Posie Parker in the USA

Regardless of the ins and outs of what Posie Parker has or hasn't done, the idea that 'right wing' women on Mumsnet have nothing to contribute to conversations about women's rights is astounding.

Apart from anything else, it's pretty clear that many women in the UK voted for both Brexit and the Tories. Are they to be included, or does 'intersectionality' only extend to some?

Feminists must fight for everything and everyone, unless they are Tory scum?

You might want to pretend that’s not the case and justify calling a feminist working tirelessly for human rights a cunt and mock other people’s appearance, but I think it will get harder and harder to convince yourself that it’s for feminist causes

You should really work on your use of the word you

As its seems to suggest that you think that I PERSONALLY believe that stuff

And YOU have no idea what I believe

Liberals and left-wing men have recolonised women around the fear of the right. This troubles me - it makes me feel like we’re really suckers.
Andrea Dworkin

While some of us run around with our knickers in a twist at the absolute horror of right wing women thinking it's okay to fight for their rights in democratic countries, rather than surrendering their views on women's rights to whatever left wing women say they are...

... can we please remember that fundamentalist genderism is a hyper capitalist, ultra libertarian right wing ideology?

Not the fault of either left wing or right women that the leaders of the current iteration of the left is thick as mince and can't recognise a right wing ideology privileging members of extant power groups when it sees one.

Unsure why some commenters here think it's heresy to criticise a regressive, authoritarian left and not feel bound to comply to it from either a leftist or a rightist perspective.

(I say this as an actual leftist, not one of the plastic ones who are currently melting at the least sign of pluralism.)

Funky, no doubt you have been around longer than many, and have better Radfem credentials.

However...

the self-ID issue has the scope to affect all women, whether right, left, rich, poor, black, balck, white, religious or not.

You may prefer that FWR is an echo chamber where only the pure are allowed to post. You may prefer that discussion only happened amongst left wing groups of women, and other women (the majority) are excluded. You may prefer that left wing political concerns are prioritised over GRA reform.

But sorry. For some reason the past few days these board seem to have been inhabited by a bunch of posters who know better, and who seem to want to control what individuals post. And that any push back is evidence of a "change in tone". Perhaps Britains left wing need to realise that if they are to be effective they need to listen and to work with others.

I think we need a new term. Radfemsplaining?! And from recent evidence it is more arrogant and annoying than mansplaining.

Reposting as some I'm sure would like to continue to derail /distract and this article provides context:

R0wantrees Fri 01-Feb-19 01:49:48
Spectator USA article by Cockburn
.Terfs take America…
What happened when British female rights activists went to Washington?.
Cockburn
(extract)
"Today, Cockburn received a phone call from Posie.

Posie and Julia had been back to the Hill, meeting with more Congress people, when they’d stumbled upon a congressional hearing organized by transgender ideologues. They then spotted Sarah McBride. McBride is a transgender activist – born a man, but who presents as a woman – who, as national press secretary for the Human Rights Campaign lobbies the government to advance the Equality Act.

McBride had just met with Rep. Joe Kennedy and there was a film crew nearby. On behalf of every woman, parent and child suffering under the madness of gender identity ideology and ignored by the mainstream media – Posie and Julia took their chance confronted McBride.

They ventured forth…

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’.

Was this harassment? The ‘two women’ don’t think so.

‘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.

She added, ‘I didn’t wear a mask. I didn’t have a baseball in trans remembrance colors. I didn’t say I want to punch anybody. I didn’t call him names. I didn’t swear at him. I didn’t intimidate him physically. I didn’t threaten violence. I didn’t commit violence. I asked a man pertinent questions about his lobbying.’

Admittedly, their behavior wasn’t very polite. Cockburn pointed this out, but Julia took a dim view of such criticism.

‘I think politeness is irrelevant here. This man is championing a law that means that men will have increased access to the most vulnerable women in prisons, shelters, sports, education establishments … he’s championing the end of women’s sex-based rights. He’s also championing terrible hormone regimes and surgeries for children.

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.’ (continues)
[spectator.us/terfs-take-america/

Americans, by which I mean people who live in the United States, are incredibly juvenile about social change. Robin Morgan called it “ejaculatory politics”: if it doesn’t happen right away it doesn’t happen. The Women’s Movement in this country has all the same characteristics as the culture that we live in, short-term gratification, personal fulfilment, personal advancement, and yes, coming out as a lesbian can get in the way of that. Liberals and left-wing men have recolonised women around the fear of the right. This troubles me - it makes me feel like we’re really suckers.
Andrea Dworkin

R0wantrees

"Spectator USA article by Cockburn", It's excellent isn't it.

The panel was brilliant and talked s lot more, in the first segment, about trans men than trans women. Something we rarely hear.

No one needs to 'lie down with' the right to join forces on one issue!

Feminism is a political practice of fighting male supremacy in behalf of women as a class, including all the women you don't like, including all the women you don't want to be around, including all the women who used to be your best friends whom you don't want anything to do with anymore. It doesn't matter who the individual women are. They all have the same vulnerability to rape, to battery, as children to incest. Poorer women have more vulnerability to prostitution, which is basically a form of sexual exploitation that is intolerable in an egalitarian society, which is the society we are fighting for.
Andrea Dworkin

I think there’s a comment on this thread about how more GC women are right than left wing

Not sure how you are defining right and left wing here, but religious organisations that believe that there is a right and a wrong way to be female and male are not gender critical.

But from the comments on here, it is clear that there has been a definite change in the demographic of this site. If you mention the right-wing aspect, you now get 'but we ARE right-wing'. Which of course is allowed, but it's not the sort of group that I thought I was conversing with at all.

Funky You are deliberately misrepresenting MN FWR.
You have misrepresented Dr Julia Long's speech.

It seems increasingly apparent that you are intenton on disrupting and/or misrepresenting women.

Its worth being aware of posts which are 'pouring petrol' on disagreements and arguments between women.

There will of course be people and groups who would like to encourage divisions amongst women. For their gain.

Rufus i have been here a while and there has been a definite change in tone. You might want to pretend that’s not the case and justify calling a feminist working tirelessly for human rights a cunt and mock other people’s appearance, but I think it will get harder and harder to convince yourself that it’s for feminist causes.

Here is Posie with the ‘fabulous’ Emily Zinos, ardent anti-abortionist. So clearly as Emily is fabulous, reproductive rights is something that Posie is clearly willing to sacrifice for the greater good.

100's of posters

A few 'right wing' comments and now were all right wing

Ridiculous

The law distinguishes between sex and gender identity but the law is only as good as the people interpreting it

A law that is being interpreted in a many different ways by official bodies needs clarification.

fucky

This is a mainly left of centre forum

Always has been

But that doesnt mean that anyone who is right of centre has been hiding under a bed all this time afraid to post

Plus there are levels of right as well

Weve got no ides who are 'conversing' with on here, we never had

Thats why its a good forum

The law distinguishes between sex and gender identity but the law is only as good as the people interpreting it and many bodies conflate sex and gender.

I am not happy to get into bed with anti-women groups motivated by transphobia. I want to support trans rights and women’s rights and where they conflict to have a conversation with mutual respect about how to deal with this.

So many of the women that are gender critical are left leaning liberals, if you believe they have turned into bigots overnight then you probably haven’t given fair consideration to what they’re saying.

I am anti-brexit, as is Owen Jones, doesn’t mean I have to “get into bed” with him to hold this opinion.

The constant justification of posies actions from most posters accross several threads speaks differently

Still not you all

And you have a habit of 'you alling' on threads

I like the word 'some' or even 'most' as I certainly wouldnt trot round the threads doing a count

'You all' makes me think that for all your ' no one listens to me attitude' you aren't actually listening to posters ...at all

From GrinitchSpinach on the Women Stand Up Washington Post

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/

It is a problem in prisons and refuges and sports, but having a procedure for changing gender does not mean we cannot legally distinguish between the sexes. The law clearly distinguishes between them.

If the law were clear there wouldn't be so many different interpretations of the law on this issue.

The Labour Party and other organisations wouldn't be changing policy ahead of changes in the law and completely ignoring GRCs.

Currently many people argue that the law can only be applied on a 'case by case' basis. If you are applying the law on a 'case by case' basis, you are judging people as individuals and not distinguishing by sex which make sex based exemptions in the EA redundant.

Meanwhile, although there are reasons for sometimes recognising sex it still remains unclear why any service should be segregated according to 'identity' ever.

I think it is a mistake to get close to right wing organisations in the US, because most people in the US won't be aware of the ins and outs of UK law and it makes it easy to paint GC feminists in the UK as Trumpists.

However, Posie Parker could form an allegiance with Katie Hopkins and decide to stand as the next leader of UKIP and it would still be true that the law doesn't work well at the moment, and that Self ID would be bad for anyone seeking protection from the EA.

The constant justification of posies actions from most posters accross several threads speaks differently.

you’re all more than happy to lay down with anti-woman’s rights activists to do so.

Well one person is. I'm not sure the hive mind extends beyond one person when we're all individuals.

Ultimately, it is just obserd to me that the whole point of this is to protect woman’s rights, but you’re all more than happy to lay down with anti-woman’s rights activists to do so.

I despair at women I respect doing this to each other.

Why do we do this? Female socialisation again? You don’t see TRA s tearing each other apart at each GAmeStop-it’s ma’am incident, or McKinnon incident. They plough on relentless regardless. They give not a single fuck.

I think pragmatism is called for.

Actually it, the situation is ridiculous, it really is. I guess that’s why KS and RF are academics rather than politicians. Although every should recognise that there’s a place and value for both, and should be focused on the common ground, and not undermine each other.

I know that MN is mainly left wing and I will ge5 flamed for this. THe ‘LEFT’ does not have a monopoly on the moral high ground. And IMO it is the ‘LEFT’ that tend to virtual signal, think they are on the ‘right side of history’, and are intolerant of the ‘RIGHT’, and vocally voice such. A PP said left = moral/good, right = evil. That does seem to be the way it is playing out.

Right side of what funky?
It is like going back to gc101 here.
Many of us are left wing women who left the labour party and other left of centre parties because they abandoned us on this issue.
We don't have to support everything any gender critical woman does for the gender critical argument to be important.
Fundamentally if you lose the ability to define your sex things get 100 times worse for women. That is what this is about. Different women will approach this issue in different ways.

Fair comment? Fucking hell, things have deteriorated.

As for we are right-wing, I think there’s a comment on this thread about how more GC women are right than left wing, comments on another thread running that since when was it illegal to be right-wing, comments on the big thread from a few days ago defending anti-abortionists. You know what? I am not going to waste my time collating the comments. You will just say ‘we’re not a hive mind’ or some other dismissive nonsense. Defend Posie’s vitriol as totally reasonable if you like. Sooner or later it will get harder to perform the necessary mental maths to convince you that you’re still on the right side.