Monroe Bergdorf on the Women’s March

[bambambini]

Aibu to be pissed off that Women are being told not to bang on about female reproduction rights in regards to the Women’s March today? Monroe has a huge following, has been vocal in interviews, articles, TV, radio etc. They recently were featured in Woman’s Hour’s celebration of women.

@LyraPotter do you think it is OK to tell women not to come to a women's march and centre women's oppression based on biology? Abortion rights and period poverty for two.

TERFs are very much on the side of men over women when they choose to oppress transwomen.

I confused - can you explain what this means? Specifically, how TERFs (hateful word, BTW) oppress transwomen, and how this is serving men?

Any woman who thinks they're being progressive by agreeing with this person instructing women not to talk about female reproductive rights is no friend to feminism

I don't feel sorry for them though. I feel nothing but despair for their regressive ways. Shame on them.

errrr it's not feminists that have a narrow view of gender ffs, we have exactly the opposite. Our view of gender is that it's a made up thing and that everyone shoould feel free to dress etc as they wish. Sex on the other hand can't be changed and our reproductive systems are at the root of our oppression.

Ive said it before, women could be trans greatest ally if they’d just stop throwing us under the bus for long enough to have a grown up discussion.

Generally we’re more tolerant than men (probably our conditioning) and less likely to harass them.

I’m a very tolerant open minded person, I’m happy to use anyone’s preferred pronoun and would stand up and support trans rights. However I absolutely will not stand aside and watch women’s hard fought rights being rode roughshod over.

I could never speak for transwomen because I have no idea about their lives, everyday problems faces, health and emotional issues... as much as I could empathise with them or study their lifestyles I could never in a million years have the experiences that they have, nor truly understand their body workings or feelings.

I don’t feel that a person who ‘feels’ like being a woman can help me - with no actual experience of growing up a girl or being a woman, no boobs or vagina etc (and with a penis which women just don’t have - plus the risk of prostate cancer), no chance of birthing a baby, going though an abortion or suffering ovarian cancer - how can he speak for me for all my issues? His platform will be mostly be for his own type of person alone.

And to be honest the voices I hear are bigoted, aggressive, anti women, violent and hateful.

I am puzzled as to how can you still admire MB after tweets like not mentioning women's reproductive biology? Just how?

Does it not feel like a punch in the guts? Like finding out someone has cheated on you or deceived you? Do you not feel repulsed by being told what women can talk/ marhc about?

Surely with views like they have, MB would be one of the loud and noticable voices not showing solidarity with women. Their views only 'unite' by oppression and silencing women and controlling the agenda of what can be talked or marched about. That is not democracy or progress or solidarity.

No need to feel sorry for me other than that I stil have to fight views like MB's and their handmaidens, and as a girl was sick of being told what I could or couldn't do, or being expected to always defer the final say to a man.

I have a very wide view of what gender is or isn't or should be, but yes, a very narrow view of what being a woman is ie being biologically female. If men want to push boundaries then go for it, but push male boundaries, challenge toxic masculinity and what it means to be a male/ a man (now that would be brave), men should not try to dictate what it means to be a women.

Bergdorf has accused Linda Bellos of not wanting equality but just wanting power for herself (spoken like a true MRA)

In response to Lewis Hamilton's cruel mocking of a little boy wearing a dress, Bergdorf suggested he donate to mermaids who apparently 'specialise in allowing kids to be themselves' (Bergdorf and Hamilton: two buttocks of the same genderist arse)

And now here is Bergdorf telling women to STFU about their material reality on a women's march and, as the icing on the cake, telling WOC their vaginas are not pink.

PENISES Bergdorf! Not all penises are pink.

The whole hoo haa reminds me of this oldie but goodie - just whack a dress and lipstick on 'Buck' and you have the whole 2018 TRA in charge of feminism schtick -

www.theonion.com/man-finally-put-in-charge-of-struggling-feminist-moveme-1819569515

The whole March was a fucking joke.
Paris Lees, who loves a bit of sexual harassment to validate her as a woman, speaking at a ‘times up’ March on er, sexual harassment.

Makes my piss boil.

And the leafleting, saying that women’s vaginas were ‘front holes’ and trans women had ‘vaginas’.

How the fuck do they get away with this shit? And why are so many women buying into it?

I agree Fekko. It’s the breathtaking arrogance that really grates my (lady) nipples.

I’d never be so arrogant as to assume I could speak on the issues experienced by for example women of colour as I am not one.

Insisting that gender is a binary only benefits the patriarchy

SEX is a binary.
Gender is the crap imposed on us because of our SEX.

What on earth do you think the patriarchy is Lyra?

But boys know best, eh? Must be their upbringing.

Men telling women which of them are allowed to come to a women's march. Fucking golden. Hopefully will peak trans a few people and severely embarrass a few others such as womans hour

This x 100

I’d loathe to be organising any event for women these days. Can you imagine the gobshites demanding to come to a womans abortion support group, or a menopause workshop?

"And the leafleting, saying that women’s vaginas were ‘front holes’ and trans women had ‘vaginas’. "

They were handing out leaflets with this on?

Fucking hell so genitals aren't supposed to matter at all but simultaneously we are being reduced to what plenty of men have always seen us as ie a collection of nice warm holes.

As a mixed race Arab-English woman, I'd be thoroughly pissed off if a white person declared themself a Person of Color
and then started reclassifying me as cis-Arab,

restricting what I was "allowed" to say about racism I have suffered from earliest childhood.

A white person may have suffered because of poverty, class prejudice, homophobia etc,
but not the specific problem of racism that I have suffered, that other POCs have suffered.

A white person is not a POC, even if they feel they were "born in a POC body"

There is a tiny biological difference between me and a white woman,
compared to the fundamental biological differences between me and a "transwoman" of any colour

This is the bloody Emperor in the Altogether and it's about time that people stopped pretending that biological males can ever be women in any meaningful sense.

Who was handing out these leaflets, what was the logo on them?

HOLES fuck off.

I’d loathe to be organising any event for women these days.

I can't help thinking this is why some activists are doing it. LM getting a lesbian fired? Seems like a war on women. Stop them talking, organizing, writing, meeting... very effective.

Unless there are tweets I haven't seen, she hasn't remotely said that you can't discuss reproductive rights. She has simply said that reproductive rights aren't the only issue on the table, and that centering them to the minimisation of all else is exclusionary. Are you really going to disagree with that?

I'm a ciswoman but I don't think my reproductive organs are the be all and end all of what being a woman means. I don't think you're less of a woman if you were born without a womb or have had it removed for whatever reason. I don't think that if you're infertile you count less.

If your view is that the only thing that matters at a women's march is reproductive rights, do you think Malala is irrelevant for campaigning for education? Do you think Munroe Bergdorf is irrelevant for calling out white supremacy? Do you think feminists should stop giving a shit about Cyntoia Brown because her incarceration isn't related to her reproductive organs? Should we stop campaigning against domestic violence and rape? Do we not care anymore that the pay gap exists, and is significantly larger for women of colour than it is for white women? Do we really not care about murdered women?

All Munroe has said is that it's not enough to draw ovaries on a poster and think you're solving sexism. Intersectionality means addressing all forms of inequality, not just focusing on one. If you weren't so keen to make sure you're not accidentally agreeing with a transwoman, I think you would recognise that.

Lyra, you should spend some time with feminists instead of TRAs. Feminists are the ones who don’t give a fuck who wears a dress, make up, or heels. Stereotypes are LITERALLY nothing to do with sex. Transwomen? They are the ones that think dresses and make-up and feelz determine your sex.
Gender is regressive bullshit. You literally have it completely the wrong way round. Feminists want to abolish gender. Transwomen are desperate for gender to replace sex in law.
Fuck that shit. I’m a woman because of my sex. I refute the notion of socially constructed gender and I want no truck with a man who insists he is a woman because he spends hours a day dressing up like one.
My sex is not a costume to be donned to get a boner and consign the rights of women to history.
Regressive bullshit and you have fallen for it in the name of ‘equality’. Shame on you.

This was on Twitter - someone said (and I don’t remember who tweeted it) it was handed out.

assets2.hrc.org/files/assets/resources/Trans_Safer_Sex_Guide_FINAL.pdf

WTF

Our reproductive organs are the entire reason for our oppression

Women all over the world die or are permanently injured every day directly as a result of these reproductive organs

We don't even have abortion rights in most of the world for fuck's sake leading to swathes of pain damage distress and death as women have unsafe abortions

Listen to yourself seriously just listen to yourself.

Abortion is not even legal in all of the UK.

I can see what she said as I have read her tweets, you can choose to embellish and alter her meaning to whatever makes you feel comfortable but the IDEA that reproductive rights, that our biology is irrelevant is fucking preposterous.

And we are sick of being told to shut up about it.

Yes I've seen that leaflet before, TW have vaginas, women have front holes. Same old same old.

Yes of course I don't care if women die.

listen to yourself