Tris Osbourne

[FattyCat]

Dear God. I am actually lost for words.

Yeah we need some kind of pic collage with a "coming to a changing room near your kids" heading..

I think those kind of things feed into their accusations of transphobia and that the evil terfs think all trans women are rapists. If he thinks Lily Madigan is a woman then sending him pictures of other transwomen won’t do anything except give him fuel for the accusations that we hate transwomen.
I think getting him to define what a woman is and pointing out barriers to politics that natal women face are different to trans women is a better tact.

Thinking out loud here...

What are the barriers to trans participation in politics?

What are the barriers to women's participation in politics?

If they were depicted as a venn diagram, would there be any overlap between the two?

How do real world structural differences between how TIMs and women navigate the world affect the outcomes for affirmative programs they graduate from? Are there invisible forces (to male perceptions) that hold one group back more than the other and aren't accounted for in conflating the two categories of "women"?

Are there any instances of discrimination or social barriers to women that are solely "gender" based, and cannot be linked to either material biology or perceptions of it? Can gender ever be "disrooted" from its material source sex?

He's so far refused to answer that question lentil

He won't say what a woman is

X-post with lentil

I think 'would you like this person to be your daughter's PE teacher?' is going to prove to be our best question...

Using specific people is no good. As there are extreme examples of everything really. A more generalized 'would you call your daughter a bigot for not wanting to get changed infront of a male person' would be better I think. I have 'peak-transed' so many men this way. Also seems to help if they have no female family members they care about, would you sleep with a bepenised woman? if not, why not? Do you realise this makes you transphobic? And so on

There is no definition of a woman as science is constantly evolving. Or some such bollocks.

bahhybygge

I would argue that structurally natal women are held back in a very practical sense because we’re the ones with the fannies to birth the babies and the tits to feed the babies, we’d get more women to engage if there were things like crèches, meetings at different times, more flexibility, training for after career breaks, feeding rooms etc
There are obviously perceptions that hold us back too but if we don’t do anything about the practical stuff then it’ll never be equal.
Trans women won’t be affected by those things because they are male.

And obviously when I say natal women I mean women.

He's a teacher who's a local councillor on a couple of committees.

Why are we giving his opinions headspace?

I think getting him to define what a woman is and pointing out barriers to politics that natal women face are different to trans women is a better tact.

I'd agree. Any party that has a women's program needs to have a working definition of woman, and that definition needs to relate to why women specifically need a program. Thus 'a woman is anyone who identifies as a woman' doesn't work.

I'm not sure there's any point targeting Tris though. He's not a big cheese and he's too dim to understand the arguments people are putting to him. I feel like there must be some high profile people out there who have their doubts about this and who could be brought round to seeing how illogical and regressive it all is. God knows who though.

Well yes, it is crude undoubtedly. But potentially powerful.

I would like to ask Liam about what it was like getting to puberty and realising that suddenly men were eyeing you up as a potential target. I'd like to ask him about how he has dealt with people staring at his tits and grabbing him for unwanted 'hugs'. I would like him to address the way that men expect you to give them your time and attention and react aggressively if you don't do that in bars and at work and how disempowering all those little things are and how they feed into your world view of yourself and what you are for and what is expected of you.

He can do that right? Because he's a woman's officer.

How do the people who signed that letter feel about Lily and pals hounding a Labour woman out of her job for her views on gender, or Lily making rape jokes on a Twitter account a few years ago? All cool because Lily says Lily’s a woman?

CertainHalfDesertedStreets

The thing is TIMs claim all those things have happened to them. They get targeted for sexual harassment. Despite courting it on many occasions because, validation.

Asking other people to explain why there are woman only shortlists is a good one.

Pointing out the reasons to them is more difficult, because it is quite involved. It involves socialisation, perception, unconscious bias, as well as material things like maternity leave.

The three points are:

What is a woman? This is the best one. Firstly because they can’t define it, and secondly the own goal of saying if you can’t define it, how can you represent them or fight for them?

Asking why there are woman only anything. What’s the reason? Shortlists, spaces, etc. Nail it home. Because before long, they will say they’re not necessary. The key here is to name men as the problem. Not some nebulous thing that oppresses women. Men - the very thing that is now infiltrating women’s spaces.

Thirdly, yes pointing out the reasons for these women only things, based on biology. So maternity rights breastfeeding rights, but also using statistics.

So statistically, how many women are cabinet ministers, MPs, CEOs, millionaires, newspaper editors.

Because you can argue all the day long day about the reasons for women’s lack of representation, but the statistics speak for themselves.

The suggestions of pictures showing which people are "coming to a changing room near your kids" would be perceived by many as a "look at the state of that ". Not a good idea. It would go down well with some unpleasant parts of the Right and would leave a nasty taste with everyone else.

Look at what they say. Look at what they believe. These are better arguments. It isn't for nothing that TRAs are continually fighting against being made to explicitly state what they actually want in clear terms.

It isn't for nothing that TRAs are continually fighting against being made to explicitly state what they actually want in clear terms.

I agree.

Despite photos speaking a thousand words, for every weirdo in a fur bikini, they will have a normal looking TIM in a tweed skirt.

It looks like a cheap shot and will get interpreted as such.

Incriminating photographs do get circulated. We don’t need to promote them.

When they talk about rights, they rarely actually specify. It’s just to be treated as a woman.

Because they want the bathroom one. That’s the one can give them validation five times a day. And discomfit women at the same time.

They want the one where they can hold positions reserved for women, particularly if they represent women. Because that’s the one where they can get their policies in.

What is a woman? Why do we need sex segregation? Who is doing the oppressing?

What is a woman?
What is a woman?
What is a woman?

If you can’t name it, who are you representing? If you can’t name it whose bathroom do you want access to? If you can’t name it what are you identifying with?

I'm Loving RogueBiscuit's post.

Agree that pictures of particular TIMs is not a great plan. To add to reasons already mentioned, there are still a lot of people out there who think anyone opposed to transactivism must just be a conservative sort who thinks men shouldn’t wear dresses, and saying “look at this obvious man in a dress!” is going to reinforce that.

Yeah I know your right..

Just a shame they won't see the kind.of people who would take the piss and be of equal threat to the others just trying to get on with their lives.

OT but I had to share this. We don't seem to have an active trans kids thread going at the moment. While we discuss Lily and Clitoris Osborne I think it's good to keep in mind the actual harm being done to tiny children by the transcult.

twitter.com/nerkish/status/936024907670056961

You make a completely valid point Gileswithachainsaw. As we see time and time again, the kind of people who come to prominence as forcing their way into women's spaces are exactly the ones that should be kept out. Their narcissism, anger, and misogyny is often only too clear.

The problem is, we're already persuaded. But others aren't, and they need to be drawn into our world, even if only briefly, to get another perspective.

Why do we need sex segregation?

I tend to ask 'do you agree that we need sex segregation?'

If the answer is no, then fair enough. I disagree with that but at least it makes sense and is consistent

The answer is usually yes though. At which stage its fairly simple to ask how we are supposed to segregate these sex segregated areas if not by sex. Then watch people try to backtrack.

I have resigned my labour memeberhsip and they have emailed to complete the complaint process. Which I will do and will print out and post to them as well.

Next on the to do list!

How do the people who signed that letter feel about Lily and pals hounding a Labour woman out of her job for her views on gender, or Lily making rape jokes on a Twitter account a few years ago? All cool because Lily says Lily’s a woman?

They don't. That's FakeNews

They employ the exact same social media tactics as Trump.

I fear that the inevitable result is naut that when all these activists get the go ahead to leave behind the violent men's loos, that all the regular trans people we are perhaps more famiiar with who were just going about their day and using the correct loos or were inconspicuous enough to use the other loos, will probably end up being hurt in the ladies by the piss takers.

And the safest place will probably he the Mens then.

Course that will be our fault for bringing it all to every ones attention and drawing a target on their backs