Am I a TERF?

After all the posts about Elaine boiled and my lack of sleep (which I know you understand well), I read public as pubic.

And I thought you might have designed a merkin with writing on to protest with!

Well… that would be different, wouldn’t it boiled? I am not sure that would work as well though …

I think what is ‘yuck’ is your very obvious disdain for woman who disagree with you land.

Actually, scrap the ‘who disagree with you’ part of the sentence and it will be more accurate, I think.

I shouldn’t be surprised that the same culture which produced the expression curtain twitcher engages in the digital equivalent.

Some lessons in consent would useful here. Finding an unlocked drawer does not give you consent to examine its contents. I expect that you use exactly the same justifications to peruse the contents of bathroom cabinets when you’re invited into other people’s homes.

Yuck!

Ooh that wasn't the one i meant to do.meh

💩💩💩

Er no....what did I just say still reading public words...naughty people of the internet...did you not know the proper lady etiquette in this enlightened brave new world. Avert your eyes ladies.Avert your eyes.

@Helleofabore it's almost as if it isn't 2023 tomorrow. I mean yeah if she'd gone through the persons suitcase and read their private diary then OK but don't read stuff that people put purposely on line to be read???

Helle if you read this YOU ARE AWFUL. HOW DARE YOU READ THESE WORDS I WROTE TO BE READ BY THE PUBLIC. You are being so offensive to me right now anyone reading this. How dare you read my words I put out there for the world to access. I hope you are now thoroughly chastised and that you will spend the rest of 2022 facing the wall in the naughty corner thinking about what you've done.

pfft reading my public words like that. Pfft

What personal boundaries were violated, exactly?

There we have it fellow inhabitors of social media!!!

Don’t read other people’s social media contributions, it is only ever intrusive.

You do understand how social media works, don’t you? And how privacy settings exist? And that everyone is responsible for curating their social media footprint as much as they can by asking for tags, and references to be removed that you don’t want to be public.

If that person didn’t want the knowledge to be public, they would have and could have done all that.

There are many reasons to check someone’s social media profile or ‘snoop’ as OP put it. Some are intrusive. Many are not. For instance, do you just accept any person’s ‘friend’ request, or invite someone to ‘friend’ you, without checking?

Or is it also not acceptable to want to know more about a person who you are forced, through family connections and etiquette, to share accommodation with? To have conversations that might be private and perhaps forced through family dynamics, and that etiquette makes you feel you cannot exclude that person from?

Rather bizarre to reprimand the OP for the person not setting their accounts to private or dealing with their privacy if that was what the person desired. And for using social media for reading about what others have left in public for others to read…. which is what social media is about?

Don’t let the purpose of social media stop you taking the opportunity to admonish a woman though!

Why would you snoop through the Facebook pages belonging to the partner of a family member?

That’s grossly intrusive behaviour and a clear violation of personal boundaries.

Yuck.

the TRAs' attempt to change the fundamental definition of what it is to be a woman.

Have they attempted it, though? An "attempt" would be to provide an alternative definition that isn't circular and is clear. They've not actually even managed that, have they?

Indeed.

We can pussyfoot about with being polite, using preferred pronouns, treating transwomen as women for social purposes, but what makes me steaming angry is the TRAs' attempt to change the fundamental definition of what it is to be a woman. They can fuck off.

The right that I very definitely do want to remove from trans women, because they shoould never have had it in the first place, is the right to tell women what a woman is and is not.

Your perfectly reasonable and rational thoughts, OP, make you what gender ideologists call a terf. Welcome. Although the trans activists say we're on the wrong side of history, this is the side of rational, thoughtful people who pay attention to safeguarding.

What your relative gets up to is his own business. You have to work out how far you are prepared to go to support what is effectively a lie. Has your relative had same-sex relationships before?

One of my female experiences is that of pride and hope when I see a successful, high-achieving woman, such as Dame Professor Sarah Gilbert. It feels (to me) like every great woman does it for all of us, in spite of the obstacles that we battle. I love to see women athletes and sportswomen succeed - I love Simone Biles and Serena Williams. I've noticed that even my completely apolitical and non-feminist friends tend to cheer on the women in eg Ninja Warrior (not Love Island though)

I've also noticed that watching lower league rugby, it's always the women shouting "Smack him!" 😉

To which the answer is: take your sexist and rather out of control ego and get stuffed mate.

@nilsmousehammer 👏👏👏

nilsmouse

yes ^^.

This cannot be said enough!!!

Yes.

It's tosh from start to finish.

'I feel like a (noun)'.

We have to have shared meaning on what that noun actually is to have any ability to know what 'feel like a' may mean. So despite that we're too polite to mention it out loud, what is really meant here is 'as a biological male, I feel like a biological female inside'.

To which the answer is: no, all you can mean is 'I feel like I imagine a biological female feels from the perspective of someone who is male'.

Which is fine, feelings are feelings, you do you, etc etc. The limit is 'and I wish to wholly rearrange biological femalehood around my feelings, needs, definitions and control as a male and expect all to indulge me in this at their cost'. To which the answer is: take your sexist and rather out of control ego and get stuffed mate.

What a very odd one. Who gives a fuck who someone dates. As long as the person they date doesn't try any compelled language bullshit.

So the only response to the " but i feel like a woman " ( damn you miss Twain) line from a man with a beard is to say "but you can't. You either are or you aren't a woman. it's not a feeling. its a descriptive marker that shows acknowledgement of the fact that I as a female have reached adulthood. "

Bit if a mouthful mind.

Flippin' autocarrot:

...males who have never and will never experience these things, regardless of their beliefs or sense of identity.

Though 'tragedies' fits. This ideology is a bloody tragedy all round.

Fair enough, PurplePalms, those are feelings most women will have experienced. But they do not define us as women. They are feelings that result from societal stereotypes imposed upon us, from misogynistic and paternalistic attitudes imposed upon us. All imposed upon us purely because we are female.

Even before a little girl experiences these horrible things, what she and we have in common is our femaleness, which we do not have in common with males who have never and will never experience these things, tragedies of their beliefs or sense of identity.

I still say that there is no one way to feel woman, purely because woman is not a feeling.

A woman is an adult female human.

(Not saying you're doing this, OP, to clarify. It's those that say "a woman isn't a female" but can't say what one is).

Imo it's very liberal to say a woman is "any female, regardless of how she thinks, feels, acts, behaves, likes, loves, desires....".

I think it's odd to try (or pretend to try - no-one ever really does) to limit "woman" to an unwritten list of thoughts, beliefs, feelings, behaviours etc.
It's downright wrong to do it based on femininity.

The feeling of being uncomfortable when men catcall you and whistle at you from across the street, from a car window, from a building site.

@PurplePalms if it will make this one easier to bear, I used to work on building sites when this sort of thing was rife, like no woman was safe walking past rife.

I used to wait for a solitary man to walk past and then wolf whistle and duck down so when he looked up the brickie stood next to me looked like the culprit. The men being whistled at used to look really confused. I hope they felt just a slight bit of the disconcerting feeling having this happen gives a person.