Suzanne Moore Guardian - new column

.....and also a plea for people to recognise that women actually suffer on account of their body. Personally, I've always gone for celebration too.......

Thing is trans activists don't care about women's sufferings in the slightest.

What are you all seeing that I'm missing

I agree! It feels like an appeasement of sorts to soothe her nerves......and to restore sanity.

Yet she does come back to the body - which is exactly where it all begins.......and ends. Certainly on Planet Earth.

Agree Floisme.

I have no idea what she's saying and don't see the positive that PPs have identified. She quotes Butler approvingly:

“If the immutable character of sex is contested, perhaps this construct called ‘sex’ is as culturally constructed as gender; indeed, perhaps it was always already gender, with the consequence that the distinction between sex and gender turns out to be no distinction at all.”

Isn't that actually fully supportive of TRA theory? No such thing as sex, woman as performance, femininity as drag.

And yet on the basis of sex, half the population were deprived of the vote and deprived of the right to own property once they were married for centuries. On the basis of sex, girl children are mutilated. On the basis of sex women still earn less than men for doing the same jobs.

It reads to me as more of a surrender. 'Okay, you win, you can be whatever you want to be.'

What are you all seeing that I'm missing?

The trans writer Julia Serano says: “In trans women’s eyes, I see a wisdom that can only come from having to fight for your right to be recognised as female, a raw strength that only comes from unabashedly asserting your right to be feminine in an inhospitable world

Serano here mixing up wanting to express in feminine ways and being female - as if 'being female' is a fixed mental and emotional state or way of being, rather than than the condition of being in a female body, with female biology.

The moment I decided I was done was when I suggested to Paris Lees that some of women's concerns did need to be addressed and she told me: "You're either with us or against us." So, here I am. Where Paris insisted I should be.
I had to choose, she said. Women or trans women. I chose women.

Deborah Orr (RIP) tweet.

Suzanne Moore didn't so much stick her head above the parapet as climb to the top and dance. I'm not going to start having a pop at her because a week later she's used some words I don't like.
She's always been a bit unpredictable and if you're going to start setting her a purity test I will tell you now, she won't pass. It's why she's such an interesting voice.

It's a very raw bloodied description of her experience as a woman, and some of it made me physically wince. I like the phrase "female drag" when referring to gender.

But, yeah most people (not feminists) will just think she's barking. Especially those who conflate the words sex and gender.

The Guardian has a hell of a lot of back tracking to do, and they can't win me back with an article like that.

There is a petition to support her. Please sign and share it: chng.it/sqXpYpV5hW

zana Deborah Orr changed her position on whether transwomen were women after she wrote that.

I remember a tweet where she said that she'd been pushed too far by Paris Lee's to take a completely anti-women stance when Paris told her she had to choose between women and transwomen, and she said she chose women.

So glad that she's sharing her "lived experience". I think we spend so long concealing these things that people who don't experience them don't have a chance at empathy because they just don't get it

My experience is that most trans/ allies don't give a flying fuck about women's lived experiences, as they relate to their female body, and in their position as women in our society. They really don't. In fact, quite the opposite. Contempt.

I don't think that's Suzanne's best article but I'm v pleased she's not been cancelled

It's not really an article......it's a stream of consciousness. I suspect that Katherine Viner wanted to soothe frayed nerves......the Guardian has, rightly, being getting it in the neck from all quarters. Suzanne, like anyone subject to on-line abuse just wants her sanity back and to feel normal again.

I'd prefer it be her last piece for that paper.

NotAssigned I agree. I’m not really sure what she’s saying, to be honest. Those who want to read it as a climb down probably have adequate ammunition

Yes, I'm not sure either.....it comes across as more of a stream of consciousness type piece, written on the back of a tumultuous weekend.

Using Judith butler quotes seems like an attempt to appease, to show you know your queer theory........suggesting that perhaps sex is not real - but just as much a construct as gender.......

But then ends with the body - which is where it all begins......and which is what makes you the variety of human being that is known as 'a woman'. An adult human female.

I struggled to read some of it, feeling she may have written it while high in Amsterdam this weekend.

But the point is clear. Perform gender if you want to, but a female body does female things regardless, so stop trying to pretend sex doesn't matter.

I don't think that's Suzanne's best article but I'm v pleased she's not been cancelled

Debaroh Orr wrote some right crap

" That's why it's so awful to talk of trans women as men who have been castrated. Such people are women who have had the biological misfortune to have been born with bodies that are out of kilter with the much more complex biology of their female minds. That too, is why the trans community prefers people not to talk of being biologically or born female as opposed to trans female. Trans people are biologically or born female, but with detail of the flesh that traduces their ability to be physically and socially accepted for what they are"

amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jan/19/feminism-trans-women-female-enough

Going by what she was tweeting about her Amsterdam trip, its hardly surprising if it's not her sharpest piece ever. I'm mostly just relieved to see she's still writing and that the Guardian are still publishing.

Those who want to read it as a climb down probably have adequate ammunition.

Without an abject, grovelling apology, TRAs aren't going to read it as a climb down. They will direct their ire towards the Guardian for publishing her without said apology.

I have to be honest, Ive no idea what she's on about really. It just feels like a massive word salad and is already being called a climb down on twitter

NotAssigned I agree. I’m not really sure what she’s saying, to be honest. Those who want to read it as a climb down probably have adequate ammunition.

Thank You Suzanne. Don't let them grind you down.

Shame about the cis and I'm not sure the average reader will have a scooby what she is on about.

Yes, I'm really missing Deborah Orr. She called a spade a fucking shovel when it was needed.

She’s come back from that weekend in Amsterdam fighting. Good. I sense a scintilla of career-saving accommodation in the ‘you do you - whatevs’ but the message is loud and clear ‘don’t try and shut this woman up fuckers!!’ Love her. The spirit of Deborah Orr lives on. A wise decision by The Guardian.

Well done, Suzanne.