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?

I couldn't listen to the whole thing.

What has shocked me the most is this;
how can a group of intelligent women (panel, audience and listeners will be overwhelmingly female) sit round and not say anything when a man states that Greer believes 'you're not a woman unless you've got a big smelly vagina'??? Disgustingly offensive.

And how he can say FGM should have the female descriptor removed....to a woman who has actually suffered the violence of FGM.
I am genuinely shocked at this level of arrogance.

I am massively gender critical, but I do read libfem ideas as well, I want a balanced debate (inside my own head) but listening to that I was horrified.

I feel like many of the women on the panel are almost....ALMOST...'getting it'
Like bad sex, teetering on the edge, almost there....and then...nothing....

It's the same old story in current feminist discourse; women back pedalling on intelligent debate to be inclusive of offensive, demanding men, to the detriment of their own born sex. Depressing.

I've not listened to the while thing either, but I'm really confused by Deborah's attitude. This is her podcast. The whole point of podcasts is that its not commissioned by anyone therefore the hosts can talk about anything they like. If she wants to talk about trans issues exclusively, that's her decision.

So why does she feel the need to monitor her own language about her own body on her own podcast? On a feminists podcast. How does she reconcile her feminism, her right to freely talk about her body and the fact its her podcast, while allowing someone else to define all of the language used? Is this really feminism?

This thread has been tweeted to @GuiltFemPod and DFW has responded.

Tufted can you link? I've had a look but I can't find anything.

Check out @GuiltFemPod’s Tweet: twitter.com/GuiltFemPod/status/913762105135951872?s=09

Thanks Tufted.