Women's rights general conversations

Good Times piece. And yeah, I've thought (and posted) before that if the GBP realised what is going on here, they would be horrified. The media (and, especially, the so-called quality media, with a few notable exceptions) have served the public very poorly.

Winterborne74

The argument seems to be that rapists and abusers are going to rape and abuse, and it’s wrong to retain barriers to obtaining a GRC as even though some rapists or abusers may fraudulently change gender to target victims, they’d find another way if that route wasn’t available to them.

There's also been the frequent claim that real trans w are all lovely and would never do anything as awful as raping women and children.

If nothing else, before the next election I will swamp my local area with leaflets about this policy and explain that local Labour MP and councillors support it. I bet most people are still blissfully unaware.

(Sorry if it’s already posted elsewhere, been rushing about a bit today)

Good piece in the Times this morning:

Scotland’s gender bill should worry Labour

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/73ab6b80-821f-11ed-933d-2ad94f4b2285?shareToken=5fe72f57c61ef00f04433bc764237ba4

Men don't seem to understand or care how much we fear them.

Just this week a man was convicted of murdering his pregnant partner and bludgeoning to death her children and their friend and to top it all raping her 11 year old daughter as she lay dying.

Now most men are not a danger but a man did to a woman who let him in to her life and trusted him. Sarah Everard trusted Wayne Couzins to be a professional who was there to protect her. Men constantly do this to women who trust them and we are supposed to jist accept that there is not an issue?

Fuck that sky high.

It seems like most people see policy and law as a mechanism for being nice to trans people and think that when bad faith actors come along it can all be safely ignored because of natural justice. Or common sense (that elderly lady really won’t be able to object to a self-identifying burly man changing her inco pads but they think they will when it comes to it).

They seem genuinely not to care about safeguarding. The argument seems to be that rapists and abusers are going to rape and abuse, and it’s wrong to retain barriers to obtaining a GRC as even though some rapists or abusers may fraudulently change gender to target victims, they’d find another way if that route wasn’t available to them. The harm to trans people caused by retaining these barriers meanwhile is too big a price to pay for preventing sexual offenders exploiting the system.

I’ve also had the ‘surely it can’t be that bad’ discussions, as well as ‘what’s the actual problem with transwomen in women’s changing rooms/toilets/spaces? It wouldn’t bother me’. I’ve tried to explain the issues but it’s usually met with ‘oh that won’t happen’ and ‘I doubt that’. I’ve provided links to evidence and arguments but I don’t think they’re ever opened.

I guess it’s just not on some people’s radars, including some women’s. Maybe they think it doesn’t really affect them because they don’t use MVAW services, don’t need care, don’t go to a gym, don’t plan on ever being in prison or a psychiatric hospital.

I used to attend a service for women who’d experienced sexual assault but stopped going when they changed their policy to allow transwomen into the group. Some time later they did allow a transwoman in, and someone complained. I had an acquaintance who was also in the group at that time, and she explained what had happened, using the most awful, abusive language to describe her. Turns out she was a TRA and identified as NB. Even as a survivor of MVAW themselves, she/they couldn’t see why it was an issue, and thought it was fair game to be vicious to this woman for not wanting a male in that space.

I keep hearing that GRC won’t change anything other than making the process of obtaining one easier for trans people, and that women’s services can still exclude transwomen. I’m not sure what kind of alternative reality they’re living in.

Safeguarding is always about the worst situation, not the best situation. I genuinely don't understand why the zealots don't acknowledge this.

If it is orchestrated to spur a bid for independence then it could so easily backfire with a large number thinking 'not yet, too dangerous while the monkeys are running the circus'.

I only caught the last couple of minutes in the car so must go back to listen later but the 8.10 slot on Today was about Scotland, and Justin Webb - speaking to Baroness Kennedy - used words like legal fiction and untruth.

I'm against purity tests now. I no longer need to agree with anyone on any issue to appreciate their perspective.

Glad to see Glinner back on the twitters, like KJK I don't always agree with them 100% but they are both loud voices that get heard, and overall a force for good.

Well, even if we were just talking about the worst case scenarios, why should they not be considered? Especially since many have happened, at least once.

Glinner (Graham Linehan) is back on the Tweeter. I’ve always liked that Musk fella.

I had a discussion with my son about this, he thinks I am worried about nothing. He also did the "look who agrees with you, doesn't it concern you?"

When we talk again I will ask him why his caring liberal mother has apparently morphed into a bigot.

He was tipsy and was hopelessly misinformed on lots of points. For example, he thinks a woman who wanted a female carer could still ask for one could trust that any carer described as female would be so.

I'm going to discuss it again when he's sober.

There's going to be a kerfuffle between Holyrood and Westminster, which, as some have suggested here, may have been Sturgeon's intent all along.

www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4692698-womens-rights-general-conversations?page=36&reply=122485274

Westminster may resort to using powers that it has never wielded before as the row with Scotland over its controversial gender reforms bill escalated. The Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill was passed yesterday to jeers of 'shame on you' in Holyrood.

The vote puts MSPs on a constitutional collision course with Westminster as UK ministers consider the 'nuclear option' of stopping the bill from going for royal assent.

www.theguardian.com/society/2022/dec/22/sunak-government-threatens-to-block-scottish-gender-recognition-law

One of the things that upsets me most is the aligning of people with GC viewpoints with the political right, as evidenced in that linked article:

Tensions around the legislation prompted Socialist LGBTQ activist Carla Antonelli – the first and only trans woman to serve as a lawmaker – to resign from the party after decades of activism.

"We have seen part of the Socialist party and the feminist movement go from defending the rights of the trans minority to ruthlessly boycotting our very existence," she wrote in an op-ed published by El Pais on Thursday.

I've never been right wing in my life, but I know reality when I see it, and when I see solid left-wing writers like Suzanne Moore and Julie Bindel pushed out to right wing papers because left-wing media sources won't give them room, I think it's absurd. They haven't suddenly become right-wingers.

And I just heard on the radio that the Spanish government has approved a bill on transgender rights, along Scottish lines.

www.france24.com/en/europe/20221222-spanish-mps-approve-new-bill-on-transgender-rights

It's almost like no-one thought it through when they took some essentially meaningless phrase, and wrote it direct into legislation.

I'm a Labour Party member, but I won't be voting Labour whilst they persist with this ridiculous policy. When are Starmer and Co going to wake up and smell the coffee?