Why is Mumsnet allowing itself to be bullied by Shon Faye?

[Manyfridays]

Really sad that this site is going to allow itself amd women on here to be bullied and silenced. Most of all because the support here for abused women is some of the best on the net and now the actual site is allowing itself to essentially be abused and bullied into submission

I'm a transwoman, I sometimes refer to myself as female (for example, in a scenario when there is no third option, or a social situation where it isn't relevant at all).
But I am not under a delusion that despite being post op, I have no claim to being female and I am firmly in the male biological category.
However, socially, if anything. I am a transwoman, as tru says a few pages back, I identify with women not as one.

No woman here can tell me what it feels like to lose out financially or socially due to being trans, or to face homophobia as a transperson (I wouldn't even like to begin to
Count the amount of times I've been called a fag or shitstabber). Or to face transphobia (cock in a frock, anyone?) or even physical and sexual assaults for who I am.
No woman here can tell me how mentally and physically difficult GRA surgery is.
No woman here can begin to try to tell me what it feels like to be treated like an experiment, or a compromise for a gay guy (who is afraid to come out of the closet and thinking a bloke, with a dick but "looking" feminine will be a great compromise. They lose interest when I tell them I am post op).
Not. One. Woman.

So why will I do it to you?
I'll name a few things here.
the endemic amount of DV in this country (something like 2 women a WEEK are killed by their partners, husbands or exes)
Abortion, or the inability to access a legal one.
Period shame and period poverty.
Being sexualised for/while breastfeeding in public.
childbirth injuries.
PND.
FGM,
Honour killings.
The expectation of being the "main parent", either a SAHM or someone who tries to do it all. As well as being called or inferred to be a heartless bitch for going back to work.
These are just a few female issues off the top of my head.
Not gender.
FEMALE.
WOMAN.
ADULT HUMAN FEMALE.
Biology.
Science.
Thousands of years of oppression.
Some people may mistake me for female and some things I can identify with and in some ways a circle of female friends has saved my sanity (We are pretty much exclusively all lone parents, and I'm not treated any differently to the next. In this regard our struggles are identical). I've also faced cat calling, for example, annoying and degrading when you just want to get on with your day and sometimes it can be terrifying.

But for every one thing I can say "I experience that too" there are a hundred things I can't say the same about, I can give my sympathy and help all I can but I cannot say I feel the same way or have experienced it because I haven't! And the same is true in reverse.

I want my struggles to be overcome,
I want female struggles to be overcome,

I don't want to merge them together so we all become invisible, hidden behind a small minority of very vocal males who get off on hurting, shaming, embarrassing and threatening us.

Call me transphobic if you want.

I posted on a transphobic thread here recently and reported it, and it was zapped within 2 minutes.

I've had transphobia aimed at me here once. Fellow posters rounded on the transphobic poster and the comment was quickly zapped.

I love mumsnet and I would be horrified to see transphobia encouraged; left to stand or perpetuated here. It's a good thing that despite being here daily and posting on the feminism board too, I have seen it a handful of times and it has been dealt with extremely quickly.

The standard line on here is "We're not anti-trans - we're anti self ID". Yet in 7 pages there's been about 1 mention of self ID in passing and 100 posts about trans women aren't women.

You're talking about a group that has asked to be referred to as women, to be treated as women and you respond "No you're not. This is BIOLOGY. REALZ trumps FEELZ!" (BTW that last one is something I'm more familiar seeing from Red Pill and Alt-Right forums). And you wonder why this is viewed as hate speech? Seriously?

Don't point to the handful of transactivists that are behaving badly to justify this. You KNOW that's not the majority and you must know you're deliberately painting a false picture of the group by doing this.

Not all transwomen want to be referred to as women. Bit of a sweeping generalisation there.

trans women are trans women

potato

Also do they really want to be treated the same as women? Because somehow I doubt they do.

Did you even read my post? Relief
Please don't make sweeping generalisations about what transwomen want.
I personally think self ID is very harmful, as is squashing us all into one category.

Probably not peanut. Allies never do.

And yet another thread which is nothing but a personal attack on someone who rightly spoke out about plenty of hateful postings directed at them, which were left to stand.

Your "nothing transphobic, just factual" is the same playbook as "it's not racist to have legitimate concerns". Not unsurprising that there's quite an overlap in commentators endorsing both stances.

The standard line on here is "We're not anti-trans - we're anti self ID". Yet in 7 pages there's been about 1 mention of self ID in passing and 100 posts about trans women aren't women

I agree that this is the MN GC posters' stance on the legal issues involved. But many/most also hold that 'biology is not bigotry' as well. This is still not 'anti-trans'. Personally, I consider that the demand of some natal males to be included in and to define what 'woman' is is an act of violence against women (if we accept that violence can be more than physical and can include erasure or forcible changing of identity - in the same way that Dworkin said that 'pornography is violence'). I accept post-operative transwomen as transwomen. They are not women. I won't call them men. I'll call them she in an honorific sense (just the same as I will call someone with an honorary doctorate 'Dr.') I'll leave the gender-fluid, genderqueer, and no-op or pre-op bods aside for now. But honestly I do feel like saying 'woman is who I am, I was born female and I have suffered as a female because of my biology and because of the violence of patriarchal gendering that has named me and continues to name me as inferior to men. I need this identity and name ('woman') in order to state who I am, who I do not wish to be and who I wish to be and to fight patriarchy. So get off my fucking turf."

At all those who are crowing about how ‘at least the transphobia is being addressed’ do you not find it interesting that other forums that talk about ‘trannies’ and make derogatory remarks in extended threads?

Interesting that a forum used predominantly by women is the only one being targeted, even though our voices haven’t been heard (or if heard, have been dismissed) on any issues raised?

One might think there was some sort of systemic issue!

I did peanut, and I did not make any generalizations about 'what trans women want'. This is a thread about people who are telling us that they are offended. If you're not that's absolutely fine.

Self-ID is a law with huge cross party support, has been successfully implemented in Europe already. None of the apocalyptic predictions of mumsnet have come to pass in Denmark, Malta or Ireland. It looks overwhelmingly positive, and certainly not a conspiracy to shut women up or put them in their place.

I've got to wonder why the panic? Is it because in this scenario it is women who are being asked to check their privilege?

I asked this in another thread but didn't recieve an answer so will try here:

Genuinely not trying to be goady here and still don't fully understand the issue but am I correct in thinking this is going to affect health figures (and more importantly funding for it)? Could there potentially be a rise in figures of women suffering prostate cancer and a decrease in women suffering breast cancer? Or does it not work like that? Sorry if that's a stupid question

I've got to wonder why the panic? Is it because in this scenario it is women who are being asked to check their privilege?

I can't speak for those other countries or how it's impacted upon women there, but even before self-id we've got (you call it "privilege", I call it hard-won rights):

1. Posts designed to represent women's specific issues going to trans-identified males, who then represent only trans issues
2. Women-only shortlists open to TIMs, despite the fact that they originated because women were under-represented in parliament
3. Schools being 'advised' to allow boys who feel they are girls to change with the girls and if the girls don't like it, THEY must be moved, because it's 'their problem'.
4. TIM sex offenders demanding - and in some cases gaining - the 'right' to be in women's prisons.

That's women being made to 'check their privilege', is it? I call it shunting us back where some men think we belong and placing us in danger.

But if you were to ask me if I believed a trans woman is a woman I would have to say no. They’re a trans woman. There’s a difference.

/

This.

Although I'd go so far as to say if you asked me if I believed a transwoman is a woman, I'd say they are the gender that they were assigned at birth.

I have a family member who was once called James and is now called Jane.
I call her Jane, use the appropriate pronouns (her/she) but to me she is still ultimately a man as that is the gender she was assigned at birth.

Reliefofchaos I notice you didn't include Canada in your list there. Could that be because there have been problems arising from self ID there?

Uh no. It wasn't in Europe. Just had a look and the only hits on self ID in Canada are Mumsnet threads LOOKING for problems with self ID in Canada.

Telling.

The fucking audacity of calling a domestic violence shelter or rape crisis service a 'privilege'. I've spent my entire adult life fundraising for these services.

People are not "assigned a gender" at birth.

When you are born, your sex is observed and this has as a consequence that you are treated in a certain way.

Nobody "assigns" anything at all, ever.

Bottom line is.. You can't speak for anyone other than yourself.. And that's the problem. People assuming they have a voice for everyone like them.

But surely the reason there aren't many posts about self id on this thread is because that's not what the thread is about? This thread is about what is and isn't transphobic which is a different debate isn't it? I do think self id should be debated, I'm not necessarily sure if I'm for or against it to be honest but how can anyone be sure without debate? The problem I guess with deciding that the statement transwomen are not women is transphobic is it completely stops that debate from happening. That certainly doesn't seem right to me.

I think peanut butters post is fantastic and makes a lot of sense for me.

I've got to wonder why the panic? Is it because in this scenario it is women who are being asked to check their privilege?

You sound very much like an MRA

What privilege are you suggesting women check? Their ability to organise and name themselves as they see fit?

Do you tell "black lives matter" to check their privilege?

Do you tell gay rights groups to check their privilege?

Groups for cancer survivors?

Or is the ability to organise and name our group only a privilege if the group is women?

dontforgetbilly thank you for that explanation of green. I was sure there would be a scientific one, I was just too lazy to check.

Come to think of it, there is a scientific definition of just about anything, isn't there. Like air, or water, or copper, or woman.