...or is there a lot of internalised misogyny on MN today?

[wheresmymojo]

I feel like I've stepped into a parallel universe this evening where MN has been taken over by MRAs...

• Serena, the brand new mother, looks shit in her wedding dress

• Women are shit at holding discussions

• If as a woman you have any concerns at all about people with fully in fact penises accessing women's spaces just because they said 10 seconds before they are a woman you must be transphobic

There are more going on this evening...but seriously?

Am I being oversensitive or is it a bit woman hatey on here today?

What Bertrand says. There's a lot of 'women should do X,Y or Z for a kinder, more loving world,' and competitive martyrdom.

If you are so worried about safety and dignity, there is a lot more you can do than pile on the trans community.

The patriarchy is alive and well- why is the target of frustration/ action not about the inadequate and overpriced childcare, women who are fired for getting pregnant, how women are often pushed out of STEM careers, the wage gap, sexual harrassment and power dynamics. If some posters on mumsnet spent 2% of the effort on those cases instead of focusing on American-style bigoted bathroom bills, things might actually change.

Because it’s easier for the patriarchy to survive when persecuted groups are fighting each other, rather than joining forces.

If you are so worried about safety and dignity, there is a lot more you can do than pile on the trans community.

There has been no piling on the trans community.

"If you are so worried about safety and dignity, there is a lot more you can do than pile on the trans community"

The problem is that there hasn't, as far as I can see, been any public discussion about how the trans and non trans communities can integrate and co exist. And any attempt to have that discussion seems to be met with #nodebate.

Of course there are loads of other pressing issues- but pretending that the trans debate isn't one of them is deeply unhelpful.

And incidentally, in my opinion, the bathroom stuff is simply a distraction. Bathreems are pretty low down in my list of things that need to be discussed and agreed on.

Agree Bertrand. I'm new to Twitter but my most liked and retweeted tweet was a Reply to Owen Jones that all this bathroom discussion is just straw man to avoid discussing some very real dangers which the TA community have no answer to.

And to keep OT of this thread, it's not just on MN, I am seeing internalised misogyny everywhere at the moment. I don't know wthether this is because it's more prevelant or because feminism has become more important to me lately.

Is it misogynistic to say Serena Williams looked shit in her wedding dress? Or is it more misogynistic to say that every bride looks beautiful on her wedding day (with the subtext being that she must be beautiful because it's the happiest day of her life because she has finally been validated by achieving the life long goal of marriage to a man).

These are not the only available options, if you disagree with one, then it doesn't follow that you subscribe to the other viewpoint.

Serena Williams was being judged and commented on purely on her appearance. Her husbands appearance wasn't commented on. It's part of the insidious undercurrent that what actually matters about a woman when it comes down to it is what she looks like. Comments on her figure and her breasts - so many threads on here about how male partners are nasty to women when their bodies after childbirth, yet a woman who has recently had a baby dares to wear a strapless dress and people are criticising the size of her breasts.

And it is all part of the 'women must be stick thin to be beautiful' narrative. Which again focuses on appearance as a woman's main achievement, and is built around a made up externally imposed criterion for what a body should look like.

Serena Williams has an amazing strong athletic body, she is a woman at the very top of her chosen career, she is one of the most successful athletes in the world, yet people are rabbiting on about her dress and her breasts.
It seems even a highly successful, powerful woman is reduced to tits and ass, this is what is so fucking depressing - when will we ever get past this ?

I thought the Serena williams thread was awful. She looked happy and relaxed in her photos.

People were not criticising the size of her breasts. They were criticising her vastly expensive dress for not making the best of its owner. Clothing is supposed to enhance the body, not the other way round. I have to admit to joining in that one because I thought it made her look more like a cream puff than a woman, in the way her subsequent changes of clothing did not. It may have just been the lousy photography though - that also got a mention. Nobody DARED to criticise the bride herself (hopefully they would have been torn to shreds if they did). As for the guy, he wore a fairly standard-looking smart suit and the article wasn't about his clothes anyway. There were a few mentions of how nice he looked but let's face it, pretty much everyone looks at the bride rather than the groom at a wedding. (Even I did, at the last wedding I went to, and the groom was my son!)

"all this bathroom discussion is just straw man to avoid discussing some very real dangers which the TA community have no answer to"
It's not even dangers. It's concerns. Questions which might for all I know, have simple answers I just might not have thought of. The sort of questions that always need to be answered before different groups can shake down together.

"An awful lot of posters take the position that being trans is inherently wrong, therefore transphobia cannot exist."
You know, I don't think I have seen a single poster saying that being trans is inherently wrong. Not a single one. I have seen plenty saying that you cannot become a woman simply by saying you are- but that is different. And surely a perfectly valid opinion?

"that gender is 100% about what genitalia you were born with."

Why do you think that people shouldn't be allowed to think this?

Oh yes. I've basically just been told to get 'professional help', shut up and not post on here. First time I've ever posted which was therapeutic in itself, for help and was shot down.
Anything which tears other women down, I find misogynistic.

"Anything which tears other women down, I find misogynistic"

Tearing down is obviously wrong. But this idea that women ought to agree automatically with other women is very wrong.

Agreed, some of the attitudes I've seen regarding what women should accept in relationships for example is just beyond me. I see a lot of misogyny here, and sadly most is coming from women. There was a post the other day from a pregnant woman whose husband was whining about lack of sex and someone came along to tell her that she should have been servicing her husband. Bleugh.

You know, I don't think I have seen a single poster saying that being trans is inherently wrong. Not a single one. I have seen plenty saying that you cannot become a woman simply by saying you are- but that is different. And surely a perfectly valid opinion?

I think, honestly, this is a gap in understanding that I don't really see can be bridged. If, on a fundamental level, you believe that trans women are mentally ill or fetishist men, then you are trans exclusionary, and are, on a basic level, saying there is something wrong with being trans.

"If, on a fundamental level, you believe that trans women are mentally ill or fetishist men, then you are trans exclusionary, and are, on a basic level, saying there is something wrong with being trans"
I don't actually think there is anything wrong with being mentally ill - do you?

Do you genuinely believe that there are no problems at all with saying "OK-anyone who says they are a woman is one"? No practical problems? No niggles? No worries that natal women might have which means they have the right to question and discuss? Just "This person is a woman" #nodebate?

Worries that natal women have that might very well prove to be groundless if questioning and discussion was allowed?

I don't actually think there is anything wrong with being mentally ill - do you?

Well as someone with long term serious MH problems and a history of hospitalization, I'll say to begin with that I think it's less than ideal, no one is choosing to experience illness, and it is radically different to sexuality or gender identity. That's why I take medication to treat my condition instead.

I would also say that as someone with long term mental illness who has faced significant discrimination because of this, I can recognise someone being disingenuous in claiming they totally weren't being negative when they used the words 'mentally ill' as an insult and surely any offence taken isn't their fault.

You were clearly using the term as a pejorative. I very much doubt, for example, you'd be comfortable with someone suggesting lesbians are mentally ill, in a similar context.

That's a bit simplistic. There's never two sides to something as complex as debates around gender.

And I have a lot of feelings about the complex nuanced areas in which different classes of women have different needs, about how the concept of gender as a fluid and subjective thing is throwing up loads of challenges, about how childhood gender socialization is totally a thing we need to discuss, about reproductive rights and oppression specific to that, and about rape culture and violence against women.

I desperately wish I could have those conversations.

I can't have those with someone who starts off the conversation by saying "we define gender at birth, that's it, and anyone who doesn't fit into my world view is mentally ill." I think that stance is also completely poisoning the whole conversation, just as much as anyone in the other side is.

"You were clearly using the term as a pejorative"

I didn't actually use the term at all until you did.

BertrandRussell - apologies. I was mistaking you for someone else I'd quoted earlier. So you don't think there's a link between trans people and mental illness?