Helen Steel's speech from Cambridge Women's Place meeting

[christinarossetti]

Is now online -

Just watched all of that- thank you for sharing.

Thanks for posting. I also watched the following video where Linda Bellos suggests we all write to the relevant Minister asking for the equality impact assessment they have(n't) done on the Gender Recognition Act. Good idea.

I found that very coherent and moving. Recommended for anyone on the fence.

Thank you Helen Steel.

That was very moving.

Thank you, Helen x

She really clarifies why women need to be able to insist on their own boundaries and the importance of women only spaces.

It's indicative of the narcissism of some TRAs that they can only interpret views like this as 'transphobic.'

Brilliant speech Helen. Calm and very well explained with a number of very difficult to argue with facts and observations. I'll pass several of them on to my MP.

Excellent.

This woman, who has been campaigning for 30 years, says she has never seen such toxic and aggressive behaviour from people who disagree.

The most telling part was when she said men have no idea.

Because, quite apart from the men who have an extremely good idea because they are the perpetrators, it is normal, everyday men need to get behind this.

I’m quite certain that most men have ‘no idea’. But, ffs, do they think the #metoo campaign is a joke? That the numerous men who have been named as a result, by different women, are nebulous outliers, not normal men like them?

That women prepared to speak out after being violently targeted, are doing this for fun?

That 85,000 women a year who are raped is insignificant?

Men who have difficulty believing that the relentless and constant harassment that women are subjected to, for their entire lives, need to radically readjust their intellect.

They need to imagine, just for one moment, that their view of the world may be true to only to them.

They need a fundamental perception shift and to accept that what women are saying is true.

Huge thank you to Helen Steel.

And, I might add, that given women are shouting this from the rooftops, the men who continue to disagree, are the ones who are desperate to get at women.

Their very disagreement should see them vilified for the abusers they are.

What a brillian speech. I’m so glad to have Helen Steele on our side. Thank you Helen. I’ll be sharing that later today on all my social media platforms

Thank you Helen, especially for sharing your experiences. It's bloody bizarre that we're supposed to forget our entire lives. I remember being 19/20 years old and fleeing in to the women's loo's at a nightclub to escape a man who just wouldn't leave me alone. I've also gone to the toilet for the usual business to find a terrified woman there who has asked me ''is there a man with a something coloured t-shirt outside? ''.

It's bonkers that I'm being told not to worry, ''shush shush you silly hysterical cis-woman, you just need re-educating''. I'm supposed to believe that the entitled men who feel they have the right to follow reluctant women around, touching them without permission, trying to get them to leave with them, would somehow balk at the idea of self-declaring as women to get access to women,

Thanks for posting, it was very moving.

Thank you, thank you Helen.

Shared on fb. My first public declaration on where I stand on the subject. It's been there since last night. Not one like and no comments. My fb friends are a mix of gay,straight,black,white, generally ' nice' people who would consider themselves inclusive.
There is a deafening silence.
Interesting.

That's what is so scary about the current climate. Five, ten, twenty years ago, a speech about the sexual violence and harassment that women experience and the need to maintain protected spaces would have been regarded as fairly common sensical, liberal feminism.

Now, it's now somehow the far end of radical feminism, and people are scared to even acknowledge they agree with this position (or articulate an argument against it).

I wouldn't read too much into people not reacting on Facebook. Most people scrolling through a Facebook feed aren't going to have time to stop and watch what is after all quite a long speech.
It's an excellent speech but you'd have to already be committed enough to watch it.

I guess that depends on your FB profile/usage. Do posts often get no likes or comments? That definitely wouldn't be the norm for mine.

I posted it and it has been shared by people who, so far, have expressed no opinion on FB about the GRA and are not particularly 'political'.

I love these two women.

And think of where we are: Helen Steel and Linda Bellos are being threatened and even physically attacked by a bunch of bourgeois students who actually think they are more marginalised and oppressed. It beggars belief.

I shared it too. My first public stand on this issue.

Thanks v much. Also shared on social media, will see if I get any reactions!

Very, very moving. What a formidable and articulate woman.

Thank you Helen.

That has brought me to tears.

She's so determined, although obviously uncomfortable.

Thanks for posting OP, I will be sharing.

Thanks for sharing that. I would love to go to things like this but I just can't get to them.

I do wonder what her views were before being attacked by TRAs. It seems until something actually happens personally to someone, they don't understand. This speech was so moving, I am still sorry she was attacked in the way she was. It sounds awful but the only way more people are going to wake up to this issue is when they are personally affected by it. Hopefully, male people start getting it next, as it seems to be only women so far. And its men who will be able to stop this, not women sadly.

Excellent video thanks for sharing

Given that Helen fell in love and had a ltr with a man who she thought was a fellow activist, but turned out to be an undercover police spy, I imagine her views about structural male violence were pretty much the same.

See www.spycops. Lots of women manipulated into intimate relationships with spies. Lives severely traumatised and /or destroyed. Police won't release the names of all the organisations spied in (over 1000 at latest estimate) nor the officers/aliases involved because of 'concerns for the privacy and well being of the officers'.