Woman attacked by transactivists at speakers corner - part deux

[BeyondNoone]

Here's the link to thread one
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/_chat/3033126-London-meeting-to-discuss-Gender-Identity-attacked-by-transactivists

I'm just going to sleep, if someone else can add the news links for me please? Thanks :)

Who is that person @MillicentFawcett ?

Warwick Union's SU page re; transpersons being offended because women have vaginas? Men with bollocks talking bollocks about the "female penis"? The person chosen as one of the first participants in Labour's Women in Leadership programme? (I wonder if dear Jeremy would sleep with that person? No? Transphobe!).

FFS. Where is the Daily Mail when we need it?

That is Sophie Cook @TheWeeWitch. They have been transitioning apparently since 1998 but only 'came out' in 2015 according to this article: www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-transgender-candidate-mp-sophie-cook-general-election-a7712286.html

which I assume means that they wore women's clothes in private until two years' ago and is intended to demonstrate that they are indeed a woman, despite having enjoyed the trappings of white male privilege for 48 of their 50 years.

I wonder where the wife and kids are in this because I bet you a tenner there'll be some in the background.

Ah, I see Sophie is a twice-married father of three.

Nurturing, brave, blah blah blah
www.theargus.co.uk/news/14183743.___I___m_so_grateful_to_finally_be_me_____Hove_photographer_is_first_transgender_woman_in_Premier_League/

I wonder how caring for the severley disabled child fits in with the parliamentary ambitions?

Presumably they would leave their family. Must be triggering for them to be reminded of their life as a male.

What you mean they won't be taking on the stereotypically female caring role?

Well there's a fucking surprise.

And they won't take on the backlash that a woman would get for taking on the same position. Not that I agree with that either, but would rather tackle it where it happens than erase the meaning of woman.

No they won't face the misogyny a woman in the same role would face. No chance. That's not to say they won't face prejudice, but it won't be the same prejudice as a woman would face - and it gets right up my nose that TA even try to co opt sexism

I'd be really interested to hear from the TA who genuinely tried to stop the aggressors

Me too. I was actually talking to her and her friend/partner before the attack. We didn't agree on much but had a civil, if heated, discussion and shook hands at the end.

She can only have been about 20 and completely didn't see the need for women only spaces. It must have been such a total headfuck when ponytail man assaulted her.

Just had a look at some of the comments on the videos of the incident online.

It's obvious to anyone with half a brain that the young TRA starts it by stealing Maria's camera and her friends pile into her. Yet there are plenty of young trans people who've seen the videos, who still maintain the TRAs are the victim of an attack by a "big TERF".

Deleted from Facebook but this was by a young TRA just now:

"The video shows a big TERF assaulting someone much smaller, and then someone else hitting her to get her off. Thank God she did. Now fuck off."
That was about this video

They're utterly deluded aren't they?

They're utterly deluded aren't they?

They really, really are. Not so much about being unable to see what everyone else can see, but imagining that they can convince everyone else to disbelieve the evidence of their own eyes.

And, scarily, I think it has some traction. Echo chambers are like that. People will not click on the comprehensive video, but will click on anything that distorts the truth, as long as it satisfies their own bias.

Tbh I'm amazed the TRA's haven't been claiming that watching the video is "literal violence"

Some of those comments on that Sophie story are hilarious. But theres one woman commenting and making so much sense.

Excellent article on the use of the term "TERF" and the violence at Speakers' Corner. Very telling that the transactivists did nothing to protest or attack a fundamentalist Christian event with openly homophobic (and I would imagine genuinely transphobic) speakers but are so hostile and violent the minute women want to have an open debate on how proposed legislation will affect them.

www.newstatesman.com/politics/feminism/2017/09/what-terf-how-internet-buzzword-became-mainstream-slur

Rumandraisin1

Completely agree. The TRA cocktail. Two parts woman hating, to three parts attack them because we can.

Very telling that the transactivists did nothing to protest or attack a fundamentalist Christian event with openly homophobic (and I would imagine genuinely transphobic) speakers but are so hostile and violent the minute women want to have an open debate on how proposed legislation will affect them.

Some people pick their battles. Was that Christian conference directly oppossing, or at least focussing on, a specific piece of legislation that if thwarted thwarts trans-rights? And were some of them filming people who did not want to be filmed perhaps? You need to compare like-with-like really.

The TRA cocktail. Two parts woman hating, to three parts attack them because we can.

In a parallel universe where there had never been any real opposition to trans/tranms rights, they still would have just been randomly going around assaulting a woman who was just sitting in Starbucks drinking a coffee, or wading into discussions women are having online about the weather to give them vitriol. Because they just hate women.

Actually, yes they probably would have found some other pretext for attacking women. There's a certain type of angry young man whose life revolves round finding a "cause" to justify a good punch up. It could be football in the 1970s, or the miner's strike in the 80s, or extreme right wing (EDL type politics), or militant Islam. And these guys don't keep their violence in a neat box - they also glass random blokes down the pub and commit domestic violence in the home. And as various people have noted, the blokes who attacked Maria weren't trans in the sense of being transexual, they were the "dye my hair purple and loudly proclaim I'm queer, but make no other changes to my life whatsoever" variety of "trans."

Also, what "rights" would self-identification give genuinely trans people that they currently can't get through following the current GRA procedures? I'm genuinely puzzled by this. I want people who are genuinely trans to be able to have access to jobs (barring the very few with exemptions from the sex discrimination act on the grounds of necessary sex segregation), I want them to have access to housing, I want them to be able to go about their lives free from harrassment and the threat of violence. And guess what - they currently have those rights.

What I don't want is an "imaginary right" to declare (while wearing a full beard, being physically larger, stronger and faster than women, being sexually attracted towards and violent towards women and retaining your penis, etc) "I am a woman now", and that declaration having no checks and balances whatsoever. Utter the magic words, and you get to compete in women's sports, gain access to women's shelters, get reassigned to a female prison even if you've raped women and girls.

What I don't want is an "imaginary right...

Totally agree. This always becomes a pussyfooting exercise.

They bang on about rights and erasure. But the only actual right that is up for contention is changing the definition of the word woman to legally include men.

It's the goal. And surely anyone with an ounce of sense would question this juggernauting campaign to get it?

I see JAPAB has joined the long queue of men eager to find reasons why punching Maria was perfectly reasonable. No surprise there.

Here are the videos again:

Actually, yes they probably would have found some other pretext for attacking women.

Some of them might have done. And in the here and now they are secretly glad that there is this opposition and that the majority of it comes from non-trans women, so they get to exercise their true heart's desire without having to admit that this is their real motive.

Anything is certainly possible. In the normal scheme of things though, making such assumptions and imputing such motives to a whole group, or a majority of it, would be called prejudice.

I see JAPAB has joined the long queue of men eager to find reasons why punching Maria was perfectly reasonable. No surprise there.

I didn't say it was perfectly reasonable. I just think in order for it to be "telling" why some people act one way in one situation but not another, you need the circumstances to be a close as possible and not leave out any factors that may have something to do with the difference.

JAPAB

I'm not sure what you're trying to say. Men hit women using a variety of different justifications?

So we need to focus on those justifications?

Some people pick their battles.

Yes, this man picked two battles that day, one with Maria and one with another woman, also much smaller than him, who was on his own side. I'm sure JAPAB has well thought out reasons why that was OK too.

And were some of them filming people who did not want to be filmed perhaps?

I don't think anyone can reasonably expect not to be filmed while standing in a group, chanting loudly and waving plackards at the person with the camera - at Speakers Corner - just about the most public place in the country!

The guy who made a grab for the camera didn't want to be filmed though, obviously he wouldn't want his face to be recorded during an attempted mugging.

JAPAB as always you are arguing against a position no-one holds.

Pretty much everyone on this thread has said repeatedly, here and on other threads, that we have no problem with people who are genuinely trans. We just want some means, in law, of distinguishing them from the sexual fetishists and violent men lying about being trans to gain access to women's space.

So, knowing that there are sexual fetishists and men who will lie out there, what would be your solution, JAPAB? How do you suggest we stop a repeat of the likes of Martin Ponting aka Jessica Winfield being placed in a women's prison? How do we prevent transwomen like Laurel Hubbard taking away places in national teams from female athletes? Or perhaps you're perfectly happy with them.