I didn’t know we had arseholes like this “on our side”.

[MothQuandary]

I saw that a transwoman called Kristina Jayne Harrison is speaking at the Manchester meeting “A woman’s place is under threat”

I’d never heard of her, so I looked her up on Twitter. I thought I was a TERF but, my god, she has had a hell of a lot of really unnecessary abuse from people who describe themselves as feminists. Maybe I was naive in expecting her to only get abuse from TRAs and right wing bigots. Look at the response she got to this perfectly reasonable tweet. (You have to scroll up to the top there, I couldn’t find a way that made Kristina’s post appear at the top, without it hiding the worst of the abuse).

Aside from anything else, have these people got no thought for how this looks? People will think the TERF slur is justified if they see stuff like this. Kristina doesn’t pretend she’s really a woman. She supports women keeping their safe spaces. Why the hell have such a go at her? It’s not helping.

I can’t imagine how hard it must be for her and other feminist trans allies, like Miranda Yardley, to continue putting their case despite getting shit from all directions. Props to them.

We probably need more angry women tbh, calm hasn't got us anywhere has it and it wouldn't have got us the vote 100 years ago.

Very good point Damn and I totally agree.

I also think that when women are cross and assertive they are perceived as 'aggressive' whereas men [and TIMs] are seen as justly angry and their words and feelings are given more credence.

The message from society to women is something like "you're not allowed to be angry because we don't want to be forced to take your concerns seriously"

The conflation of anger and aggression (when it's women doing it) is obviously bollocks and a silencing manoeuvre.

But the real lie is in the idea that aggression isn't a good strategy and is bad PR. One glance at who succeeds in this fucked-up world and how demonstrates that this is nonsense. Aggression is respected much more than reasoned debate, which is why men do it and why they don't want women doing it. I don't specially want us doing it either so I don't know what the solution is. But I think being misread as aggressive is at least as likely to be good pr in the long term

The message from society to women is something like "you're not allowed to be angry because we don't want to be forced to take your concerns seriously"

YES.

And yes, that was robust debate - I've seen worse in AIBU.

If you look at twitter conversations towards feminists on the issue you'll see actual abuse (private messages even worse).

Kristina blundered in with 'dignity for the man who wants to violate your boundaries' and ends with 'all about me' - it's insensitive, and is going to provoke anger.

I am angry and pissed off with the way women are treated in our society but don't think Kristina is the problem. The trans debate is a distraction from many of the material issues.

I’m not saying women shouldn’t be angry FFS! I just think they are directing their anger at the wrong person.

To me, whataboutery means misdirecting the argument (e.g. women are subject to sexual abuse: but what about the men who are subject to sexual abuse?) and I don’t believe Katrina’s done that. Her tweet is still about the woman. It makes a passing reference to trans dignity at work but that is not the main thrust of her tweet, which is clearly on the side of the woman.

Aside from anything else, it doesn’t seem to be very pragmatic to lay into her like this. No I don’t think we are going to win by being nice, but I do think we will need male allies, including transwomen. Maybe others disagree. I am just giving my opinion.

I never ever post anything about trans stuff publicly. I’m too scared. I post here (very rarely) because it’s anonymous and I feel safe. I am on twitter and facebook and do follow pro-women groups. I am considering going to the Manchester meeting, which is how this thread started. Right now I am trying to entertain a toddler with slices of melon so I can finish typing. I’m not saying this as “poor little me: don’t be mean!” But I think posters should be aware that a lot of people on here are not long time members of the feminist sisterhood. I’m just a regular woman who believes in women’s rights. I’m happy to be educated, but it puts me off if people are mean! I realize that probably makes me unutterably pathetic, but I think you’ll find it’s quite a common human experience.

I do agree OP that there are better people to be angry with. And there's nothing pathetic about speaking up for someone you think is being unfairly attacked.

But I also feel that male allies who will only be allies as long as we suppress our beliefs and feelings about what is happening to us are not really much of a help (I have no reason to think Kristina is in this category)

I have been pondering the mental gymnastics necessary to reconcile the fact that I think Rachel Dolezal is deluded and wrong but think transwomen like Katrina and Miranda are acceptable.

I suppose I do believe that gender dysphoria exists. Which is not to say that I think people with gender dysphoria are the opposite sex just because they want to be. I’m related to a pioneering transman who my family are very proud of and this has undoubtedly shaped my thoughts on this.

Rachel Dolezal believed she literally was black and took positions reserved for black people. The same is not true of these transwomen.
Kristina accepts she is not and never will be a woman. If Katrina was claiming to be an actual woman, I think people would have a point.

But blacking up is offensive no matter whether the individual believes they are transracial or not. (I’m white btw). I don’t know why I don’t find men dressing as women offensive in the same way, but I don’t, as long as they don’t try to pretend they know what it is like to be a woman.

Just thinking out loud. I am not pretending to make any sense!

Patients have a right to access single-sex clinicians for routine intimate examinations & transgender people have a right to dignity at work. Neither should've been put in this situation but a nurse should show more sensitivity to women's needs.

The way I read it (and I RT'd it), the main point was that neither should have been put in this position - the trans HCP should not have been sent to do the smear in the first place. This would have respected the woman's right to a same sex HCP and preserved the dignity of the trans HCP.

The trouble is, twitter has been awash with arseholes saying the patient herself should have been more mindful of the trans HCP's feelings and calling her a TERF (and worse, of course) for not respecting the HCP's identity. I can completely understand why some women saw this as whataboutery / false equivalence. I can understand the anger.

I don't know much about Kristina, so far she seems to be a great ally. She is trans though and so of course will have issues she cares about that are to do with trans. It would be very unreasonable to expect her to drop all that just because she is supporting gender critical feminists.

I get what you're saying about 'writing for the lurkers' OP but I don't think women should be constrained by that. We're allowed to get angry and we're allowed to disagree robustly, even with each other and with allies.

The trouble is, twitter has been awash with arseholes saying the patient herself should have been more mindful of the trans HCP's feelings and calling her a TERF (and worse, of course) for not respecting the HCP's identity. I can completely understand why some women saw this as whataboutery / false equivalence. I can understand the anger.

YY. That's my position on it too.

If you want to see how awful look up Katelyn Burns' twitter timeline. Or visit an awful, doubly ironically named group on Facebook called "Feminists United". Which is probably run by a TA as many mainstream feminist groups are.

As a man, I used to think that radical feminists were nasty b*tches for their comments on TIMs and their deliberate "misgendering". Why can't they just be kind to this group who were so much more vulnerable and deserving?

When I started reading on the trans issue (GallusMag especially) then it slowly dawned on me that (i) there's no obligation on feminists to soothe men's feelings, (ii) however rude they were, it was nothing compared to the vile hatred emanating from TRAs.

Charlie Hebdo is a good parallel, I think.

Too many "awful"s there. But they truly are!

But I think being misread as aggressive is at least as likely to be good pr in the long term

I hope you are right. It is exhausting having to be perfectly benign whilst fighting for survival.

To me, whataboutery means misdirecting the argument (e.g. women are subject to sexual abuse: but what about the men who are subject to sexual abuse?)

I would say that a big part of whataboutery is about minimisation by false equivalence, as in - let's not focus on the massive f*cking elephant in the room in order to give equal attention to the little mouse.

Its not necessarily a conscious misdirection tactic, it can be just a plain old manifestation of entitlement and lack of concern for the pain of the disadvantaged group.

And this lack of concern doesn't even need to be malicious, it just naturally occurs because the disadvantaged group's pain is generally invisible to the privileged, since the privileged do not share it. They only know it as a story they have been told, not something they personally feel or experience.

eg- Women are oppressed by being relentlessly reminded of their bodily violability by the acts and expression of men, such as harassment, rape, misogynist turns of phrase, etc, yet born males can't get their heads around it eg- Paris Lees thinks it is actually a compliment to be reminded of their (medically constructed) violability.

and I don’t believe Katrina’s done that.

I wonder if this could be through socialisation to have greater sympathy for males than females that you don't see it?

Her tweet is still about the woman. It makes a passing reference to trans dignity at work but that is not the main thrust of her tweet, which is clearly on the side of the woman.

I beg to differ. The tweet says:

"Patients have a right to access single-sex clinicians for routine intimate examinations & transgender people have a right to dignity at work. Neither should've been put in this situation but a nurse should show more sensitivity to women's needs."

The opening sentence is a shocker in this context.
Minimising the utter shocking, violating and disgusting cringy experience of a woman being presented by a bloke with a delusion to perform an intimate exam as just a 'right of access' to a particular type of service.

My mind was filled with questions of 'why?' - 'why would a TIM want to perform intimate exams on women as part of his job?', 'why would a TIM not see that he would make women feel uncomfortable by doing that job?', 'why are we in a situation where this TIM is able to impinge on the safety and dignity of women in a vulnerable state as part of his job?'.

This woman patient was put in an utterly undignified position. If she wasn't assertive enough to refuse and complain, she could have ended up deeply traumatised by the experience. I - as a woman- was not thinking about this situation as simply a 'patient's right of access to a service'. My concern was a woman's right to 'not be abused' by medical staff - a far bigger deal. Kristina did not mention the dignity of the patient at all. Just her right of access.

To add insult to injury, Kristina then brings up the inappropriate 'dignity' of this dodgy TIM perv at work. Jaw-droppingly inappropriate in that context!

The second sentence "Neither should've been put in this situation but a nurse should show more sensitivity to women's needs."

Looks like more false equivalence - but there is some ambiguity. Does Kristina mean that the TIM shouldn't be employed in that role of medicine, or that we should think about the feelings of the creepy TIM as much as those of the woman patient? The former I agree with, the latter I vehemently oppose.

And also "a nurse should show more sensitivity to women's needs" - surely it should read 'a trans identifying male should show more senstivity to women's needs, especially when they are working in roles such as nursing'. But of course there's the issue of twitter and lack of characters.

I don't know Kristina, but I think there was a fair bit of male-entitlement, what about the men and minimising women's oppression in that tweet.

I don't know Kristina, but I think there was a fair bit of male-entitlement, what about the men and minimising women's oppression in that tweet.

Kristina is an ally, but it's neither the first time they've said something insensitive that I've seen nor the first time women have got into an angry exchange of this nature. Unless you're Miranda Yardley, I agree it is a difficult position for both sides to maintain.

Ack. It's all so tricky. But I do still think a lot of this is about playing to the gallery.

I notice there were also some friendly exchanges which challenged Kristina - one woman pointed out that she liked a lot of what Kristina had to say but that she could no longer get on board with TIMs ever using the word woman whether as trans woman, transwoman or whatever. Too much was now at stake to compromise on language in any way. Kristina acknowledged this although didn't agree. I thought the exchange was quite edifying - clear differences emerged but without an irretrievable split into tribalism.

I think the current fight is to find a way to prevent the situation for women deteriorating further. The current GRA isn't going to be overturned (I'd like to see it amended so that only people who have completed a physical transition are eligible for a GRC but I accept this is never going to happen now). The main fight is against self-ID. So I do think we have to amplify the voices of trans people who are also against it, while accepting that there will be areas of difference between us.

I notice there were also some friendly exchanges which challenged Kristina - one woman pointed out that she liked a lot of what Kristina had to say but that she could no longer get on board with TIMs ever using the word woman whether as trans woman, transwoman or whatever. Too much was now at stake to compromise on language in any way

That's my exact position. I agree it's hard/impossible to reach a compromise for both sides here.

We need to push for more than self ID. The EA already allows self ID in practice due to the way the protected characteristics are laid out. We can galvanise against self ID. It sends an important message. It won't be normalised further for males to be in female spaces. But we need to put public pressure on organisations to use the exemptions.

Ereshkigal

That feminist united page is utterly disgusting.

People actually advocating for the woman to shut up and get on with it.

Go on, love, be assaulted because otherwise you might hurt the feelings of the man who wants to assault you.

Great post Guardian.

I agree it's hard/impossible to reach a compromise for both sides here.

It is. I think I currently find myself in a place where I think the priority is to build coalitions that will stop the proposed changes to the GRA to self-ID and the EA to drop the sex-based exemptions.

Therefore, I'd rather make the alliances with people like Kristina and Debbie (I'm more bothered by Debbie, to be honest, because they have been supportive of Mermaids in the past) and try to prevent these legislative changes. I think productive exchanges between these groups (radfems and so-called truscum) will do a lot to persuade onlookers. Reading all those tweet exchanges, I suspect Venice Allen has come to a similar conclusion, for example.

We can worry about the differences later on.

I think the priority is to build coalitions that will stop the proposed changes to the GRA to self-ID

I think this too. For the simple reason that if an MP is going to get letters of concern from a wide spread of different types of people they're more likely to think "hang on..." than if they just get them from a (perceived) narrow group with a particular perspective.

I know Datun. And they've deleted the vast majority of the gender critical comments, even the completely sensitive and reasonable ones. Abuse by TAs and yes, the handmaidens on the page is terrible.

I agree. But you're not going to get feminists, especially lesbian feminists who saw this coming much earlier than most people and see just how shitty the transagenda is for women every single day to toe any sort of party line. It's politics. Politics gets heated and people disagree on the best approach.

especially lesbian feminists who saw this coming much earlier than most people and see just how shitty the transagenda is for women every single day to toe any sort of party line

Also agree. A great deal is owed to these women by all of us.

I must ponder on a personal Twitter account so I can practise what I preach. I'm in the unfortunate position of having a professional one that I couldn't compromise because it would affect other people.

Arguably women speaking with anger and passion about how violated they feel by some of these developments is the best possible refutation of the 'its not doing anyone any harm' and 'you're just being mean for no reason' arguments.

It took me a while to find that post on “Feminists” “United”. (It’s here if anyone else is having trouble finding it). There are a lot of posts about men’s issues on that page (what has male rape in prison got to do with feminism?!) and they are clearly a bunch of pricks. This gives context to the abuse Katrina’s received but doesn’t wholly excuse it, imho.

I’ve only just discovered Katrina so I don’t pretend to know much about her views and I’m certain I will not agree with everything she says. I doubt there are two people alive who agree about everything. I don’t even agree with myself some of the time. Alliances necessarily require compromise to some degree and making at least some effort to get along.