The BBC empathise with women.

‘I’m always taken for a woman’ - I bet you’re not mate 😂

This was exactly my thought. I’m not quite 60 and I do still feel vulnerable at night, due to the fact that I know even older women are sometimes targeted.

However a man who started wearing women’s clothes and passing as a sixty year old woman is unlikely to notice any change. He’s not about to experience sudden unwanted male attention and unless he has some weird fascination with women’s vulnerability, he’s not going to have any reason to feel any more at risk. Most normal men are broadly oblivious to what women experience.

A much more likely reason for him to get unwanted or negative attention is because men see him as a transvestite or cross dresser.

And exactly what you say, too. I'm really sorry for what happened to you.

Everything you already said so eloquently catiette.

Plus the logical inference that if Kim can identify into our oppression, we can surely identify out.

As someone who was attacked as a teenager when wearing no makeup and a boys tracksuit FUCK OFF GUARDIAN.

I’m glad people think it gets to the heart of it. It did upset me this morning, and I wanted to work out why in a way that would address any unthinking Be kind! defence (or attack!) On the surface, it may seem very reasonable to many readers, and my own feelings quite churlish. But not in the current context - a context the Guardian systematically obscures and denies to prevent and demonise precisely this kind of critical engagement with the issue.

The difference in biology - strength & reproductive role - lies at the very heart of the issue; for us, it is the issue. It shapes and limits our decisions and movements; colours our thoughts and feelings every day; every hour, even. And it’s the one thing that men can never fully understand because of their own, different physical reality - they can only ever imagine and empathise, at the very most. But they don’t, on balance. The bear in the woods went viral, this went viral, in part because women are desperate - desperate - for a way to bring this home in terms men can understand. So here was another chance… exquisitely skewered in the most damagingly effective way by the very newspaper that claims to support us.

How better to undermine another effort to communicate this fundamental truth and legitimise its denial than reframing our daily fear to include a male-bodied person? It’s perfect. And it’s devastating.

And it reenacts exactly what the clip is fighting to expose.

Eloquent post that completely nails it, @Catiette . It's a shame next to no-one at the Guardian seems capable of such clear thinking.

This. Paragraph 5 alone would make a perfect letter to the letters page. @Catiette

Kim is not feeling vulnerable because Kim a woman. Kim is just imagining what a woman might feel.

And I expect that Kim thinking Kim passes as a woman is just Kim going through life without every person Kim comes across pointing out that they know Kim is a man dressed as a woman.

I think you should copy and paste this and send it to the Guardian as a complaint/response.

I meant "men AND boys" of course (tho most men ARE boys too).

Absolutely spot on though. 👌🏼

What a great post @Catiette

Thank you for articulating this so thoughtfully

Kim is a bloke pretending to be a woman. He is not "reasonable", he is a danger. His "reasonableness" is his very weapon. Do not allow yourself to be blinded by deceitful men.

Fantastic post, nails it.

Do not feel bad about what you said. Not for one second. Kim sounds like Kim is cosplaying for validation.

Exactly, @RoyalCorgi. And much more concisely put than bored, angry me! 😂👍

@Myalternate, I assumed what Corgi did. But I wrote the above kind of hoping against realistic hope that some left-wing journalist may come across it and think about the damage they’re doing to women and potentially* *to the demographic of the moment by such utterly tone deaf posturing…

I'm bemused by the comments from Kim, who is the same age as me. When I was younger, I was continually pestered by men, even though I was a jeans and jumper kind of person. Now I'm in my 60s, I thankfully walk around with impunity.

Myalternate I suspect that the six women (or five women and one man) featured in the article above filled in the form you just posted, ie the article is based on responses to that form. I could be wrong, of course, but that seems to be what happened.

The inclusion of a man in the six woman feels like the worst form of gaslighting. It's like asking five black people and one white person about their experience of racism. It's so utterly insulting to take a member of the oppressor group and ask them about their experience of oppression. The Guardian really are the absolute pits.

The Guardian wants women to share their reactions to Saoirse Ronan’s comments about women’s safety.

www.theguardian.com/society/2024/oct/31/share-your-reaction-saoirse-ronan-comments-women-safety#5992905

Rant over. 😅

Lastly, I do recognise that if Kim underwent full transition at an early age, some of my above concerns are mitigated. But NOT entirely removed. My experience is different, and valid. Don’t confuse it with a male’s very different experience in an article professing to address the physical disadvantage women endure - and that, the very morning after I just read about female volleyball players enduring a fear response to their own male teammate’s superior strength every time he makes a “kill shot”.

Still thinking! Stuck at a station, and bored.

Two men near me projecting their Very Important Business Conversation across the platform at extraordinary volume really NOT HELPING MY MOOD!!!

Thought I’d shout that here as I can’t shout (back!) at them!

Also. I know that the “many” members of this marginalised group is, in itself, complex and problematic. The umbrella covers those in desperate need of kindness, and those who are, shall we say, more complex. And “allyship” is similarly complex and problematic - I doubt mine would ever have take the absolutist form that’s clearly expected even in my younger and less informed years. For starters, I believe we’re dealing with a huge range of complex issues unhelpfully - cynically! - absorbed into a single word. But my central point is that it’s just so ironic that even what cautious sympathy and support I could and would like to show in certain contexts and ways has been compromised or complicated most of all by the most ardent media promoters of “the cause”, and what they’ve made me realise. (BBC, you’re the other one I refer to…)

Sorry. Another essay processing my own thoughts.

I found the inclusion of Kim quite upsetting. I hesitated over posting because, as PP says, they come across as reasonable and empathetic, and were writing about a shared experience with which I sympathise. But, on reflection, I do feel my be-kind socialisation is stifling an entirely fair and reasonable reaction. As Kim put themselves out there to be included in that article as a “woman”, and Kim is anonymous, my thoughts on why it upset me.

1. The Guardian publishes accounts by six “women”, of which one is trans. That’s hugely out of proportion to the overall population, giving disproportionate time and space to transwomen’s experiences. It also indicates that Kim had a far, far higher chance of being published than a woman, and Kim’s words took the place of a woman’s words - even as the article implicitly professes to address the issue of men talking over women.

2. Did Saoirse intend to include transwomen in her original comment? The Guardian’s unquestioning assumption that she did (or, alternatively, their total disregard of her perspective in favour of their own political agenda) does seem rather ironic, given that the entire point of the clip was men’s total disregard for women’s experiences as actually distinct from their own.

3. That we don’t know which “women” Saoirse did mean - or, worse, that there’s no longer a way for her to have referred exclusively to females without inviting backlash - is, in itself, a devastating example of the impact of the loss of our words. We can no longer refer to ourselves clearly as a distinct group (at least, without linguistic contortions that invite accusations of bigotry). This is appalling.

4. But what rankles most is the way in which the inclusion of a male voice changes and dilutes the very nature of the issue. The Guardian is complicit in much the same denial, or reframing, of women’s reality, by men that Saoirse was calling out - a total lack of understanding of, and disregard form what it means to navigate the world in a female body. Kim’s concerns may well overlap with ours, as they’ve chosen to adapt some of the cultural signifiers associated with being female. But Kim will almost certainly be taller and stronger than the average woman, with all the relative security that brings - security that we can only dream of. Kim isn’t a target because of their unchangeable, inescapable physical reality. And it’s that, more than anything else, that is the source of our fear. By not distinguishing between us and Kim, the Guardian is actively misrepresenting and obscuring the very experience it claims to be highlighting. It’s participating in the dry sand dismissal of the female experience that it claims to be redressing.

5. Lastly, I found Kim’s comments on their previous privilege as a man, and subsequent ashamed recognition of the female experience, very interesting. On one level, this could be seen as welcome insight and empathy. But from another perspective, the phrasing, again, reflects the ignorance and arrogance of the male guests on the show. If Kim had said, “I know I can never fully experience what a woman does, due to my innate physical advantage,” I would have been wholeheartedly supportive, if not of their inclusion in the article, then at least of their perspective. But Kim didn’t say this. Instead, Kim implied that their experience is exactly the same as ours - that simply by changing their outward appearance, they become the same as us, and live our exact reality. How does that not diminish us, and in fact deny our own, so very, very different, reality in favour (again) of a male perspective?

6. And, lastly, there’s the possibility that Kim’s failure to acknowledge their own sex (when others in their position are able to do quite readily), and Kim’s choice, instead, to speak as if a fully embodied woman, is in the service of Kim’s own needs. It benefits Kim psychologically to say this. And it hurts us.

TLDR

Cultural appropriation in any context - shocking, don’t do it.

Appropriation of sexed experience in a context in which the whole point is 1) sexed difference, 2) limited public understanding of the impact of this, and 3) a professed desire to redress this balance - you go, “girl”.

NB. I’d never have typed this 5 years ago. I still find it difficult to in some respects. But, ultimately, it really is as simple as: I’d like to support and sympathise with Kim, but as long as doing so diminishes my own safety, place in society and sense of self, I can’t afford to do so.

Guardian, please just allow women their own experiences and voices. Allow Kim theirs, too, right alongside us! They matter, too. But not as one of us, at our expense, with no recognition of the unbearable irony of doing this in this particular context. By doing this, you make me feel like a second-class citizen in a way I never thought possible growing up. Even many of your articles claiming to promote my voice humiliate, distress and frustrate me. You’ve made me realise my place in society is not what I thought, and the consequent need to fight for more recognition. And in so doing, you’ve lost someone who actually would much prefer to feel able to be an “ally” to many members of this marginalised group - by marginalising her, too.

I'm 20 and considered "conventionally pretty".
I AM NOT SUGGESTING THIS ONLY HAPPENS TO "GIRLS" LIKE ME, BUT personally EVERY second of every minute of every hour that I'm not in my own flat, I am aware that men are boys are sneaking looks at me in the vain attempt that I'll look back, and - sorry - but in the hope that, ultimately, they can put their sausage into my roll.
That's the reality!