Meet the Other Phone. A phone that grows with your child.

Meet the Other Phone.
A phone that grows with your child.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

I'm Jenni Murray

721 replies

MercyMyJewels · 05/03/2017 18:51

Can we show our support for Jenni? I think she will be in for a kicking tomorrow

Thanks Jenni, for your bravery in speaking the truth

  • I'm Jenni Murray
OP posts:
Thread gallery
9
microferret · 09/03/2017 20:44

I read that BBC article about brains - it's so ironic that one of the main "female" traits is supposed to be empathy and yet many trans women seem to have absolutely fuck-all empathy for females - for all the insistence that they feel like us.

DianaMemorialJam · 09/03/2017 20:56

How would we organise something?

We need to do something

micro that shit is jerry springer.

SomeDyke · 09/03/2017 21:06

"They talk about the wiring if the brain of transpeople being different from the rest of the population."
One omission from that study (although the numbers of subjects is small), is that F2M is compared to heterosexual females. If you're going to look at this, then surely a better comparator would be homosexual females (given that many lesbians show some degree of gender non-conformity). Then you might see something (if anything!) that was perhaps more related to non-stereotypical feminine interests, say. In some sense, choosing heterosexual males and females for controls is in some way taking those that society pushes the furthest apart in terms of the 'gender spectrum' or the stupid masculinity/femininity axis (of evil.........).

And I suspect that anyone else, gay men, lesbians, transfolks, might reasonably be expected to be 'in between' those two ends. Hence rather than showing, say, that transfolks are 'more like' their stated gender than their actual sex, instead all you would show is that patriarchal heterosexuality tends to emphasize the 'difference' between men and women, and anybody else isn't so far apart, because they are just going to be in between those two extremes.

Or again, that taking all this stuff and projecting it onto a totally one-dimensional 'gender-spectrum' plot, and what else do you expect?

Oh, and of course the male and female controls as the two ends of your spectrum onto which you project everyone else falls apart a bit when the 'there is no such thing as a male/female brain' issue comes to town. You can get a big difference if you use small numbers and cherry-pick a brain region, and having your name in New Scientist probably helps your CV, but what the numbers actually mean is grossly exagerrated as far as I can see (like why suggest this would be diagnostic for trans kids if you don't even have a diagnostic test for non-trans brains before you start! Like being able to tell a male brain from a female brain with some degree of reliability!).

BevGoldbergsSister · 09/03/2017 21:07

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

wrappedupinmyselflikeaspool · 09/03/2017 21:42

Hello, I've just joined mumsnet so I can join this discussion. I've been lurking for a while, since the Spartacus thread. I'm so tired of it all and it's starting to make me feel upset all the time. I worry I'm getting a bit obsessed with it, but I think that's because I've got no one to talk to sensibly about it. This is why I've joined here, to get some sanity. I'm very grateful to you all.

I work in the arts so I'm surrounded by liberal and radical lefties who are completely dense about gender, even when they profess to be feminists. I find it really worrying because I work in a university as an academic part time and so you'd think, wouldn't you, that I'd be among people who can think things through, use reason, see the practical implications of certain ideas, but no. In the arts its even worse, particularly the art form I specialise in. What worries me most is that the positions that are supposed to be progressive are so conservative, it's like a delusion. Trans is based on stereotypes of femininity and masculinity that are deeply conservative, even if you believe that trans people should be able to be themselves and feel comfortable (which I do) the gendered stereotypes are inescapable. And as for sex, as work, well isn't that a perfect storm of the worst, most selfish, free market capitalism with the cruelest patriarchal sexual double standards?

I've met Jenni Murray (on woman's hour) and she was very kind to me. A couple of women friends commented at the time that "she's a bit..." but they wouldn't say what they thought was wrong with her. I think a lot of women with a public profile suffer from plain old misogyny. And this was before the article. I think she's got the wording wrong here and there but the article is well thought out, reasonable and sympathetic to the difficulties trans women face so it's just awful that she's taken so much stick for it.

microferret · 09/03/2017 22:36

welcome, wrapped !

everything you say is correct. it's the height of irony that these numbskulls seem to think they're being so progressive and breaking down gender when what they're actually doing is elevating a dubious social construct into unassailable fact.

I'm a bit obsessed too. Freaked out at my husband over it today... He's generally a progressive man but lacks political passion and certainly isn't much good at understanding why I might be upset.. He's lead a charmed life really, white, middle-class, good-looking - never even had his heart broken. His response was to try to be sympathetic but then to get angry at me for getting angry. He told me I was turning into a man-hater. Which might be accurate but saying that didn't do much to reverse the process...

it's so frustrating to be dismissed when this is so terrifying for us. To be painted as the hysterical, angry wimmin who just won't shut up, lie back and take the patriarchy - plus its new lap dog "progressive" liberalism.

I love him but I did consider divorce this evening.

Igneococcus · 10/03/2017 06:37

Janice Turner in the Times yesterday:

"Jenni Murray was reproached by the BBC for expressing “controversial” views about transgender women in her Sunday Times article. Yet how can this be avoided when the clash between the safety and dignity of women and the trans movement’s extreme fringe has hit the mainstream? It is not some nutty website but the BMA that suggests using the term “pregnant people” to avoid upsetting still-fertile trans men.

Meanwhile, Maria Miller pushes legislation whereby a woman is defined as anyone who believes herself to be one. This does not just allow male-bodied individuals into female changing rooms and refuges, and brands women who object as guilty of hate crimes, it also creates an official lie.

Yesterday it was reported that a woman, Katie Brannen, is alleged to have raped a man in South Shields. Meanwhile Lisa Hauxwell, convicted of two violent rapes, is wanted by police. The Daily Telegraph ran an article by an academic using Hauxwell as an illustration of female-pattern offending. What went largely unreported is that both were born men. Yet under Ms Miller’s legislation theirs would be categorised as women’s crimes, the perpetrators housed in women’s prisons. Moreover, although 98 per cent of sexual offences are committed by men, trans cases would be cited as evidence that women are almost as bad. No wonder progressive women, who have long supported LGBT rights, like Jenni Murray, are finally speaking out. It is not about who is a “real” woman, but what is the real truth."

humourless · 10/03/2017 07:10

My husband thinks I'm obsessed, I have a feeling he thinks it's all a bit hilarious. I wonder if he'll change his mind when our daughter first encounters the first trans girl in her school or trans woman in a changing room if he'll see how serious this all is.

CharlieSierra · 10/03/2017 07:18

I wonder if Janice has seen the propaganda for schools. It's an excellent piece she's written but the part about the trans movement's extreme fringe is off kilter. I think I'll send her the link which has been shared on these threads over the past couple of days.

Igneococcus · 10/03/2017 07:39

I think she might be reading the MN threads Charlie Sierra but it's a good idea to draw her attention to it. This was just a part of a longer column where she talks about other things as well, maybe she'd be up to writing something specifically about the propaganda in schools issue.

CharlieSierra · 10/03/2017 07:42

I've just had a quick look, I can't see an email address at the moment. She is engaging on twitter about the subject but I don't know how to do it (old) Blush

Igneococcus · 10/03/2017 07:44

I don't do Twitter either [also old] but I'm sure someone will be along soon who knows how to.

StiginaGrump · 10/03/2017 07:49

My little boy told me his female friend at nursery said she was a boy but she wasn't. I said so what I used to say that too when I was little.
I had a boys nick name, wore boys clothes, hated my boobs when they grew, in every narrative I imagined I was a boy and I identified with male characters in books and films.
I got further in to puberty and suddenly loved my female body and was boringly hetro in my tastes.
I am still a strong active woman with no 'girly' pursuits and yet how terrifying now that with different parents I would be labelled trans. I don't remember anyone labelling me anything except a tomboy which did irritate me as it didn't acknowledge that I was a boy:) oh except I wasn't...

StiginaGrump · 10/03/2017 07:49

I don't tweet either or would share.

RubyWinterstorm · 10/03/2017 08:02

Just wanted to voice my support for Jenni here too

Hope she knows of this thread!

microferret · 10/03/2017 08:18

Good on Janice, I'm so glad more women are having the balls to talk about this.

Given that I actually live in Berlin, I will have to try to organise something with other radfems here (I know many of you aren't radfems, but here politics is something people are very passionate about). I did recently connect with an activist girl who I really admire; she was interviewing me for a short piece for a feminist film festival. She didn't actually know much about the trans issue but I'd say she is fully converted now. She has invited me to speak at events and I'm going to stick my neck out and do it.

But we need another strategy, one that fits with our lives, one that doesn't put us at risk from physical violence, so here's my proposal: we need to go underground, we need to start stealth-converting fence-sitters. Don't bother with men, though I don't want to be sexist, the issue is too abstract for them to fully understand; they don't know what it is to fear male-bodied people. And they already benefit too much from the system, and deep down most men still have a residual mistrust of hysterical, bitchy, cliquey females and especially feminists who aren't the "fun kind", to quote Dworkin.

Focus on women - young, liberal, well-meaning women, those who are drawn to support trans ideology because they want to be kind. Find them on any social network. Ask them what they think the root of female oppression is and where "gender" actually originated. Make sure you explain to them how homophobic the transing of gay children it is, how conservative an ideology it actually is. You need to talk about Iran, how it has one of the highest rates of SRS in the world, and is essentially used to disappear gays and lesbians from society - a society which will otherwise execute them. From this you can also talk about the danger of including MtF trans people in women's sports - a photo of the Iranian "women's" football team, 8 of which are biological males, should be an eye-opener here.

You need facts too - make sure they understand that for all the bleating of privileged white western TW activists about the murder of trans people, the TW killed are almost exclusively people of colour from poor backgrounds who work as prostitutes. Every single TW killed this year in the US is either black or native american. They are murdered by homophobic, misogynistic johns . No police raid of the home of a TW-murder suspect has ever uncovered a large stash of radical feminist literature. No person who killed a TW has ever cited Sheila Jeffreys as a key influence. No murderer is arrested clutching a copy of "the second sex" by Simone de Beauvoir. White TAs cynically appropriate the murders of these women in order to shut women up and gain liberal sympathies for their political cause. This practice must be stopped, and armed with knowledge we can do it.

Lupron (the puberty blocker commonly used in young trans children) is another weapon we can use. Touted constantly by the fact-resistant TAs and the sadly complicit liberal media as completely safe and reversible, it seems that for a long time the opposite has been true. Lupron has been used for many years to delay early-onset puberty in young girls or as a fertility drug for women, and there are grave concerns about its safety. It seems that severe degenerative bone loss is one of the main issues, though you can read more here www.nwhn.org/lupron-what-does-it-do-to-womens-health/ and here www.hormonesmatter.com/lupron-victims-advocate/ www.lupronvictimshub.com/ rxisk.org/lupron-a-nightmare-produced-in-abbvie/
note how all the sources cited are unconnected with transing children - the stories are all about women who have used the drug for infertility or little girls going through puberty during early childhood. In this way we can see they are not partisan - the erasure of doubts surrounding puberty blockers, and the suppression of attempts to talk about this however, is absolutely partisan.

Crikey this is getting long. Maybe I should start a new thread where we can share activism strategies?

wrappedupinmyselflikeaspool · 10/03/2017 08:29

Thankyou Microferret
My husband is really supportive about this and has even shared some stuff about it on social media. He hasn't had much flack but that is because I don't think normal people (not interested in feminism) really understand the issues. In fact I'd say they have little idea about what the real life implications of gender identity as a protected characteristic are for women and girls in schools, hospitals, prisons, refuges, public toilets and changing rooms, sports teams etc. He is a bit cheesed off generally with the left atm so for him its part of that. He does know how badly I was affected by a previous (violent) relationship though, so he has a particular insight and a motivation maybe. I spent time in a refuge escaping and it was pretty awful.
Don't get divorced just yet, I'm sure your chap has some redeeming features. Tall? Gets things off shelves?

wrappedupinmyselflikeaspool · 10/03/2017 08:30

How do you tag someone on here? I just tried to reply to Microferret and it didn't work?

CoolJazz · 10/03/2017 08:36

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

ErrolTheDragon · 10/03/2017 08:37

What do you mean by 'tag'? On MN you just post to the thread - by convention if the reply is directed to a particular person you put it, or a part of the name or sometimes an acronym thereof in bold, so you probably need to look out for wrapped. There's supposed to be a way of alerting people by doing @wrappedupinmyselflikeaspool but I'm not sure whether it works on all platforms and some people have it turned off. Or for stuff you don't want on-thread you can PM (exactly how depends on whether you usewebsite or app)

CoolJazz · 10/03/2017 08:41

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

CoolJazz · 10/03/2017 08:45

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

RightyWho · 10/03/2017 08:49

I am Jenny Murray and Spartacus all rolled into one

Datun · 10/03/2017 08:57

wrappedupinmyselflikeaspool

If you are on a phone one you press your finger on the persons name to select it and copy it onto your post. To put it in bold you put a star either side. If you are too frothing and can't be doing with it, take a part of the name everyone will recognise and type it at the top of your post.

Mumsnet have recently introduce the @. If you put it at the front of a person's name, I believe it alerts them by email that they have been tagged. I think most people can't be arsed.

Igneococcus · 10/03/2017 09:12

I'm German microferret I haven't lived there for 23 years but I go there regularly and am a member of a German parenting site and I have the impression the discussion isn't anywhere near where it is in the UK and US. There have been only a handful of threads on this on the German site and they've all been quite unengaged (for want of a better word). I've seen a few articles about trans issues in Spiegel's dire attempt at attracting a younger audience that is their Bento magazine, but that is it really.
Do you see a lot of trans activism? Berlin will be quite different to the rest of the country though.

I found myself whispering about JM with a friend who works in the same building when I met her in the hallway and just can't believe at the age of 51 (and my friend is a few years older) we felt the need to avoid being overheard.

Swipe left for the next trending thread