Zoe Williams opinion piece in The Guardian

Tork, thank you, that is excellent. I wish Zoe Williams would read it and really consider it.

Floral, eek, hope you feel better very soon. Take care. And lots of liquids.

10/3/2020 Zoe Williams,
"Feminism, in my life’s experience of it, takes the side of the oppressed. That is our raison d’etre.

So, anyway, I had seen this wonderful talk by Helen Belcher, who described the three ways in which trans people are portrayed and undermined, in the media and beyond. “The first is that they’re fraudulent. They’re not really who they say they are. We’d better humour them in their delusion. The second is trans as undeserving deviant. The third is trans as comedy.” Since then, this has intensified, with other, even more hostile, elements added: trans people as predators, the trans movement as deliberately poisoning the young. The savage mischief has seeped out of it. There is not much of the “We’d better humour them” any more.

Even in 2013, though, it was clear that trans people were in the eye of a familiar set of prejudices, which any of us – gay, female, disabled, BAME – might recognise."

Williams goes on to say,
"So much of the live combat happens on Twitter. This is not to call it irrelevant (I love Twitter) "

6/3/2020 Helen Belcher tweeted a "rant"

"You know, there hasn't been a day in the last two weeks where there hasn't been anti-trans rhetoric somewhere on my timeline. And they're all trying to take what trans people currently have away - with no evidence.

Today also kindly includes anti-trans adverts in two regional newspapers (apologies to Scotland for incorrectly calling it a "region") as well as some more issues around another broadcast on
@ BBCr4today
. So national, regional and social media full of this stuff.
LGB Alliance advertising the Scottish Govt consultation on sex self-id proposals

For those of you who aren't trans, imagine dreading connecting with any media because you might encounter yet another piece stating baldly that you are either a risk or an enabler of risk for society as a whole. - because there's no let up, none at all.

A few months ago it was horrible, and we thought (wrongly) that it couldn't get any worse. Well, it has. I've been a news junkie since my teens. Now I only connect with the news around one day in two.

When I helped set up TransMediaWatch just over 10 years ago, whenever there was a trans news story it meant effectively taking the day off to deal with it. It happened probably one day a month. If I used that strategy now, I'd never do anything else.

And the worst thing is, most folk around me simply don't notice this stuff - family excepted. So it's not as if it's engaging with a huge audience. In the last General Election I was the openly trans candidate most likely to win a seat.

In the event, I came second and our vote increased by almost 9% - the highest percentage scored by any openly trans candidate this time round. My team and I knocked on over 7,000 doors. The trans thing came up once, and that was to a team member.
This was more likely a swing to the anti Brexit candidate

Once out of 7,000 doors. That's how concerned folk are. And yet this abusive media coverage has been relentless. For what end?

I've called it abusive, because that's what it is. I started this thread with the claim that folk are campaigning to take rights away from trans people, rights that have been used without issue for decades. Given the amount of media coverage, if there really were issues ...

... the media would be full of them. Yet despite the daily coverage, it isn't - because they don't happen. Instead we get manufactured issues around "no-platforming" and "freedom of speech", always referencing trans people.

It's a campaign designed to hurt and force trans people back into the shadows, removing us from public life. And the media have enabled it relentlessly for the last three years - because they only ever want to report on bad news.

Except they don't report fairly on what trans people consider bad news, like massive delays to get seen by a specialist. Even when this was reported, for "balance" we then had a noble Lord explaining why we shouldn't treat trans people until we know what causes it.
Duty of Care?

It's like the whole idea of palliative medicine shouldn't exist for trans people, nor free speech, nor access to healthcare, nor respect. We should just suck it up because "science" - except it's not science. Science deals with the world as it is, not as you'd like it to be.

I've used Twitter for around 8 years now, and this is my first full-on rant, because the situation is serious, and those who are listening to us (and there are some) don't seem to be able to get cut-through, nor know how to amplify our voices."

twitter.com/HelenCBelcher/status/1235911585526358022

Has Zoe Williams/The Guardian responded to the demand to 'cut through' & amplify Helen Belcher's voice?

Stephen Doughty MP did the same at the 2018 Home Affairs Committee on 'Hate Crime'

Helen Belcher's 'evidence' (includes complaints against Mumsnet FWR)
data.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/committeeevidence.svc/evidencedocument/home-affairs-committee/hate-crime-and-its-violent-consequences/written/82105.pdf

May 2018 James Kirkup report of Stephen Doughty's questioning & demands made of newpaper editors:
www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-are-some-mps-trying-to-shut-down-the-transgender-debate-

But I guess that's my point - firstly, a lot of people don't even register that they are operating a faith based argument. Reasoning helps uncover that.

True, Floral, but when making an argument it's important to tackle the real beliefs that underlie your opponent's position, not their professed beliefs, and this is where reasoning trips us up WRT to gender ideology, because its proponents claim to believe all sorts of things that they don't really believe (sex isn't real, men are women if they say so), while refusing to be upfront about what they actually believe (men who want to be seen as 'women' are suffering, so it's women's job to make them feel better).

So we get into these tedious arguments about DSDs and gametes and so forth in an effort to prove that yes, sex is real, when in fact our opponents know that already. That isn't their real argument, so it's a waste of time to try to dismantle it.

IMO one of the big beliefs driving women's support of trans ideology is that men who are marked as feminine are just like us, and therefore we are united in the fight 'against patriarchy'. There's no downside to letting males onto 'team woman', because we basically want and need the same things. They suffer like women, they are treated like women, and most importantly, they are ON THE SIDE OF WOMEN, so we owe them solidarity in return. All of these assumptions are mistaken, the last one especially so.

So a better argument to have with women who believe this would be to ask them to examine the behaviour and political demands of men who identify as women, and to consider whether they are truly reflective of people who are in solidarity with women.

For instance, how does it benefit women and girls if we lose the right to single-sex services and spaces? How does it benefit women and girls if we lose female-only sport? How does it help the fight against male violence if the government eliminates accurate crime statistics by allowing men who beat, rape and murder women to have their crimes attributed to women on their say-so? These are all core political demands of the trans movement. Are these the goals of people who are in solidarity with women? Perhaps it is time to reassess whether 'we all want the same thing', and realise that the demands for solidarity and compassion only go one way.

Oh, and we should take the time to explain autogynephilia. Most women have never heard of it, and it illuminates so many things.

Not rtft yet but wanted to reach out to dances. I hear you because I feel the same. Accepting men in women's spaces is not possible for me. This is not a theoretical concept. I CAN'T do it. It makes me feel sick to even think about it, and any illusions of feeling safe have been stripped away by the capitulation of all the institutions that I relied upon to understand CSA and its impacts on survivors. I am really angry and despairing that my/thousands of women's experiences are being dismissed. I don't feel heard. This is made worse by not being able to speak out and defend myself in case I lose my job. So, thank you to all the brave women who are speaking out for us and I am sorry I can't stand up and be counted. Not yet. Dances💐**

*can't believe

Tork fabulous!

Floral hope you feel better soon. I almost cancelled my Mumsnet account this week, this issue is so horrendous and I can believe it's happening like it is. I'm job hunting at the moment and I don't want to go anywhere near people who think woman is just a costume. I'm in the brink of retiring from playing an active part in life outside the home.

Didn't she use to be quite intelligent?

Not that I ever noticed. She never really had anything to say.

I dunno. On the basis that logic and facts don't work with people like Zoe Williams, I sometimes wonder if we should just point out to her who she's aligning herself with. On our side of the debate we have all the cool people like Allison Bailey, Julie Bindel, Kiri Tunks, Lucy Masoud, Professor Selina Todd, Professor Kathleen Stock, Germaine Greer, Dame Kelly Holmes, Sharron Davies - and many others.

On the other side of the debate, you have people like Jess "here are some pictures of my dick" Bradley, Shon "enjoy your erasure" Faye, Jane Fae (a campaigner for extreme, violent, anti-women pornography) plus a bunch of petulant 20-year old white boys who like dressing up in bondage gear, shouting abuse and throwing smoke bombs at a peaceful gathering of women discussing their rights.

I mean, really, Zoe? Are those the people you want on your side?

Yes, the quasi religious aspect is something I've been banging on about for as long as I've been here. But I guess that's my point - firstly, a lot of people don't even register that they are operating a faith based argument. Reasoning helps uncover that. Secondly, once it's shown that this is all fervently well intentioned but baseless in material reality, the same cultural secular rules apply to this belief as any other - believe it freely, but don't expect it never to be challenged, and don't try and force it on others - then you've neutered a lot of it's force.

As someone who came out of a patriarchal religion that absolutely utilized every aspect of female socialization, stereotypes, and biological disadvantage, I can attest that thinking, reading, conversation and willingness to admit error was key to escaping.

Didn't she use to be quite intelligent? I saw her once at a Green Party conference and it's been downhill ever since for her. What a numpty.

Thank you. I am in the middle of a full on day of man's work in a heavily male dominated industry where I'm having to do everything over video conferencing that I was supposed to be doing in person in Europe. It is certainly keeping me awake after 2hrs sleep.

The Italians have their children wandering into dad's conf call amusingly often. It is all terribly good tempered. A Dutch man has already asked me to please keep on being "a difficult woman" so we get stuff done. A Scotsman got me a coffee and steak slice from Greggs that I am wolfing down now. I think I'm man-hating wrong. I have solved lots of problems for men though, so maybe I am womaning right. I am well paid for it so that's probably a sign I was not girly enough in negotiations. It has been about three years since somebody praised me by saying I think like a man, which I take as a sign of the men's opinions of women improving.

I'm just getting this niggling feeling that these arguments are so impervious to logic that I'm not sure any more what is gained by dismantling them.

This is true. I've posted before about how support for trans ideology, especially from women, is based on deep-seated emotions and desires. The feeling of pity for a man who seems like he has been cast out from manhood. The longing to be in solidarity with men and the sense of flattery when one of them declares that he wants to join 'team woman'. The shame at being one of the lowly humans with female biology and the wish for that biology to not matter as much as it does, or at all.

All the ridiculous arguments about how DSDs disprove the sex binary and all gender is socially constructed anyway are just covers for the fact that 'trans women are women' is a catechism, a faith-based position, and like all faiths, it is based on our deepest longings.

The biggest threat that is climate change( and degradation of the earth and all of its other life forms) is precisely because women are instinctively and symbolically connected to Mother Earth, to nature and its rhythms; to the body.........As you say women are expected to take up this great nourishing, nurturing, protective role - even against their own best interests. To be self sacrificing.

This is another big, unspoken dynamic. The equation of 'woman' with 'nature' is almost entirely unconscious on the part of most people, but it informs all views on sexual politics. And the thing is, it's not entirely wrong. Women are more obviously connected with nature and the animal world because of pregnancy, birth and child-rearing. Of course, the truth is that all people are part of nature, we are all inseparable from our biology, but I think it's easier for men to forget this.

Torktorkbam, that’s a brilliant translation of Zoe Williams’s incoherent waffling! Worth having insomnia for. It must have been like nailing jelly to a wall, but you have nailed it.

Your deadpan humour made it easier to bear:
Zoe has noticed that transmen are always ignored. Zoe does not mention them again.

I hope you get a good night’s sleep tonight. How people like ZW can sleep at all, spreading this toxic bilge, is beyond me.

Zoe Williams has always been thick as mince. I've never read anything by her that made any sense.

@dances
Slightly OT, but there is a gym chain where sense still prevails: Duncan Bannatyne has said clearly and publicly that we won’t allow trans women in women’s changing rooms. He seems to totally get the safety issues.

www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/duncan-bannatyne-says-letting-trans-21550284

Get well Floral , your pep talk is welcome.

I was thinking this exactly yesterday myself while reflecting on IWD. If we can’t get enough politicians to think beyond the superficiality of accepting transwo men as women, it feels like this state of constant fighting for the rights of women and children will simply go on indefinitely.

Then I thought, the longer it goes on, the more evidence of the conflict in safeguarding and women’s rights there will be. Optimistically, the evidence will dismantle the trope they use as arguments for debate. Sadly, it will just take time but the voices are growing.

So thank you again to those who have been dedicated to keeping these boards going for so long.

From maya on twitter. Sums it up really

I think she's confusing feminism with the Brownie Guide promise

I don't consider Zoe Williams a serious journalist, to be fair. More of a talentless hack.

TorkTorkBam

Fantastic Post. I was glued to it.

Poor, brave Suzanne Moore. Zoe William’s article is cynically timed, disingenuous and fucking treacherous. Her “sisters” certainly don’t include Suzanne.
I wanted to comment with the words, “Yes, Aunt Lydia”, but I don’t think comments are enabled.