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.

Can I ask ArcheryAnnie , Ehric and anyone else who cares to answer, how did you come to change your position on this?

TheXx I think the difference with that schooling is that he very quickly agreed to meet the people who schooled him to hear their concerns and work out how he could help improve BME voices being heard. With the trans issue he dismissed everyone, including respected journalists as bigots and transphobes without even reading what they had to say. If anything that make what he done even worse.

By the way, I get that my little rant at the end probably IS transphobic, but I don't think disagreeing with those 3 things is transphobic.

I do wonder, Hermoine, why some of these trains activists fight so hard to be acknowledged as something they so obviously despise. There's whole levels of self loathing and delusion in there that I don't want even to begin to unpick.

Flora, I have just come to realise that being female is a biological condition, so cannot be changed (outward markers can be mimicked through surgery and hormones but it doesn't change the basic biology) and being a woman is a culturally constructed condition. I just cannot accept that there is such a thing as a female brain, because it undermines everything I believe about gender and feminism, I think it's a pernicious concept and has been used to justify the most heinous subjugation of my sex.
If there is no female and male brain, then it stands to reason that the idea of biologically male but psychologically female is a flawed concept.
It's more than possible to alter physical markers of gender and adopt culturally constructed gendered behaviour, which means that you can live as the gender which doesn't conform to your biological sex. It's fine to believe that you would be much happier living as the opposite gender, and take steps to make that happen. I don't think it's wrong to do so, and I respect people's rights to do so if they feel it is necessary for their happiness. I will not deliberately mis gender anyone, regardless of their biological sex, and I acknowledge the existence of the state of being transgender as a psychological condition and belief system. But I don't believe that identifying as female makes you female. A penis is by definition male, and if we start saying that a female penis can exist we make the whole concept of female and women meaningless.

It's bonkers isn't it slug ? Feels like for some trans women that it's a whole new level of misogyny - like they think they can be better women than biological women?

It's hard to say how many trans women really and truly "pass", but I can only say that in my anecdotal experience, I've never met a trans women who wasn't obviously trans, but we politely go along with this lie because we get that being trans must be really hard, and we don't want to be hurtful or make life more difficult for a marginalised group, and then this shit happens.

Flora yes I noticed that too. He tried to brush it off at first but then took the criticism more seriously.

He ignored the criticism from rad FEMS then labeled them as terfs. He felt v v comfortable ignoring/insulting women.

Can I ask ArcheryAnnie , Ehric and anyone else who cares to answer, how did you come to change your position on this?

I came to this topic with the sense that trans people had a hard enough time and could be great allies with women against male violence and against punishing gender roles for women. I was in favour of transwoman having access to women's spaces and being imprisioned with women.

I felt that their burden is a heavy one and most likely, they just wanted to live quietly and peacefully as women, posing no threat but finding themselves threatened. I still think this is probably true of the vast majority of transwoman.

The obscenity of the cotton ceiling was the thing that made me look closer. It's disgusting and a non-trivial insult to lesbians, not just that, it's an attempt to remove a fundamental human right from them. I was shocked by it, by the perversity and violence of the concept.

That led me to read more about what they demand of all women, and I found that hard to process, too. It's an extension of the cotton ceiling, really, an attempt to overrule women's basic integrity where we can no longer discuss who and what we are, how and why oppression happens to us, a refusal if our biology, an attempt to force performed femininity on us as the defining act of womanhood.

Thanks for sharing. Hermione I saw your post before it was deleted and I agree with what you've said but not that it was transphobic.

I think a lot of us come at this in a similar way and I think a lot of people who go on about TERFs know this too. There seems to be an increasing trend of denying the humans are sexually dimorphic, including that arse Dr Christian. This is concerning for young people being taught not just that there is such a thing as a "gender identity" and it is the sole determining factor of womanhood but also that humans are on a spectrum of biological sex.

I'm guessing that someone reported it.....

It referred to Men in dresses
I think

Flora the thing that changed my mind was encountering the bizarre idea that people born and socialised as male were oppressed by people born and socialised as female, and thus females (whatever they identified as) were the oppressors. This is quite a recent idea, I think, and it's turned everything I considered upside-down.

I came out as a teen in the early 1980s. I remember being in a woman-only event which has getting a particularly heavy amount of abuse thrown at it, and someone who presented as male but was dressed as female visited us to offer solidarity. (I describe them like that because I have no idea how they identified, and I don't wish to be deleted. I knew quite a few people in the olden days who used the T-word to describe themselves - this is a slur, now, and denotes a specific identity, but then this would not have necessarily denoted the same thing.)

The reason I remember this particular instances out of so many LGBT events is that the contrast was particularly marked - all the women were in combat trousers, big boots, jeans, jumpers, many with cropped hair, nobody at all with makeup. This other person was in a long slinky dress, tights, full makeup and good shoes. And we were all together in solidarity - all of us would have been (and occasionally were) spat on in the street, had to be careful of getting a thump from a stranger. We had each others' backs. I cannot conceive of this person demanding that they stay, or even lead, our women only thing - it just would never have occurred to anyone present.

Now - from the extremist trans activists and allies there is no solidarity, only demands for subservience, and threats if we don't comply. They aren't my comrades and they aren't in the struggle with me - they've become part of the problem. They gaslight me as an oppressor, and demand with threats the spaces me and my sisters have spent many years carving out.

This is why I have been heartened so much for the solidarity from the growing crowd of gender-critical trans activists, who stand alongside me and mine, and we have each others' backs (without demanding we enroach on each others' space), in something like the way it was before. They are getting attacked, and we are getting attacked, and we support each other without all of us insisting our lives and needs are identical.

(And I am fine with anyone however they identify wearing whatever the hell they like, dresses or combats - but the circumstances of this particular event meant that the women attending did have to wear sturdy, practical clothing.)

As I understand it TheBlack tranvestism is something a "cis" man does i.e. he identifies as a man but wants to dress as a pornified version of a woman, so not related to gender ID. The distinction is in whether the person says they are a woman or a transvestite.

Don't know if anyone has been following the Planet Fitness story about the woman whose membership was revoked for complaining about a man in the changing room? It seems the person concerned is a transvestite (describes himself as male, has had no treatment for GID, doesn't live full time as a woman, posts on FB about strip bars and fetish activity). Apparently he wasn't even using the gym but was there with a friend and went into the locker room to hang up a bag .

Flora an increasing number of extreme trans activists, who ID as trans women, also spend time in what they call "boymode" - ie they present as male when it suits them, for professional purposes or whatever. But they still ID as trans women and demand access to women-only space, and would not describe themselves as transvestites.

(We are screwed coming AND going.)

This is very disturbing...

transgenderreality.com/2015/03/09/being-a-girl-is-like-playing-on-easy-mode-jealousy-of-women/

And yes Flora, the Planet Fitness thing is grim. There have been two previous incidents that make it even worse - 1) a woman who was kicked out of a Planet Fitness gym because her top had ridden up a little bit over her pregnant belly and the management said she was inappropriately dressed, and 2) a woman who was told she had to take her hijab off if she wanted to use the gym (I can post links to these stories if anyone wants them).

But transvestite wanting to use the women's changing room? Come on in!

AA yes, I've seen that too. In fact there is a vocal TA who is on the National Committee of Labour LGBT who works in male mode. That person was very vocal during the Rupert Read fiasco and it was never mentioned anywhere that they don't seem to live full time as a woman.

TheBlack you could have a third male-bodied person in a suit with a beard who may also be a woman, based on what they say they feel.