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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

See all MNHQ comments on this thread

I am Spartacus

310 replies

disfasia · 21/03/2017 22:15

I am posting this here since "Am I being unreasonable?" is only a phrase that a female would ask herself. Women are socialised to concede to men, to institutional pressures, and to ask "Am I being unreasonable?" I am posting here because I know I am not. And this is my protest to MNHQ for censoring women's language, for telling us that the only way to refer to a man who lays claim to be a woman is to call him "she", to call him a "woman." But he is not a woman.

In the past ten days, three different transwomen have been sentenced to prison or arrested for rape or murder of women. Just today a rapist of two children was transferred to a female prison. These are men who commit these crimes and the whitewashing of history and the pressuring of women by MNHQ to say "she", deleting comments when we respectfully disagree and point out scientific evidence, as clear in science as the earth's rotation around the sun. And I am sick of it.

I am sick of the harassment of women who say, "No" to male violence. And make no mistake MNHQ, what you are doing to women on this matter is pure unadulterated violence. You worry more about the feelings of males than women who have, statistically speaking, been victimised by male violence.

If you expect women to come to this website and generate movement for you, you need to understand that in a week where Ian Huntley wants to become a woman, where Jessica Winfield (AKA Martin Ponting) another rapist is housed with women, where Texas is facing a lawsuit from three different prisoners who have been subjected to rape at the hands of another trans prisoner, and the recent sentencing of Kayleigh Woods for the murder of Bethany Hill, her really need to understand that women know the difference between a man and a woman. No, we don't need men telling us to address them as a woman. Nor should MNHQ bei so inclined. This is an open-debate and trans "identity" is up for debate because it is a feeling, not a reality. You cannot oblige women to see the world in a delusory way simply because that individual is delusional or confirmed in his "belief."

MN needs to be a space where women are free to interact honestly, where biology is not written off as unimportant. Rape is very much connected to the biology of males. MNHQ needs to allow for women to set their own boundaries in their own language. We should not be coerced or pressured in any way to goose step with delusional ideologies where the body is irrelevant. This is Mumsnet which exists precisely because the body IS relevant.

This is a revolution.

OP posts:
BeyondUser24601 · 21/03/2017 23:10

Pistonheads - "cut and shut". Gosh.

SymbollocksInteractionism · 21/03/2017 23:10

I am listening.
I'm fairly new to the trans debate but the deeper I dig the more outraged i get.
All women need to know about this and the erosion of their rights.
It's maybe not a bad idea to post in AIBU and not feminism to get more traffic

DickToPhone · 21/03/2017 23:10

"I can't get past the parallel with religion. Imagine if all posts that stated disbelief in a god were deleted, because 'someone' has decided that existance of god is now actual fact and not a belief system. It would be bonkers."

Posts critical or offensive to Islam are likely to be deleted also, to be fair.

cuirderussie · 21/03/2017 23:15

No they aren't. Debate about religion and culture is usually fairly open and healthy here, it ain't the Guardian.

I'm Spartacus too. This shit is getting completely out of control, and very quickly.

SallyGinnamon · 21/03/2017 23:16

I am Spartacus.

And the Emperor is naked.

DJBaggySmalls · 21/03/2017 23:25

I'm Spartacus.

Society is going to find it hard to gaslight some people or force them to comply. Little kids and people with dementia arent going to understand why they have to lie. I'm not looking forwards to that battle.

Mo55chop5 · 21/03/2017 23:27

I'M WITH YOU COMRADE! ✊️

Idefix · 21/03/2017 23:33

I hear you op, because I am Spartacus.

roarityroar · 21/03/2017 23:37

I am Spartacus.

GirlInterruptedOftenByKids · 21/03/2017 23:40

I think I'm Spartacus but I'm nervous about being called a transphobic TERF.

However I'm even more nervous about a law which is based on feelings rather than facts.

Gingernaut · 21/03/2017 23:44

I am Spartacus.

EatSpamAmandaLamb · 21/03/2017 23:47

I do wonder why MN constantly shut this debate down. It's something nearly every woman I know is angry about and wants to discuss but is scared to do so publically.
If your users are crying out time and again asking you to support the rights and worries of your users and women as a whole why on earth would you ignore them? I get the fear part but who is pulling the strings to stop this debate (on a wider scale than confined to FWR) happening on such a women centred website.
That dress was blue and black, no matter how many people told me it was white and gold the facts were it was blue and black. Only the dress issue did contribute to erosion of women and lesbians. Stand up for women, stand up for the people who keep your website going.

EatSpamAmandaLamb · 21/03/2017 23:48

Didn't*

Barcoo2 · 21/03/2017 23:48

I am Spartacus. Any man who calls himself a lesbian is knowingly insulting actual lesbians.

NotCarylChurchill · 22/03/2017 00:12

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

NotCarylChurchill · 22/03/2017 00:13

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

Gingernaut · 22/03/2017 00:16

Intersex people are a vanishingly small collection of people who were born insensitive to androgens, with indeterminate genitals or one of a series of syndromes which bring their own physical and/or mental problems.

Trans women are a dangerous joke in womens' sports and a vile travesty in prison.

Pentapus · 22/03/2017 00:32

Godwin's Law Notcaryl , Godwin's Law. Besides your comments being obviously lazy and offensive.

I too, am Spartacus.

WanderingNotLost · 22/03/2017 00:35

Nothing will ever convince me that transwomen are not women and that this is anything other than sheer bigotry, bordering on Nazism.

What if you were raped by one, like the victims of "Jessica Winfield" were?? Would you still remain unconvinced? Cos I'm sure their attacker's penis felt pretty real to them.

As for the Nazism reference, well done for confirming Godwin's law

WanderingNotLost · 22/03/2017 00:37

Cross-post Pentapus Grin

I am Spartacus

DioneTheDiabolist · 22/03/2017 00:41

And make no mistake MNHQ, what you are doing to women on this matter is pure unadulerated violence.

No it is not.

DickToPhone · 22/03/2017 00:50

"Nothing will ever convince me that transwomen are not women "

Could you clarify this for me, with examples?

Craig Hauxwell - 9 rapes and indecent assaults while living as a man. Charged in 2015. Police put out the word that they are looking for a woman because they are concerned about her welfare: www.facebook.com/westyorkshirepolice/posts/10154129801369920 Eventually found, living as a man. www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/crime/rapist-tracked-down-just-day-9991480

So question is:

When he committed the 9 rapes & indecent assaults, as Craig, was he a man or a woman?

When he was charged and sentenced as Lisa, was he a man or a woman?

When he was arrested as Craig was he a man or a woman?

If the answers to these questions are different, when/how did they change?

Or how about Aidan Wiltshire:

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4323302/Pensioner-takes-cat-court-comfort.html

Stalked/harassed women while known as 'Anne Wiltshire' & referring to himself as 'she'.

Now appearing in court as Aidan and referred to by the judge as 'him'.

Question: when did Wiltshire start and stop being a woman? Or is he still a woman? Or does it depend on whether there is an 'R' in the month, as with oysters?

Another one:

www.somersetlive.co.uk/transgender-woman-from-wells-tried-to-get-photos-developed-of-naked-child/story-29924337-detail/story.html

Nicola Florida, transgender paedophile, rapes, sexual assaults on children, etc. all committed while living as a man.

Says "she is living her life as a woman 10% of the time."

So Florida is perhaps living on the Roman calendar? A woman during the month of Iunis, a man for the rest of the year? Or is Florida a woman ALL the time, but mostly presents as a man. So male-to-female-to-male transgender? Perhaps with a female penis but male testicles & female moobs?

VestalVirgin · 22/03/2017 00:53

Ugh, it is disgusting, Notcaryl, how you minimize the holocaust by comparing feminists to nazis. Really, really disgusting. You should be ashamed of yourself.
Go read a history book and learn the difference.

What do you consider intersex individuals or people with unclear genetic sex to be?

I consider them to be intersex individuals or people with unclear genetic sex. Because I am rational.

numberseven · 22/03/2017 01:12

I am also Spartacus. And I agree with this.

*'Woman' is still defined as an adult female human being. 'Female' is still defined as of or denoting the sex that can bear offspring or produce eggs. Therefore, 'woman' means, an adult of the sex that can bear offspring or produce eggs.

As a rationalist and pedant, I'd logically have to be Spartacus even if I wasn't also a feminist.*

Datun · 22/03/2017 01:12

The preferred pronoun debacle would never have got this far if it hadn't been for the transactivists pushing further and further for control over language.

The line now says any and all transwomen were born biologically female. Not a male who wants transition, but biologically female. And a huge mistake was made in their male genitalia. They assert that they have never, ever benefited from male socialisation, because somehow they managed to evade it, as from the minute they were born they knew they were female and therefore absorbed the misogyny and sexism, usually reserved for females. Completely missing the point, that female biology, in hundreds of thousands of cases, would mean they were never born at all. It is absolutely classic that people with privilege do not know they have it.

If these people seemed like any other woman, again you might even buy the notion that something has gone horribly wrong. But they don't. Bruce Jenner doesn't, Kelly Mahoney, a wife abuser, doesn't, the two multiple rapists this week, don't. None of the high-profile transwomen do. Even those who don't come with a hefty dose of male entitlement, still don't. Nice though they may be.

I don't know of any high-profile transwomen (particularly those who remain attracted to women), who actually come across in any way like a woman. And I don't know any high-profile transmen at all! You never hear them being asked to speak on news panels, radio programmes, don't see them jumping up and down insisting on changing the meaning of the word man. I wonder why that is?

To insist that biology itself is now a social construct, that there is no such thing as the sex class women, it doesn't exist, is why there is now such a push back against having to call a man 'she'.