The TRAs are speading lies again.

Lying is par for the course. And when shown that they are lying they just double down on it.

pachyderm I hope you're right and that there is a move to stop what's happening.
Just compare it to the years of (often very bitter) public discourse about abortion rights. That was democracy in action.
I know, it's crazy isn't it. Imagine if women had said 'No Debate', just clicked our fingers and the law was changed without telling anyone. It's hard to believe sometimes that we're the powerful privileged ones.

Accusations are admissions.

Thank you Lang - that's a really useful phrase to remember.

Mermoose true but Irish woke Twitter isn't the real world, no matter how effective they've been at influencing public bodies and political parties. It happened from the top down, not the grassroots. TENI are awash in cash and all over the corporate world. Doesn't mean your average Irish person is going to be okay with what's coming down the tracks. Because they were never consulted about it for a start. Just compare it to the years of (often very bitter) public discourse about abortion rights. That was democracy in action.

Always remember that, where narcs are concerned, accusations are admissions.

Why do they call us right wing and reactionary? Because male supremacy is a right wing, reactionary project - whether it comes with glitter attached or not.

Accusations are admissions.

Why are we always affiliated in their minds with US far right pro choice batshittery? Do they not see how unlikely it is that feminists, heck any women, would identify with yet another lot of mostly men trying to take their rights away?

Most GC women are clearly left leaning liberals, why do they persist in the fascist far right thing? Its just so unlikely.

I think the issue TRAs have is that they have desperately surrounded themselves by only those who agree with them and demonize 'terfs'. They have blocklists of 80k women who are apparently terfs. Yet, the large blocklists never seem to translate to 'hold on, there might be more of these terfs than we think'. Instead they still appear to convince themselves that 'terfs' are literally a handful of nasty bigots, maybe 50 at most, who make hundreds of sock accounts to be all womany and terfy on, hence the blocklist being 80k strong.

So when a few hundred women come together chipping into a fundraiser, they simply cannot believe its real. As this would make the terf population 4x their 50 that they have convinced themselves it is. AT LEAST as not every terf will have donated.

No no. The fact that many many women might want to keep the womens rights that have been won, or might possibly care about harm done to children, does not even enter their minds at all. So the logical thing is obviously 'this crowdfunder was a front for money from US rightwing evangelical christians who are anti abortion. To hide what they were doing, said US rich christian group made a few hundred accounts on gofundme, and donated small sums in amounts of a fiver, a tenner, the odd fifty. Just to make it look legit.

Such explanations are surely more believable than anything else! Disagree? Fucking bigot.

"Ah I see it's all been kicked off this morning by Christine Burns posting multiple threads about how women's grassroots organisations are a "sham" and need investigating.

Guardian 2013 article including the origins & work of the TRA lobby group Press For Change:

(extract)
Christine Burns is one of a generation who vividly remembers reading about Ashley in the papers when she was a young child. (Ashley appeared in a six-week special in the News of the World: "They were one of the very few who paid me and they behaved impeccably. I was very sad when the News of the World closed," says Ashley.) The existence of someone like her in the public eye was a great comfort for Burns. In the 90s, when she was chair of the Women's Supper Club of the local Conservative party association in Cheshire, she quietly joined Press for Change. Even then, the new activists dared not be openly trans. "The thing that held us back in the 1990s campaigning was that fear of being out," admits Burns. Eventually, she came out in 1995; she jokes that she realised she was more embarrassed to be a member of the Conservative party than openly transsexual.

Much of their campaigning remained on the quiet. The passage of the 2004 law to give trans people legal status was "remarkable," says Burns, because "the government was able to pass an entire act in parliament without anyone throwing a fit in the press". In popular culture, the activists became more forthcoming in their attempts to increase popular understanding of trans issues." (continues)

www.theguardian.com/society/2013/jan/22/voices-from-trans-community-prejudice

thread discussing the history of influential trans rights lobbyists & their influence over policy changes:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3463920-Lets-go-back-to-2007

current thread:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3632470-R4-10-part-series-by-Michael-Crick-Tales-from-the-Lobby-the-next-biggest-scandal-waiting-to-happen-1-45-pm

MenstruatorExtraordinaire

Thank you! I needed a good laugh this morning!

ah, they’re so close, but...swing and a miss. There certainly is a lot of shadowy donating going on in this whole debate, but it’s not flowing into GC feminists pockets.

The blatant sexism of thinking feminists must be getting our “real” support, ideas, drive, money, creativity etc from elsewhere is just breathtaking. Women aren’t surprised by women getting shit done against the odds, even though we might risk being unfeminine or breaking a nail doing it. Astonishingly, many of us earn our own fucking livings and can autonomously decide where we want to bung a spare twenty quid to protect our rights. Mad, eh?

There’s some brilliant comments on this thread that have made me properly LOL

That's very illuminating Sunset and also we all know that in Scotland the government have been funding the groups who then use that money to lobby the government.

"This way of thinking is now rife in Ireland."

And yet, it is all just rumour and smear, since no-one has provided any proof.

It would be great of those making such smears could provide definitive proof but they can't because it doesn't exist.

Meanwhile, the funding for the Trans Lobby is discovered and it is very right wing:

thefederalist.com/2018/02/20/rich-white-men-institutionalizing-transgender-ideology/

The Irish TRAs have been at this for years, it's pathetic.

I hate to say it but it's not confined to TRAs. This way of thinking is now rife in Ireland. During the run up to the referendum to repeal the 8th (the abortion referendum), both sides accused the other side of being funded by shadowy types from America. Irish leftie Twitter has lost the ability to believe that any decent human being could possibly disagree with the hive mind. (As for Irish rightwing Twitter, needless to say, they're nuts too.)

We don't need to do a thing...

Exactly so ... these anti-women activists can smear and defame all they want .. it only makes them look more and more ridiculous.

And, they need to remember the Maya Forstater legal fundraiser wherein over £60K was raised in little over 60 hours. So, if legal action was ever required, we can do so again with the same enthusiasm and speed. Hundreds of women contributed to Maya's campaign. It doesn't take much to raise such sums of money where women and their rights are concerned.

These anti-women activists know nothing about women do they?

I never heard of this Rhiannon person but maybe she’s pissed that her photo of herself in a bikini only got 36 likes

They forget one vital thing.if you are going to lie. You need a good memory.

They all catch themselves out in the end. We dont need to do a thing...

The issue here is that the TRAs are so separate from the world of women [despite their ridiculous fantasy mantra] that they have no idea about us at all.

And 100% this.

Some women are even lawyers now, barristers even .. maybe some of them are providing relevant legal advice to these women's organisations voluntarily.

YY.

The issue here is that the TRAs are so separate from the world of women [despite their ridiculous fantasy mantra] that they have no idea about us at all.

Not this again. It's usually American right wing Christian groups they affiate All GC across the globe with.

Doesn't matter that you've been a Labour card carrying atheist for years, all women are possessed by demons.

It's like when Harrop said all women on here should stick to baking cakes or darning their husband's socks and what would the neighbours think if we were carted off in front of the street (after disagreeing that Brian from 39 is not and will never be Brianne).

It's scary. Regressive. Controlling. Bullshit. Just like all those women that dared to question their lot in Salem had to be possessed. So said men folk.

... rather than because there are plenty of GC copywriters, designers, web experts etc volunteering their knowledge and time.

Ooh! I know! [Sybil's voice]

Some women are even lawyers now, barristers even .. maybe some of them are providing relevant legal advice to these women's organisations voluntarily.

Dear TRAs

You are outnumbered. Get over it.

Love

Women

stems from not seeing women as actual people I guess. we must be being funded and manipulated by real people (a.k.a. men)

There was a great Twitter conversation a while back where Burns (I think) and other TRA chums were bemused as to how FPFW had managed to produce professional looking materials and a website. Of course it must be because powerful sinister organisations were involved, rather than because there are plenty of GC copywriters, designers, web experts etc volunteering their knowledge and time. Because as women we can't achieve these things ourselves. The 1970s style sexism was quite telling.