The Guardian here we go agan

after publishing a broadside in June on transgender issues

“Broadside”

This means a fierce verbal attack. Historically from firing of all the guns from one side of a warship.

Clearly another one who hasn’t read it. Another slur of Rowling. Just unbelievable.

@RoyalCorgi The Indie is not the same newspaper as it was years ago. As soon as it went online, there seemed to be more articles about violent female criminals (not sure why, do the readership find that titillating?), a lot more articles about Islam and Muslim faith matters, more far left opinion pieces, and far more articles with glaring grammar or spelling errors in them. I stopped reading it mostly for the seemingly rushed articles and click bait titled, poorly written pieces,

To be honest, I am only surprised on those rare days when I go onto the Guardian website and there isn't a trans propaganda piece or an opinion piece attacking free speech.

When we teach young girls about periods, we know that a very small number of them might not experience them for various reasons, but we tell them about it anyway because we know that females have periods, and if it doesn't happen for them they will need an understanding that this is not normal. When we teach boys about periods we don't say to boys 'and you might experience this too' because we know for an absolute fact that they won't.

I know a girl who had ovarian cancer as a baby and had that ovary removed. When she was about 9 her cancer came back in the other ovary and had a full hysterectomy. She will never have a period, she will never get pregnant or give birth or breastfeed, she will have to be on certain hormonal medication for the rest of her life to try and ensure that she develops normally. As she got older, learnt more and more about reproduction, she had to develop an understanding and come to terms with what has happened to her. All of those experiences are uniquely female and directly relate to her female body and there will be other females who have been through the same thing - no male, however they identify, will ever have experienced that.

The whole 'some women don't have periods so males are women too' argument is just so lazy and ill thought out.

Are there experiences that make a woman real, anyway? Periods? Giving birth? Many women don’t experience the latter, some don’t experience the former.

Argh!

Most women have periods at some point in their life. If a woman gets to her 40s and has never had a period then there will be a specific reason for that which will have required fairly invasive medical investigation, probably heartache somewhere along the way and possibly other medical issues. If a transwoman gets to their 40s and has never had a period then they know the exact reason for this and it requires precisely zero investigation. There is a single very specific reason why no transwoman has ever had a period.

If a woman gets to her 40s and has never given birth, then it is either highly likely that she has spent most of her adult life actively avoiding getting pregnant, involving probably multiple types of contraception along the way, enduring all of the stress that comes with that OR she has spent a number of years trying unsuccessfully to get pregnant, and enduring all of the stress that comes with that. Or she has some sort of medical issue which means that she knows that will never get pregnant, and has endured the stress that comes with that. There will be a very small number of women who will never get pregnant for medical reasons and are totally happy about that fact. A transwoman has never experienced any of these things. There is a single very specific reason why no transwoman has ever given birth.

Pregnancy and periods, whether its experiencing them, lack of them, actively avoiding them, not knowing why they haven't experienced them etc are something that all women have had some kind of relative experience of.

Even if individual women leave childhood, teens and early adulthood relatively unscathed, we are affected by what happens to the girls and women surrounding us.

Rape, sex discrimination, domestic violence, coercion, pregnancy and dysmenorrhoea may have happened to other women, but it affects us all.

How we learn our cohort are treated medically and societally, are discriminated against and how and why they are killed are all object lessons in how we, as a sex class are treated.

We learn our collective lessons and try not to be treated the same.

Appeasing the domestic, medical and societal abusers is how we all end up acting, in order to prevent the same treatment.

Men cannot be women for this reason alone.

They weren't taught the lessons we were taught, weren't shown the examples we were shown and weren't taught how to tip toe on eggshells, whilst smiling, putting others first and all the while keeping groomed and presentable, just like the magazines, mothers, friends, older siblings, commentators, influencers and advertisers tell us and show us.

Society, family, friends, the educational, employment and medical systems all become our conscious or unwitting Aunt Lydias, teaching us how to take our places, how to behave as caring and accommodating women and having examples of how bad things can get being held up in order to keep us in line.

Men do not have that. They are socialised in a completely different way.

Even if they do not feel masculine, they are not taught what we are taught, how and why we are taught it, have no empathy with us and take advantage of our training as compassionate, accommodating and appeasing vessels to appropriate the fripperies, rights and appearances of womanhood, without having to go through any of the socialization, emotional or physical pain.

It's like seeing a top class ice skater in action (without seeing the years of privation, training, sacrifices and pain it took to get there), putting the costume on and declaring yourself an ice skater.

It's laughable and wrong.

@zanahoria

Hey carrot! I read that article too. The comparison to adoptive parents had my eyebrows rising into my hairline.
I wonder if he would have had the academic opportunities and career he has had and been able to raise four children if he had been a biological woman who bore them during those times.
I know it's important to separate trans people from TRAs and that piece doesn't specifically cover the legal questions, but adoptive parents are recognised as parents whilst still leaving birth certificates and actual history and facts as they stand, so I thought it was so disingenuous to use that as a comparison.

The author said on Twitter that women's fear of transwomen in refuges for example is really just 'fear of fear' or 'fear of the other'.
Nope. No no no no no.
It's fear of the really fucking familiar. Men/male bodies are not some novel apparition that reactionary females who are resistant to change just need to get their bigoted heads round.
Women are pretty old hats at dealing with penises and men, whatever dressing you put on them. Especially the most vulnerable ones that are often the users or single sex spaces.
TW are not 'the other'. The other sex yes, but that sure as shit isn't new.

The Guardian seemed to be getting better for a while but they've got worse again recently. Billy Bragg's article yesterday showed how far they've sunk.

The Indie is the other paper that is completely in thrall to TRA ideology but I don't know if you'd consider them mainstream media any more.

Do we need to adjust our wording or is that just pandering and pushing us females out of our place?
twitter.com/Tieryn_/status/1281888649022509056?s=19

And again, more transwomen just want to understood stuff and nothing that addresses JK's points

amp.theguardian.com/education/2020/jul/11/uks-only-trans-philosophy-professor-to-jk-rowling-harry-potter-helped-me-become-a-woman

I read the article and not once does she mention transmen.

The article would have been much more balanced if she'd addressed their experiences with female biology and presenting as a man in society.
I don't for one minute believe your average man would perceive a trans man as a real man. So are they not also at risk from abuse?

Instead the article is another long appeal to women to be kind to the hurting transwomen who want to use our spaces.
No mention of the fact that self-id would open the doors to every man who wanted easier access to women when they are more vulnerable.

The common enemy here is male violence. Men should be held to account for their actions, not those who have survived them.

So the writer states that male violence is a problem and that women's experiences of this have been dismissed, but does not make the logical connection to the reasons why women do not want male bodies in sex segregated spaces.
She continues the dismissal and disbelief of women's experiences, which she has pointed has been a problem.

There is a connecting thread between insulting terms like “hysterical” and the #MeToo movement’s examination of why so many women’s experiences have been disbelieved

One of my 'Wokey blokey' FB friends posted a link to this article. I had to hold myself back from commenting. But I am seething at the pathetic 'journalism' behind this. I came straight in here to see what you lot thought. I have had enough of this shit!!!

"Are there experiences that make a woman real, anyway?“

Oh God give me strength

I’ve kept myself quite calm and non-sweary for a while. But for that woman to respond to the concerns about traumatising survivors in refuges with male bodies in their spaces by saying its been going on for a while and everything is fine tra la la! 🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬

Trans people women are saying they are frightened and in pain because people are questioning their rights, and we’re not listening. Where will this end?’

There, fixed it for you, Blahdian.

Why did you expect anything different from the Guardian? They’ve been peddling this shit for nearly 10 yrs. The guardian fundamentally hates women - stop thinking they are going to change.

"Trans women can be seen as “real” women without their biology being used as an oppressive tool against them."

How can something that makes you (tend to be) stronger than another group be used as an 'oppressive tool'?

She's actually flogging a book about how hormones affect women.

We're a myth love, you must be imagining things.

People will say ANY THING for a few quid.

So basically: “Women, it is up to you to look after men who wish they were women This is your problem”.
At no point does Morgan suggest that men have any responsibility for transwomen. As always it’s left to women.

Morgan is all about compromise, she seems to say, yet she uses the term ‘cis’, which she knows is rejected by those she says should do the compromising. I find it interesting I thought The Guardian had decided that ‘cis’ and ‘cisgender’ should not be used. Did I imagine this?

Trans women seem, from prison population, to commit sexual offences at male rates. I'm not interested in sharing places where we're vulnerable with people with male bodies, and male propensity to harm women. Do I care that those people are safe, too, from male violence? Yes. It it women's duty to sacrifice themselves in order to keep another group of male people, at risk of male violence, safe? No.

That's not anti trans. It's not anti men to keep them out, or to say that yes, most are lovely, but as a group they pose a huge risk to us and therefore all stay out, because we can't know which are which. It's just reality.

Expecting women to sacrifice all our own sense of safety, and indeed our actual safety, to cater to a group born male is misogyny.

If you want to be cheered up, here's the author touting her piece on twitter and the responses she's getting:

mobile.twitter.com/eleanormorgan/status/1281233749586464768