Searing and excellent from Victoria Smith

Its a great piece, thanks for posting

Just read it again and experienced a surge of justifiable wrath.

Bumping for anyone who hasn't picked this up amidst everything else going on in FWR. It is a fabulous piece and I have bookmarked it as I want to come back to it again and again. Thank you Victoria.

Battle cry.

Brilliant. Turn up the heat.

💯utterly brilliant. Thank you @ArabellaScott

I find the concept of gender identity sexist and fundamentally incompatible with feminism, but understand that for many people, claiming to be the opposite sex is the most comfortable way for them to live their lives. I have no interest in questioning their choices, but think it’s important that feminists are not ordered to go along with a belief system that undermines so many of our beliefs and analyses. I think my own perception of female experience matters and do not wish to describe myself as ‘cis’, let alone own up to ‘cis privilege’, because that contradicts everything I feel and have experienced. Please let women have our stuff (including our one and only political movement), as that’s only fair. The End.

👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏

Great! I've been feeling enraged by the whole thing. First massive relief but then anger at the lack of accountability, the gaslighting, the abuse women have suffered and that measly reponse from the government over the issue. And their lack of condemnation (and arrests) for the violent threats on women's lives over the weekend.

Brilliant article.

Brilliant

Brilliant article, thanks for the share. Her book 'Hags' is excellent. She's a very, very articulate and intelligent women (I'll stop fan girling now).

Shes so spot on - "The misogyny – and the utter failure of politicians to condemn it as misogyny that is intrinsic to a misogynistic movement – is terrifying, but it’s hardly a surprise."

I bloody love Victoria Smith. I have never yet read anything she's written on this issue without fervently agreeing. Such a talented writer, and she's outdone herself here.

Absolutely love Victoria's writing and this one is just perfect.... Do we think Lisa Nandy would read it if I sent it to her, or is she a lost cause?

This is an outstanding piece - the combination of complete honesty, self-awareness, deep emotion and reason and logic is powerful.

And very moving - the courage to lay your feelings and experiences out like that deserves so much credit, and so much gratitude from those of us who don't have the same amount of courage that Victoria has.

She is feeling, thinking and speaking all the things that so many of us feel and think but can't, for one reason or another, speak.

Thank you Victoria Smith

It's a long but very interesting read.

I really appreciate the honesty she has in analysing her previous works.

To the woman in the comments section who ironed the plumber's shirt - you did the right thing.

Love that she has the courage to talk about the elephant/s in the room - porn & fetishism. Men can get totally addled by their addiction to pornography and their sexual fetishes. We all know from the news/court cases that some of them will do anything to fulfil their sexual desires, including literally having their penises nailed to boards and being castrated in garden sheds, yet we are expected to pretend that men want to cross dress in public and get into women’s spaces solely to assuage their sadfeelz and inner ladyness. They talk about their desire to be degraded and explicitly say that this is what makes them female. The misogyny is off the scale.

Glad to see Rachel Rooney got a mention.

It absolutely is like an abusive relationship, right down to all the flying monkeys on the abusers side telling is how lovely it would be if we could just get back in the fold and behave.

A classic piece that, back in the days of Virago, would have appeared in a Women’s Studies Reader book (not that I can recall who published those - and I’ve just now thought how beautiful the Virago covers were.

Men who identify as women keep issuing death threats and rape threats, but it's women who are bigots for pointing it out.

That is epic. She has felt every bump of this road.

I went out either a criminal barrister and he was very against “both sides” type thinking. In his experience it’s usually one side being a bastard to the other side.

After the initial relief and celebration died down, I have to admit to some feelings of absolute rage at the mealy mouthed bastard words of political parties, commentators and the media.

Both Sides, my arse.

That is fucking excellent.

Powerful and true.