Zoe Williams opinion piece in The Guardian

But the point is is that there hasn't been a proper public debate It's been cancelled. And so it has become a war of attrition conducted via social media.

This is the absolute heart of the matter. And here's pious, sanctimonious Zoe irresponsibly adding to it.

Zoe Williams has always waffled utter garbage, did nobody notice this before? I find her virtually unreadable.

According to Zoe Williams, the purpose of feminism — its raison d'être, the reason for its existence — is to take the side of the oppressed.

So it’s not surprising she thinks we should be kind, move over, make way for that most oppressed minority, men. When the trans issue came up, says Zoe, it was obvious which side feminism would be expected to take: “the side of compassion and fellowship.”

Strangely, feminists thought feminism was about taking the side of women. A simple mistake.

Jesus wept.

How many transwomen did Weinstein assault?

cont.
"So, thank you
@ zoesqwilliams
for your strong and inclusive words."

Helen Belcher tweet,
"I remember being surprised that
@ zoesqwilliams
had been in a talk I gave quite a few years ago. She wrote about it at the time.

I’m amazed that she seems to have remembered it so well that she’s included it in this amazing piece about inclusive feminism."

twitter.com/HelenCBelcher/status/1237485387800510464

Dances 💐
This is so disappointing. I usually quite like her political stuff (although the year of baby columns was excruciating) but she seems to have spectacularly missed the point here.

Alongwith LOJ, she's one of the reasons I stopped reading the Graun
This.

Dances, because it is - feminism is about the reality of the female experience, and for a lot of us, it's bloody difficult stuff. To read ivory tower princesses pontificating so casually about why women are just stagehands in their own liberation movement, meant to be there simply to support literally everyone else but women, is galling, insulting and cruel. We have your back here. For as long as we possibly can. xx

Thanks Floral
I'm angry on a daily, hourly basis with this shit, but that article really cut. Maybe just because I have had the Observer delivered for years; am used to reading her articles on a Sunday morning; never thought that she would take such a swipe to my freedom.

it seems personal, I have no idea why.

she should stick to wittering on about her dinner parties

Dances totally hearing you, and deeply empathizing. You don't have to do it, not all the time. We hold up each others arms in this xx

I wondered if that was purposeful

I think a lot of these people are in denial that other people see through their bullshit, and that more and more people are waking up to it. Look at that idiot Nandy sharing the interview with Piers Morgan on her Twitter as if she did a bang up job.

I felt it was so badly written that lots of it made little sense. I wondered if that was purposeful. The arguments don't stack up. The idea the feminists raison d'etre was to champion the underdog was particularly irritating. The idea that women can't champion their own cause unless we simultaneously champion the cause of all except the rich white man? I don't think so.
It was very we'll only get anywhere if we're nice to everyone.
She failed to touch on any valid argument against self ID - which spoke volumes imo.

"Oh dear, I appear to have bought a map, and a GPS system, and employed a guide just to be sure, and also a private investigator, and thus I stumbled upon you witches. Totally by accident, of course."

Zoe Williams is, and always has been, an awful, awful writer. I really struggle to follow her train of thought most of the time.

Yes. She is dreadful and talentless.

I'll take the plunge now and read this but I anticipate that I'll be wound up at the end

Think I'll give my blood pressure a break.

What a clueless, privileged idiot she is.

She has noticed the rise of misogyny.

She has not connected it to teenage girls wanting to avoid growing up to be women.

She has not connected it to middle-aged men into cross-dressing getting the award for best woman ahead of all the actual women.

That last paragraph makes zero sense

Classic Zoe Williams. Alongwith LOJ, she's one of the reasons I stopped reading the Graun. I started to feel like I was bankrolling the 'careers' of people who hadn't fully left their student newspaper days behind them. Mindless drivel with no sense of consistent logic.

Provides some relief from accidentally stumbling across all the hate on this website.

"Accidentally"

So very upset about this article.

I have long accepted that there is no therapy for the abuse I have suffered, every attempt was torture, I was triaged again and again., everytime having to again relate my history

I will have to exclude myself from the only thing that helps - exercise, as my gym - Nuffield, say they will allow transwomen on a 'case by case' basis, whatever that means.

Running outdoors is out of the question, just too dangerous at night.

My sincere thanks to the women of these boards for keeping on. I do for a while, then I see the utter betrayal of women, again and again.

I have managed to pull myself through the shit I have endured but it lives with me every single day. It's hard not to feel desperate sometimes, angry, helpless. Why am I so invisible? Everyone knows about abuse survivors, sexual assaults survivors. Why don't we matter?

Do I have to tell my story to the world before I have any consideration from my government? From supposedly progressive journalists?

Why don't I matter at all?