WTF is the 'female patriarchy'?

And you’re all being unrealistic to think feminists can address everything at once or even half a dozen things at once. To get anywhere we have to prioritise the needs and then tackle them.

Who decides what is a priority? I don't mean a vague hand wave towards 'feminists' but specific names and organisations. Which ones? Who choses the priorities and what if other people disagree with them? What happens to the issues deemed unimportant? Are they defunded in order to funnel money towards the prioritised issues? What about issues which affect relatively small numbers of women but are really important in terms of protecting those women from violence? Who is 'deserving' of help and support? You've indicated that you believe that vulnerable women in prison are not 'deserving' enough - in my mind that's a really ugly path to go down.

I could go on.

Female prisoners tend to get overlooked though because some people think they are not deserving of protection. This ignores the fact that female prisoners are on the whole a very vulnerable population, most have been victims of domestic or sexual abuse, and most are in for fraud/shoplifting rather than violent crimes. And Helen Joyce predicts that 60% of the sex offenders in women’s prisoners were born male.

And for the lofty pedestal argument... No pedestal here. Just a worried mum and daughter seeing my aged mum and disabled child being thrown under the bus.

I think the litmus test for whether you can leave the TW issue at the door and discuss VAWG as ZT wanted to do is whether it is possible to do it the other way round.
Can we leave identity politics outside the door and discuss VAWG within the framework of TWAM?

I think we all know the answer to that. It's not possible. And this makes it a silencing technique rather than an agreement to ignore differences and discuss common causes. It turns it into the bad faith argument, in my view.

With respect to raising the issue of gender ideology while discussing VAWG... how is it possible to robustly discuss VAWG without a solid understanding that that violence is rooted in the male drive to control the reproductive resource that is woman. It is rooted in needing to control a woman's behaviour in order to ensure any offspring are theirs. The man may very well not be conscious of this but that is where it comes from, this oppression and violence against women. How does that relate to transwomen? It does not. Violence against transwomen by men is rooted in homophobia. A different cause, a different solution. We do both groups, women and transwomen, an injustice by lumping discussion of these two issues together.

That is why it is necessary to raise these gender ideology issues when looking at VAWG. You have to define woman. By including males in the definition you absolutely muddy the waters and slow down any progress.

And we've all seem the propensity for and discussion involving transwomen to end up centring them and their needs too.

Putting out the embargo on single sex space and gender discussion in a conference about VAWG just brings the focus more onto it anyway! They should have been able to have all these discussions. A culture that see transwomen as women is a misogynistic one. A misogynistic culture will harbour a greater propensity for the men in that culture to commit VAWG.

It's all fucking relevant.

Dreadful stuff.

i suspect that many sensible early years practitioners view the restriction of tots and activities according to ‘gender’ as a big risk for the young children in their care.

No one advancing pink is for girls type stuff is working towards equality. Quite the opposite.

Well, the people who promote this gender ideology have to lie because the facts aren't on their side.

That leaves them with only two options, change their opinion in accordance with the facts, or lie.

Changing their opinion is hard. It means they'll be seen as one of those Terfs they have spent years reviling and ostracising. They'll lose friends.

Lying is easy. They get to maintain the status quo in their social and professional circles. Their mates still like them.

Absolutely this.

The training I was at was on early years and challenging gender stereotyping. Yet the trainer was clearly on board with young boys playing with girls toys may be girls. She didn't seem to see the huge incoherence of this with what the training was about. A huge Mermaids enthusiast was in the training and promoting their work too. Three of us spoke back against the promotion of gender ideology (which was heartening) and to be fair, we were allowed to have the discussion, but the trainer was clearly uncomfortable with this challenge and didn't seem to know how to handle it.

Not .en but men with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment

Onnabugeisha

Do we also leave aside the issue of how we can offer survivors the female-only therapeutic environment they need to recover if we include .en with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment in that environment?

Is that an unimportant issue too?

And to answer your question about why we focus on women in prison so much - because we campaign to protect all women and children from male violence, and part of that means that we focus on the most vulnerable groups whose rights are most egregiously breached by our governmental institutions, and which are comparatively easy to uphold if the will is there. Women in prison are in this category. They don't have a lobby, their voices are not typically heard at all.

The suggestion to ignore their suffering because there are so few of them is also illogical when you make this choice to benefit men with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment who are also few in number. If I have to decide which of these two small groups to protect, it's not logical to ignore the former if - as you say - you want to defend the rights of all women.

It’s basically gaslighting to tell women (the adult human female kind) that their objections to men being given access to female-only spaces are being misogynistic.

No wonder they seem to be all for female patriarchy.

Through this looking glass feminism is clearly about supporting the patriarchy and ensuring men remain the key beneficiaries of activism.

Zero tolerance isn't zero tolerance anymore.
They have learnt tolerance and accept female prisoners , for example, as acceptable collateral damage.

Tolerance and inclusion - who knew they could have such negative connotations.

Zero Tolerance have a position statement on "Inclusion and respect of trans women"

It is our position that trans and non-binary rights are integral to, and contribute to, feminism. Scotland’s violence against women services provide trans inclusive services and trans inclusion plans have been in place since 2012.

This inclusive approach has not given rise to any concern or challenges. Rather, trans women have added to our movements through their support, voluntary work and as staff members. You can find out more about our stance on our blog.

Violence against women, homophobia and transphobia are all rooted in misogyny. We are committed to working with partner LGBTQI+ organisations to end this inequality, discrimination and violence.

No surprise that they support including transwomen in women's spaces, but I was amazed by this sentence:

This inclusive approach has not given rise to any concern or challenges.

Gender ideologues usually try to minimise and deflect such concerns and challenges by claiming they are not evidence based or describing them as "dog whistles", "transphobia" or "moral panic". Saying that concerns about and challenges to their inclusive approach simply haven't arisen is a really bold claim.

raise public awareness of violence against women and girls , particularly lesser-known forms of violence and under-represented groups of women subject to it

This aim is really odd. ‘under-represented groups of women subject to it’ would seem to suggest their focus is on groups who are subject to less violence.

support early years care and education providers to challenge gender inequality and end violence against women and girls by providing clear guidance, training and advice for frontline practitioners

how they’re going to challenge gender inequality while forbidding discussion of gender and gender ideology is beyond me.

what clear guidance are they going to give when they aren’t willing to even clearly discuss what gender is or it’s harmful effects in society?

Just rhetoric. Poorly thought through but righteous sounding rhetoric.

Zero Tolerance. I went to a training event of their’s once. Poor quality, trainer out of her depth. Yes, confused language and incoherence.
And utterly captured.

They are not being out at the front of the queue though. As their basic rights have been removed. The basic right to a male free environment when they are vulnerable. The right all of us should have.
Feminism is for all women.