Feeling really conflicted

jj

"But that's not the usual response to questions about how trans people should be able to exist in the world safely and with some dignity. Not women's problem is the usual reply. (not specificlly replying to you with the following but the thread more generally)"

Although I'm loathe to use a bathrooms example since the issues are of course bigger than that, I think the perspective of those giving you that reply is very loosely akin to the following:

Parents have a need to change their child's nappy while out and about, but let's say it is rare that provision is made for this in UK establishments. Parents demand to each be given a Radar key so that they can use disabled facilities. Disabled users of those facilities say, "hang on a minute, those facilities are for us and we will be disadvantaged if Radar keys are handed out willy nilly to any parent who wants to use them". Parents now round on the disabled users themselves with the question, "well then where am I supposed to change my child?!"

It would be quite reasonable of disabled toilet users to reply, "I've no idea - perhaps you should take it up with the relevant authorities because, although I sympathise, this hasn't become my problem to solve purely because your initial - unworkable - suggestion focused on facilities designed for me".

In my book that doesn't make them callous shirkers of responsibility, it just means they are declining to be charged with finding a solution for something wholly unrelated to them on pain of losing the facilities originally provided for their specific needs.

And you know what I kept seeing? Trans activists disrupting the activism of FGM campaigners. Policing their language if they say the flipping word woman.

I think this is a problem with social media. I have challenged some of that nonsense, so have many people you would dismiss as trans activists, but it only takes a handful out of the hundreds of millions of people who use twitter to make such comments and it becomes presented as typical of what trans people think.

I've posted on here because this is a forum dominated by discussions about trans people often with trans voices completely excluded, and where I believe trans people are often unfairly maligned and a lot of misinformation is spread. I deliberately haven't posted on threads which aren't about trans people because I am content to just read them and listen to people's thoughts and experiences. My posts on mumsnet do not represent the totality of my political thought, and certainly not my thoughts on feminism - there are many great feminists who have been an inspiration to me for my entire life.

Over on Twitter, I anticipate the trans movement is going to welcome a man with open arms, despite his past couple of days of trivialising the holocaust, and trying (and failing) to play the "But some of my best friends are Jewish!" card.

But sure, feminists are the ones who are anti-semitic.

JJ, when we say 'it's not women's problem to solve' - whether sports, toilets or shortlists - we mean not that we don't care at all, but we reject the only proposed solution. Which is that we give up the stuff we needed and fought for, for bloody YEARS, to convenience a small group of people who don't want to have to do the same thing.

I know you know this really.

www.dentons.com/en

according to their home page, they are the second best known law firm in the world

Global perspective, is it?

Let's consider the global fricking perspective.

Have you heard of something called FGM? A while back, during the boredom of lockdown, as a woman who was wont to say that mumsnet was a bit transphobic, I joined twitter. Followed a bunch of interesting people, including trans activists. (Boosting trans voices, amirite?)

And you know what I kept seeing? Trans activists disrupting the activism of FGM campaigners. Policing their language if they say the flipping word woman.

A couple of weeks ago you were on about us donating to a bus. Well, I donated to that. I donate to a hell of a lot of things. So what the hell have you done in all your posts here except to put down women? To try to tell us we're seeing things when we see TRAs actively destroying things women have worked for or are working for instead of building their own stuff?

You're on here all hours of the day. How about trying to rein in your allies piling on black FGM campaigners on twitter?

Dentons isn’t a think tank it’s a big law firm that was providing free advice.

‘there is no organised plot to invade women's spaces”

No, there is just the patriarchy, darling. Sitting back and letting all the work be done by TRAs.

[quote MrsWooster]” None of this is how social change works, there are no secretive TRAs running round switching the word sex to gender on forms, there is no organised plot to invade women's spaces”
You were saying, JJ?
www.lawgazette.co.uk/obiter/dentons-goes-bashful-over-transgender-children-campaign/5102607.article[/quote]
This is a perfect example of what I mean. It's one report out of probably thousands which discusses perfectly normal lobbying and other techniques which have been common to all political and social movements for decades. As if trans people invented trying to tack something onto an uncontroversial political bill to minimise objections to it - its parliamentary democracy 101, politicians have been playing such tricks for centuries.

And who gives an actual fuck about Dentons anyway. This is exactly how conspiracy theorists work, take some report from some think tank that no-one ever probably even read and use it as proof of some grand plot behind the scenes. If only the world were that exciting. Remember when they were all going on about Common Purpose, a small training company a few years ago, using reports like this to claim they were secretly controlling the Blair government. It's not how things work.

” None of this is how social change works, there are no secretive TRAs running round switching the word sex to gender on forms, there is no organised plot to invade women's spaces”
You were saying, JJ?
www.lawgazette.co.uk/obiter/dentons-goes-bashful-over-transgender-children-campaign/5102607.article

Just posting another link to this thread for anyone who wants an antidote to jj's latest rant.

Haha, nothing like responding to accusations of conspiratorial thinking by posting a rant from some intellectual dark web gobshite edgelord about how psychopaths are secretly creating a totalitarian society by brainwashing everyone into believing a pseudo-reality.

Yes jj I agree you represent a splinter group of feminism but I won’t hold it against you!

I don't think the vast majority of feminists are conspiracy theorists by the way, just the small number in the UK who seem to have veered off in that direction and been joined by associated social conservatives and worried liberals. But I would never dream of ascribing views to feminism based on a splinter movement that from a global perspective is miniscule within the feminist movement - and which stands in oppostition to a lot of long held feminist ideas.

I find it amazing that on an FWR thread a poster can write such a long post without really recognising that women have any rights they may be concerned about losing. In a world where women are fighting to be allowed to call themselves women and speak about their biological reality it feels deliberate obfuscation and diversion.

There was a horrific video recently of male vegan activists branding young women, which I wish I hadn't seen but really made the power dynamic and abuse clear. I saw behaviour like this, but on a less violent scale, at university and from the activist boyfriends of teenage friends

That's awful, but a far cry from peaceful, eloquent, compassionate vegan activists like Earthling Ed and Akala. It sounds like a PETA stunt and they are awfully misogynistic and extreme.

Vegan means cause the least harm so flies in the face of that.

Just goes to show those kind of people will use a cause as a good cover for horrific behaviour.

You're right, OldCrone.

Ugh, revolting to see a poster here, try to smear feminists as conspiracy theorists, anti-gay rights or anti-semites or perhaps [head tilt] vulnerable intelligent people who are just a bit "wobbly".

There has also always been a serious issue with the way good causes can be used as a cover for bullying and coercive control, even as a way to groom and abuse young people and then silence them for fear of betraying the wider noble cause, whether that's political or religious. There was a horrific video recently of male vegan activists branding young women, which I wish I hadn't seen but really made the power dynamic and abuse clear. I saw behaviour like this, but on a less violent scale, at university and from the activist boyfriends of teenage friends.

It is not progress for women to be named menstruators. It is not progress to pretend that you can change sex. It is not progress to think that 50-50 representation for women means 2/4 people on a panel are not women. It is not progress to pretend puberty blockers are reversible or to foist them on questioning girls. It is not progress to have women run away from men in refuges. It is not progress to have women beaten by men in sports. It is not progress to force women to be intimately examined by men. It is not progress to silence women in universities, in media, and in publishing. It is not progress to harangue women who campaign against FGM, or women enduring miscarriage.

I beg to differ. If you are a misogynist who believes that women are subhuman and should have no rights, all those things represent progress.

Just posting another link to this thread for anyone who wants an antidote to jj's latest rant.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4169150-Pseudo-realities-Power-and-Language-Games

The OP starts with a quote from James Lindsay's article "Psychopathy and the Origins of Totalitarianism"

newdiscourses.com/2020/12/psychopathy-origins-totalitarianism/

Pseudo-realities are, simply put, false constructions of reality. It is hopefully obvious that among the features of pseudo-realities is that they must present a plausible but deliberately wrong understanding of reality. They are cult “realities” in the sense that they are the way that members of cults experience and interpret the world—both social and material—around them. We should immediately recognize that these deliberately incorrect interpretations of reality serve two related functions. First, they are meant to mold the world to accommodate small proportions of people who suffer pathological limitations on their abilities to cope with reality as it is. Second, they are designed to replace all other analyses and motivations with power, which these essentially or functionally psychopathic individuals will contort and deform to their permanent advantage so long as their pseudo-real regime can last.

Pseudo-realities are always social fictions, which, in light of the above, means political fictions. That is, they are maintained not because they are true, in the sense that they correspond to reality, either material or human, but because a sufficient quantity of people in the society they attack either believe them or refuse to challenge them. This implies that pseudo-realities are linguistic phenomena above all else, and where power-granting linguistic distortions are present, it is likely that they are there to create and prop up some pseudo-reality. This also means that they require power, coercion, manipulation, and eventually force to keep them in place. Thus, they are the natural playground of psychopaths, and they are enabled by cowards and rationalizers. Most importantly, pseudo-realities do not attempt to describe reality as it is but rather as it “should be,” as determined by the relatively small fraction of the population who cannot bear living in reality unless it is bent to enable their own psychopathologies, which will be projected upon their enemies, which means all normal people.

Those who are setting the agenda seem to be a toxic mix of people socialised as men, who are doing a very male thing of wanting everything on their terms,

Yeah, yeah, do read the 50:50 parliament posts if you can. It's brilliantly illuminating.

A lot of people like to conflate totally separate things to smear others. It is a well worn tactic and often the person totally believes it themself.

Most social change has happened because groups fought for their own rights, and their own language.

The trans rights movement is different . Their campaigns are about removing another groups rights and changing other groups' language. I'm sure they do a lot of good work for their own ccommunity as well, and most people will support that - we just don't tend to hear about small positive changes which have modest yet incremental benefits.
But that's not where the problem lies, the problem is when women's rights to single sex spaces in certain limited circumstances is removed, or when we are referred to in dehumanising terms, or when minors are subjected to medical treatments which they can't really understand the long term consequences of.

Not only are these things happening, you have the added layer of not being allowed to talk about it, or notice it. You might not notice at first but when it comes to your door you notice. And then you realise you can't speak about your own rights having been given away.

Once again, I'm astonished why JJ constantly post on the feminist threads when their words drip distain for feminists.

It is not progress for women to be named menstruators. It is not progress to pretend that you can change sex. It is not progress to think that 50-50 representation for women means 2/4 people on a panel are not women. It is not progress to pretend puberty blockers are reversible or to foist them on questioning girls. It is not progress to have women run away from men in refuges. It is not progress to have women beaten by men in sports. It is not progress to force women to be intimately examined by men. It is not progress to silence women in universities, in media, and in publishing. It is not progress to harangue women who campaign against FGM, or women enduring miscarriage.

We are right to stand up for those things and it does not make us conspiracy theorists and we are not anti gay rights.
The constant constant insinuations wear thin, JJ.

Well that’ll teach me not to read the full thread 🤣

I don’t read any newspaper these days (read the Guardian/Observer for about 20 years) but remind me again which newspaper called out the murderers of Stephen Lawrence on the front page and which dismissed the Cologne sexual assaults in a column.

PronounssheRa

"I also agreed with the mail when they kept up the pressure after the murder of Stephen Lawrence and printed this on the front page. I stopped reading the guardian after they failed to acknowledge the mass sexual assault of women in cologne"

The did it for me with the Guardian. Also Labour MP Jess Phillips on Question Time:

She told the audience: "A very similar situation to what happened in Cologne could be describing Broad Street in Birmingham every week, where women are baited and heckled."

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-35440954