Danielle Muscato

[feminazi]

So, Muscato has been all over the media the past week after having a Twitter rant at Trump. Muscato was praised for being a vocal female activist...

All MSM is reporting this story in the same way, ignoring the elephant in the room...

[todayitstarts]

It's pretty eyepopping stuff Beach

What was the response from the board?

[qwerty232]

I guess what I'm trying to say is that in opposing the trans community and taking a 'woman centric position', many feminists these days are in opposition to the tenets of earlier radical feminists. Traditionally, radical feminists aimed to dismantle gender dichotomies.

It was Dworkin who stated:

"Work with transsexuals, and studies of formation of gender identity in children provide basic information which challenges the notion that there are two discrete biological sexes. That information threatens to transform the traditional biology of sex difference into the radical biology of sex similarity… Every transsexual is entitled to a sex-change operation, and it should be provided by the community as one of its functions."

As far I am aware, this was a view broadly shared by Mackinnon and Steinem.

But now many feminists seem to dislike the idea of a world that isn't immutably gendered. Some are quite crypto-reactionary - crypto-patriarchal even - suggesting that male sexual violence is a result of biological factors like testosterone levels. That seems like a curious turn for feminism to have taken.

Maybe internet platforms are partly responsible. Political debate has been factionalised into fiercely adversarial ideological tribes maintained by self-reinforcing feedback loops. The feminist and trans wars are only one example of this phenomenon. The extremist politics of left and right currently in evidence online also suggest a very polarised political discourse predicated on competing claims to identity.

[CharlieSierra]

So so glad you were able to successfully resist Beach

[qwerty232]

If only is was that simple. We had to argue and justify our position in watertight terms to a funding body, a board and a legal team all of whom knew next to nothing about trans politics and who were coming at our problem from a position which could be summarized as "transwomen are women, you should not be bigoted and refuse this transwoman. It should be explained to the prostituted women who use and need the service that their position is bigoted and ignorant. Plus we are a bit afraid of this going to court."

Ok, and that sounds perfectly justifiable. In that context it was obviously right to fight to uphold the wishes of the women who use that service. That's very different from saying that there is some kind of inherent problem with the trans movement per se.

Btw, I don't really have a particular position on this myself. I can see problems with both sides.

[Beachcomber]

The board were concerned when we explained what autogynephilia is. The members had never heard of it. We agreed that we could not be sure whether this particular transwoman was autogynephilic or not (although interview questions answered by the person suggested that they were) but that we could not risk the dignity and privacy of the female service users. They agreed (after much discussion) that the trans definition of woman is circular and misogynistic (gender feelz) and in conflict with the policy of the service which is to provide a female only safe space for prostituted women who are by definition victims of male violence and sexualised violence. There was a lot of talk about the muddying of the waters of what sex is and what gender is - we agreed that the service was sex based not gender based.

This didn't take place in the UK. I'm not sure if that helped us but I think it did as there seems to have been less kool aid drinking here. We had to work hard to present our position and show them that it came from a place of knowledge not ignorance.

[M0stlyHet]

Wwll done Beach - in the present climate that is a huge achievement. I'm taking note because I have a child who I'm going to have to help navigate all this stuff during adolescence. (I'd be very surprised ifhe sshowed any signs of identifyingas trans, aa a sc I cacan't bear the Iidea of lyilying to him ababout biobiology because of what is increasingly looking like a cult-like ideology: fortunately he has a naturally sceptical streak a mile wide.)

[M0stlyHet]

What is my phone doing?

[todayitstarts]

Lol Het

Yes well done Beach and thank goodness you had the language to express your point without being accused of being a bigot. It's very frightening. Certainly I would not have not been able to articulate the arguments before I started reading about this on FWR, so thanks to you and everyone else for that.

[Beachcomber]

Thank you CharlieSierra, M0stlyHet and todayitstarts . I was able to put our argument across thanks to the consciousness raising that goes on here in FWR and women's blogs that I read. My colleagues said the same - that they had developed their thoughts, position and ability to argue them thanks to internet consciousness raising. We hope that this particular challenge is over and won't go any further. This time. I don't doubt that we will probably have to do it again (and it will be harder if the transwoman wanting to enter the space is prostituted).

[AskBasil]

Well done Beachcomber. It shows the value of hours of discussion on t'interweb!

I love Danielle Muscato, purely because when you present him to all those people who are so open minded that their brains are falling out, they reach trans peak and start putting their brains back in again.

The thing about him, is that his position is totally consistent with the TA ideology. If you genuinely believe that a woman is whatever a man says one is, then you can't argue with his assertion that he is a woman. If being a woman is a question of your inner feelings, rather than your outer body, then Danielle's inner feelings are as valid as someone who passes, like Lavern Cox and he's as much of a woman as Lavern is.

Where do you draw the line? Up to now, human beings collectively have agreed that you define what sex a human being is, by their visible biological markers (because we haven't been able to see their invisible ones - we don't know if someone is XXY, for example). There have been a handful of cases where intersex conditions have provided exceptions, but that's what they are - exceptions.

Now we are either being asked - sorry, firmly told - to draw the line at the point at which a man says he is a woman (and today it's reported that Ian Huntley, the child murderer, has decided he is one and if you believe that saying you are a woman is where the line is, then you have to accept that he is one) or we are being told there is no line at all - there's no such thing as biological sex, it's all gender fluid and feelz or non-binary (in which case what are you transing from and to?), although coincidentally, the people who were always formerly known as women, are still expected to do the childcare, make the sandwiches and suck the lady-cocks.

Hurrah for Danielle.

[BitOutOfPractice]

Reading that meme it's like accusing women of thought crime for not recognising them as a woman.

I certainly object to being labelled as a bigot for not recognising this person as a woman.

[qwerty232]

and today it's reported that Ian Huntley, the child murderer, has decided he is one and if you believe that saying you are a woman is where the line is, then you have to accept that he is one

Can I just ask, why is it any more problematic (from the perspective of feminism) for a child murderer to decide he is a woman than anyone else?

It is a very telling point you have made there.

[Prawnofthepatriarchy]

Congratulations, Beachcomber. You should be proud of yourself!

[HelenDenver]

Qwerty

More for the interested lurkers than you:

Firstly, I assume you can understand why a woman might be more worried about a violent male bodied criminal sharing her cell than a fraudster. (Neither is acceptable, btw)

Secondly Crime stats are currently recorded under male:female (amongst other classifications) and it will not take too many males identifying as women to impact these stats,

[HelenDenver]

Well done beach

[todayitstarts]

Basil
"the people who were always formerly known as women, are still expected to do the childcare, make the sandwiches and suck the lady-cocks. "

Fucking brilliant!

Actually was laughing at this v hard while sitting in the kitchen and my DS(14) wanted to know what I was laughing at. So I showed him the last few posts and Danielle and chatted for a bit and he was like . He's very cynical, bright and funny.... It's going to be amusing in my house discussing this (which DH will hate as I've bored him to death about it)

[qwerty232]

Firstly, I assume you can understand why a woman might be more worried about a violent male bodied criminal sharing her cell than a fraudster. (Neither is acceptable, btw)

Of course. That wasn't what I meant - and I don't think it's what AskBasil meant either.

[HelenDenver]

"Can I just ask, why is it any more problematic (from the perspective of feminism) for a child murderer to decide he is a woman than anyone else? "

I replied to this. HTH.

[Beachcomber]

Totally agree Basil.

Danielle Muscato is a gift.

As you say the explanation as to why he is considered a woman is exactly the same as why very stereotypically feminine transwomen who try very hard to pass are considered women - because they say so.

Fewer of the right-on open minded crowd are willing to earnestly argue that DM is a woman because they know it makes them look like brainwashed dicks. And so the whole house of cards must come tumbling down. We need more people like DM in the public eye.

[Beachcomber]

Thanks everyone.

[M0stlyHet]

Figure 2 of this report on male and female offenders in the UK for 2009 to 2011 should show why the stats matter so much. (Note the enormous difference in scale of the two graphs - the y axis for the male offenders runs from 50 to 20,050, while that for women runs from 50 to 1850 (with none of the bars in the histogram actually going much beyond 1000). Note also the difference for sexual offences - a factor of 100 greater for men.

Men offend much, much more than women - so a small percentage of male prisoners "identifying as women" will totally skew the figures for female offending. They are also much much more likely to be behind bars for crimes of violence and sexual crimes than women - and these men should not be placed inside women's prisons where the majority of prisoners are very vulnerable women, inside for non-violent crimes.

So now we've established that Qwerty's attempted change of subject is a complete pile of shite, as well as being a total derail, can we all just ignore him and carry on with the main topic under discussion?

[M0stlyHet]

Sorry, I see that we were (for the most part) invoking the "hide poster" button. Carry on as you were!

[qwerty232]

Men offend much, much more than women - so a small percentage of male prisoners "identifying as women" will totally skew the figures for female offending. They are also much much more likely to be behind bars for crimes of violence and sexual crimes than women - and these men should not be placed inside women's prisons where the majority of prisoners are very vulnerable women, inside for non-violent crimes.

Sure. And I was not endorsing any kind of distortion of those statistics. If some monster chooses to be identified as a woman, then he should not be statistically recorded as one (least of all for the obvious reason that he most definitely was not a woman when he perpetrated the crime).

But my question is this. In a completely equal society, would not each gender account for a roughly equal number of child murderers?

[Beachcomber]

Qwerty your above comment takes "women do it too" to a whole other level. Because it is "in my thought experiment women do it too".

This is a discussion about a real person in the real world and about things that are impacting on women and children right now. Generally feminists can't be arsed with men's thought experiments that bring nothing helpful to our discussions and which always come across as a whining argument whose main purpose is to tell feminists they are doing feminism wrong.

[qwerty232]

It is important I think, because it raises a question about the goal of feminism is.

Do you want a society in which men and women are equal in every respect? A genderless society as it were?

Or do you want a more humane and less violent society? A more feminised society?

They're not the same thing. And these questions are not just abstract 'thought experiments': they underpin all the debates surrounding the 'real things' that you refer to.