BBC Bitsize - Pronouns

No, different groups often have conflicting needs, and anyone who doesn’t live in a privileged bubble acknowledges that. The world is messy and Religious groups have often protected and cared for those with whom they fundamentally disagree.

Absolutely! I recently posted on MN something about my work with young Muslim refugees in Germany. What I didn't say was that the project was financed almost entirely by the "Evangelic' (Protestant) church in Germany, and very generously so. There was not the slightest attempt to convert them.

Why does everyone assume that all people who fight for women and girls are middle class? And why do they say it as an insult?

I grew up in a tower block with a drug addicted mother on a drug riddled estate.

I only got an A in English Lit (thanks to my nan making me love books) and failed everything else, I've got a dead end, low paid job and probably no hope in hell of ever getting into Uni. I'm looking into going back to college at age 27 to get grades I should have achieved aged 16.

I was also born (and still live) in a city that was voted the 2nd worst city in the UK, and came fifth on a worst cities in the world list.

I do stick my pinky finger out when I sip my tea, though. Middle class fam, innit

"The term first surfaced in the Vatican, in the mid-1990s, a time when sexual and reproductive rights were formally recognised by the UN, and when gender entered the lexicon of the global body. Gender equality was finally being protected and promoted by international legal obligations.

Advances in women’s rights threatened the Catholic church, which feared this would open the floodgates to abortion and promiscuous behaviour, and lead to the downfall of western civilisation.

By 1997 the notion of a “gender ideology” gained wider momentum with the publication of Dale O’Leary’s The Gender Agenda. This influential text – reportedly read by members of the Vatican – maintained that substituting the word “sex” with “gender”, in international spaces like the UN was part of a global feminist scheme to dissolve the family and remake society.

By the early 2000s, a transnational movement agitating against “gender ideology” was strengthening. And not just in Catholic Poland, Brazil and Ireland, but in reliably progressive countries like Germany and France."

www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/mar/30/gender-ideology-big-bogus-and-coming-to-a-fear-campaign-near-you

@jj1968
I am middle class and centre right. I have spent decades in the City fighting to be taken seriously as a woman. Fighting to be paid the same as my male colleagues, being seen as technically able and rational; with a voice that deserves to be heard even though I am the only female in the room.
Then along come TRA wittering on about ladybrains and liking pink and sparkles is what makes a woman. All those bloody nauseating stereotypes that have held women back for years. It’s not progressive and it’s not #be kind: it is utterly regressive and deeply deeply conservative. It’s putting women back into the repressive gender roles that reinforce male privilege.
It is also deeply classist as working class women are most likely to be harmed by a regression back to stereotypes as the have least power to fight back. I have the sort of role that relies on qualifications and expertise so I have more weapons to fight my corner. I am wealthy enough to to take the risk of fighting and well educated enough to fight my corner.
Like many women on this board I am pushing back for all the women who can’t.

I honestly don’t know why I’m bothering. Your contempt for the women here just shines through. There’s literally nothing I could say that would reach you, and that’s a real pity.

This. I'm responding solely to let in the sunlight for everyone to see.

Your contempt for the women here

contempt for women full stop, more like

It could be said that trans activists are themselves helping the right with their total ideological capture of institutions and political parties with an untenable belief system and political agenda for many feminist women. Moderate and left wing women and male allies are completely politically homeless, and as in the US people are starting to feel hostile to identity politics as a luxury belief for many that ignores other issues they find important. This wasn't brought about by gender critical feminism.

JJ, this is not a left/right issue. It hasn’t been for some time, and to be honest, very little in the current political situation in the UK divides neatly in to left/right any more, this topic least of all.

It’s much more about authoritarianism, identity politics and increasing disengagement of political life from the lives of ordinary people. Just saying “euwww, Tory, next stop National Socialism” is so simplistic, it’s laughable.

Nobody here is anti LGBT for goodness sake. That’s not even worth dignifying with an answer, any,ore than your horrible smears about the Baroness.

I honestly don’t know why I’m bothering. Your contempt for the women here just shines through. There’s literally nothing I could say that would reach you, and that’s a real pity.

JJ gender ideology, which codifies the female role as passive and submissive, even going so far as to assign transgender identities to females in history who showed any kind of desire to break the shackles of sexist oppression, is about as conservative as it gets.

On twitter at least

I might be wrong but I think Bitesize has taken down the post?

Women's rights are under attack by transactivists. Gender ideology is homophobic and misogynistic at heart.

The lesson is that when one group's human rights is attacked then it is not long before that expands to other groups. LGBT and women's rights have been won in tandem against right wing and reactionary or religious forces across the globe and if one of those groups has their rights taken away then all are at threat.

No, different groups often have conflicting needs, and anyone who doesn’t live in a privileged bubble acknowledges that. The world is messy and Religious groups have often protected and cared for those with whom they fundamentally disagree.

To refer to your example, the Polish government broadly supports gender ideology. They only quibble with the idea that people can choose their box.

Please don’t try to pretend that gender ideology isn’t anti feminist. We all know that’s bobbins.

Oh, look, it's breakfast time in the US.

when the women have been. Drat the postman!

Seems to me that the thing that should happen is that instead of attacking women's rights, transwomen should be actively supporting the sex in which they wish to be included.

By attacking women, what LGBTetc do is create a climate in which the oppressive male establishment has fewer people fighting against it because they are too preoccupied with fighting each other. LGBTetc are actively playing a part in this divide and conquer manouever -- and setting themselves up to be conquered, either first or when the women have . Time they wised up and started a bit of solidarity, I'd've thought.

(Choice of word deliberate, given the country being discussed.)

Stop trying to fuck things up for women in the UK then.

@Swallowzandamazons

What does the situation in Poland have to do with trans people? Are abortion rights anti-trans, somehow? I don't get it. It's got a vague threat like quality, that statement, yet I cannot get the ends to pull together to make sense.

The current Polish government was elected on a wave of anti-LGBT sentiment following a promise to crackdown on "LGBT ideology". This emboldened the Polish far right to start violently attacking LGBT events and establishing LGBT free zones. More recently the government themselves have cracked down on LGBT activists most notably with a mass arrest of 48 peaceful protesters in August.

The lesson is that when one group's human rights is attacked then it is not long before that expands to other groups. LGBT and women's rights have been won in tandem against right wing and reactionary or religious forces across the globe and if one of those groups has their rights taken away then all are at threat.

Now perhaps what is happening in Poland couldn't happen here. That's probably what Polish LGBT people thought. But the UK is entering a period of political instability and the very best chance the GC movement has of meeting its ends, possibly the only chance, is the election of the type of government we now see in Poland. And I do wonder how many would support that? How many GC activists would hold their nose and vote for a Government that pledged to ban transition for the young, ensure single sex spaces based on sex at birth and repeal the GRA but aso pledged to end legal recognition of same sex relationship or a similar attack on LGB people? You've already flirted with politicians whose views are not a million miles from that, the Baroness, Jackie Doyle Price, David Davies. How many of Posie's new facebook friends would gladly vote for such a party?

You are not just gambling the lives of trans people with the ferocity of this campaign and the willingness to stand with the conservative right. Every anti-Trans article in Quilette, Breitbart and even The Spectator brings us closer to the situation women and LGBT people face in Poland. That's precisely why the right are giving you so much support. They think you are helping them and sadly I suspect they are correct.

Luckily I don't give a fuck what jj thinks. I've been insulted by better.

That was also my exact same thought.

[quote Malahaha]Oh, The Pronoun Song is fantastic!

www.youtube.com/watch?fbclid=IwAR2iKfegcy76GmorvbnLA-17jzfiyofILvZihTRqZReoPVitpvLXwUB1-CI&feature=youtu.be&v=Xetogrd3n4Y&app=desktop[/quote]
Thank you! That was rather enjoyable.

There is something very male and middle class about assuming that everyone is free to drop everything and charge around the country going on marches, regardless of of whether its an efficient way of campaigning.

Oh, The Pronoun Song is fantastic!

www.youtube.com/watch?fbclid=IwAR2iKfegcy76GmorvbnLA-17jzfiyofILvZihTRqZReoPVitpvLXwUB1-CI&feature=youtu.be&v=Xetogrd3n4Y&app=desktop

'Frightfully middle class' is a touch Hyacinth Buckét, is't not?

It's long been noted that the only people TRAs think should be able to speak are those with no knowledge, no power, no following and no voice.

Unless they are supporting transgender ideology I assume you mean.

What's wrong with your sleeve?