Women's rights general conversations - Thread 4

Here’s the introduction to Baroness Casey’s report into the Metropolitan police.

She notes that without the tenacity of many women and other Met victims, their cases would have remained closed and never brought to light.

www.theneweuropean.co.uk/95580-2/

For serial there, read sexual. My auto text is a prude.

It strikes me that, although I'd say the generally acceptable position on this has had to shift in our favour recently, largely due to the spotlight on the Isla Bryson case, there's a danger of that becoming the new border.

That is, an acceptance that there are bad actors and piss-takers, and that women have the right to say no to them in female spaces, but that it's still somehow unacceptable for women to say no male bodies in our space, regardless of GRC status, surgery, etc. That a man who's undergone SRS is not a specific serial threat and so what reason could we possibly have to object?

I mean, in the narrowest possible, legal technical sense, probably.

women have rights?

I just wish that people could understand that women have a right to prioritise women's issues.

We have a duty to have bodies and faces the shape and size that men enjoy looking at, and to adorn those bodies according to men's tastes. We should be very grateful to men who demonstrate that those ideals are.

If we insist on being lumpy and wearing comfortable clothes there is clearly something wrong with us - no wonder we're wrong about everything. As for wasting our time on books and cats and chatting with other women when we could be attending to men . . .

I saw a guy on Twitter, and I sort of skirted over it so no copy and paste I'm afraid, who <s>correctly</s> thought, that all women who have issues with transwomen have that issue because we are ugly. I mean, seriously, that man is a genius. If only we weren't ugly we'd happily accept any and all men who enjoy cosplay.

Women as defective men again. Women don’t exist in our own right but are defined as people lacking the defining qualities and attributes of a man. What more does a man need to do to become a woman, than remove his manhood? Surely that not something that any man would do by definition? What else are post-operative transsexuals than women? How cruel of other non-men not to recognise their common misfortune. Probably votes Green.

Gosh. I’ve missed that thread but I agree.

Kids act out sometimes- it can seem inappropriate to adults but a child’s eye view of a situation is often quite different and an 8 year old is a long way off of emotional maturity and full impulse control.

If the atmosphere in a household is one of stressful simmering undercurrents, it doesn’t take a massive leap of imagination to understand why a kid might cut through that stiff atmosphere with a good old fashioned burst of the screaming abdabs.

You can explain to the child that her behaviour was unhelpful a few hours later or the next day - in the moment she probably needed some reassurance that whatever was happening was temporary. A big hug and a film you’ve all watched so many times you can recite it is going to be more helpful to all in the long run than mum’s boyfriend shouting and name calling.

That kid will never trust that man again now and god help a second time around couple with a kid who hates an incoming step parent.

The day was already shit for the woman having the miscarriage but it’s going to be a lot harder to put the bad day behind them all now that the little girl has a solid reason to hate mum’s boyfriend.

I don't know, but there are definitely some child haters on MN. A lot of people seem to have zero compassion or understanding for anything an 8 year old child might be going through and she's expected to have complete control over her emotions, where a grown man is coddled and sympathised with for not being able to stop himself from being aggressive and name calling a child. It's fucked up and it's misogynistic.

Mum having a miscarriage is a thing an awful lot of children must live through without much in the way of helping understand what has happened - or are there books about it now? I remember slightly baffled and alarming conversations with friends - all of us well under 10.

I read some of it. Personally, I think that if you can't be a brat at eight when something scary and mysterious is happening to your Mum and you're being cared for by someone who doesn't seem to have much tolerance, there's something wrong.

Poor little thing, she's only 8, I'm sure I was a brat some of the time at 8. I admit I haven't read the whole thread.

Yeah, one of them’s me, and she sounds like a brat.

That's terrible, and the sense of being second best may stay with her for the rest of her life. I hope there's someone who can help. What's wrong with the pilers-on? is there a secret mumsnet of child-haters?

Lots of people calling the little girl a brat and saying how they'd call her worse to her face, etc. Really sad. The partner apparently "lost his shit" and wants to "kick her arse" and everyone thinks that's fine, but the little girl being upset is not allowed. Gross.

It's in AIBU Angelico - I didn't read the whole thing - it was very sad - the mother is misscarrying, the child is picking up that something is wrong, doesn't know what, and is acting out (uncharacteristically) and the partner, distressed at the loss of his future child, is not cutting the existing child any slack. I hope they managed to resolve it with hugs and edited explanations. A tough time for everyone, and definitely not the little girl's fault.

Which thread, beastly?

There's an article in the Guardian today about how close to death a woman has to be to get an abortion in Tennessee. Putting aside the subject of the piece, throughout the article unless quoting someone they refer to the women and girls affected as 'pregnant patient(s)'. Perhaps it's me, but it seems really jarring because all the people quoted use women or women and girls.

I understand terminology is the least of these women's problems but, ffs, it's obviously important to the Guardian, to the person who wrote that article.

I mean, God forbid we should be allowed to define our own groups or have boundaries or anything radical like that.

Women aren't supposed to design anything for our own interests. Our purpose and point is to give men whatever it is they decide they want. If they want to call themselves Deliah and go to miscarriage support group, of course they should. Who would mere women be to suggest otherwise?

The thread upsetting me right now is the one where everyone is piling on to an 8 year old girl, calling her a spoilt brat, while showing endless empathy to her mums boyfriend who "lost his shit" with the little girl. Adult males get sympathy for not being able to control their emotions. Little girls get the blame.

The post from over yonder that most recently enraged me was one bewailing how mean and horrid women are for not counting post-op transwomen as "proper" women, for the purposesof including them in women-only groups. I mean, God forbid we should be allowed to define our own groups or have boundaries or anything radical like that.

Some people really do seem to hate Mumsnet without ever having been here. I guess it's because we're all TWSOH. Or women.

I read that bit from the Twitter thread and my brain nearly exploded. Definitely queer theory, definitely all theory and no idea of real life. The notion that getting young women to draw images of dick pics that have been sent to them is some sort of craftivism is insulting to the young women and craftivists alike.

I don't doubt that there are many good people with good intentions involved in all of this but my god they are getting it wrong on so many levels.