Webchat with Laura Bates, founder of the Everyday Sexism Project and author of Men Who Hate Women, Tuesday 8 September at 12pm

[BojanaMumsnet]

Hello

We’re pleased to announce a webchat with Laura Bates who has just published her latest book, Men Who Hate Women, after going undercover to expose misogynist networks and communities, from incels to pickup artists to men’s rights activists. The book includes interviews with former members of these communities, the academics studying this movement and the men fighting back.

Laura is the founder of the Everyday Sexism Project and author of Everyday Sexism, The Sunday Times bestseller Girl Up, Misogynation and The Burning. Laura writes regularly for The Guardian and the New York Times amongst others. She also works closely with politicians, businesses, schools, police forces and organisations from the Council of Europe to the United Nations to tackle gender inequality. Laura is a contributor at Women Under Siege, a New York-based project tackling rape in conflict worldwide and she is patron of SARSAS, Somerset and Avon Rape and Sexual Abuse Support. She was awarded a British Empire Medal for services to gender equality in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list 2015.

Laura will be joining us live tomorrow, Tuesday 8 September from 12pm for an hour. If you can’t join us then, please do post your question here in advance.

As always, please remember our webchat guidelines - one question per user, follow-ups only if there’s time and most questions have been answered, and please keep it civil. Also if one topic is dominating a thread, mods might request that people don't continue to post what's effectively the same question or point. (We may suspend the accounts of anyone who continues after we've posted to ask people to stop, so please take note.) Rest assured we will ALWAYS let the guest know that it's an area of concern to multiple users and will encourage them to engage with those questions.

Many thanks,
MNHQ

Hi Laura,

I hadn't heard of incels before I read your book. It feels like more awareness would be a positive! Do you think including the manosphere in school curriculum would be a positive move?

While it's not in the general consciousness, can you suggest age appropriate ways for parents to have this conversation with (late) primary school kids?

Finally, thank you for bringing to our attention something so important!

Hello Laura, thank you for coming on & congratulations on your book.

I find the scale of misogyny demoralising and depressing - and as a parent of an 8yo DD I'm dreading the teenage years and what she may endure. I also have a 5yo DS and I worry about what kind of teenage boy he will become, as my influence will only stretch so far! My question is do you think there is any realistic hope of change and if so, how can this come about?

Why do you think women are oppressed by men? What is it about us that makes us a target for male hatred? Is it about the way we dress? The things we say? How feminine or masculine we are? Or is there another reason?

Why does everyone seem to ignore the fact Twitter allows huge amounts of women-hating comments, porn, “MAP” 🤮, but women are banned or suspended easily for speaking up for women’s rights? Would the world be better off without Twitter or does it shine sunlight on misogyny?

Have you been contacted by the estate of Stieg Larsson over the title, and will it be called The Girl With the Dragon Tatoo when it’s translated into Swedish?

*Tattoo

Hi Laura

What do you think about the debate around seeing porn and sex work as empowering to women - they can own their sexuality and warn money. Vs that it further enables men to see women as sex objects and doesn't do anything to create equality. I personally feel conflicted. I'd love to know what you think.
Xx

How does this web chat work ?
Does this page just start up with Laura on it or do i need to go somewhere else ???

@Thesuzle

How does this web chat work ? Does this page just start up with Laura on it or do i need to go somewhere else ???

Hi @Thesuzle,

You're in the right place - Laura will start posting on this discussion in a few minutes.

Ta

Hi everyone, I’m so excited to be here, thanks so much for having me, and for all these brilliant and insightful questions. I’ll do my very best to answer as many as I can, but apologies in advance if I don’t manage to get to your question.

@AlwaysTawnyOwl

Hi Laura

Why do some men hate women so much?

Hi @alwaystawnyowl

I think that at the root of most hatred is fear. We live in a world where extremist groups, aided and abetted by the media, have very effectively spread the idea that feminism means hating men, that toxic masculinity means toxic men, that fighting for women means taking something away from men. The President of the United States has said it’s “a very scary time to be a young man in America.” The Today program has asked if #MeToo is a “witch hunt”. There’s so much misinformation and I think that stokes fear and division.

For this book, I started replying to some of the hundreds of men who send me regular and detailed rape and death threats. And one of them (who’d written about raping me with a piece of furniture), went into great detail about how he longed for a return to a world where ‘men were men and women were women’ and at the root of it, it seemed like he was scared that the clear role he thought he had to occupy in life seemed to be disappearing. I think that when you’ve been raised to believe that you have to perform being a man in a certain, restrictive, hyper masculine, aggressive, powerful way, which relies on subjugating and controlling women, the idea of women becoming empowered or emancipated is terrifying as it threatens your idea of your own place in the world.

What’s incredibly frustrating is that so many of the men who end up turning to ‘manosphere’ communities are themselves deeply scarred and affected by these toxic, unachievable gender stereotypes. The ones feminists are fighting against. So really, we should all be on the same side! But the manosphere and its leading ‘gurus’ fight to the death to preserve outdated gender stereotypes. They are very much their own worst enemy.

@PacificState

Hi Laura

This is such an interesting topic.

I've got two teenage sons and I'm also a single mother. I read somewhere ages ago that having a single mother who is also a vocal feminist could be a factor in boys becoming radicalised misogynists so I've always dialled my feminism down when talking to them. Did that factor come up anywhere in your research?

Second but related question: I've observed that from my sons' points of view, they're sort of passive recipients of a lot of broadly feminist messaging (lots of 'girls in STEM', Me Too, feminist student societies etc) but in their day to day lives they're seeing girls who tend to do better than boys academically, often being more articulate and more emotionally aware, often frankly being a lot more grown up. So in their lived experience, girls are successful and quite powerful compared with boys of the same age, and are also spoken about as being discriminated against. Did this slightly confusing perspective come up in your research? My impression is that it can contribute to the disaffection of some young men, and that taking on some of the points made by people like Jordan Peterson, about how very young men need quite a lot of compassion and understanding, might help.

I'm aware I'm beginning to sound like an incel myself I'm not, honest! Full-bore Germaine Greer fan personally. But having teenage boys has been really interesting and has made me question whether seeing everything through a feminist-first perspective is necessarily constructive when you're trying to raise compassionate, thoughtful young men.

Hi @PacificState

No I haven’t come across any research suggesting that a vocal feminist Mum could radicalise boys in the other direction – in fact, all my research has pointed to the fact that feminist parents who talk openly and compassionately with their sons about gender issues and sexism can really help them to respond with a more critical lens when they encounter sexist propaganda online. So don’t be afraid to talk to them about it, you’re probably doing them a world of good already!

I think your comments about teenage boys are so true and the clash between what they’re seeing in the media about feminism and sexism (particularly given the media’s tendency to distort feminism for clickbait controversy) and their perception of their own ‘privilege’ or lack thereof can create a real tension. I agree that compassion and empathy are such an important starting point for these conversations. We have to be pragmatic about what is most likely to get through to people and starting from a point of listening to them openly and not alienating them is important. I think the manosphere, from incels to MRAs are very good at making teenage boys feel heard, respected and safe, and if we want to compete with their propaganda we have to be able to do that in our conversations too.

In the book, I speak to Ben Hurst of the Good Lad Initiative who has some great tips about starting conversations with boys without shutting them down or automatically telling them they’re wrong. He suggests trying to get to the fear that is at the root of what they’re saying; for example, if they’re parroting harmful manosphere stuff about false rape accusations, what they’re really worried about is whether something like that could happen to them. He suggests taking their statements at face value and then gently exploring them together, using real statistics, to let them decide for themselves whether or not they stand up to scrutiny, instead of simply dismissing them out of hand, which risks playing right into the hands of the incels’ victim-centred approach.

In fact, getting Ben or another Good Lad facilitator in to speak to young people at school is a really powerful way to counter some of this stuff in my opinion, he is fantastic.

Another big feminist issue for me is women being repeatedly ignored by medical professionals. Whether that's over birth /rights and preferences, having pain dismissed, lack of menopausal support or mental health issues being 'just anxiety'. There's also an intersectional issue with this too as black women are more at risk during birth for example. Many medical professionals still think black people have a higher pain threshold. Working class women may feel less able to advocate for themselves etc. This can come from female as well as male medical professionals. I'd be interested to hear your take on this an what we can do about it.

I think that when you’ve been raised to believe that you have to perform being a man in a certain, restrictive, hyper masculine, aggressive, powerful way, which relies on subjugating and controlling women, the idea of women becoming empowered or emancipated is terrifying as it threatens your idea of your own place in the world.

I think this is true. And it also goes into the workplace etc where we see men realising that they now have to compete with the entire population, not just half. So it feels like they're really losing out.

@TorchesTorches

Hi Laura, what started you down the gender equality path? Any particular personal experience?

Hi @torchestorches

I started the Everyday Sexism Project in 2012 after a particularly awful week in which I was sexually assaulted on the bus (and everyone around me looked out of the window, even when I said out loud what was happening), I was followed home by a man sexually propositioning me and walked past two men who graphically and loudly discussed my breasts. At the end of the week, I was thinking about all the incidents and it suddenly struck me that if they hadn’t all occurred so close together I probably wouldn’t even have thought twice about any one of them. It made me wonder why! Why was I so used to harassment and abuse that I almost didn’t notice it any more? Why didn’t I tell anyone about what had happened? Why had this become simply part of my life?

So I started talking to other women, expecting a few of them to have similar stories to tell, and I was completely overwhelmed by the sheer number and scale of their experiences. It wasn’t a few women, it was every single woman or girl I spoke to. But when I started talking about ‘sexism’, people dismissed me and told me sexism didn’t exist any more, and ‘women are equal now’. When I looked at the statistics, on everything from female representation in parliament and business to STEM, to the arts, to the treatment of women in the media, to domestic violence and sexual violence statistics, it became clear that the idea women are equal now belied the reality, but it was a very common refrain. So I wanted to provide a space to hold and believe women’s testimonies, to give them the catharsis of being heard and feeling less alone. But I also wanted to open people’s eyes to what seemed an invisible problem. I thought if 100 people shared their stories, it would be harder to dismiss us, to tell us sexism didn’t exist, that we were overreacting or making it up or needed to learn to ‘take a compliment’. Instead, hundreds of thousands of people shared their stories and the project became a worldwide movement.

@nosswith

Hello Laura.

I am a man. Thank you for making me more aware of everyday sexism than I was before you started your project.

Do you think the things you are campaigning for and highlighting are made more difficult in the current climate of a Prime Minister who seems to have the least respect for women of any in living memory?

Hi @nosswith

Yes, I’m concerned about the decisions being made by a government which seems to have very few women’s voices in decision making rooms, and one which is led by a man who has made a vast catalogue of sexist and racist statements in the past. Looking at the Coronavirus response is a good microcosm of this I think – we barely ever saw a single woman giving the daily briefings, and from what we know of the groups assembled to tackle the crisis, they were male dominated. As with any decision-making group, this has been reflected in the choices and decisions they have made. After lockdown was imposed it took the government over 2 weeks to announce a domestic violence campaign, for example, suggesting that rather than this being a proactive part of their planning, the potentially devastating impact of lockdown on domestic abuse victims only occurred to them afterwards, when pointed out by advocacy groups and charities. Yes, they reacted at that point with funding and an awareness campaign, but in that 19 day gap, 11 women, 2 children and 1 man had already been killed in suspected domestic abuse cases. (Source: www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53781734)

To give another example, when the government announced that those who had been working from home were expected to get back to work, there was no corresponding concrete plan whatsoever to tackle the fact that there is still vastly less childcare available than would normally be in place, from before and after school clubs to holiday schemes to nurseries and child minders. The closest the government came to addressing this was when Boris Johnson airily said he was “sure employers will agree” to be reasonable if people were unable to come back to work immediately. And of course we know his confidence in employers is misplaced – women were 50% more likely to lose their jobs or quit during lockdown and we already know that 54,000 women a year lose their jobs due to maternity discrimination. I’m really concerned that we are teetering on the brink of a huge rollback of progress in gender equality and this government seems to be presiding over it either without noticing or without caring.

It is only going to get worse through the winter, with the testing system (particularly for those who can’t access drive through tests) often taking over a week for results to come back in my experience and that of dozens of other stories I’ve heard. Young children frequently get spikes in temperature, particularly through the winter, while teething or for a million other reasons. As it stands at the moment millions of parents are going to be stuck at home for repeated lengthy periods (and we know that women tend to take the brunt of this childcare responsibility and the impact on careers.) Do we think employers will still “agree” to support them?

The problem is localised too- in my local area, after the green light for reopening of pubs and playgrounds was announced by the government on the same day, pubs were open again at 6am the following morning, but it took over three weeks for my local authority to open playgrounds, despite the massive impact lockdown had had on child and maternal mental health.

Finally there are other examples where gender clearly hasn’t fed into the decision making process at all- the A level results fiasco being a clear example. Results were based in part on teacher predictions, yet there was no mention of gender bias in the guidance. But we know from repeated international studies that teachers tend to mark girls down and boys up in subjects like maths and science because of gender stereotypes ( www.nber.org/papers/w20909 ). This has been shown to have long term impact on career choices and prospects.

The thing that is most frustrating about all this is that there seems to be barely any coverage of these issues in the mainstream press, and subsequently little pressure on the government to address them.

Phew! It feels good to get that off my chest!

@Plussizejumpsuit

Another big feminist issue for me is women being repeatedly ignored by medical professionals. Whether that's over birth /rights and preferences, having pain dismissed, lack of menopausal support or mental health issues being 'just anxiety'. There's also an intersectional issue with this too as black women are more at risk during birth for example. Many medical professionals still think black people have a higher pain threshold. Working class women may feel less able to advocate for themselves etc. This can come from female as well as male medical professionals. I'd be interested to hear your take on this an what we can do about it.

Hi @Plussizejumpsuit

Yes absolutely, I couldn't agree more. We see SO many reports of this on Everyday Sexism. Women with endometriosis who have been fobbed off for decades by doctors telling them they're overreacting about period pain, teenage girls pushed around on contraception by medical professionals making assumptions about their sex lives and perceived 'promiscuity'. And so important to raise the issue about different birth outcomes and risks for black women - Candice Brathwaite's new book is excellent on this - we still have a very long way to go in tackling implicit and explicit bias in medicine

@whataboutbob

Hi Laura, no question, I just wanted to say well done for this necessary work which must be very gruelling at times. I always knew there’s a subculture of men out there who fear and hate women. Back in pre internet days it was often expressed by defacing posters with female models, scribbling out the eyes, drawing an erect penis going into the mouth or a knife into the neck etc. Like the PP I bring my boys up questioning any misogynistic views they express or repeat. That’s got to be better than keeping quiet.

Hi @whataboutbob

Thank you for your support and for what you are doing to bring up your boys to challenge sexism. It’s so important and really will make a wider difference.

@TheChristmasPrincess

Hi Laura,

Why do you think the words feminism/feminist have such negative connotations around them and do you think this negativity is increasing or decreasing?

Hi @TheChristmasPrincess

I think the negativity around feminism is due to a deliberate and concerted campaign to spread myths and misinformation about the movement (mostly by those with a vested interest in protecting the status quo.) It comes in part from extreme misogynistic groups online and in Men Who Hate Women I trace how the ideologies of these groups have very effectively spread offline, through semi-respectable intermediaries, to pop up in schools, in politics and in workplaces. It doesn’t help that the media is obsessed with painting feminists either as ‘Feminazis’ (on the tabloid front pages) or as a few whining, pearl-clutching wimmin, in order to attract clickbait and controversy. It’s rare for me to get a press opportunity to discuss rape conviction rates, workplace harassment, period poverty or the detention of refugee women, for example, but my inbox is filled daily with requests like these (real examples):

‘Hi Laura, would you like to come on tomorrow to debate wolf-whistling?’

‘Looking to set up a discussion [about whether] the #MeToo movement has gone “too far”’

‘Do you think that a sign saying “Men Working” is sexist? If so, would you be interested in putting that view forward in the debate?’

‘I am looking for a comment from yourselves . . . regarding Kleenex ditching the “mansize” branding from their boxes . . . about why the branding was sexist’

‘We will be debating: are women destroying feminism?’ ‘Has feminism gone too far? TV interview’

‘Could we entice you on to discuss man flu: fact or fiction?’

In terms of whether this negativity is increasing or decreasing I’d say it’s strangely sort of doing both at the same time. I think the level of vitriol against feminism and the hate campaign against women online is really stepping up a gear, and becoming extremely effective in its grooming and radicalisation tactics when it comes to young boys, which is why I thought it was important to write this book, to lift the lid on it. But I also think in other ways things are improving – we’re seeing a far greater number of male role models, for example, talking openly and clearly about feminism and what it means (Barack Obama, Andy Murray, Matt McGorry, Jordan Stephens, David Schwimmer etc etc)

@TBHno

Hi Laura,

Thanks for coming on.

What practical things can we (as feminists, as mothers, as women) do to combat everyday sexism (particularly misogyny). The problem itself is so large that I often feel overwhelmed by the scale and hopelessness of it, so I'm hoping you have some ideas of what simple, easily-implementable, things that we can do.

Hi @TBHno

That’s a great question and I really understand that feeling of overwhelm. IMO it comes partly from feeling that we as individual women are responsible for fixing the problem, when in reality we need to see individual men stepping up and playing their part in tackling normalised sexism in our culture, and we need to see governments and organisations taking responsible for tackling the structural, systemic ways in which gender inequality is ingrained in our society in a way individual victims cannot be held responsible for changing.

Having said that, I do think there are small, every day things each of us can do: talking to our children regularly, openly and often about gender stereotypes and sexism; pointing it out in the media, challenging it in the media they consume and the clothes and toys they encounter, giving them the tools to analyse it critically when they encounter it instead of internalising it. In our workplaces, friendship groups and daily lives, we can all play a role in helping to tackle the normalisation of sexism by challenging it when we see it, whether it’s reporting the sexual harassment we see on the bus, standing by a colleague who feels unable to challenge it alone in the workplace, or supporting a friend who has been blamed for her own assault.

I know that these actions can feel small and insignificant, but I really believe it is only by each of us making these small ripples in our own pond that we will be able to create a global tidal wave. I like to think of it as very similar to climate change and global warming – turning off your own lights and taking your bike instead of driving and recycling your milk cartons might feel minor, but if everybody in the world did it the difference would be enormous. So we keep chipping away, together, and at the same time we put all the pressure we can muster on the people at the top with the power to make bigger, systemic changes as well.

Yes, I’m concerned about the decisions being made by a government which seems to have very few women’s voices in decision making rooms

It’s extremely frustrating that all other parties essentially made it impossible for feminists to vote for them by telling us that they didn’t want support from anyone who believed that sex was more important than gender, and that it was impossible to change sex.

@WeeBisom

Hi Laura. There's a strong connection between misogyny and terror attacks and violence in general. Do you think there should be any specific legal solutions to target this, like hate crime legislation?

Hi @WeeBisom

Thank you for raising this! YES, it’s a massive and under-realised issue, and the connection between misogyny, domestic violence and terror attacks is one I investigate at length in the book. This isn’t a new idea – feminists have been shouting about it for many years, but it still absurdly fails to gain traction amongst those with the power to really tackle these issues, mainly, I believe, because violence against women and girls is so normalised that we simply don’t recognise it as a red flag.
A 2019 investigation revealed that, in at least 22 mass shootings since 2011, the perpetrators had a history of domestic violence, had specifically targeted women, or had stalked and harassed women. Those twenty-two shootings accounted for more than a third of the public mass shootings that took place during that eight-year period.
And, when gun-control campaign group Everytown for Gun Safety analysed FBI data on mass shootings in the USA between 2009 and 2015, it found that, in at least 54 per cent of mass shootings, the victims included an intimate partner or family member of the perpetrator.
In terms of specific solutions for this I think they are:

1. Make misogyny a hate crime. It’s absurd that this isn’t already the case, it wouldn’t create new crimes, but would allow us to track and monitor the problem far more effectively.
2. Record and track domestic violence properly. The fact that Karen Ingala Smith has had to maintain her own record of Dead Women killed by men in the UK for the past several years because the UK government simply doesn’t do it is a disgrace. These women are canaries singing in coal mines going completely ignored. Their deaths are just part of the wallpaper. It’s outrageous.
3. It is incredible even to have to say this but a man who has committed domestic violence, stalking or other forms of abuse, should not be allowed access to fire arms in the US and elsewhere. This one measure alone could have prevented a huge number of mass shooting attacks.

@ArabellaScott

Hi, Laura.

Thanks for your work. The book looks really interesting.

I wanted to ask how you think we can best protect our children from this - I've raised my son to be respectful and aware, but is there a way to help girls identify men like this and avoid them? (I am very aware of the idea that we shouldn't put the focus & responsibility on women and girls' behaviour, but to be honest, I will do what I can to ensure my daughter stays safe.)

Many thanks!

Hi @ArabellaScott I think there are a number of ways we can protect young people; and I definitely think we should be educating boys and trying to inoculate them against these extreme misogynistic ideas they may encounter online. We need to start these conversations young, and proactively, as it is much easier to prevent than it is to try and disentangle those who have already been radicalised later on. This means both tackling issues about gender, stereotypes, sexual consent and respect, but also helping young people to have a critical response to what they read online and teaching them about biased sources and forming their own opinions, not just trusting everything they see in a viral YouTube video. I understand your concern about teaching girls and I do think there are things we can do to prepare girls for encountering this kind of extremist misogyny without victim blaming or being overly alarmist. Having open conversations about this kind of content and the fact that it exists, and making sure girls know they can always communicate openly with parents about anything that is happening at school is really important. Too often, school sexual harassment and sexism are shrouded in shame, secrecy and stigma, and it’s vital we let girls know that if these things happen they aren’t OK, or normal, they can be tackled and girls aren’t to blame. It’s also worth having a chat with girls about some of the manosphere myths they could come across; like the idea that false rape allegations are rife, or the gender pay gap is a myth, and even some red flag terms to look out for (if a boy is talking about ‘normies’, being ‘redpilled, bluepilled or blackpilled’, describing people as ‘triggered’, ‘butthurt’ or ‘snowflakes’ or talking about ‘feminazis’, these are all indicators he may have been in contact with extremist material online). A lot of girls have asked me for ‘comebacks’ or ‘what to say’ to specific sexist comments and arguments they most commonly hear from boys at school and I include a whole index of these in my book Girl Up, which is a kind of survival guide for girls navigating everything from sexism to body image to career choices. A lot of the girls I’ve met in UK schools who have been up against extreme sexism at school have felt very lonely and isolated. They begin to feel that they’re alone in facing these issues and that they simply have to put up with it. I’ve found that connecting girls to the feminist movement, via online spaces like Amy Poehler’s Smart Girls, Teen Vogue, Scarleteen, Rookie, Shameless magazine, Galdem and others can help them feel empowered and less alone.

@Macbooksdontwork

Hi Laura,

I'm really looking forward to reading your replies. I wanted to ask if you've spoken to any social media companies about men who hate women and what their response was? Also, do you have any ideas about what could be done in terms of moderation to tackle this on platforms? Thank you!

Hi @macbooksdontwork In my experience, social media companies are not doing nearly enough to tackle the use of their platforms to harass and abuse women, both by members of these extremist misogynistic communities and more widely. Social media platforms repeatedly throw their hands in the air and suggest that it’s simply almost impossible to police a platform with so many millions of users, that they do their best and that algorithms which they use to detect illegal content are fallible. But these excuses are pretty pathetic when you remember many of these companies have incomes greater than some small countries. Of course they have enough money to tackle this properly if they wanted to – they could easily afford to hire tens of thousands of human moderators tomorrow and properly train them, in cooperation with civil society organisations. They are building their billions on the backs of their users and they have a responsibility to keep those users safe – at the moment, they’re simply not doing enough. I think we need to see social media companies held to account when they are hosting high profile ‘leading lights’ of extremist movements, who are actively inciting hatred and violence against women. But we also need to see them reconsider guidelines which routinely see women expelled for posting period or mastectomy pictures while women who report content inciting rape or glorifying domestic abuse are repeatedly told such posts are not violations of community guidelines. (Totally agree with you on this, @notbadconsidering)

A number of you have asked questions about feminism and inclusion of other groups, including trans women, so I’m going to answer that here and hope it addresses all of those questions. This is a really big question and one that truly deserves a whole separate webchat; I’m not going to be able to go into it in the depth and complexity it deserves but I’m going to try to give a brief and hopefully useful response about my position.
There is a broad and flourishing, diverse feminist movement in the UK and globally, tackling everything from period poverty to domestic abuse to media sexism. I don’t agree that the inclusion of trans women and their struggles in that fight somehow diminishes it or does harm to women’s rights more widely. I believe it’s important to recognise the complexity of oppression, and that black women, for example, or disabled women, or older women, face different and specific forms of abuse and inequality as a result of their intersecting identities.
This has really been made clear to me by the Everyday Sexism Project entries we receive, where you can see in people’s lived experiences how these different forms of prejudice overlap. We might hear from a black woman who has been asked for directions to the toilet by a white man attending a conference where she is due to present the keynote speech. A disabled woman asked to do a pole dance around her walking stick. Older women who again and again use the word “invisible” in their project entries. Clearly building these intersections into the movement is vital in order to move forward. How can we create a comprehensive plan to tackle the fact that one in four women in the UK experience domestic violence unless we build into its foundation an awareness of the fact that that number increases to 1 in 2 for disabled women?
I think that many aspects of the struggles for trans rights and women’s rights are portrayed as mutually exclusive or in direct opposition to each other and I don’t believe this is true. I believe that we are allies in our opposition to gender essentialism, gender stereotyping and male violence.
I believe that we have all experienced a vast variety of different forms of prejudice and abuse, with diverse women having a wide range of different experiences, and that the fact that not all trans women are perceived to have experienced childhood sexism in the same way in no way disqualifies them from inclusion in the feminist movement.
I don’t believe it is impossible to acknowledge, include and fight for trans women to live full, safe, respected lives, and also continue to oppose marginalisation, discrimination and abuse against women as a result of specific issues relating to biology like pregnancy discrimination. Yes, this is complex. But that does not mean it is insurmountable.
I believe that all women deserve dignity and safety, particularly in sexual violence service provision. I think it is important to note, for example, that all women’s frontline sexual and domestic violence services that receive Scottish Government funding have been trans inclusive for over 6 years, and that this has not resulted in a single incident of concern or challenge, according to those organisations. (Source: www.engender.org.uk/news/blog/frequently-asked-questions-womens-equality-and-the-gender-recognition-act/).

Of course I believe that we should do everything in our power to make all women and girls safe, and that anybody who accesses certain spaces with the purpose of assaulting or otherwise abusing them should be punished to the fullest extent. I don’t believe that an entire law-abiding community should be punished or have their rights curtailed because of an individual who chooses to commit a crime like this, thousands of whom exist and operate and will continue to do so regardless of access rule changes.

I hope this is helpful and I realise that there is far more to say than I’m able to here.