Men who parade how "feminist" they are but who can fuck right off...

[ArcheryAnnie]

...as they don't actually want to listen to women who disagree with them in any way.

I am not including common-or-garden arseholes here, as the list would be a billion posts long and the internet would explode. I am talking about the kind of man who writes a long, handwringing article in the Guardian about how we should all listen to feminists more, but then deletes most of the comments from actual feminists that are posted on it.

The two currently at the top of my very long List are:
Ally Fogg
Owen Jones

Nominations, please.

"Ally Fogg - Complete Skidmark"

TheBlackRider that's perfect, and I will never think now of AF without the -CS bit.

Owen Jones is currently pissing me off, first with his "I can't be homophobic - I'm a gay man!" (lesbians exist, you utter tool, and you are being homophobic towards them) and now his "if you don't agree with me then YOU'RE the real homphobe and all you women are acting just like straight men!"

Because gendered oppression doesn't exist and it's not possible for him to have any personal or structural privilege whatsoever.

Skidmark.

I am one of those women who thought OJ was a Good Thing, so encouraging to see someone so young be so clued up and progressive and well-read, blah blah.

I remember saying to a friend of mine that one of the reasons he's so good is because when he goes on Question Time or whatever, he's always done the reading. He's got the figures and facts at his fingertips and I suspect that that's because unlike your average white middle class straight bloke in the media, he's working class, gay and young and so knows he has to work harder than the privileged bastards who sit there spouting off expecting every ill-informed thing they say to be take seriously (and being taken seriously as well, no matter how unevidenced or plain downright incorrect their statements are).

But it all falls down when it comes to women doesn't it. He doesn't need to do the reading, he doesn't need to do the research, he doesn't need to be on top of his subject, because it's only women he's arguing with. And it's the most despised sector of women - radical feminists and/ or lesbians. So no need to put the effort in he has to with the people who matter. And no need to listen to us. So suddenly he turns into every other man we've ever encountered.

AskBasil I completely agree. It's striking the difference in his approach to this issue compared with other issues.

AskBasil I know. It's a real disappointment. He's now being deliberately goady on twitter, because he can. He's so fucking proud of it, too, all "look at me, being attacked by transphobes!"

When he's using "transphobe" to mean "women who think he's a misogynist", and when he's also calling trans women "transphobes". And when he clearly doesn't have a fucking clue how women are treated at all.

In case anyone missed it on the Glosswitch thread, her great take on this:

glosswatch.com/2015/03/04/from-thinking-like-rapists-to-thinking-like-homophobes-a-feminist-backlash-update/

Kim listening to trans* voices is important, of course it is. However, so is listening to lesbian voices, don't you agree? And when lesbians tell a certain type of man that something is happening, he could perhaps listen, instead of yelling TERF and sticking his fingers in his ears.

Are you suggesting that one of the least privileged groups in society, lesbians, are as llikely to be listened to when they "splain", that their voices are as loud and as powerful as those of white men mansplaining Kim?

There's a reason Owen Jones is not listening to lesbian women. And to radical feminists. It's to do with power. There's a reason he doesn't feel it necessary to properly inform himself as to what's going on in the debate the way he does on every other subject he ever weighs in on.

It's only women. And only lesbian women at that. They can splain as much as they like, he can't hear their voices because he doesn't have to.

Interesting to hear women being mansplained at makes you laugh Kim

I find it extraordinary that women talking about feminism and women's experience could be described as splaining.

Really demonstrates the degree to which women have been shut out of discussing what either feminism or being a woman means.

I don't think most feminists are 'transplaining' - they are rejecting a definition of women from a group of radical trans activist women, and they've got a right to do that (I think this group is not representative of the whole trans community but they shout the loudest and are having real political impact)

These activists say that being a woman has nothing to do with the biological body you are born with, your experience going through life in that body and your socialization from birth as a girl. What's left is a 'feeling' - if I feel I'm a woman, I'm a woman. That's incredibly offensive, everything about being a woman is erased except the 'pink brain' - which is a myth, but one which has historically always been used to keep women down.

There are no trans men saying 'I am a real man,' assuming the right to enter men-only spaces and demanding that gay men have sex with them. That sense of entitlement is only coming from a group of trans women - those that are biologically men and have been socialized as boys.

The denial of biology has lead to 'penis isn't male' and 'FGM is a cissexist term' and other beliefs which are so ridiculous they'd make you laugh if it weren't for the fact that they are being taken seriously by everyone who doesn't want to be called a TERF.

There are plenty of trans women who reject the trans activists' claims too, some of whom challenged Owen Jones and were lumped together with the rest of us as 'transphobes.'

To deny women's lived reality and erase our biology (and history of persecution because of that biology) is sexist and misogynistic. One oppressed group can't stamp on another oppressed group in order to elevate themselves. I'm not surprised the rad fems are angry.

But surely that goes without saying? We're all a bundle of our own particular privileges and lack of privileges and may have both been splained at and splained in our time.

My post was to Kim and the comment about 'irony'.

"It's called irony.

Feminists complain about mansplaining.
Feminists are just as capable of "splaining" as other people."

You are ignoring the power issue there.

Men who mansplain are listened to and taken seriously and respected.
Feminists who "splain" as you refer to it (or attempt to assert boundaries/ describe our lived experience which is routinely erased from societal recognition) are mocked and dismissed.

Imagining that there is some sort of parity, implies an unawareness of the power differentials between female voices and male voices, between women and men.

Well said Stephanie, that sums the issue up perfectly.

What Stephanie said

Kim: "They have every right to discuss trans issues and how they affect them. But not to explain to me what trans people should do"

I have to part company with you on the second one. Suppose I am at a women's college (as I was 30 years ago). Suppose I am aware of the proud history of such institutions in making higher education available to women (remember, Cambridge didn't start awarding women full degrees until the 1940s). Moving from history to the current day, suppose I'm aware of the low numbers of women studying STEM subjects, and the little oasis my college provides in giving women a chance to do that free from stereotypes and surrounded by positive female role models. Now suppose I'm also aware of the way women's sexuality and bodies have traditionally been demeaned and demonised, and the way the "worst obscenity in the English language" is a slang word for vagina. And I am interested in challenging that and reclaiming the word. So I want to put on a performance of the Vagina Monologues. And a trans person who also happens to be a trans activist campaigns (successfully) to prevent me doing it on the grounds that to do so would be cis-sexist (sic.). Why am I not allowed to say "you should not do that?"

Ditto campaigns to erase women's experience by removing the word "female" from female genital mutilation, trivialising the ongoing erosion of women's reproductive rights in the US by insisting that the single most important thing we must do is insist that abortion clinics' leaflets talk about pregnant persons (newsflash: republican misogynists are not being transphobic when they try to restrict access to abortion to the extent that they have all but banned it in several states).

I do have ever right to stand up and say to the trans activist "you should not be doing that" - because what they are doing (not feeling) is directly impinging on my rights.