one, male, female or who ever, has to accept anyone in their dating pool.

If in doubt see Magdalen Berns talking about the video from Riley J Denis!

And I don't think he risks are minimal!

ConfessionsOfTeenageDramaQueen "The problem is misogyny isn't a dirty word like "phobia". What we need is something more literal - like femphobic."

I think current thinking is toxic to women and girls, so 'toxic2females' says it to me. The trouble with 'fem' is has come to mean something in itself, like a man who presents in a feminine way may be referred to as fem.

I've seen a trans woman arguing the risks of self id to women and girls are minimal, what right do others get to argue that women and girls should accept these risks. Even women themselves cannot push these risks on to other women.

lurking I like the word 'Reclaim'.

@Materialist. I see where you're coming from but the blunter approach may back fire via lazy journalism and allow the media to ignore or misrepresent what your message is affecting your ability to reach out and highlight what's happening. The campaign has to be spot on to bat off the shrieks from the TRA's. However I could be wrong and the direct approach may work.

I still think that the Achilles heel of the TRA movement is the medication of and removal of safeguarding for children. Society is a lot less willing to let that happen without complaint than they are adult women being put at risk.

When I started out with this, all I got from friends and family were eyerolls and 'God, she's off again."
But I stuck at it, stayed calm, stuck to the facts and clear logic, learned to pierce through the blatant lies that were being presented everywhere, and I'm now hearing them all having conversations with other people about these things using their own words to explain the batshittery.

It is just a question of persistence.

A one word slogan may work, Reclaim I think this one word is very powerful if followed up by a concerted media campaign online and in women's' mags then onto mainstream press.
It emphasises that you are just reclaiming your safe spaces reclaiming rights that have been hard fought for.
The slogan Reclaim might be simplistic but slogans with too many words people tend to switch off from, think of retail campaigns/adverts, the most successful use very little words to help stick in the buyers mind.

Talking you are right - but we still have to try in the meantime...I know even my DSs don’t fully get this and probably roll their eyes when I rant.

I take the point about trying to redefine and reframe the terms of the debate and I absolutely agree in principle. But the problem goes way deeper than the language we use or don’t use. The problem is that misogyny doesn’t matter precisely because we live in a world that is still misogynist to the core.

Women who talk about misogyny are perceived by a great many people of both sexes (probably the majority) as being extremists/delusional/mad old hags etc. People don’t take it seriously. Because it is absolutely ingrained in our culture (all cultures) that women are less. It’s totally and utterly normalised to the point that it’s mostly invisible, and you often come across as a bit of a conspiracy theorist type if you try and point it out.

Most people actively don’t want to acknowledge that women are institutionally lesser, because it’s a very uncomfortable, shocking truth that they’d rather not live with. Far easier to pretend that everything is fine now, we have all the equality we could possibly want, and the world is a lovely, cuddly place.

The denial around the extent and impact of universal misogyny is something that transactivism has had the effect of highlighting and bringing to the fore. When even a sizeable percentage of those women who call themselves feminists are blind to the reality of the misogyny inherent in transactivism, you know this problem runs really deep, and isn’t going to be solved by a simple change of language choices.

How we wake people up to the reality of misogyny when most of them want to stay fast asleep, I don’t know. But the number of people who’ve been peak transed by this board is a hopeful sign.

TL;DR: it doesn’t matter what language we use, specifically; the main thing is that we keep talking about it in a rational, common sense way to as many people as possible and just keep making inroads in smallish ways, while being aware of the scale of the problem and trying to address it at its root. Eventually something will have to give.