Glinner calling women "handmaidens"

Morally derelict MSP's in the Scottish Parliament as a perfect example of women not giving a flying fuck about women but who are just interested in succeeding at any cost.

I don't particularly like the term TERF but I do feel very proud of this. As well as the phrase 'women won't wheesht' now being used across the world.

echiffre55

Does anyone else here sort of feel proud of the word TERF?

Yup, I am good with TERF.

My feminism doesn't think that women are not strong enough to accept, fight for or against the language that we and others use to describe us.

DemiColon

Most women who support gender ideology do so because they think it's right.

Where is the evidence of this? I know many women who are TWAW. Many of these actually really don't care about other women or children, people with less power (despite claiming otherwise), they just care about moving up a power structure, succeeding at any cost. They will jump on any bandwagon if they see it as a way to further themselves... and consequently many are very successful and in spheres where they have huge influence.

They are morally bankrupt and those who are very publicly TWAW etc. need to shore up these beliefs or they will lose status if/when the beliefs attached to the power structures change. This is what Glinner is up against in the media and this why his career has been destroyed.

I actually have more sympathy for those who genuinely hold these beliefs as they have been captured... although you would hope that once they realise the damage these beliefs do to women and children etc. that they would change direction.

Handmaiden seems a good shorthand for both groups but probably more deserved by the former.

Ah yes, that unbiased bastion of information, Pink News…..

It's nothing to do with that. It's about whether a man should be using sex-based insults to women he disagrees with in the name of women's rights.

But is it just in the name of women's rights or in the name of protecting children, and broader society from irreparable harm?

Does anyone else here sort of feel proud of the word TERF? Like every time I hear the phrase "TERF Island" referring to the UK, as a resident of the UK I feel proud I live here, and how well women here are defending their rights and not being wheesht by the "useful idiots".
I know TERF is meant to be derogatory, but like the N word I feel it's been reclaimed by the people it's meant to demean and changed from something negative into a postitive, a word that represents solidarity between strong women who refuse to be cast as passive powerless victims.
For example David Lammy calling women "dinosaurs hoarding rights like eggs" resulting in women right's campaigners hilariously running around London in dinosaur costumes with armfuls of colourful eggs mocking his ignorant egotistical proclamation. It shows the remarkable strength and courage of women facing the the loss of their rights responding with great spirit and humour to an out of touch moronic politician who has no grasp of the situation and who couldn't care less about uterus havers who don't submit and conform to his view of how menstruators should behave and think. Women turning something very negative and condescending right around into a positive and joyous message through great character. Elaine Miller flashing a merkin in Hollyrood in protest is another example of grabbing the headlines with humour and wit, popping the pomposity of the now disgraced Herr Sturgeon of Lightfingers, once owner of the grandest luxury motorhome North of the Clyde.
Compare that to the agression, intimidation and violence of those who use the word TERF as a slur. Drenching themselves in piss, playing piano with their cock, jugging their fake tits on the Whitehouse lawn, the lack of humour, the despising of humour and comedy, the need to involve children in their every sexual fantasy. It's very clear to me that the TERFs are the ones with wit, humour, honesty, and heart, and being called a TERF by these vile people seems to me one of the greatest positive endorsements and sign of good character that it's possible to get.
I am so proud to live on TERF Island, thank you ladies for all that you do.

TERF - Tired of Explaining Reality to Fuckwits

TERF has been discussed to death here, by finer minds than me! GC feminism wants to protect female spaces for females, and that includes trans-identifying women and those born female that have the protected characteristic of gender reassignment.

Because sex is real and sex matters.

Gender is, well heck if I know. I don't have one, I don't want one. I have a sexed body and a personality. So does everybody else.

Looks like someone came to a Glinner fight but is still dreaming of KJK's milkshake. Tastes good doesn't it 'friendly neighbourhood trans'?

Glinner got banned from twitter for saying that men cannot be women.

Excellent point Bez
Its almost as if T*RF is a shitty misogynistic put down applicable to any woman with an opinion that men dislike..

and in her own words she's not a feminist at all, she's a woman's rights activist. So the lazy slur terf doesn't even apply.

"Posie Parker rally (who for further context is a terf who is known for praising and sharing her platform with openly far-right groups)."

Firstly, @FriendlyNeighbourhoodTrans I think the FWR posters are quite familiar with PP aka KJK. But they are not your intended audience, I guess?

Secondly, citation needed. Some evidence of this ludicrous smear would be nice.

Mike drop!!!

Yes, it's fine.
Next question?

I like your post, @BellaAmorosa.

I came back to this thread to observe that's it's really just another long, wittering complaint about terfs not being nice enough. Thanks, but we're already aware of insistent instructions to #BeKind. Kind, that is, to people who deny the existence of a female sex in humans, see women as faulty males, assert that children have gendered souls and should be sterilised if their soul doesn't like their body, are working to remove all women's rights and, in many cases, promote paedophilia.

Fuck that.
No.

I'm not sure it's entirely true to say that TRA women or trans allies are not consciously working against the interests of women. I think many of them are. Some women who are fully onboard as trans allies think that feminism is a second- or third-order issue, that harm coming to some women is an acceptable sacrifice for a higher cause whether that is socialism, diversity, equity, trans rights, etc. The cause, whatever it is, is more important than women's rights.

Or they think that women's rights are sorted and the males claiming to be women are more vulnerable. That we are being selfish not to make room for the men who really want in. That the special males need our rights, services and spaces more than we do, in effect.

An example of this was a woman on twitter who aggressively insisted that in a time of hormone scarcity, men claiming to be women should take priority over menopausal women for HRT supplies because they needed it and we didn't. I don't have the link, unfortunately. This is our old friend #BeKind, of course, and this attitude is often combined with a naive belief in the sweetnaturedness and helplessness of all males who claim to be women. The kitten with one eye, or the dog at the kennels that nobody wants to adopt.

I think that's what they mean when they say that treating males claiming to be women as women takes nothing away from us as women - they mean that it takes nothing we can't afford to give.

Anyway, basically what I'm trying to say is that I don't think the focus of the "handmaidens" is women.

I wasn't particularly saying that about Glinner, I don't think that's actually what he thinks, as it happens.

I do think that it tends to be the implication when it's used in feminist discussions about other women.

Either way, I don't think it's useful.

I don’t think GC people have to behave perfectly because other people don’t behave decently. Behaving decently is enough. And ‘handmaiden’ falls easily on the right side of that decency line, for me.

We’re not right and on the ethical side of this argument only because of how we have made the points. The rightness of the position will always remain whether we all use shitty terrible language or all use perfectly polite language, or a mix.

Do I want to look back on all this and think I didn’t resort to verbal shittiness (which would be using a lot worse language than ‘handmaiden’) yes ideally. but as a human and emotional being I can imagine that is a very high bar to aim for 100% of the time on a very emotive topic. And that’s OK.

LGBT

• Lesbian
• Gay
• Bisexual
• Terf

@Signalbox here are a couple of sources for the details of the ban - it wasn't covered as much as his first couple of bans:
https://www.thepinknews.com/2023/04/16/anti-trans-graham-linehan-suspended-twitter-again/
https://www.cityam.com/graham-linehan-aka-glinner-banned-from-twitter-again/

The short version is that they were counter-protesters who had turned up to oppose a Posie Parker rally (who for further context is a terf who is known for praising and sharing her platform with openly far-right groups).

@ftmquestions "...it seems that his respect for women is conditional on whether they agree with him or not" is indeed an apt summary of his approach. His attitude seems to be that if you're not with him then you're against him, and if you're against him he seems all too happy to presume your motives and your role in the vast and highly-coordinated conspiracy which he believes he is fighting against. @DemiColon that everyone who disagrees with him is "disingenuous about their motives", that's a good way of putting it.

TERF is recognised as sex based hate speech. You may be OK with it. Many of us are not and will not be silenced in our challenge of it. Ditto "Handmaiden".

Collaborator is not sex based. Do we need a special word for women who collaborate? Why?

It's vanishingly rare that women who support any of the things that get them called "handmaidens" say they are doing so in order to support or pander to men specifically. Or even that they are somehow trying to undermine women's rights.

There is a difference between saying, "I think your views on X are undermining women's rights" and "you are trying to screw women over."

Most women who support gender ideology do so because they think it's right. They don't think they are doing anything against women.

There are cases occasionally when a particular individual is clearly doing something with really compromised motives, and it may be appropriate to point that out. But by calling women handmaidens it's essentially saying they are being disingenuous about their motives. And that's a manipulative kind of argument we see here all the time.