And so it begins: Transwoman is running for women's officer of NUS

[PosieReturningParker]

Some of her aims:

Gender neutral sex ed
Women in leadership making room for transwomen (because you know how many women are in leadership roles)
BUS accepting transwomen to compete as women in sports

lionheart that should make biology and medical degrees interesting!

Yes, it should.

No idea who does the checking.

PenguinVox, I don't think we can get those points across really. The pertinent question would be what issues young women today feel affect them. Many of the things I have highlighted will seem like another world to students today.

Nonetheless, it is worth asking what would be the liberal approach to ensure equal opportunity and representation. Your 19th century liberals would have looked to the law.

Therefore, reflecting on it, there would need to be a clear argument which would be upheld in court that born women were being discriminated against, or denied access to a position or service or put off accessing a position or service because the rights of a trans* person were given more regard, or suitable provision was not in place for both groups to access separately.

The Equality Act should protect the rights of all groups - thus, the right of born women as well as trans* women - and these are not the same in some areas. It would need a few test cases to establish precedent.

It is all so depressing, and actually I am really angry at the deletions. There is a vast difference between bigotry or prejudice, e.g saying something negative about someone because they are a different race, and stating a fact that is somehow unpopular or unfashionable. Saying that someone with a functional penis and testicles is a man is basic biology, it isn't a "phobia" of any sort, it isn't insulting, it is the simple scientific truth. There is something horribly attention seeking and arrogant about all this. Here we have a man who thinks that because he wears "feminine" clothing and has long hair, he somehow is able to speak for all young women. That he is now in fact, a woman, with all that is entails. How patronising, how typically male. I think that the attention is a big part of it for so many transwomen, the longing for validation at any price. Any time he feels the need, he can simply revert back to being a man, with all the advantages of that sex. The rest of us women do not have that choice or luxury. 100 years ago women were not even able to vote. That is only one lifetime. And now young women are going to vote a man in as their women's officer? Is that Emmeline Pankhurst I hear revolving in her grave?
There is also a naivity and youth issue here. I am 52, and it is only since hitting my mid forties that I've fully been aware of how horrifyingly little progress we've made as women. How much men only listen to women while they are young. I am nice looking, I used to model, I'm tall with a typically "feminine" figure and I dress in a typically "feminine" way. I know now that if I was less conventionally attractive, if I wanted to live in lovely comfortable large shirts and jeans and fleeces, I would be listened to even less, patronised even more. It is absolutely fucking shocking. And I'm supposed to allow men into spaces that I consider solely female, female loos, female changing rooms, female hospital wards? And my 84 year old mother is supposed to accept this too? We fought so hard for the few rights we have. And now we are facing a situation where men yet again tell us what to do, what to think. Where they encroach on safe places that 100 years ago were women's by right. We are going backwards not forwards.

Applauds sirvix

I can't stop laughing at that video

How fucking deluded do you have to be to ok that for public release in connection with a comms position?

Student politics is a wasteland, clearly. Thank god for MN and the lived experience of women.

Hear hear SirVix.

YY SirVix

The video is laughable yes, it is so unbelievably incompetent that it looks like a wind up. So HOW is this happening? Have people lost the power of critical thought?
There is a strong sense from the male to female trans people that I've met, or who are in the public eye, that what they have is an extreme desire to fetishise femininity combined with a loathing of womanhood. There lurks a huge jealousy of women and their real child-bearing breast-feeding bleeding bodies, covering the same old deep hatred of women that so many men feel.

"Trans thought police" standing up to be counted here.

What a vile little thread. I have fresh sympathy for what my trans friends go through - the unselfconscious bigotry displayed here is just stunning.

For what it's worth to you I do indeed possess a biological vagina - but I don't feel terrified of women who are different than me.

Except , of course, they are not women , TheGoldenApples.

Goldenapples, I don't think many of us feel terrified of anyone in that way.

We might be terrified of a neo liberalist lobby which threatens our status and rights as women.

That's not the same thing.

Not terrified of anyone. Just affronted by the appropriation.

Not terrified, just not prepared to agree that someone who has lived 20 years a man should be free to speak for all women as a woman.

That election video has to be a joke, no? I have never seen one so ridiculous.

Goldenapples, stop patronising other women by assuming our serious political objections mean we are 'terrified'. If you want to disagree you are free to do so but reasoned arguments might get you further than insults.

Absolutely SirVix, but how do we counter this? How do we speak out when even on a predominately women's forum we are being deleted and silenced.

I've followed this discussion from the beginning, I have had trans friends and was always broadly pro-trans in respect that it's entirely up to a person how they wish to live their lives, without harassment or impediment as long as this does not impinge upon someone else's freedom - I've always followed a classic libertarian ideal, I'm a staunch believer in individual liberty and freedom, a traditional friend to those who are other, I couldn't give a shit what anyone chooses to do, or how anyone chooses to label themselves AS LONG AS IT DOES NOT IMPINGE UPON OTHERS.

And this is where we have become unstuck because an extremely vocal and aggressive ideology-driven group of men (and let's be honest, that's what it comes down to, trans-men, who have been biologically and socially women up to the point of transition are not the ones forcing this discussion, they're not the ones making death threats on Twitter or forcing themselves into women only spaces or DEMANDING in no uncertain terms that we accept them on their terms, and labelling us TERF and Cis), are forcing an ideology and shutting down debate, from women, they are shutting down women's voices as has happened for thousands of years.

Women's Officer?

The IOC says trans-woman can compete against women?

Trans-women can invade woman only spaces at will?

I call ALL the fucking bullshit, I call trojan horse and fucking men in trans-clothing pushing a male fucking agenda as men are wont to do. Same old bullshit.

Same old fucking bullshit.

More bigoted than thinking womenhood consists of wearing a dress and makeup? How come it's ok to define womanhood by that, but not by having a vagina?

And it's not 'women who are terrified of women different to them' who are the problem here - it is men who are terrified of men who are different to them who are.

GoldenApples I am stunned that you don't stand up for your own sex, but instead for someone who is trying to erase it.

GoldenApples, you dear, sweet girl, I'm frightened of no woman, have she a vagina or a cock, what I am frightened of is ideologues who push an agenda with no thought to the harm they are promulgating, just because it suits them.

It happens the world over and they are the ones who are frightened, they are the ones who love to shut down debate, be they misogynist trans-women , deranged fascists or maniacal religious loons (they all tend to be men btw - it's interesting in the US now that trans-women are muddying the waters when it comes to abortion and contraception - BECAUSE THEY DON'T FEEL INCLUDED IN THE CONVERSATION - boo-hoo, it's not your conversation, that's why - there are women in the US now that are being denied access to both of these, and trans-women feel they have to speak up because cis-centric language is being used in the debate - really, Really? Do I have to spell this out to you?)

Yes Hound. I totally agree. I feel the same. And WindyMiller.

Agree with others that it's awful.

I love MN for being open to debate about this. I'm not at all against anyone living their life as they see fit. I can't talk about it though. I work in a conservative industry, but I with policies that mean I can no-more be transphobic than use the 'n' word or be anti-gay. Of course I'm none of those things, but unfortunately my question is at the heart of trans identity and thus I cannot say e.g. 'I don't think Caitlyn Jenner is a woman in the same way I am.' without potential repercussion.

I find it utterly bizarre that I can't say the above, but I could argue against gay marriage or adoption (I wouldn't) and still be within policy. How the actual fuck have we got to the point where you can still object to two woman who love each other marrying, but you're beyond the pale if you point out that a man who wishes to be a woman but has not had surgery is not erm, a woman. World has gone completely fucking bonkers. I sincerely wish I could be more open on FB irl, as the 'allies' are doing my nut in.

Hang on. Aren't we always being told that associating menstruation with women is bioessentialist and transphobic? That menstruation, vaginas, childbirth etc are not markers of woman-ness. That they don't define womanhood (and to mention them is triggering and violence).

Because not all women menstruate and also men can menstruate too (trans men).

So surely the issue of menstruation doesn't fall under the remit of the Women's Officer at all. Isn't it exclusionary and discriminatory to men, women, non-binary, gender fluid etc individuals who may or may not also experience menstruation?

Tut, Anna Lee.

The trans agenda being pushed is that we erase the few privileges of womanhood, -our uteri, our abilty to bear children, women only spaces that protect women and girls, academic and sporting schemes set up to help and support women, housing schemes that are women only to help with women's safety- and accept that "some women have penises". That to talk of experiences unique to born women- periods, or menopause, our experiences of childbirth or miscarriage or breastfeeding , is transphobic and excluding of women who have penises and therefore can't do any of these things. This has implications for both the social safety and healthcare of women and girls. It is a huge step back for women.