Rapper Zuby breaks British Women's deadlift record...

Hi Zuby

Meant to be working so I'm just going to say
I have been enjoying some of your podcasts and you've got a gorgeous voice to listen to!
Great post upthread too. And of course delighted by your contribution to the sports debate.

Hi @zubymusic I also thank you for the deadlift. Bloody brilliant.

I also respectfully disagree with your stance on abortion and would ask you to look into "birth injuries" should you wish.

Hoping that the momentum keeps gathering on the trans sports issue. I have followed you on Twitter but am unable to comment on there due to the nature of being GC versus my livelihood

Welcome zuby! Thank you for posting but more importantly thank you for your intervention in the trans-sports issue. You've really shone a light in a way that women/ feminists have failed to do. Ironic isn't it then that you think it's a falsehood that we live in a patriarchal world.

Just as I would raise an eyebrow if a white person tells me there is no racism, I can't really take a bloke seriously when he says patriarchy doesn't really exist. You slid rethink your views on feminists. We are not one homogenous mass, we are diverse, varied and interesting.

Re abortion, I found your views interesting. I am also kind of pro life and pro choice in the sense that I believe woman have the right to make decisions about their bodies. But your comments did give me some food for thought so thank you. I hope you return, if only to discuss other ways in which you can help further our cause in the sports debate. Ultimately, I'm sure you'll agree, this isn't a feminist cause at all. It's an issue pertinent to us all.

It’s very easy for men to men to moralise on abortion. To them it will only ever be something they need to think about in the abstract.

If you will never get pregnant or give birth, it’s not really something you’re ever going to be able to have a truly informed opinion on.

Before I had children I was staunchly pro-choice. Now I have experienced pregnancy and birth I’m still pro-choice, but for me the issue has many nuances that it didn’t have before.

Personally, I could never now have an abortion. Whereas before I had children, if I’d found myself in that situation, the decision would have been easier.

That said, I now have firsthand insight into the toll pregnancy, birth and child rearing takes on women physically and mentally. Carrying a child to term and birthing it is physically exhausting and emotionally profound. To suggest a woman can just ‘have a baby and then put it up for adoption if she doesn’t want it’ is offensively facile.

I had a miscarriage before my two children were born. I mourned the potential that that pregnancy had. I grieved for what might have been. But in no way did I consider that embryo a ‘soul’ or a living human. In fact to suggest that it was is offensive to parents who have actually lost children. A miscarriage or abortion is potential life never realised. It is no way even in the same universe as the loss of a life.

You say that it’s demonstrably untrue that western women still suffer under a patriarchy. If you read the threads on here and on the relationships boards you’ll see that women are certainly still very much subjugated by men. And child rearing is a significant tool in holding women back. It limits their career options, making them financially reliant on men who may be abusive. Or it makes them financially reliant on the state. The potential consequences of having children - even planned ones - are serious and far-reaching. Two years of maternity leaves definitely damaged my career. Before my first child was born my husband and I earned the same salary. Five years later mine has reduced by £10k (because i need to work part time because of childcare limitations) while his salary has now doubled. We both had two children together. But his career has flourished and mine has foundered. The reason for that? I was the one who was pregnant, who gave birth and who breastfed and reared our babies. No patriarchy? Ha!

Two women are murdered every week by their partners in the UK. 72% of those murders happen at the point of relationship separation, ie. when the woman tries to leave. Male violence against women is a very real and present threat. Many women who live with physically or mentally abusive partners know that staying with their abuser is the only thing keeping them alive.

You say you’re not ignorant or uneducated but I don’t see how you can be cognisant of these facts and still come to the conclusion that the patriarchy is a thing of the past.

I’m pleased you’re here Zuby, I’m pleased you’re engaging with this. Stick around and read a few more threads. I do hope that you’ll at least be open to looking through different lenses at these issues.

Hi @zubymusic, well done for last week.

In addition to some of the excellent points made by fellow posters about your stance on abortion, I'd like to flesh out the things you're discussing as solutions. In particular, are you under the impression that we as a society are going to be able to do a decent job looking after all the unwanted babies that would be born if abortion weren't possible?

Look at some stats. There are about 180,000 abortions each year in the UK to resident women. Let's kindly assume that half of these are to women who'd find ways to not get pregnant if they knew they couldn't get an abortion (I have my doubts but I'll give you it for the sake of argument). Do you really think there are 90,000 individual or pairs of parents ready and able to do a good job of looking after these babies, every year? This seems massively over optimistic: there is a shortage of babies to adopt in the UK when compared to the number of people wanting to adopt them, but not to that tune.

It's not even just a question of providing the resources to allow these children to be looked after. Because that's the easy part, although the stuff you have posted on twitter about how people should work for things they want makes me think you might not be particularly child tax credits anyway? It's also about providing children with people who actually want to look after them. You can't force that. Children are bloody hard work, take it from some of us who have more experience looking after them than you do. You might think you have some idea how hard, but unless you're a parent yourself which I don't think you are, then you don't. It's a recipe for resentment at absolute best. Bad things happen to children who are resented.

Fundamentally, it's not like we don't know very well what happens when more children are bought into the world than there are people willing and able to look after them. It's orphanages, at best, and societies coming up with mechanisms to get rid of them at worst. You're pro-orphanage.

Aww Zuby comes across great on that clip.

Good interview (on BBC radio!). The difference in how Zuby has been interviewed and other people on this issue is pretty clear - he's not treated as an abhorrent person who is trying to cause all trans people to cease existing for a start.

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p072jncn

Still fucking astounding this is being framed as a contentious thing that needs settling - I mean, the segment is called "Does being born a man give you an advantage physically over women in sport" ffs

When it comes to carrying and birthing a child, women do 100% of the work and take on 100% of the risk.

Exactly.

Who is anyone to decide that someone else must take those risks? It must be an individual’s choice.

The pro choice strength isn't really in proving that the unborn aren't human in a meaningful sense. It's in pointing out the HUGE problems in disregarding the personal autonomy of a woman to not go through 9 months of a process that carries with it significant risks, even though it involves another person.

Yes. Essentially you weigh up the right of the unborn foetus/baby to life vs the right of the woman not to have to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term. That's why some of us feel less comfortable about late abortion (except in extreme cases) because the balance tips the other way.

In any case, there are problems with making abortion illegal. In countries where abortion is illegal, abortion still happens, but it risks the life of the mother as well as the baby. And of course we've also seen women sentenced to years of imprisonment for illegal abortion in some countries - sometimes even when they have miscarried the baby. I can't believe that this is a good outcome for anyone.

Let's put it another way: When it comes to carrying and birthing a child, women do 100% of the work and take on 100% of the risk.

Hopefully by now, Zuby you have done a little more research and have realised that these risks are not small and that many of us us live with the consequences for the rest of our lives. Of course you are still entitled to your opinions - everyone is - but can you please explain why you think women should pay any attention to them?

Yup, I'm agreeing with WeRiseUp about there being no need to believe that someone has an indefinable essential soul in a religious sense to hold that every human is an unrepeatable unique individual. You don't need to believe in any kind of metaphysical reality to want to protect human life.

The pro choice strength isn't really in proving that the unborn aren't human in a meaningful sense. It's in pointing out the HUGE problems in disregarding the personal autonomy of a woman to not go through 9 months of a process that carries with it significant risks, even though it involves another person.

bertrandrussell

There are some viciously nasty people masquerading as “feminists” on twitter - stavvers and her ilk

Regarding my ‘feminist status’ – I’ve been very clear for years that I do not ‘identify’ as such (heh).

This is not because I am ignorant, uneducated, nor against equal rights for both sexes - but because I have major issues with much of the ideology, delusion, hypocrisy and frankly nastiness exhibited by many who cling to the title.

I am not alone in this. A large % of both men and women have a negative perception of modern feminism and it’s hard to blame us. There are some really awful individual ‘feminists’ and ‘feminist groups’ out there...

I too am reluctant nowadays to define myself as a feminist, because what the mainstream understands as feminism is liberal feminism - petty arguments policing language and the wearing of T-shirts with pin-ups on them etc. However, so long as there are 2.5 murders of women per week,1038 rapes recorded each week and the 20,500 reports of domestic violence reported to the police each week in England and Wales (Office of National Statistics 2017) I will continue to campaign for the rights of women.

I'm glad that you are willing to have a conversation and invite some feminists on your podcast, please take the opportunity to consider the range of feminist opinions out there that you may not have heard before due to the media's focus on the 'juicy' lib-fem stories. You seem like a reasonable guy but really, 'tens of hours' of research when you're speaking to women who are Doctors and campaigners who have been researching in this field for longer than you have been alive makes you sound more than a little arrogant and naive - Mumsnetters don't just push prams around all day...

I've forgotten who said it recently - I think Natasha Chart - but setting aside purity politics and pragmatically treating those with whom we disagree as a resource is the clever thing to do, especially in times such as these. If I see people that get us closer to our objectives as resources instead of allies I'll be far more likely to be able to achieve something worthwhile.

Yes, that's it exactly, I've been struggling to find the right words to explain how I feel about Piers Morgan's input, but yes, he is a resource.

@zubymusic

Glad to see you on this thread and thank you for engaging. We hope you stick around and learn more about women's lives, about why we are feminists, and about what's NOT wrong about calling yourself a feminist.

In the meantime, do you fancy:
Signing up to an All Women Shortlist in the Labour party?
Joining the Girl Guides as a leader?
Going for a swim in the Hampstead Women's Pool?

All of which you are amply qualified for.

Tbf Lang though. A mate of mine had an abortion at 17 and I remember being a bit confused that my, I now realise, somewhat facile and overconfident reassurances that she could have a baby later anyway because living her life now is important, were met with "But it won't be the same. It will be a different person. I can't just have the same baby later". Bless her. Now I'm a mum and birthed such strong and different personalities, I know what she meant.

So although a collection of cells is not the same as a fully grown person, a zygote is a unique individual even if there isn't such thing as a soul.

That doesn't mean the zygote should have the same rights as a person, but it doesn't mean you have to believe in disembodied souls to think of them as unique individuals either.

Perhaps look into the figures for birth injuries, birth trauma and PND.

Less of the 'old women' not being his fan base though!

I'm about the same age as him/her and mostly listen to hip hop and rap.

Granted, I suspect most of the artists I listen to don't imagine me (white, female, mid-30s, Home Counties, senior manager in Pensions) as their target population though

As some have correctly pointed out, I believe that human life is sacred, the unborn child/fetus is a human life and that innocent human life should be protected.

So you think an embryo of a few days development has some kind of intrinsic personhood, a soul basically, that is separate from the pregnant woman whose body supports it?

Do you then also credit transactivists when they assert that they have a gender identity, a soul basically, that was born in the wrong body?

Both seem to me to be equally theocratic beliefs.

zuby

Both my pregnancies (very much wanted) did serious physical damage to my body. I’m being investigated for an autoimmune condition that seems to have been triggered by pregnancy, which may limit my lifespan, and I have permanent pelvic damage that leaves me in constant pain daily and impairs my physical mobility. I am also partially deaf from birth complications. I was sick up to 50x a day during both pregnancies too as I had hyperemesis and my teeth and throat are wrecked.

Almost every woman I know has some type of damage (google ‘episiotomy’ please...)

I could technically have another baby but to do so would cripple me. My friend who gave birth at the same time had her pelvis broken by forceps. Birth injuries are NOT 1-2%. Rape is endemic.

You can be pro life, but as a man you do NOT get to tell women what they must or must not do.

Cheers. The deadlift stuff was funny, well done on that.

Oh I haven't got to the part about research yet.

tut Floisme

Zuby has done tens of hours of research. Do not question him.

OK I've not finished Zuby's post yet but I've got this far:

I accept there are exceptions - rare 1-2% of cases may include rape, genuine health risks to the mother

You say you're not ignorant, and yet you display astonishing ignorance of what pregnancy and childbirth does to a woman's body. And I'm not talking about the awful cases where things go badly wrong, I'm just talking about the routine, everyday deliveries.

To be fair, that's probably true of most men and indeed of many women. We don't tend to talk about this stuff very often, even among ourselves because we know people are going to go, 'Eww'. But can I suggest, Zuby that you go away and google a few terms like post childbirth incontinence - faecal and urinary? Or vaginal tearing? Better still, ask any women in your family who have had children. And then see if you want to come back and lecture us some more about 'genuine health risks'.

Thank you.

Hi zuby

It was a good stunt. It’s got people who would never have talked about it doing so.

Your views on abortion are your own. One can be pro life while not seeking to restrict women’s bodily autonomy. However if you seek to restrict women’s access to abortion then that IS forcing something on women. But you dont say you’re a feminist and you dont need to be so. You’ve done a single action which has benefitted the cause, you don’t need to make all your views 100% feminist.

Anyway, one thing stood out for me: A large % of both men and women have a negative perception of modern feminism and it’s hard to blame us.

I agree that the perception of feminism in the media is very negative. What I’d like to ask you is why do you think this is so?

The feminism featured in the media is mainly the liberal sort that strips for attention on brexit debates and thinks pole dancing is empowering. That’s easy to mock. But it’s not the only type of feminism. I would encourage you to chat to your older female relatives - their feminism may be of a very very different sort - ‘not the fun kind’ as I like to say ;) .

The sort of feminism that focuses on women’s RIGHTS is less media friendly and really not even featured in he media is it? Southall black sisters for example - they don’t make the news like brexit stripping lady. Again, why do you think that is so?

Anyway, views on abortion aside, think about why feminism is demonised in the media and why only the ‘fun’ feminists get into the media? Who does that benefit?

Perhaps you could challenge Rachel McKinnon to a bike ride? I’m sure all of us would enjoy that