Future of Legal Gender academic talk

draft Parliamentary Bill

Just open mouthed at her claim that rad fems don’t focus on violence from men within the family. That is basically what radical feminism is about. She can’t be this dumb- this is a deliberate strategy to smear radical feminists. She knows that is an outright lie.

From that thread it doesn't sound like this is some kind of random academic musing. They want to go the whole hog and have sex legally abolished as a category:

Cooper asked was the project a ‘worthwhile project for academic study?’ (Just a rhetorical question, she wasn’t actually asking). She saw it as as ‘pre-figurative feminist project’ and was consulting stakeholders widely.
A Parliamentary Bill would be the outcome.

This could be happening faster than we expect. Trans has been fast-streamed and mainstreamed so quickly, the men in power obviously see this as very advantageous to them.

Sheila doesn't explicitly cover that there is a push to get rid of recording any sex or gender marker at all

By which I mean that she doesn't unpack it fully.

Wow good point Pencils. I was at that meeting (and asked a question based on the Mumsnet trans moderation rules which had just come in the day before I think) but somehow didn't perceive the full import of the YP with relation to the category of sex itself, I guess because I wasn't aware of things like this ludicrous research seriously happening.

Link to the meeting below which is well worth a watch. Sheila doesn't explicitly cover that there is a push to get rid of recording any sex or gender marker at all, but she does talk about the erasure of biological sex in favour of gender starting at 0.37, and then again when I asked my question about how to frame what is happening within ever stricter moderation rules on social media, at around 1.27.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=KdQuYMjaqHY

When Women's Studies became Gender Studies this was entirely predictable. Some female academics are almost queueing up to sell women and girls out.

From the Twitter feed:

Destroying binary may wither away all gender discrimination. Would open up conversation for what gender you could become, in turn would radicalise power relations.

This makes me think of the time when women had no words or spaces to discuss sexual abuse, violence and rape by men. In particular child sexual abuse which wasn't spoken of at all. It was feminists who found the language and created the spaces so women could talk. Those spaces had to be fought for and they are precarious.

Now these morons want to remove the term 'woman' and 'man', 'male' and 'female' so once again we will no longer be able to talk about male violence against women and girls. If we're not talking about it, it's not happening, right?

Also the gall of that woman to claim that radical feminists only talk about men outside the family being dangerous to women and girls, whilst ignoring what men do to their closest female relatives. Radical feminists named what men did within the family, radical feminists set up the first domestic violence refuges and are still running some of them. It's us that are fighting back to keep men out of those spaces, whilst she rolls over for a massive grant and patriarchal back pats. Sickening.

Hi Pencils, I'm going, I will message you.

Yogyakarta Principles: International Threat to Women's Rights

This article mainly summarises the key points made in a speech by Sheila Jeffreys (entitled “Enforcing Men's Sexual Rights in International Human Rights Law”) at Venice Allan's We Need To Talk event, 'Inconvenient Women', held in London on June 13th 2018.

www.objectnow.org/news/2018/7/27/yogyakarta-principles-international-threat-to-womens-rights

It includes a link to a full transcript of Jeffreys' speech. Quote:

The Plus 10 includes, for instance, the demand that sex, the biological basis for women’s oppression, be eliminated for official documents. They call for an end to ‘the registration of the sex and gender of the person in identity documents such as birth certificates, identification cards, passports and driver licences, and as part of their legal personality’ (31) (Yogyakarta Principles, 2017). This eliminates the sex class of women and the possibility of recording any information relating to discrimination against women and violence against us. If sex cannot be mentioned, then woman as a category is disappeared and feminism and the idea of women’s rights cannot exist.

This was always the end game. Self-ID is merely a stop-gap.

Yogyakarta Principles +10 - Principle 31:

STATES SHALL:

A) Ensure that official identity documents only include personal information that is relevant, reasonable and necessary as required by the law for a legitimate purpose, and thereby end the registration of the sex and gender of the person in identity documents such as birth certificates, identification cards, passports and driver licences, and as part of their legal personality;

B) Ensure access to a quick, transparent and accessible mechanism to change names, including to gender-neutral names, based on the self-determination of the person;

C) While sex or gender continues to be registered :

i. Ensure a quick, transparent, and accessible mechanism that legally recognises and affirms each person’s self-defined gender identity;

ii. Make available a multiplicity of gender marker options;

iii. Ensure that no eligibility criteria, such as medical or psychological interventions, a psycho-medical diagnosis, minimum or maximum age, economic status, health, marital or parental status, or any other third party opinion, shall be a prerequisite to change one’s name, legal sex or gender;

iv. Ensure that a person’s criminal record, immigration status or other status is not used to prevent a change of name, legal sex or gender.

(my bolds)

yogyakartaprinciples.org/principle-31-yp10/

I'll be going to the round table discussion on the 8th. Hope to see some of you there?

Apropos to this thread is this submission by Jan Rivers to a Select committee below. I am eternally grateful for Speak Up for Women and their vigilance on behalf of New Zealand women and girls. ( Apart from the Abortion Law legislation, proposals to ban all counselling for gender dysphoric children other than instant affirmation would have gone through Parliament on the coat tails of a bill to ban gay conversion therapy if not for keen eyed SUFW members. See the links below).

Jan Rivers’ Abortion Legislation Oral Submission

Supporter of Speak Up For Women, Jan Rivers, spoke at the Abortion Legislation Select Committee in favour of the bill, but in opposition to calls from other submitters to exchange the word ‘woman’ for ‘person’ throughout the bill

Jan Rivers refers to the Legal Gender Project in her submission

If this change is made can we realistically expect no untoward ramifications? Should not women have been forewarned about something which would finally encode in law what has been just a legal opinion and which has already had a such a significant impact on their status and rights? Should legislation that will fundamentally change what it is to be a woman from material reality to belief not be subject to an impact assessment at the very least? In the UK the Future of Legal Gender project is a well-funded 4-year investigation into possible impacts of encoding gender into legislation and it is proving deeply divisive and problematic

speakupforwomen.nz/sufw_essays/jan-rivers-submission/

speakupforwomen.nz/speak-up-for-womens-submission-to-parliament-gay-conversion-therapy-and-counselling-of-gender-dysphoric-individuals-cannot-be-equated/

speakupforwomen.nz/speak-up-for-women-pleased-government-wont-scrap-counselling-for-gender-questioning-children-and-adolescents/

Ani O'Brien's recent article in Medium on how to approach being fair to transgender people without losing women's rights to sex based protections. As always Ani writes with clarity and reason.

medium.com/@aniobrien/making-room-human-rights-are-not-a-pie-9519c02bc67e

Sorry to throw all these links at everyone, but I was genuinely appalled to see how fast things are moving in NZ to erode the rights of women I try to keep up, and I support SUFW, but I think I am going to have to go onto the Parliament's website daily, see what legislation is proposed and make submissions if needed.

Someone has just pointed out this comment, which shows that they are aware that they are being scrutinised by mumsnet even if they try and make it seem like a joke:

"I attended the lecture on 30th.
Sheila Jeffreys was said to be an “essentialist”. And, Mumsnet discussion was offered up on Pieerpoibt with prompts for ridicule - students obliged with laughter.
Absolute misogyny.
I was horrified."
twitter.com/bindelj/status/1183379219839102976

@Pota2, thanks for that reply. As far as these particular academics are concerned I would agree with that observation, and believe this to be a real betrayal of the rest of us. It is a position of privilege, and the power it exerts is immense. The slew of abuse and coordinated campaign of harrassment leveled at Nina Power - referred to as a 'disgraced T*RF' - is a case in point of what happens to women, even senior academics and renowned feminists, who take the opposing stance. There's an open letter online denouncing the poor woman as a fascist.

It's a bit like nailing handmaids' heads to the Gilead wall as a warning to other would-be disobedient handmaids.

Where does this leave quietly-living trans people who simply want to live their lives in peace under their assumed gender? Why are men apparently immune to all this criticism? And how on earth does any woman not on the side of legitimized misogyny and homophobia even begin to fight such a battle?

It wasn't rambling, it was great

Apologies for rambling post - I hit 'post' instead of preview so it's unedited.

While there are problems in academia in terms of sex discrimination and harassment, it’s nothing like other sectors.

As someone standing inside academia, I have to tell you that you couldn't be more wrong. Sexual harrassment etc is absolutely rife in Higher Education. Universities have a bad name for this, which is all the more worrying in a supposedly 'enlightened' sector that is left-leaning and has traditionally concerned itself with inequalities. I've been seriously ill - ended up having PTSD diagnosed - as a result of being sexually harrassed and stalked by a male colleague, which although I didn't know it at the time triggered a whole host of issues relating to past abuse. A close colleague has recently had to deal with appalling threats of sexual violence made to her during the course of her work, with the result that she can't leave the premises to go home unchaperoned and is living in a state of constant stress and fear. These are not isolated cases. Meet with other academics at conferences up and down the country, and you hear myriad variations on the same story - so many women have similar experiences to relate of which sex-based discrimination is only the mildest. Yet the 'T' word (the acronym, that is) looms large in keeping people quiet out of fear of losing not only their academic credibility, but also their livelihoods.

My observation in my workplace is that misogyny is being legitimized by the recent assaults on women's protection and women's rights, and that this has become demonstrably worse over the past 5 years. And the more ground we lose in relation to our protected spaces etc., the more I suspect this kind of abuse will increase.

I'm bitterly resentful of politics like those the OP has related above, which are contributing to this madness in my once-valued work-space. I'm also in a peculiar catch-22. LGBTQ and non-binary colleagues and friends - one of the most collegial, inclusive, lovely bunch of people I've worked with in a recent project on sexuality (albeit in a different period) - would probably never speak to me again if they could see my more recent mindset. Sadly, this division is becoming inevitable. I have no intention of ceding over my rights as a woman or of accepting the legitimizing of homophobia and misogyny that the TRAs have made commonplace. Added to which, my employer is neck-deep in 'Allies' - an organization that was supposed to represent my interests and now no longer does. There's a very legitimate risk that voicing views like these could lose me my job.

I'm a relatively recent convert to 'Peak Trans'. As a victim of rape and violent sexual abuse, it took two campaigns to help me see the light: #MeToo (or, more accurately, its backlash) and the 'cotton ceiling'. This kind of coercive rhetoric has shown me all-too loudly and clearly what women are dealing with here: an ideology that's rapidly pushing any gains women have made toward equality back into the dark ages.

Academics and feminists who don't buy into this shit are in a seriously precarious position. I've seen colleagues de-platformed. Horrific threats are made against them as a matter of course. Even so-called moderate colleagues are unsympathetic to the 'TE*Fs'. They're then disappeared from social media and gone to ground. It's only the very well-known ones who are able to stick their heads over the parapet and keep their positions (and even they're bullied relentlessly) - others arre effectively silenced. And I suspect others as well as me are newish to waking up to these issues and are contemplating how they're going to negotiate it.

I'm considering how to bring these issues into my current work in a way that tries to resist these trends, but I'm aware I'm swimming against a prevailing tide that's running fast in the opposite direction. Taking on such a task is going to require a lot of thought. I'm under no illusions about the risks it carries, but the alternative is capitulating to this misogyny and remaining silent is tantamount to rolling over, accepting it, and admitting we've lost.

Universities are not sequestered. Their staff live in the real world too. Many of us have suffered very real consequences because of the bullying and abuse that's rife in academia. And we too look at the Emperor and see, not only that he doesn't have any pretty, feminine new clothes on, but that he has a bloody great todger and it's swinging in carefree abandon for all to see.

It’s the same blatant denial of the existence of any power structures at all. -the belief that ‘gender’ has no social, or socialised, aspect, that result in a sense of entitlement in males and a collective belief that women and girls should always be kind.

This nonsense assumes that an unkind women and an unkind man would be met with identical responses from others. We know that isn't true. We also know that the current trans ideology is only making such massive headway because it is backed by affluent, white men.

It is not just misogynist, it is academicially sloppy. -and ironically, overlooking power-structures is not foucauldian at all.

I genuinely don't understand how people like this rise to the top and get given huge grants. It's such Emperors New Clothes bollocks.

What worries me about all this is that the debate is being led by individuals who have led quite privileged lives. I am very willing to believe a woman professor of gender studies has faced far less discrimination of any kind compared with a trans woman from a lower socio economic background, particularly if the trans woman is perceived not to 'pass' very well in her preferred gender. However, this analysis completely ignores the sex based discrimination that also exists. Even in this country where FGM has been illegal for many years, I think there has still only been one successful prosecution for carrying out or facilitating FGM. FGM doesn't exist because of gender stereotyping. It's misogyny. In the same way, it's not because of transphobia that I would get short shrift if I decided to identify as a man in Afghanistan.

These very privileged people think it is ok if they are responsible for decisions that disproportionately affect poorer women and girls from marginalised communities. That is what upsets me.

missing link to project futureoflegalgender.kcl.ac.uk/

I promised myself I wouldn't get caught up on this again, but have just looked at the home page of the project and right there on the home page, they talk about babies growing up without a "legal gender".

This is a law project and they dont even know that nobody in this country has a legal gender.

And yet in the paragraph before (which shows they are aware of criticisms) they say "we use gender here to emphasise the social character of this categorisation".

If this is the level of university work then everybody who has been conned into taking out a loan to get a university education should get their money back.

Apart from the nonsense of their ideas it is just so appallingly badly and unprofessional.

They should all be ashamed of themselves and the university should be deregistered.

I just dont know if people who do this work genuinely believe any of it, or that it has become such a gravy train for so many people - and an ego trip as they will get plaudits from all the hyper woke fanatics who seem to be obsessed with denying the reality of women as a sex, the reality that sex is the basis on which women experience, disrimination and violence.

The capture of the media being the most significant thing they have done.

Imagine in MSM reported as being of the utmost important comments on mumsnet, in the same way as the report tweets as somehow being the most significant source of representation of current thought.