To be angry and feel the Scottish Gov’s Twitter header is an attack on women?

[Badmoonsarising]

i’d like them to clarify exactly what their definition of “transphobic” is because it seems to have become a slur these days often aimed at anyone but mostly women who are critical of or question in any way the recent upsurge of identity politics. I just feel they’re doing a knee jerk, ignorant, unnecessary huge fuck you to women.

I'm a woman in Scotland.

I am involved in my local Rape Crisis centre. All rape crisis centres in Scotland are based on feminist governance. And the Scottish government has just given a big boost of funding to all rape crisis centres in Scotland. Even Glasgow, which got one of the biggest pots of money, which is I think the only one left that only works with female survivors.

Just to add a little balance to the argument that the Scottish government is somehow anti-women.

By doing it as they have they make it appear that transphobic is the most important one

They're all important, but I think they'll have chosen that one as that's the one Twitter have been tackling lately - it's more prevalent on there more so than say racism for example.

So, following that link to the posters available there is still no poster against misogyny? Or misandry? All the protected characteristics except sex!Why is that?

Because misogny and misandry isn't a hate crime.

This is how the SNPs Women’s and Equalities Convenor views and openly talks and tweets about women who are critical of identity politics - she slots them in between racists and mysoginists. But, the first thing you see when you search for the Scottish Government on twitter is a statement about Transphobes.

That Verbeena is my point!

For some reason sex, and age, are the only 2 protected characteristics that are not included. Why?

If hate is so nasty as to be a crime why aren't ALL of the characteristics that get special protections covered?

And why can we not legislate that 'hate' against any individual or cohort will not be tolerated? Why not criminalise the actions globally?

Or would that highlight some oddities in the idea of 'hate crime' as a law, as opposed to harrassment, stalking, threatening behaviour etc?

Elaine

What “feminist governance” would that be? Those feminists that believe a woman is simply an adult female or feminists thst think a woman is a belief, a feeling, an inner essence which leaves us with an ideology where a woman can impregnate a man with her penis resulting in the man possibly conceiving and giving birth.

Oh dear.

So they give money that supports a woman-centric organisation that supports, in the main, women as they are by far outnumber male victims of sexual violence.

And you are concerned that it might be being governed by the wrong kind of feminist?

And by doing so, it's effectively an attack (although admittedly not a significant one) on the very people you would purport to be trying to protect?

Yeah, I'm out. I see where you are coming from, and you don't want a discussion. You want to rant and you want to make people think like you.

That's fine, you are entitled to do so. But I'm out.

No, i want to know exactly what people mean by “woman” when they are talking about services, funding, protections and safe guarding etc that are aimed at women and girls - it’s kind of important we know what definition of “woman” is actually being used.

You're right, Badmoonsarising. If people are redefining the word "woman" to mean anyone who says they're a woman then their statements about women become meaningless.

Well I haven't looked into the constitution of every centre, and I'm not going to for the sake of an Internet discussion.

But I can tell you that, as far as I'm aware, in the whole of Scotland, none of the centres has been run by anything other than female born women. One or two have had a solo man on the board, I don't know the current situation. No board has ever had a transgender or non-binary person on the board that I an aware of.

But as they are independently run centres, I can't be 100% on that, but I am 99.9%.

Now, out of curiosity badmoonsarising, how much time do you spend in Scotland?

Plus we know that women's services have been put under pressure to conform to genderist ideology or lose funding.

There's an open letter from a group of shelter users saying how much they fear the idea of allowing men who identify as women into DV shelters (I bookmarked it but can't find it.) They can speak out. The women running the shelters have been gagged for fear of losing funds.

Why do you want to know how much time i spend in Scotland? As a woman who is gender critical, i felt that banner was taking a swipe at women like me - probably more so than men laughing at transwomen on the bus and threatening them.

Isn't it in one of the 'evidence' threads?

There was quite a long thread about it not so long ago! It ran alongside the Canadian one!

Hasn’t the Vancouver Rape Crises Centre been targetted by transactivists to get it closed down because it wants to keep the centre as a female based service?

Quite a branching thread, this one; so can someone let me know if I've read these points correctly:

The OP saw a campaign aimed at preventing abuse of a particular section of society, and is arguing that as some women have a problem with said section of society, the campaign must be anti-women in nature/design?
The OP is reinforced by a view that because the campaign does not specifically cover anti cis-female abuse too, it is evidence of anti-female design aims?
And finally that a trans-female is, by virtue of being a transfemale (as we are gifted no other information about them), a threat to children and invokes specific safeguarding concerns?

If I've read these right, I am at a loss as to which one is the more ridiculous. I'm also at a loss as to which one best exemplifies the damage women will bring to their own quest equality and security thru the adoption of false victimhood.

Saying I don’t believe in Allah doesn’t make me Islamophobic.

Adam - can i ask what is a “transfemale” - i’ve never heard of this?

Can you also say what your definition of transphobia actually covers? Same with your definition of “woman?” Really difficult to have conversations with folk if everyone is using wildly different meanings for the issues being discussed.

so can someone let me know if I've read these points correctly: Well, simplistically and ignoring most of the posts.

But your use of the term 'cis' gives you away! It's considered very poor form here! It may be that you won't get deleted purely by having posted it here in AIBU!

And yes, what is a trans-female?

If you mean transwoman, born male, 90ish% never having surgery, then the threat is the same as from any other born man. Which is why sex segregated facilities were 'invented' made law in the first place!

FFS. So, a choice of vocabulary by someone not involved in this arena undermines the point? I used cis because I thought it meant biologically female. If people have a problem with that phrase then tough. I used what I thought was right word for one thing and transfemale to describe something else. Picking at words here is just pedantry.
Still not read anything here that clarifies why an anti transphobia campaign is anti women.

Adam You aren't reading the room right!

cis has long been a term that is not used here because of how it is used by TRAs. The very least you could do is to accept that women don't like to be labelled as a sub section of woman just so some men can feel better about themselves. YOU don't get to police why women find the term unacceptable!

And that you don't know why some women find the anti transphobia banner to be anti women is because you either haven't listened to enough of those women or are simply dismissing their thoughts and feelings.

Pop over to the feminist boards, there are a couple of threads there for people who want to know why some women find the whole TRA campaign a threat to women's rights.

You don't see the problem in saying "suck it up Shirley. It is tough if you don't like the word cis which I am using to describe you" ?

Picking at words here is just pedantry. To elucidate a little. The whole point about transwomen is that they used to be men, or what else would they be wanting to trans from?

TRAs wish to have 2 types of women, transwomen and ciswomen. This is often explained as there needs to be a way of identifying non trans women. Many women would say there already is a word for that "women" and that attempting to add cis to that word is to render it null and void as a stand alone term. Backed up by the gleeful shout of "Enjoy your erasure" from some TRAs.

So your claim that semantics is inappropriate here is really missing the point!

Still not read anything here that clarifies why an anti transphobia campaign is anti women

Same, but hang around for long enough and you'll realise that lots of posters think trans are out to take over women - kind of like the "coming over here, taking our jobs" argument some have but in this case "coming into womenhood, taking over women"....
That'll be why some see it as anti women - daring to be trans in the first place is anti women for some.

What I said relating to the word cis is that as an outsider to this debate u don't know the terminology. If you do know the terminology and have a relationship with it, fine but it's tough if you expect every new comer to be immediately up to speed

Why do I want to know? Because the Scottish Government is Scottish, based in Scotland and represents the people that live in Scotland.

Apologies for my delay in replying. I had a meeting straight after work. A meeting to shape and grow services for people affected by sexual violence in Scotland. The majority of which are women.

You know, doing something proactive and much more useful than criticising a government that doesn't even represent me.

Tomorrow I'm taking part in an event for the 16 days of action, so I don't really have time to chat about the definition of 'woman', I'm too busy doing things to actually support women that need it.

But have fun in your attempt to take offence at something that wasn't even aimed at you, based on your lack of actual answer to my question.