Page 4 | I think the spell is finally broken...

OvaHere · 23/01/2025 20:51

Janice Turner in The Times

Democrats yielded the gender war’s key weapon

Last week the US House of Representatives passed the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act. One by one, Republicans rose to make the simple point that as parents or grandparents of female track stars or soccer players they thought it unfair, and in some cases dangerous, for girls to compete against male-bodied athletes.

To any Floridian football fan or Montanan marathon runner, this was an unarguable truth. Yet all Democrats (except two from Texas) opposed the bill, rebranding it the “child predator empowerment act” and arguing it would lead to the appointment of genital inspectors — “Taliban-like enforcers” and paedophiles — to look inside the underwear of girls as young as four.
If that sounds deranged, it’s because it was. But what else did the Democrats have? They couldn’t dispute biological advantage or fairness, so they ended up sounding like QAnon loons.

None of this matters now President Trump has signed Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government, the executive order that got the loudest cheer from the inauguration crowd. This ticks the entire gender critical wish-list, from fair school sports to removing rapists from women’s prisons and categorically defining woman as an “adult human female”.

Liberals will cry culture war — although they didn’t on President Biden’s first day when his executive order replaced “sex” with “gender identity” in Title IX policy, in effect abolishing women’s rights. Or in 2022 when the White House “lesbian visibility day” was led by Charlotte Clymer and Rachel Levine, both straight biological males. Or when Nancy Pelosi supported the abolition of the word “mother” from House rules.

It takes two to fight a culture war. And on the gender front the Democrats lost. Why? Because they moved beyond fighting for legitimate trans rights — freedom from violence or discrimination at work — into fantastical thinking.
When I’m asked why this issue has such salience amid war and economic crisis, I say: imagine if a politician told you he was a devout Creationist or Flat-Earther. You might agree with him on other matters, but would you trust him? That’s how women feel about lawmakers who deny sex is real.

Trump’s executive order states: “The erasure of sex in language and policy has a corrosive impact not just on women but on the validity of the entire American system. Basing federal policy on truth is critical to scientific inquiry, public safety, morale, and trust in government itself.” The damn-fool Democrats handed truth to their worst enemy. Can they ever win it back?

DeanElderberry · 23/01/2025 15:08

Musk is a loud voice, but I doubt he has a much influence as he'd like.

Things I never thought I'd say, but so far I'm favourably impressed by Trump.

Knowitall69 · 23/01/2025 15:03

CinnamonStick77 · 21/01/2025 15:22

@Grammarnut you only have to pay attention to what Trump et al say to realise that they are coming for women's rights. Musk is obsessed with the birth rate and increasing it, it's only a matter of time.

Obsessed? How so?

FlirtsWithRhinos · 23/01/2025 14:34

Hermyknee · 23/01/2025 13:23

I am arguing against more general neutral toilets.

You are arguing for people using the limited space and costs they have to build them instead of using resources for extra single sex provision, then seeing what happens if there’s a demand for them, then dismantling them if people research their impact and see that they don’t work. Refitting won’t happen because of costs. We’ll be left with the legacy of toilets that aren’t good for women. Women can’t choose in real life and they have to deal with what they are presented with.

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I'm talking about something that would play out over decades
I'm not just talking about toilets, I'm talking about all single sex provisions. "Spaces" in the most general sense including social spaces, learning spaces etc
I'm not mandating anyone adds gender neutral anything, I'm saying they can if they want to, if they perceive there's a need or a preference.

This has been done to death now. I understand your points but I think you are reading something I'm not saying.

Also, if you want to campaign for more toilets overall I'll sign up.

Hermyknee · 23/01/2025 13:23

FlirtsWithRhinos · 23/01/2025 12:50

Women want their own spaces due to experience and common sense.

And again. My point is it is not either or. I'm not suggesting taking single sex spaces away. I am saying if there is a demand for mixed sex provisions we can have that and single sex spaces as well. And women can choose where they prefer to be. And the only reason that situation could ever end up in losing single sex spaces is if women themselves stop using them. And if you believe that would never happen, which you clearly do, and FWIW I also cannot see happening in the foreseeable future either, then single sex spaces remain.

I really am not sure what you are arguing against, but please stop replying as if I'm advocating taking anything away based on some academic theory because that is absolutely not what I am saying.

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I am arguing against more general neutral toilets.

You are arguing for people using the limited space and costs they have to build them instead of using resources for extra single sex provision, then seeing what happens if there’s a demand for them, then dismantling them if people research their impact and see that they don’t work. Refitting won’t happen because of costs. We’ll be left with the legacy of toilets that aren’t good for women. Women can’t choose in real life and they have to deal with what they are presented with.

Knowitall69 · 23/01/2025 13:20

Phthia · 21/01/2025 15:21

You love someone who is going to support the removal of women's rights over their own bodies?

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Explain.

AlisonDonut · 23/01/2025 13:19

Women won't notice any difference in terms of their day to day life, because most people have never and will never knowingly come into contact with a transgender person.

Well, we did notice. We always noticed men who pretended to be women. And we avoided them, but then they used gay rights to get into law and the concept of 'woman' ceased to mean 'adult human female'. Hence the backlash and lots of very angry people. It's why Trump got in.

Pretending that nobody can see the men in this picture is not just insulting but completely ridiculous.

Lovelyview · 23/01/2025 13:05

izimbra · 23/01/2025 10:16

Transgender people will still exist.

They will still use the spaces they feel are most appropriate and safest for them.

However they will be persecuted for doing so.

Which many of you here will enjoy.

Women won't notice any difference in terms of their day to day life, because most people have never and will never knowingly come into contact with a transgender person.

But hey, enjoy the 'win'.

Maybe just consider the price a generation of women will pay for it in terms of loss of access to reproductive care, employment rights, access to higher education, protection from domestic violence etc etc.

'Women won't notice any difference in terms of their day to day life, because most people have never and will never knowingly come into contact with a transgender person.' I 'came into contact with' a man with long hair in the Centre Parcs women's changing room two years ago and I do not consent.

FlirtsWithRhinos · 23/01/2025 12:50

Hermyknee · 23/01/2025 11:09

This is the problem with academic thoughts and concepts and ideals. What happens in real life is that women get attacked. Women want their own spaces due to experience and common sense. Academics come along and do thought experiments and say we need to treat the root cause and so we don’t like your idea.

Women can’t vote with their feet when women are being pushed into these places.
Take disabled women. They don’t get a choice of safer single sex toilets. They are put at a lot of disadvantages because of this.
There has to be a compromise and disabled women are the compromised but I don’t think any gender neutral toilets work well for able bodied women either.

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Women want their own spaces due to experience and common sense.

And again. My point is it is not either or. I'm not suggesting taking single sex spaces away. I am saying if there is a demand for mixed sex provisions we can have that and single sex spaces as well. And women can choose where they prefer to be. And the only reason that situation could ever end up in losing single sex spaces is if women themselves stop using them. And if you believe that would never happen, which you clearly do, and FWIW I also cannot see happening in the foreseeable future either, then single sex spaces remain.

I really am not sure what you are arguing against, but please stop replying as if I'm advocating taking anything away based on some academic theory because that is absolutely not what I am saying.

selffellatingouroborosofhate · 23/01/2025 12:28

FlirtsWithRhinos · 23/01/2025 12:08

So your argument is that the new laws are pointless because trans people will just lie and overide boundaries to get what they want?

And this is supposed to be an argument for the genderist side?

Wow. I'm gender critical but I think more highly of trans identifying people than you do. Yes I think they are wrong in their beliefs about manhood or womanhood, but bar the small subset of people, mostly biologically male, whose particular flavour of wrong idea about womanhood is malign and predatory, I don't think they are bad people!

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Good spot.

Am I alone in thinking that @izimbra's post is a collective slandering of trans people as lawbreakers, and hence transphobic?

FlirtsWithRhinos · 23/01/2025 12:08

izimbra · 23/01/2025 10:16

Transgender people will still exist.

They will still use the spaces they feel are most appropriate and safest for them.

However they will be persecuted for doing so.

Which many of you here will enjoy.

Women won't notice any difference in terms of their day to day life, because most people have never and will never knowingly come into contact with a transgender person.

But hey, enjoy the 'win'.

Maybe just consider the price a generation of women will pay for it in terms of loss of access to reproductive care, employment rights, access to higher education, protection from domestic violence etc etc.

So your argument is that the new laws are pointless because trans people will just lie and overide boundaries to get what they want?

And this is supposed to be an argument for the genderist side?

Wow. I'm gender critical but I think more highly of trans identifying people than you do. Yes I think they are wrong in their beliefs about manhood or womanhood, but bar the small subset of people, mostly biologically male, whose particular flavour of wrong idea about womanhood is malign and predatory, I don't think they are bad people!

selffellatingouroborosofhate · 23/01/2025 12:00

selffellatingouroborosofhate · 23/01/2025 11:22

Maybe just consider the price a generation of women will pay for it in terms of loss of access to reproductive care, employment rights, access to higher education, protection from domestic violence etc etc.

A pack of lies from you.

Roe v Wade was overturned before Trump was elected for his second term. The loss of Roe isn't the price of this second term. Experience of Dems lying about protecting abortion tells us that Harris wouldn't have actually done anything: a) Obama signed EO 13535 that ensured that federal funds could not be used to cover abortion care and b) he broke his promise that he ran on to codify abortion rights. Biden did nothing for four years too.
If you actually read the EO, you'd see that the EO protects rape shelters as single sex spaces. This improves women's protection from DV, as rape is one form that DV takes. We had an American woman on this board a few years ago who was camping in winter to escape her abuser because she feared going to a shelter that might have a male in it so much. I wonder what happened to her?
Protecting the definition of "women" and "girls" for Title IX purposes improves female access to higher education because mediocre men won't be able to take spaces from elite women.

Trump is a rapist, but that's not a problem to women who aren't in the same room as him. Trump has just protected women in prison, some of the most vulnerable in society, from being raped by male inmates. And he's done that on his first day in the job, as promised. Obama could learn a lesson here about keeping promises.

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Protecting the definition of "women" and "girls" for Title IX purposes improves female access to higher education because mediocre men won't be able to take spaces from elite women.

I'm referring here to sports-related scholarships here.

selffellatingouroborosofhate · 23/01/2025 11:56

themostspecialelfintheworkshop · 23/01/2025 11:33

And they wonder why people prefer Trump. All those promises from the Democrats, broken. Trump's already shown he keeps his promises to some extent. And he's not shy on telling you if he's not going to do what you want. I prefer honesty, even if I don't like the message, to constant lying, gaslighting and not delivering.

And it's heartening to see how many state laws to protect abortion have already been enacted, with many States very close to doing so (e.g. Florida).

I can't help but feel the Democrats are probably quite upset that women's rights to abortion in so many states are going to be codified into state law because they're not going to be able to keep on making promises they have no intention of keeping to get votes in those States. If the Dems were ever going to do it, Obama would have done it. Now it needs to be done at State level with every indication this will be more successful in the end. This is what Ruth Bader Ginsberg believed was the case.

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I can't help but feel the Democrats are probably quite upset that women's rights to abortion in so many states are going to be codified into state law because they're not going to be able to keep on making promises they have no intention of keeping to get votes in those States.

You are right. The Dems saw women as public property, an exploitable resource, a voting block to be blackmailed with promises about protecting abortion rights. That resource can't be exploited any more if those promises are actually kept, so it forever had to be "jam tomorrow" for federal abortion protection. And now that's backfired spectacularly.

"The difference between left-wing and right-wing when it comes to women is only about where exactly on our necks their boots should be placed. To right-wing men, we are private property. To left-wing men, we are public property."

Andrea Dworkin was right.

(I could also talk about how using women to validate men's speshul gender feelz is also treating us as public property, but that's a whole 'nother post.)

Snowypeaks · 23/01/2025 11:47

themostspecialelfintheworkshop · 23/01/2025 11:33

And they wonder why people prefer Trump. All those promises from the Democrats, broken. Trump's already shown he keeps his promises to some extent. And he's not shy on telling you if he's not going to do what you want. I prefer honesty, even if I don't like the message, to constant lying, gaslighting and not delivering.

And it's heartening to see how many state laws to protect abortion have already been enacted, with many States very close to doing so (e.g. Florida).

I can't help but feel the Democrats are probably quite upset that women's rights to abortion in so many states are going to be codified into state law because they're not going to be able to keep on making promises they have no intention of keeping to get votes in those States. If the Dems were ever going to do it, Obama would have done it. Now it needs to be done at State level with every indication this will be more successful in the end. This is what Ruth Bader Ginsberg believed was the case.

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🎯

Snowypeaks · 23/01/2025 11:45

selffellatingouroborosofhate · 23/01/2025 11:22

Maybe just consider the price a generation of women will pay for it in terms of loss of access to reproductive care, employment rights, access to higher education, protection from domestic violence etc etc.

A pack of lies from you.

Roe v Wade was overturned before Trump was elected for his second term. The loss of Roe isn't the price of this second term. Experience of Dems lying about protecting abortion tells us that Harris wouldn't have actually done anything: a) Obama signed EO 13535 that ensured that federal funds could not be used to cover abortion care and b) he broke his promise that he ran on to codify abortion rights. Biden did nothing for four years too.
If you actually read the EO, you'd see that the EO protects rape shelters as single sex spaces. This improves women's protection from DV, as rape is one form that DV takes. We had an American woman on this board a few years ago who was camping in winter to escape her abuser because she feared going to a shelter that might have a male in it so much. I wonder what happened to her?
Protecting the definition of "women" and "girls" for Title IX purposes improves female access to higher education because mediocre men won't be able to take spaces from elite women.

Trump is a rapist, but that's not a problem to women who aren't in the same room as him. Trump has just protected women in prison, some of the most vulnerable in society, from being raped by male inmates. And he's done that on his first day in the job, as promised. Obama could learn a lesson here about keeping promises.

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Great post, thanks @selffellatingouroborosofhate

Anyone who is anti this Executive Order is anti-women.

Nothing in it prevents anyone believing in GI, or claiming a trans identity. It just says that GI is not sex and does not override it.
If there are lesbians who want nightclubs where MCW are welcome they can have that.
But now, lesbians who don't want that can associate freely without males.
Women in general are not forced to bend the knee to GII to their own detriment.
The EO restores women's sex-based rights without destroying the legitimate rights of others.
No reasonable person could object to this EO.

themostspecialelfintheworkshop · 23/01/2025 11:33

selffellatingouroborosofhate · 23/01/2025 11:22

Maybe just consider the price a generation of women will pay for it in terms of loss of access to reproductive care, employment rights, access to higher education, protection from domestic violence etc etc.

A pack of lies from you.

Roe v Wade was overturned before Trump was elected for his second term. The loss of Roe isn't the price of this second term. Experience of Dems lying about protecting abortion tells us that Harris wouldn't have actually done anything: a) Obama signed EO 13535 that ensured that federal funds could not be used to cover abortion care and b) he broke his promise that he ran on to codify abortion rights. Biden did nothing for four years too.
If you actually read the EO, you'd see that the EO protects rape shelters as single sex spaces. This improves women's protection from DV, as rape is one form that DV takes. We had an American woman on this board a few years ago who was camping in winter to escape her abuser because she feared going to a shelter that might have a male in it so much. I wonder what happened to her?
Protecting the definition of "women" and "girls" for Title IX purposes improves female access to higher education because mediocre men won't be able to take spaces from elite women.

Trump is a rapist, but that's not a problem to women who aren't in the same room as him. Trump has just protected women in prison, some of the most vulnerable in society, from being raped by male inmates. And he's done that on his first day in the job, as promised. Obama could learn a lesson here about keeping promises.

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And they wonder why people prefer Trump. All those promises from the Democrats, broken. Trump's already shown he keeps his promises to some extent. And he's not shy on telling you if he's not going to do what you want. I prefer honesty, even if I don't like the message, to constant lying, gaslighting and not delivering.

And it's heartening to see how many state laws to protect abortion have already been enacted, with many States very close to doing so (e.g. Florida).

I can't help but feel the Democrats are probably quite upset that women's rights to abortion in so many states are going to be codified into state law because they're not going to be able to keep on making promises they have no intention of keeping to get votes in those States. If the Dems were ever going to do it, Obama would have done it. Now it needs to be done at State level with every indication this will be more successful in the end. This is what Ruth Bader Ginsberg believed was the case.

Hermyknee · 23/01/2025 11:31

selffellatingouroborosofhate · 23/01/2025 11:26

Disabled loos are single-occupant, so they don't need to be single-sex. And they actually can't be single-sex because carers aren't always the same sex as the disabled person.

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I know. Doesn’t mean disabled women aren’t disadvantaged by the fact we have the same problems as everyone else with the spaces not being single sex.

selffellatingouroborosofhate · 23/01/2025 11:26

Hermyknee · 23/01/2025 11:09

This is the problem with academic thoughts and concepts and ideals. What happens in real life is that women get attacked. Women want their own spaces due to experience and common sense. Academics come along and do thought experiments and say we need to treat the root cause and so we don’t like your idea.

Women can’t vote with their feet when women are being pushed into these places.
Take disabled women. They don’t get a choice of safer single sex toilets. They are put at a lot of disadvantages because of this.
There has to be a compromise and disabled women are the compromised but I don’t think any gender neutral toilets work well for able bodied women either.

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Disabled loos are single-occupant, so they don't need to be single-sex. And they actually can't be single-sex because carers aren't always the same sex as the disabled person.

selffellatingouroborosofhate · 23/01/2025 11:22

izimbra · 23/01/2025 10:16

Transgender people will still exist.

They will still use the spaces they feel are most appropriate and safest for them.

However they will be persecuted for doing so.

Which many of you here will enjoy.

Women won't notice any difference in terms of their day to day life, because most people have never and will never knowingly come into contact with a transgender person.

But hey, enjoy the 'win'.

Maybe just consider the price a generation of women will pay for it in terms of loss of access to reproductive care, employment rights, access to higher education, protection from domestic violence etc etc.

A pack of lies from you.

Roe v Wade was overturned before Trump was elected for his second term. The loss of Roe isn't the price of this second term. Experience of Dems lying about protecting abortion tells us that Harris wouldn't have actually done anything: a) Obama signed EO 13535 that ensured that federal funds could not be used to cover abortion care and b) he broke his promise that he ran on to codify abortion rights. Biden did nothing for four years too.
If you actually read the EO, you'd see that the EO protects rape shelters as single sex spaces. This improves women's protection from DV, as rape is one form that DV takes. We had an American woman on this board a few years ago who was camping in winter to escape her abuser because she feared going to a shelter that might have a male in it so much. I wonder what happened to her?
Protecting the definition of "women" and "girls" for Title IX purposes improves female access to higher education because mediocre men won't be able to take spaces from elite women.

Trump is a rapist, but that's not a problem to women who aren't in the same room as him. Trump has just protected women in prison, some of the most vulnerable in society, from being raped by male inmates. And he's done that on his first day in the job, as promised. Obama could learn a lesson here about keeping promises.

Obama reminded of what he said about abortions in 2009 after Roe v Wade is overturned

Former President Barack Obama was reminded of what he said about abortions in 2009 after Roe v Wade was overturned.On Friday (24 June), Obama took to his official Twitter to share a thread of messages about the Supreme Court's ruling."Today, the Suprem...

https://www.indy100.com/politics/roe-v-wade-barack-obama-abortion

SerafinasGoose · 23/01/2025 11:16

selffellatingouroborosofhate · 22/01/2025 18:22

Multiple US states have abortion later than six weeks. Stop exaggerating. The US doesn't only contain Texas.

That executive order doesn't mention gay people, other than in a list of titles of documents to be amended, it doesn't mention race, and it mentions women only to uphold our rights.

President Pussygrabber's election is a natural consequence of Dems screaming "TERF! Bigot!" at every sex realist and alienating sex realist Dems. You reap what you sow here.

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I agree with you both. Is that possible or is it congnitive dissonance? 🤓

It's clear exactly what kind of GoP, ultra-conservative, regressive rhetoric Trump's position stems from, and that his election is really, really bad news for women, not to mention other groups. His views happen to converge with a prominent feminist movement on one particular issue that happens to work in our interests. Boiling all this down to left vs. right rhetoric is pretty meaningless, given the whole distinction has faded into shades of murky purple and the right frequently masquerades as the left and vice versa. His election is bad news. I'll take a small slivver of one good by-product: doesn't mean I like or support the vengeful egomaniac. All the lazy 'aligned with' rhetoric is becoming increasingly tedious.

I also agree it's likely that the opposition is at least in part to blame for this. It's been clear for some time which way the prevailing winds have been blowing. Politicians can ignore this - shouting the odds against people's legitimate concerns, marginalising them from their sports and having them fired from their professions - at their peril. If enough people feel sufficiently strongly they'll be made to pay for it at the ballot box (or before). Nicola Sturgeon and Penny Mordaunt both found this out to their political cost.

The democrats helped to bring this about. America wanted this. They voted for it. There needs to be some honest reflection as to why this is the case. Because this hideous man, who quite aside from his other misdemeanours nearly caused an insurrection last time around and should be nowhere near the White House, has secured a confident victory and now seems more revered than ever before. And this will only end up making him and his gargantuan ego more insufferable than ever.

Hermyknee · 23/01/2025 11:09

FlirtsWithRhinos · 23/01/2025 09:58

In which case women won't use them. That's the literal point of the post you replied to. Anyone who wants to offer a neutral space can still do so, they just have to do so in addition to single sex spaces. And people who only want to offer single sex provisions can also do so.(subject to other discrimination rules of course).

You are thinking about the thought experiment backwards from the endpoint of gender neutral spaces continuing to exist and saying in that case they will still have the same problems because of men, but the story I was proposing as the thought experiment runs the other way (obviously! Time has to run beginning to end not vice versa!) : once single sex provisions are also an option again, we would only get to an endpoint where gender neutral spaces are wanted, used, even preferred if those spaces work for women as well, because the women would have a choice.

Once women, including those who currently do not identify as such, have a choice and can vote with their feet as to whether each individual gender neutral option on offer works for them or not, the only gender neutral options that will survive are ones that work for women.

And again, thought experiment. I'm not saying this will happen, or even that it should happen. I'm just saying the catastrophising about people caught up in genderism having no place to feel they belong is only one possible outcome; other futures are also available.

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This is the problem with academic thoughts and concepts and ideals. What happens in real life is that women get attacked. Women want their own spaces due to experience and common sense. Academics come along and do thought experiments and say we need to treat the root cause and so we don’t like your idea.

Women can’t vote with their feet when women are being pushed into these places.
Take disabled women. They don’t get a choice of safer single sex toilets. They are put at a lot of disadvantages because of this.
There has to be a compromise and disabled women are the compromised but I don’t think any gender neutral toilets work well for able bodied women either.

TheCatsTongue · 23/01/2025 11:05

Also I may not have come across a transgender person (I have), but I have come across men who pretend to be transgender to gain access to single-sex spaces.

TheCatsTongue · 23/01/2025 11:03

@izimbra

Yes the current tactic by TRAs is to claim that by defining two biological sexes, thus protecting single-sex spaces and sports will lead to a ban on abortion. But you've gone one further and now claiming a ban on university.

Greyskybluesky · 23/01/2025 10:50

Women won't notice any difference in terms of their day to day life, because most people have never and will never knowingly come into contact with a transgender person.

This reveals a lot about you @izimbra
Women can still care about what happens to other women and girls even if they're not in the same situation
I don't imagine I'll ever win a top sporting medal or go to prison. I still care very much about the women who do.
I've never knowingly come into contact with a member of the Taliban but I still care very much about the women in Afghanistan.

ChishiyaBat · 23/01/2025 10:47

teawamutu · 23/01/2025 10:09

This. DS1 is currently very worried about his teenage, gender-confused, obviously very vulnerable friend who is currently in a constant state of weeping terror that 'the whole world hates them'.

I'm really fucking angry this morning at all the irresponsible zealots who:
*Assured this fragile, confused kid that their preferences and interests meant they weren't a 'proper' member of their natal sex and could change to the other one
*Insisted that anyone who wouldn't play along with the pretence hated them and wanted them dead
*Pushed, bullied and intimidated until women, corporations and even the government had to say NO, we're standing by reality.

And having done that, caused all that damage, have the FUCKING CHEEK now to say it's on the women who said no. Drop hands, walk away, shrug and leave others to pick up the pieces.

Hell mend you, you fucking ghouls. Fucking over confused kids in pursuit of gratifying men with fetishes.

I despise the lot of you.

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I'm sorry for what you and your son and his friend are going through. I hope the friend can one day find peace, but for now I hope he has at least some support.