Guilty Feminist: minefields

[LondonPainter]

I usually listen to the Guilty Feminist podcast and enjoy it as they have an interesting diversity of guests. However, this week's episode...

The trans woman on the panel was talking about pussy hats with the argument about their being offensive due to not all women having vaginas. There was some attempt by others to argue the case for the hats but it sounded very much like someone who'd grown up with male privilege telling the women how they were doing feminism wrong, with no attempt to compromise or understand their reasons.

Later there was a discussion on gender-neutral toilets and it would have been good, for balance, to have a voice on the panel speaking for those women who quite like to have their own toilets.

Did anyone else listen?

She's a younger generation than me - and I would hazard a guess many posters here.

Pro trans is the prevailing philosophy these days can't say I'm too surprised although she's a smart cookie, It's a shame she's obviously not thought about this one too critically.

It's not that the toilets are gender neutral but the TERF comments that are so depressing. Intersectional feminism means throw women under the bus for men, I guess

AssignedPerfectAtBirth yes I agree - but it goes with the territory - doesn't it?

I don't understand how she can claim to have exclusively gender neural toilets on her tour. Does she insist that every venue install tampon machines and sanitary bins in the men's loos? Has she that much power? Or does she only perform in venues with gender neural toilets?

And what does "it will always be SAFETY over COMFORT" mean. Is it known that gender neural toilets are safer than single sex ones?

The whole tour has gender-neutral toilets....It will always be SAFETY over COMFORT.

Well, she's got that the wrong way round then, hasn't she?!

I've tweeted her the article. I'll probably be blocked. I genuinely think DFW is a bit more on 'our side' but also suffers from the wanting to please everyone. Not just on the trans issue either.

I do love the GF generally and just avoid the trans episodes.

I just got that email from Sofie too. I have unsubscribed from her mailing list. I like Sofie. It's sad.

From Sofie's website. I've included all three sections for context:

This tour is ANXIETY SAFE

I suffer from anxiety myself so I know that live gigs can be terrifying. We all have our 'thing' and it can be hard for me to predict what would make you the most comfortable. So if you somehow feel inhibited by your anxiety and there IS something I can do, like, letting you in before the crowd, saving a specific seat for you or letting you know about the show in advance, you can email me at [email protected] and we will try and sort something out.

This tour has GENDER NEUTRAL TOILETS

Going to the toilet can be both terrifying and genuinely dangerous for a lot of people, who don't necessarily identify with a specific gender - or who are trans. I wish for everyone to be and feel welcome on my tour. So the toilets will either be gender neutral already - or I will bring signs saying GENDER NEUTRAL on them. Some will say GENDER NEUTRAL WITH URINAL so you know where to go, should you need one of these. This is absolutely not up for discussion. Assume that I have heard ALL the arguments AGAINST gender neutral toilets and that I have made a decision based on logic and empathy. We did this on my last tour - and all venues, apart from a few, said yes - and no one complained. It's doable.

This tour has DISABLED ACCESS to all venues

If you are disabled, I am so sorry - I had no idea how few venues had disabled access. As an able-bodied person I am so unaware of these things - and trying to make sure all venues were accessible was more difficult than it should have been. But we made it. All the venues should be completely accessible. However, it is advised that you contact the venue and let them know what you need specifically, just in case.

The whole tour has gender-neutral toilets....It will always be SAFETY over COMFORT.

Gracious - what a terrible man-hater she is! I don't think I want to associate with that kind of feminist at all, I quite like a good number of men.

Ah, so in reality, she has a 'gender neutral' sign. She hasn't really made the men's toilets accessible to every women at all.

It's really odd that she so obviously wants to do the right thing by people with anxiety, but has this massive blind spot to the glaringly obvious fact that a lot of women are extremely anxious about sharing intimate space with male bodies.

She obviously thinks that the anxiety stems from bigotry, that trans identified males wishing to use the ladies are OBVIOUSLY harmless, because they are in fact women, and it is therefore not logical for them to provoke anxiety in women who would otherwise not be comfortable with sharing intimate space with males.

But surely to goodness, as someone who suffers from anxiety should know, she is aware that it's not something that you can reason your way out of at will? The cognitive dissonance must be incredibly hard to maintain.

I myself have no anxieties around loos, but I know a lot of women who do, and as has been amply demonstrated, putting up a "gender neutral" sign on ladies loos simply mean that any man who fancies it will waltz in and out at will - it's not just the transfolk who she believes are harmless who are in the facilities, it's EveryBloke.

And if transwomen are women, then why do they need gender neutral facilities? How does that improve things for them?

Genuinely lost by this line of reasoning, and I just have to chalk it up to "thoughtless virtue signalling", because there's no sense in it otherwise.

I had to stop listening to this episode as it made me so angry. Female penis? Wtf? I hate it when they have men or transmen on there as they dominate the show and I'm not really interested in their thoughts on feminism. I really enjoyed the earlier shows but now it's gone a bit trans mad.

Just listened to it. The "female penis called a vagina" bit was . And I'm fed up with talking about toilets. Why not prisons? Or hospital wards?
Leyla Hussain was very interesting and I would have liked to hear more from her. Pink haired chaplain was also weird.
Wtf is a non binary trans woman anyhow?

I'm a writer so I am very interested in language and the power it has. Non-binary trans makes NO sense. If you're non-binary you can't transition from one thing to another - because that is binary. Similarly the male vaginas thing. It's words but it's not real. It's very emperor's new clothes.

I agree that Reubs comes across as very young. I think she said she is 26? What are her science credentials?

I listened to the faith episode today which had the same guests. Reubs was fairly quiet as I suppose it was more Kate's thing, and it was very interesting.

Very little of it makes sense Kathy

science credentials of Reubs.

Are there any other podcasts that people would recommend, explicitly about feminism or featuring women's voices?

CaptainWarbeck - pretty good credentials. Very impressive, in fact. And yet, female penises... My head hurts.

Feminist Current does good podcasts.

I don't know kathy. Her articles appear more social science than science.

I've just been to the gym and walked to work in a ruminative state, listening to this with regular grimaces

It's really worth listening to if you want to hear how language helps form ideas. Everything (sex, imposed gender rules, internal sense of gender, gender expression =your outfit) being called gender means you cant form and finish ideas.

Kate said something interetsing- DFW talks about "femme phobia" (where feminists think extreme feminity in how you appear is bad). Kate thinks that women who think this "want to fit in with the Patriarchy, if you wear trousers and a tailored suit..."

Isn't that describing girls who want to present as male? By wearing masculine clothes?

The earlier part is fucking astonishing, reubs clearly has no intention of joining the battle for women's rights.

I wsould have no problem with gender neutral toilets IF they were converted from the male ones. Has anyone seen an explanation of why we shouldn't just stick a gender neutral sign on the men's loos?
Then women who need it have privacy and only one set of toilets needs to be equipped with bins, sanpro machines etc.
I think any objection to this would be very revealing of the real agenda.

There was a photo going around a while back where that happened - a women's toilet, a disabled toilet and the men's one changed to gender neutral. The boys on reddit did not like it one bit. Some didn't like the idea for privacy reasons, others because of the inequality of it all - why should women have more choice than men?

I don't know any women who are actively campaigning for gender neutral toilets for the benefit of women. I don't know any women who wants to abolish womens toilets, only some who don't mind using either mixed or women's only.

I've just listened to this podcast and I actually feel really upset (triggered?!). I couldn't follow exactly who was who and so who it was but I think it was Deborah - you could see her struggling to reconcile her recognition of the oppression of the biologically female body with an imposed concept of 'cis privilege'. I felt that Reubs completely dominated the discourse, called the shots, policed the women's language. I found it really upsetting.

Excuse typos, on the hoof and on my phone.