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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Women Stand Up in Washington, D.C.

167 replies

GrinitchSpinach · 26/01/2019 21:38

The board is, ahem, moving fast today, and some marvelous stuff is getting buried in the monster threads. I thought this might be a good place to collect reports from on the ground in D.C.

Thanks to SpartacusAutisticus for posting Natasha Chart's wonderful, raw speech outside Human Rights Campaign:
www.facebook.com/100003299679086/posts/2366913433428623/

Here is the protest outside Twitter:
m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=2366769483443018&id=100003299679086&refsrc=http%3A%2F%2Ft.co%2FD8guU5XQ0R&_rdr

OP posts:
Oxytocindeficient · 01/02/2019 12:40

There's a bigger picture.

Yes there is.

I wouldn’t do what Posie did, because I just don’t have that kind of courage. I’m grateful for all contributions to this struggle

R0wantrees · 01/02/2019 12:39

I think the danger is in allowing focus to be turned on individual women.

Women come from different viewpoints and this will inform their reactions.

There's a bigger picture.

Oxytocindeficient · 01/02/2019 12:29

I am disappointed in Kathleen Stock. Setting us back by decades, what an over-reaction.

Does nobody remember what the Suffragettes got up to?!?!?!

R0wantrees · 01/02/2019 12:25

Is this getting into all the mainstream news? Has Posy been interviewed on TV?

Spectator US article:

Have you heard of Posie Parker? She’s a 5 ft 1 mum of four from Wiltshire, England who looks an awful lot like Marilyn Monroe and has a truly radical belief – that the definition of ‘woman’ is the one that which appears in the Google dictionary: adult human female. But what about men who identify as women? Cockburn asked her. ‘They’re not women’, Posie replied bluntly.

Golly!

Cockburn met Posie and her female friends – Venice Allan, kicked out of the British Labour Party for saying that only females can be women, and Dr Julia Long, researcher and activist for the first time in Washington D.C., last weekend. Cockburn was blown away by their good company and by their fearless commitment to stating the obvious.

From fighting the notorious clinical activist – Mr Harrop – on Sky News to providing women across the UK with ‘adult human female’ T-shirts, Posie has been a leader in the resistance to the proposed changes to the UK’s Gender Recognition Act.

If reformed as trans activists would like, the GRA would enable a person to change his legal gender simply by filling out a form. The implications of this have disturbed many adult human females. Especially after the case of Karen White – a rapist born a man, but who identifies as a woman – who was put in a women’s prison, where White was able to abuse females.

Likewise, human females in America face an uphill struggle in the form of the Equality Act. The Equality Act, which is on the House’s agenda and is likely to pass, would continue the legacy of Obama in interpreting sex to mean ‘gender identity’ – both for civil rights protection and for federally funded entities."

Posie and her galpals flew to America last week to raise awareness and hold those responsible to account.

‘This ideology has been imported into the UK by America. So to stem the flow of female erasure we have to come to its source’, Posie told Cockburn.

‘What the Equality Act will do is it will replace women’s sex-based rights and protections with gender identity. So, in one swift move, women will no longer have sex-based rights in the USA. Which will be an unprecedented roll back of women’s rights in America.’

‘We’re over here to lend our support to our sisters in America who no one else is listening to,’ Julia added.(continues)

It is also worth being aware how the article (as many others will do) also chooses to focus on specific points of criticism.
In this case quoting Katheen Stock:
(extract)
"Yet, in Britain, various gender critical feminists have tweeted to say that they are disapproving of Posie and Julia’s actions. Some claimed that they had ‘ambushed’ the powerful lobbyist.

Kathleen Stock
@ Docstockk
Posie Parker & Julia Long are a liability. I’d be mortified to be ambushed like that. Their jaunt to Washington is setting back a productive conversation, in US context, about female rights by decades. I’ve nothing to do with them anyway, but no-one should think they act for me.

Cockburn asked Posie and Julia what they would say to such critics. Their answer?

‘I would rather you just said thank you.’

[[https://spectator.us/terfs-take-america/

There is a bigger picture which is always important to be aware of.
Just as it will be Chelsea Clinton's response that receives more criticism and then focus.
Sexism and political gain will always be powerful forces.

Oxytocindeficient · 01/02/2019 12:19

Thank you so much. I only had small flashbacks, so the ordeal itself I can’t recall as I hit my head on the road and passed out. It was the reactions and treatment afterwards that was really horrible ( and findin injuries ). I have found peace as some years after I found a new set of friends that made sure I understood I was a rape victim, not a slut. Thank you so much for your kindness. I really ought not to get involved in that thread! It’s not very nice and I think the wrong place to focus.

Thank you for all this, this thread is marvellous!

GrinitchSpinach · 01/02/2019 12:13

Hey Oxy I saw your post on the other thread and don't want to wade in there, so here are some Flowers for you. I am so sorry you went through what must have been a terrifying ordeal; hope you've found some peace now.

OP posts:
GrinitchSpinach · 01/02/2019 12:03

Is this getting into all the mainstream news? Has Posy been interviewed on TV?

No, the mainstream news here are very invested in the "stunning brave" narrative and steadfastly ignore almost all criticism of gender ideology.

However, Posie has gotten more coverage this week in the conservative press than WoLF or Hands Across the Aisle the past several years combined.

I conclude that whoever it was upthread, I think Bernard, who said that we need Man Friday is right. It will take splashy stunts to get women's voices on the TV. Heaven help me, though; I don't have the courage to don the mankini for the cameras...

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Italiangreyhound · 01/02/2019 11:25

Is this getting into all the mainstream news? Has Posy been interviewed on TV?

Oxytocindeficient · 01/02/2019 10:55

Anyone who thinks we handled this week wrong is more than welcome to go out and show us how to do it better. I’ll take notes, because I have room for improvement. I, and my colleagues, consider this situation an emergency for women’s rights, so constructive ideas from just about any quarter will be considered.

Ah but those attacking are too busy tweeting to do any actual work

R0wantrees · 01/02/2019 10:47

This is the video from the 'We Need To Talk' meeting in Washington

www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=_twaEEStWUw

Watch the last 25 minutes if short of time to listen to the damage that is being done to young women, especially young lesbians.

Oxytocindeficient · 01/02/2019 10:43

That article by Natasha is great. This is crazy:

The president of HRC makes close to half a million dollars a year in salary to ostensibly represent women like myself, and I can’t say I’m impressed

Wow, what a lot of money!

R0wantrees · 01/02/2019 09:47

extract from the Natasha Chart at WoLF article:

I’m not sure I could have done what Julia and Posie did. But when they rushed over, I thought about the 19-year-old woman who stood behind me on Sunday at the library, where we’d earlier heard from Lierre Keith, Meghan Murphy, Kara Dansky, and Brie Jontry. This young woman came to tell a room full of strangers that she had started transition about five years ago, had been on testosterone and already had a double mastectomy, only to realize that she was a lesbian, and a woman, and to wish someone had told her when she was younger that that was okay.

Does anyone have a link to the video from 'We Need To Talk' meeting referred to.
The young woman who spoke so powerfully and bravely at the end cannot fail to have moved anyone who listened.

Her voice and experience is so important.

CandidPeel · 01/02/2019 09:17

What about when documentary makers like Michael Moore or investigative journalists doorstep someone? Then it's applauded and seen as hard-hitting, brave, appropriate. But two women do it, and suddenly it's a huge outrage.

Yes! This!

This article by Natasha Chart at WoLF is must read (i know its been linked to already, but just giving it another boost)

womensliberationfront.org/posie-parker-in-the-house/

BeUpStanding · 01/02/2019 08:58

Posie, who is pro-choice, added: ‘Most of those critics would have no issue if I’d gone in a room with Mike Pence and asked him why he disagrees with abortion in aggressive terms. I could have verbally assaulted him with bad language, and everybody would think it was great. Yet women who purport to be in opposition to gender ideology tend to uphold it with their double standards, as if a powerful lobbyist is somehow vulnerable if they identify as a woman.’

YES! Absolutely this. What about when documentary makers like Michael Moore or investigative journalists doorstep someone? Then it's applauded and seen as hard-hitting, brave, appropriate. But two women do it, and suddenly it's a huge outrage.

Oxytocindeficient · 01/02/2019 08:05

Posie, who is pro-choice, added: ‘Most of those critics would have no issue if I’d gone in a room with Mike Pence and asked him why he disagrees with abortion in aggressive terms. I could have verbally assaulted him with bad language, and everybody would think it was great. Yet women who purport to be in opposition to gender ideology tend to uphold it with their double standards, as if a powerful lobbyist is somehow vulnerable if they identify as a woman.’

This^ totally support her on this

SpartacusAutisticusAHF · 01/02/2019 08:03

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

GrinitchSpinach · 01/02/2019 03:29

The American Spectator, v sympathetic to Posie, Julia and the other activists:

Posie explained her thinking to Cockburn. ‘I thought: When am I going to get this opportunity again to talk someone so powerful in the business of lobbying?…In this culture of silence bringing this issue into the public consciousness can never be counterproductive…I will take my lead from the mothers who are facing the catastrophic mutilation and irreversible damage to their daughters’ bodies.’

The consequence, inevitably, was that this was then spun into a ‘transphobic ambush’ narrative. HuffPost ran a story with the headline, ‘2 Women Disrupt Meeting To Harass Transgender Activist In Appalling Video’. Gay Star News went with, ‘Shocking video shows women barging into meeting and harassing trans woman’.

‘I am bewildered by the characterization of us being in a position of power and influence so that our questions are being called harassment. We were in the corridors of the Senate building in the land of free speech. That doesn’t square! Questions cannot be harassment’, Posie said.

Posie, who is pro-choice, added: ‘Most of those critics would have no issue if I’d gone in a room with Mike Pence and asked him why he disagrees with abortion in aggressive terms. I could have verbally assaulted him with bad language, and everybody would think it was great. Yet women who purport to be in opposition to gender ideology tend to uphold it with their double standards, as if a powerful lobbyist is somehow vulnerable if they identify as a woman.’
spectator.us/terfs-take-america/

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GrinitchSpinach · 01/02/2019 03:18

Brilliant Natasha Chart writes a very long post about meetings with Congressional staff this week, and addresses Posie and Julia's questions of Sarah McBride at Cannon House Office Building, in McBride's official capacity as a lobbyist advocating the erasure of sex as a coherent legal class for civil rights protections:

McBride is also a public political figure, who was there that morning representing HRC in an official capacity at the Cannon House Office Building, encouraging Congress to support the sterilization of minor children in the guise of a human rights agenda of “acceptance” and “inclusion.” McBride was there that morning to argue that girls in school have no right to bodily privacy when changing for gym class or when first managing menstruation in what should be girls-only bathrooms. McBride was there to argue for an end to girls’ sports, because they want boys to be able to join the girls’ sports teams. McBride was there to overturn decades of women’s rights advocacy, at the head of a movement that has brutally silenced women who dissent.

McBride came to Cannon HOB as a public representative of an organization that claims to represent the human rights of all lesbian and bisexual women, including myself and Julia Long. Yet when Posie and Julia decided to see if McBride would answer their questions, this salaried advocate for the LGBTQ could not even turn around to make a single expression of sympathy to a lesbian woman who clearly felt hurt and betrayed by HRC’s policies, not even to issue a fig leaf of sorry-you-feel-that-way concern. If McBride was truly in too fragile a state to be questioned in public by quite small women then maybe they’re in the wrong line of work

To clarify for a friend: It’s okay with the left to kick Sarah Huckabee Sanders out of a restaurant on her personal time, but not okay to ask Sarah McBride a handful of questions that pertain to their job and the laws that they are currently lobbying for, during working hours, in a House office building, and then walk away to go about one’s own business? Have I got that right?

Lots lots more on the apparently productive meetings with Congressional staff:

womensliberationfront.org/posie-parker-in-the-house/

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BlackShutters · 01/02/2019 01:11

Great work Grinitch!

Rush Limbaugh weighing in on this is huge (as much as I hate him). Maybe I'm wrong but didn't the UK CG wave start with conservative commentators?

GrinitchSpinach · 31/01/2019 22:50

Well, she properly identified him as a guy who raped a woman — and she was accused of “violence” in the language she chose to describe the rapist. She was considered the problem in this story, not the rapist.
...
You’re asking if the guy had a penis, right, while identify as a woman?
I’ll guaran-damn-tee you he did. I don’t know it, but that’s what makes this absurd! I guarantee you. A guy rapes a woman and then says, “No-no! No-no! I’m not a guy. I — I — I — I identify as a woman. I’m transgender,” and the LGBTQ outfit supports him and accuses the woman who correctly identified what happened as engaging in violence. This is the kind of crap, folks. This is permeating schools. They’re teaching little kids now to identify things this way.

www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2019/01/31/you-wont-believe-this-headline/

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GrinitchSpinach · 31/01/2019 21:08

Thank you so much for all the kind words!

Update: apparently Rush Limbaugh (very conservative, influential radio commenter who...is not a good guy, in my estimation) is discussing the Heritage panel, Julia Beck's speech in particular, right now. I love that Kaeley Triller Haver (one of the conservative founders of Hands Across the Aisle) hopes he doesn't ruin it.

Limbaugh has an estimated listening audience of 13 million people per week. This is HUGE exposure. I just wish it could have come from Rachel Maddow (popular tv political commentator, and a lesbian) or similar. If right wing sources are the only ones to publicize these questions, so many leftists will dismiss them without another thought. Angry

Women Stand Up in Washington, D.C.
Women Stand Up in Washington, D.C.
OP posts:
OvaHere · 31/01/2019 20:39

Excellent work Grinitch thanks for maintaining a clear record of the week.

I hope this is the start of a proper debate for the US.

Discovering Natasha Chart is a big plus too. She is excellent.

sueanddumplings · 31/01/2019 20:33

Great to see the work Posie, Julia and Venice are doing in Washington this week.

Yes, a lot of people are very pleased with what they've achieved there.

ChattyLion · 31/01/2019 20:31

Thanks Grinitch I remember HRC now from Natasha Chart’s effing brilliant speech outside their offices - a must-watch!

Posie in the background was saying HRC are positioned in the US a bit like Stonewall are in the UK.

AnneHutchinson · 31/01/2019 20:20

Chiming in with the thanks, Grinitch It's so important to have the actual record, rather than the reports of what others have said about the record. Primary source material, always.