Flora Gill - annoying article in The Times

A mum in a rented house who has no means of getting a new place to live or feeding the kids has no recourse but a shelter. Someone with their own money, and a wealthy background, doesn't have those problems. Similarly, someone wealthy can afford private therapeutic support, whereas someone on benefits has to take whatever Refuge, or Rape Crisis, have to give them.

You can buy single sex provision, if you can afford to.

Here's a share token for the other article, you get it by clicking the share by email www.thetimes.co.uk/article/4e27076a-c2e7-11ea-8d55-2d09441849ca?shareToken=4bfd96fcd4c2c0f00d96597a986a0ff3

She's clueless.

In the context of the wider discussion, please don't let's pretend that being privileged necessarily protects from domestic abuse though.

I’m sticking in a link to the Phillip Collins article as I can’t see that anyone else has. I don’t know if this will work though as is just a link not a share token. What is a share token - And how do you get them? www.thetimes.co.uk/article/a-gag-is-no-cure-for-this-cancel-culture-mcnpkhk5b

She's just clueless. I have sympathy with that because her views were pretty much mine, before I started properly looking into the facts. I just assumed, as she does, that it's like racism and homophobia. In fact I started looking into it so I could prove the nasty T*RFs wrong.

Many of us came to be gender critical that way. You can't properly research all the facts, be a genuine feminist, and not. There's no test or scan for transition, to show changes. It solely relies on a claim from a person that they think they're the other sex. So all you're left with is behavioural data. I assumed, given the demands from seemingly reasonable people, that the data supported the wrong-brain hypothesis - when actually, it refutes it.

What they - and I, in the past - are arguing for is opening women's spaces up to any male who wants access. That's clearly wrong, from an evidence perspective. That should be wholly separate to the argument - which I still hold - that people should be free to express gender in any way that feels right to them.

Sex isn't gender, and women need rights based on sex. She's straightforwardly wrong, here.

I don't get how you can be so unaware of other women that need protection. Does she know about FGM? does she know about certain religions & their need for single sex spaces? Is she aware of why women end up in shelters or prison? An understanding of the need for safeguarding for children? I'm not much older but wow imagine being so dismissive of the above. And then talk about the privilege of others!

That first link to forwomen.scot is absolutely brilliant.

Thank you wellbehavedwomen.

‘ For example, for my generation — I’m 29 — the right of trans people to be protected is as indisputable as the right to sexual or racial equality. If you’re focusing only on the tiny number of women who could be at threat from men pretending to be trans, instead of the real threat faced by trans women now, then you’re not fighting for women — you’re fighting against a type of woman you don’t value.’

She can want to believe that all trans women immediately morph into a women's offending profile as soon as they state they're women. That would be great - and it was was what I used to believe, myself - but it would be wrong. Male people have male offending patterns, whether transitioned or not, and women are hugely safer in spaces that exclude all males. That's not hate, not unless you think it's man-hating to have single sex spaces in the first place.

It's also straightforwardly wrong to think trans women are at greater risk of physical abuse than women are. That's unsupported by any actual facts. Very low murder rates indeed, no evidence of any increase of any form of abuse or violence. I'm certain trans people deal with lots of discrimination in employment, housing etc and that absolutely should be addressed and dealt with. Nobody should cope with that, and yes, it's bigotry. But it won't be solved by allowing access to women's spaces, and yet that seems the sole focus.

And bollocks do all women around 30 think that way. Dr Jessica Taylor's that age, for a start. Plenty of Mumsnetters are as well. Not all women, Ms Gill, think the preferences of 'women born with penises' justifies what you appear to regard as an acceptable increase in rapes and assaults for the more boringly female types of women. But congratulations. The patriarchy trained you well.

Then again, she's AA Gill and Amber Rudd's daughter, so she's never going to be in a position to need a domestic abuse shelter, or a free rape crisis therapist, or a municipal women's changing area, let alone likely to end up in a prison, where almost all women are survivors of brutal sexual abuse at the hands of men, and terrified by male bodies with very good reason. She's decreeing how vulnerable women, without her levels of privilege, should live, just as those did who thought Karen White belonged in a women's psychiatric unit, and then, when the rape of a vulnerable fellow patient occurred, a women's prison. How very enlightened. How woke.

Women like Gill, Emma Watson et al can give away my rights because they have always had money so do not need them. No secure mental health units or women's prisons for these special flowers. Unlikely to be sexually assaulted or filmed in the loos at Claridges or the Ivy or the Harvey Nics changing rooms. They have no empathy because, like men, they are not and have never been at risk.

Those comments are an absolute joy. The article is irrelevant as it just encourages sunlight to shine from the comments.

Has anyone got a share token for the Philip Collins article that stands beside this one?

I am very glad that this has been published in the Times alongside all the other pieces. Sunlight and a chance for all to put their arguments and reasoning out there. And see how well it all stands up - from the comments, not many people are buying it

Thank you, Clymene.

Is that really the best argument that the woke side can come up with? ‘You’re all nasty women, if you’re not prepared to sacrifice females in order to protect the male bodied people who don’t want to share the toilets with others of the same sex as them.’

It’s obvious she’s talking from a very privileged background. She’s never going to be in the typical high street shops, with lines of curtained off cubicles or with nice phone friendly gaps at the top/bottom of the walls. She’s not going to be in the council swimming pools, with similar setups or open plan changing rooms. With her privilege, she can afford to shop in the more select shops, with their nice, private changing rooms and private sports centres, which will be policed more rigorously and well staffed.

She’s never going to be homeless or afraid to leave a violent partner because she has no money, support or safe place to go.

It’s easy to preach to women that they have to give up their rights to safety, dignity and privacy to a group of people who are of the section of humanity, that commits most of the sexual and physical violence. MEN, when it doesn’t affect her. she is the epitome of privilege.

Note the use of standardised language:
"cancel culture doesn't exist", it's only "accountability"
"trans rights" is effectively the same thing as anti-racism
those with means enough not to buckle under the pressure, like JKR, prove that cancel culture doesn't exist (the nobodies who lost their jobs is an inconvenient detail and is to be ignored)

In the first days of the Coalition, Nick Clegg had people scratching their heads when one of his first pronouncements was against nepotism. It fizzled out but it had Times writers like Giles Coren, Victoria Coren-Mitchell and Hugo Rifkind looking at the ground and shuffling their feet fir a while.

Looks like nothing much had changed (even though I think it's the least worst paper right now).

Are we talking 10s? 100s? We need this to made clear before legislation is passed. If there is no ceiling, we need to be told that, too, so we know how expendable and unimportant we all really are in comparison to this tiny special interest group.

I’ve posted this a few times.

The number of women and girls assaulted before TRAs admit there is a concern = the actual number of women and girls assaulted + 1.

It’s always an unattainable number.

What I don't get - apart from the predictable misogyny - is why women are always the bad guys in this recurring narrative. The words may fly around, but if a transwoman is actually attacked and harmed or even murdered, it's not women doing it. Male violence is the real problem; everything else is flak, distraction and obfuscation.

I always want to know how many girls and women being assaulted, raped or even murdered - by predatory violent men - in what were once women-only spaces are seen as acceptable collateral damage in this push for access all areas. How many will it take before someone says this was not a good idea and we need to put things back as they were?

Are we talking 10s? 100s? We need this to made clear before legislation is passed. If there is no ceiling, we need to be told that, too, so we know how expendable and unimportant we all really are in comparison to this tiny special interest group.

In the actual paper, Flora Gill's piece is next to an article by Philip Collins arguing the opposite point of view. Maybe they wanted to show both sides?

Most people would agree that certain opinions don’t deserve a platform

And that right there is Flora's first mistake.

Titania McGrath could have written that!

I agree with others that this is The Sunday Times wanting to be seen to be putting forward the trans ally side. But they're being liberal in letting very critical comments stay up, and overall Flora Gill with her "be nice or you're bigots" and shallow understanding looks clueless.

Isn't it weird how essential it is for the young to be seen to be a trans ally? I realise it goes into the portfolio with anti-racism and other antis, but taking it on board means having to rely on fabricated statistics and disregarding much of what the real world consequences might be. It means being very vocal while quelling any urge to look behind the curtain. The less you understand/examine, the stronger is your faith.

If you’re focusing only on the tiny number of women who could be raped or assaulted by men, instead of the real threat faced by men now, then you’re not fighting for women — you’re fighting against a type of man you don’t value.

That's what she's wrote.

Also I get annoyed by the self-infantalising some do when talking about "millenials".

The word 'millennial' has become lazy shorthand for 'young person'. The oldest millennials were born in the early 80s and are now in their late thirties. I know, because I am an old millennial!

the right of trans people to be protected is as indisputable as the right to sexual or racial equality

Er... she completely missed that gender reassignment IS and will continue to be protected.

Convenient that she didn’t reference ‘sex’ as a protected characteristic. Neatly forgetting this is what is at risk for 51% of the population.