BBC News on gender identity law - mentions us!

[YetAnotherSpartacus]

The link is here

www.bbc.com/news/uk-40713645

I was just coming here to see if anyone had posted about it.

There's already a thread about this.

Sorry, it's here:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/_chat/2993422-MN-on-BBC-News-website?msgid=70821954#70821954

I have been struggling to post this on mumsnet for the last 15 minutes, so here goes: (wrote it in word first and copied and pasted)

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-40713645

Is this discussed elsewhere. This surprised me. Has the BBC suddenly woken up even handedness and realised that it is only regurgitating material from lobby groups and is now behind the rest of the press after recent articles.
Do they think mumsnet is the only place where there is any dissent to the new gender self identification bill and the previous one. It is certainly the only place that allows any discussion around the issue without shutting it down.
Are they ‘reducing’ the issues to a ‘group of mums’ who belong in Maria Miller’s ‘Ignore Box’, along with cake baking Christians and other ‘nutters we must ignore’.

....always late to the party [eyeroll]

It will likely be useful to have one thread in chat and one here. The one in chat already seems full of those who shout transphobe and run, or who claim to hide trans threads but always manage to see them long enough to post that they hide them ...

Yes, I saw that this morning. As ever when a thread I participate on appears in the national media, I've name changed.

The mischaracterisation of the gender critical position being hateful is really tiresome. Particularly when people say "of course I don't bother to read the threads any more". So how would you know?

I try to take comfort in the fact that it is always like this in feminism. There are always going to be people who tell you that you're a man-hater, that you need to pipe down, that you're being hysterical, that the thing you think is a problem isn't a problem, that you're over-thinking, that it's not normal to think as you think. Take heart. None of that means you're wrong.

No - there does not seem to be much discussion about the actual article in chat.

I have just skimmed it (and am not au fait with modern politics/feminism etc) but it seemed an odd sort of article, especially basing it on a chat forum. It did not seem to have any 'meat and bones'

My view is that they are paying lip service, so that they cannot be accused of only reporting one side - which they may be in light of recent articles appearing in other mainstream sections of the media.

I suspect there is also little other material as a lot of debate has been shut down by well meaning people who think it is all to do with not repeating how we treated people who were gay in the 1950s.

I am also concerned about Maria Miller's othering at the end of the Times article and suspect we belong to the 'others' in many politician's and journalist's minds.

I've only read it quickly, but it did strike me that 'our' position was described with some concern for explicating the reasons for our stance, whereas the TRAs quoted did not seem to offer reason and justification here. I'm hoping that this may sway some people.

I do t think they quite understood the objections about sport though.

.

I try to take comfort in the fact that it is always like this in feminism. There are always going to be people who tell you that you're a man-hater, that you need to pipe down, that you're being hysterical, that the thing you think is a problem isn't a problem, that you're over-thinking, that it's not normal to think as you think. Take heart. None of that means you're wrong.

Actually, males and their handmaidens hating you is a good sign that you are doing feminism right.
The more resistance you encounter, the more likely what you are trying to achieve will help women.

The support the whole trans nonsense gets from males is a very obvious sign that it is not feminist, and it will NOT benefit the female half of the population in any way.

(Not saying that men aren't theoretically able to develop compassion and empathy for women and see that patriarchy is wrong, but if men stop opposing you, always look if they are opposing someone else instead, and if perhaps that person might be doing feminism in a way more likely to succeed.)

Indeed, when people are shouting "fuck off TERF" you're probably doing something right. Depressing how many of those people are young women though

Can someone enlighten me.

Is the anti-transactivist feminist positions that there IS a distinction between biological sex and gender identity - that the trans lobby are refusing to recognise the distinction?

Is the anti-transactivist feminist positions that there IS a distinction between biological sex and gender identity - that the trans lobby are refusing to recognise the distinction?

Yes, that's about it.

Of course, the trans lobby sometimes acknowledge that biological sex exits - when it suits them - but they insist that spaces previously based on biological sex, such as toilets, changing rooms, prisons, hospital wards, etc, should be changed to be based on gender identity.

(And biological sex seems to matter only when pre-puberty children absolutely need to be put on puberty blockers and artificial hormones to be transed, with surgery absolutely planned immediately after the 18th birthday - the statement that a penis can be a female organ seems to only apply to adults over the age of 21. Using this same statement to deny a child puberty blockers would be transphobic.)

Is there such a thing as gender identity in your view?

Not claiming to speak for everyone but in a nutshell the position is:

1. There is a difference between biological sex which is a real, observable scientific fact and gender (sex role stereotypes) which is the behaviours seen by society to be associated with men and women which change over time and across cultures.

2. Gender is a hierarchy, a system of control designed to keep women submissive and dependent on order to control their reproductive capacity

3. that anyone should be able to dress, behave and act however they like (within the limits of the law) but adopting the sex role stereotypes of the opposite sex does not make you become that sex and does not stop the fact that women are oppressed because of their biology, not their hairstyles or shopping preferences.

4. Over the past hundred or so years women as the oppressed class (who experience endemic levels of sex based violence) have organised and worked together to put in place a number of sex based concessions that allow them more equal to access public life (although there is still some way to go with this) this includes public lavatories, separate categories in sporting competitions, maternity rights, single sex hospital wards etc. These are all needed because of the specific differences between male and female biology.

5. By replacing the category of sex which is based on real scientific fact with gender identity (a feeling in someone's head) all of these sex based accommodations become nul and void. Any man can access areas reserved for women and women are therefore back in the position they were in the 19th century of being unable to participate fully in public life.

Hmm... that was quite a large nut! Anyway that is the basics of the issue. Others I'm sure will be able to give more nuanced explanations.

that anyone should be able to dress, behave and act however they like (within the limits of the law) but adopting the sex role stereotypes of the opposite sex does not make you become that sex and does not stop the fact that women are oppressed because of their biology, not their hairstyles or shopping preferences.

That's interesting. So women are oppressed because of their biology? Why?

So women are oppressed because of their biology? Why

Can you think of any ways?

As ever when a thread I participate on appears in the national media, I've name changed

How wise. I have done the same.

Overall, the BBC article is more balanced than most recent media coverage.

Is there such a thing as gender identity in your view?

Well, some people are willing to kill over their gender identity, so it clearly exists in some way.

Same like religions. I don't have to believe in any god to be able to observe the very real existence of the Catholic Church and its very real power in the real world.

I suggest you do some research of your own. You don't seem to be aware of the most basic facts, and risk coming across as goady fucker. You surely don't want that, do you?

That was a good article to read. Between that and the times and guardian articles this weekend fingers crossed some critical thinking is being done...

MN is quoted because there aren't enough confident voices of dissent over this. Too many people are worried they will be labelled transphobic.

FWIW the comments under the article in the Sunday Times gladdened my heart a little. It was about 90% this is bonkers

"So women are oppressed because of their biology? Why?"

Let's flip this shall we. Why are women oppressed in society if not because of their biology?

Let's flip this shall we. Why are women oppressed in society if not because of their biology?

To be honest, I don't know.

Why gender? Presumably black people are oppressed as a result of political contingencies - because a militarily and economically powerful west plundered Africa for slaves. The skin pigmentation of the oppressors and the oppressed was therefore a result of historical accident. If white people had lived in defenceless tribes and faced the might of a superpower of black people then the situation might have been the reverse. In other words, the biological fact of someone being black did not lead to them being racially oppressed, but a historical circumstance in which people who happened to have black skin lacked power and people who had white skin did. A culture of racial prejudice would of developed from that circumstance - not from the fact of blackness independent of historical context.

Yet you say that women are universally oppressed because of biology. That biology was the initiating factor. If that is so then what can be done? After all, as you say, women cannot change their biological sex.