Has the left now met the right, shaken hands with it then stuck 2 fingers up at the general population?

[Soloadventurer]

Womens rights are an area the globe seems to struggle with. Afghanistan has decided women must be covered head to toe, including hands, in thick black fabric and cannot be allowed near men. Australia has decided men must be allowed in women's spaces or face being taken to court for large sums of money, making it all but illegal now to have women only spaces there. Why does the world hate women so much?

I recommend listening to "Antisocial, Extreme Mysogeny" on BBC Sounds radio 4, broadcast yesterday. It was interesting, unfortunately I didn't hear all of it as I was in and out but I got the impression there was a lot of "what about men?", almost excuses

You might have a point if an ordinary guy found that the only local golf course was women only and claimed it was unfair and quoted equal rights activists

But I'm not convinced that men now demanding access to women's toilets, changing rooms and lesbian only spaces are related to that at all.

Remember if there was only one golf course you'd be losing out by being blocked from it.

But there are always men and women's toilets, changing rooms, sports and so on. We're not talking about taking anything away from men.

Excellent novel. It's basically about a society where women and girls are not allowed to speak more than 100 words a day and get severely punished if they do. These 2 above mentioned ideologies are all about silencing women. It's horrific how much women's rights seem to have gone backwards in recent years, all across the world.

I hadn’t seen that one. It is very apt.

Vox was quite a terrifying read, it's supposed to be a dystopian novel but I read it not long after it was released and at the time women were being banned from Twitter and arrested for acknowledging the material reality of biological sex so it didn't feel dystopian.

Exactly. Then a "senior book seller" at Waterstones announced they were going to tear up all her books. Women have been and are being silenced everywhere. It is just the methods of doing it that differ.

You are being disingenuous.

You can't say "the women did it so they can't complain when the men want to do it" and ignore that the reasons the women did it are totally different to the reasons the men want to do it.

Women wanted certain men-only jobs, spaces and practices to be open to them within the social context of men having greater social, economic and political power and using these spaces to network and influence power in ways that women were excluded from.

Men who want access to women-only resources aren't motivated by being excluded from powerful networks, they just want to see naked women or indulge a fantasy that they are women.

The root cause is not "the women did it", the root cause was the society stacked against women by men that made it necessary to prevent men excluding women is now enabling men to harass women.

Yes. It is the authoritarian and totalitarian nature of the extremes that is a major contributor to the issue here.

But it is not just the extremes now it has been adopted more broadly.

You see it with those who censure and berate others who refuse to use preferred pronouns, ‘cis’ and reject the harmful to women language they wish to impose. These are not extreme people, they are people who seem to believe that they are righteous though.

What has come about over the past few years but really reached a peak with the discussions with the two male boxers, is that the reasons that were used to pressure society to use these language changes are empty, bereft of anything but emotionally manipulative reasoning to get other people to support that person’s belief.

In fact, all it ever was was one group demanding that everyone in society support, as a collective, an individual’s personal choices.

When those personal choices caused others direct harm.

But what they had done, by using previous groups fights for equal opportunity where that group had been illegitimately discriminated against, was to make some people
who couldn’t see the difference think that their demands were righteous. When the truth is that the group demanded additional rights that negatively impacted those of other groups. What that group did was forced teaming and using another group’s rightful and legitimately recognised issues to leverage their own demands. Which should not have been legitimised where it negative impacts other groups rights.

You are confusing extremists with all men. Men outside of Islam have no interest in covering up women and hardly any want to access women's spaces. Men are disinterested in this stuff. As are most women outside the feminist trenches of MN.

I think there are various things going on. The trans/GC debate doesn't fit neatly of itself on a left right spectrum because it's identity politics v scientific reality. People on the far right were quicker to grab the GC cause though, out of an aversion to identity politics. But they have no interest in feminism or Women's Rights, it's about bashing "liberals" and using the trans delusion as lightening rod to say all liberal opinion is based on such nonsense. Or at worst, it's about protecting a sexist concept of women as mothers in a family led by a father.

On the left, starting with centre left liberals, movement towards a rejection of gender based ideology has been much slower (but is happening) because of "be kind" ideas, and a reluctance to repeat the historic mistakes of poor treatment of those in same sex relationships. This created a feeling that it was wrong to point out that as it goes, trans ideology is a case of the emperor wearing no clothes and everyone else feeling pressured to indulge the delusion for fear of ostracism for causing offence. However, the winds are changing in the UK, and the law is not following the same path here as it has in Australia. But there is a long way to go.

The problem with most men being disinterested in this stuff (and I agree with that point) is that they are not challenging men who DO want to control and abuse women.

Women cannot fight these battles entirely on their own. We all need to stand up for the type of society we want to foster.

You are confused about the point of the thread, it's about misogyny on both ends of the political spectrum not commentary on what all men believe.

OK let me change that for you. We should all have the freedom to be in a space where only our own sex can access. Either entirely or on a timed basis.

Which is why we have ended up where we are. We have a massive case of "I'm all right Jack" going on and have done for years. Women over on FWR have been sounding the alarm and being silenced by other women. On a site set up mainly for mothers.

You are woefully misinformed if you think that women outside of MN are not concerned about males accessing female single sex spaces.

You only need to look through YouGov polls, or most national, non targeted surveys to understand that once directly asked the question, women are concerned. Strange that you have missed this. Perhaps you need to talk to women more.

By a small number of men

Yes, when you have Gender Critical 'feminists' cosying up with anti-abortionists.

This is an argument about 'golf clubs' is used by men's rights activism and I have seen it used on MN before. Maybe even by the same poster with a new name.

This argument does not acknowledge the historical nature of 'men's clubs' and the business that was done there where female people were excluded which amounted to negative illegitimate discrimination. Those clubs were places of power for men to make business decisions and access networks. This resulted in women being excluded from those business opportunities and it meant that there was a power imbalance directly caused by these clubs excluding women.

Golf is a great example of this only so far as golf was used as a vehicle for these business opportunities to take place.

However, there is also the sports aspect of golf where female people cannot compete fairly with male people due to the differences coming from testosterone effects on the body. Meaning, that including a female in those groups for 'business opportunities' resulted in that woman being seen at a distinction disadvantage as she will take more shots and take longer to finish the course unless she is exceptional compared to the male golfers.

That again results in a power imbalance when considering it from an equality in business point of view.

Your points don't acknowledge the safeguarding issues associated with including any male adult in a female only space. Nor do your points acknowledge how some 'men's clubs' exploited female people for entertainment and even sexual activities.

There are legitimate and not legitimate reasons to discriminate against groups in society. Excluding women from what was being used as venues and events to conduct business was not legitimate because it negatively impacted on female people. Excluding women from a male only group such as the Men's Shed which is therapeutic as well as for socialising is legitimate.

Excluding female people from a private men's club so that those men can exploit female people for 'entertainment', are you here on MN arguing that this should be acceptable? If that private men's club was not a business venue, and had strict policies against the exploitation of female people and was only for social activities, then you could probably argue that there was legitimacy in the exclusion of female people.

Your points really seem to be regurgitating trope around 'the fallout from earlier Women's rights activism'? So much so that your points seem to be incoherent and just plain ill informed about legitimate and not legitimate discrimination and seem to support sexism and misogyny instead. Whether that was your intention or not.

The Islamophobia on display in this thread... tsk tsk.

Daddy Starmer and Mummy Balls Cooper are watching, you know.

Who specifically do you speak of when you say this is happening?

So? People are homogenous tribes who all think the same thing.

Gender is a societal construct. Anyone can identify as any gender they like nowadays. There's hundreds of them apparently.

Sex is immutable. There are only two sexes-male and female.

Sorry, people ARENT homogenous tribes who all think the same thing.

It's horrific how much women's rights seem to have gone backwards in recent years, all across the world.

Horrific that some women have not only supported this but actively promoted it, cheered it on, flung abuse and been party to shutting down and shunning the women who spoke up about what was/is happening.