Vogue’s transgender ‘suffragette’ and a licence to bully women

[ContemporaryPankhurst]

I am a Labour Party woman and often very much disagree with Caroline Farrow however I think this article of hers is great.

www.conservativewoman.co.uk/vogues-transgender-suffragette-licence-bully-women/

I would be interested to hear other people's opinions on this.

Good Lord. The transwomen commenting on that conservative woman article.

We get more cat calls than you because we are younger and prettier and you're just jealous.

#not a fetish.

There seem to be 2 obsessive TIM who comment on everything. One called Katie. They seem really unhappy and unhinged TBH. If they are basing their happiness on looks then they are in for a rocky ride TBH because none of the TIM I have seen have aged well. They seem to become more male looking as they age.

I think "Katie" is the same "Katie" that gets accused of being a bot on Twitter. Syntax is the same. Perhaps "Katie" is actually a real person!

Yes I think Katie is a real person. But comes across as a very aggressive damaged and unhappy person. Transitioning has clearly not helped with their gender dysphoria or made their life happy. Same as India in CBB. They do not seem to have resolved any issues by transitioning. Seem to have just created more problems for themselves to be honest.

I very much disagree ALunerExplorer and am sad that you bat women's concerns off as transphobic. According to your post it would appear that women are just not capable of reasonable thought. How very progressive of you.

On that note I find the suggestion that many women who have spent their lives fighting for social justice, equality of the sexes, equality for gay, bi and lesbian people have suddenly all woken up to be hateful bigots ludicrous. I am not talking about Caroline Farrow who wrote the article but the repeated no-platforming of Linda Bellos a gay, black, lesbian who was called a fascist. Or the doxing and bullying of Heather Brunskell-Evans who has spent her career working to end violence against women and child abuse. Or Helen Steel being repeatedly termed a nazi.

I have found this blog post by Critical Sisters enlightening as to why women initially support trans ideology until they question it. www.criticalsisters.co.uk/category/blog/

" According to your post it would appear that women are just not capable of reasonable thought. How very progressive of you"

I was referring to the article specifically so lets not act as though a two line observation can be spun out as some generalised attack or dismissal of women's issues.

I mean, you could try some good faith for more than a few seconds, surely?

The premise of the article was bogus; the deliberate mis-gendering obviously provocative. You disagree with me, I disagree with you. You think your feminism is the 'one true church' (as an analogy).

It really isn't. Trying to shame other women who don't sign up to your one true church isn't exactly new either. It is easier and more comfortable for you to write us off as 'handmaidens' in thrall, not cognitive women whose thoughts and real experiences don't line up with your agenda.

Do you have a response to my comments that are based on what I said - rather than on your fictional extrapolation of what I said?

Excellent piece regardless of the author's politics. It's high time women stood up to all this shit. Does anyone know if women transitioning to men lay all this shit on us?

ALunerExplorer, why was the premise of the article bogus? Why was the deliberate ‘mis-gendering’ “obviously provocative”?

In your first comment you wrote 42 words which didn’t really provide much to engage with.

I don’t believe my feminism is the one true church. There are certain issues that I work with women from a range of political and feminist beliefs to address such as the sex industry. There are older women who are much more wise regarding feminism and feminist theory than I am, I readily admit that I am relatively new to the territory.

Having been in an abusive relationship and since helped others to spot the signs and leave parts of the trans ideology and the speech of defenders of this ideology ring alarm bells for me. To get women to deny their own perception of reality in favour of a man’s, to get women to internalise the blame and hatred – we are bigots of course – to silence questions and criticism. It fits a usual pattern.

It would be lovely if you shared your thoughts and real experiences that you claim I try to dismiss through shame. I would really appreciate hearing them and trying to see your point of view.

On that note I find the suggestion that many women who have spent their lives fighting for social justice, equality of the sexes, equality for gay, bi and lesbian people have suddenly all woken up to be hateful bigots ludicrous.

Exactly. I've asked this many times and never had anything back but nonsensical obfuscations.

"In your first comment you wrote 42 words which didn't really provide much engage with"

And yet you extrapolated from those 42 words what I apparently thought about 'all' women's ability to be rational; and you could also apparently infer that I cared not one jot for the work that sisters who have gone before me have done.

Shall we start again?

Like many women, I am a multiple survivor, and much of what surviving taught me, informs me now.

The false premise of the article was that India Willoughby's behaviour is indicative of all trans women's behaviour. That's a nonsense argument in whatever form it is put forward (extremist Muslims do not speak for all Muslims) but the use of it plays to the tropes and caricatures' that the trans exclusion narrative needs in order to make cosmetic (if not actual) sense.

And yes, wilfully mis-gendering people with every single reference to them individually and generally is of course provocative. It is meant to be so, because that is part and parcel of the caricature the argument relies on too: the man-in-a-dress-hairy-knuckled-and-coming-to-get-you trope, because that leverages fear. I am suspicious of arguments which seek to leverage real women's real life trauma to feed that fear.

Maybe you personally don't believe your personal feminism is the one true church - but feminists who are trans inclusive aren't called 'handmaidens' because trans exclusive feminists are happy to agree to disagree. (I use the example merely to illustrate my point, I am not suggesting you are using that word).

I don't know if you know any trans women (or trans men) IRL. Part of my 'experience' is know and recognise them as valued friends, comrades, and sisters.

My real experience means I look at these tropes of trans women and see nothing of the women I know and value; I see how one trans person behaving badly gets distorted in to 'oh they're all like that'; at how it suddenly becomes expedient to frame rights as something which are finite; references to a mythical 'trans lobby' (which exists in the same way that the 'gay mafia' existed - in other words, it doesn't) - and for what?

To perpetuate a conservative, dogmatic and narrow definition that 'woman make babies'? Is that, in the end, all we women are then - baby making factories?

I lose nothing at all, nor will I have anything taken from me, by recognising my trans sister next to me. Rights are not finite. Womanhood is not so narrowly defined.

And I hope you enjoy the rest of your evening.

On that note I find the suggestion that many women who have spent their lives fighting for social justice, equality of the sexes, equality for gay, bi and lesbian people have suddenly all woken up to be hateful bigots ludicrous.

But it's so much easier to tell women who have been fighting for women's rights their whole lives that they're bigots for not wanting to place trans women's rights front and centre, even though trans women have the same rights as everyone else.

The disingenuous way the usual comments about women being a sum of organs, and the follow up of some bollocks about 'so, you're saying women who have mastectomies aren't women any more, then, cunt' is fucking tiring. Surely no one is actually that obtuse?

Womanhood is not so narrowly defined.

So what is your definition of 'womanhood' then?

"I think she's got a nerve. It was the Tories that introduced the GRA and trashed the Equality Act, not Vogue."

Sorry what on earth do you mean?

The Equality Act is shit, but it was passed by the Brown government.

The Gender Recognition Act, meanwhile, was passed by Labour, but in response to a decision by the ECHR, which basically every country in Europe is signed up to.

As always, Luner, you have seized the wrong end of the stick and are waving it madly, refusing to let go.

"Is that, in the end, all we women are then - baby making factories?"

No, that is to put the cart before the horse. Radical feminism holds that women are full human beings, but, because we can make babies and men cannot, the latter co-opt our reproductive labour and seek to reduce us to "baby making factories", denying our humanity.

Think about all the things patriarchal society does to us - denial of contraception, denial of abortion, forced abortion, denial of divorce, forced marriage, rape as a weapon of war, FGM, slut shaming, the Magdalene laundries... what do these things have in common? They are all about men controlling women's reproductive capacity, either directly, or indirectly via taking control of women's sexuality. Or do you really think it's some sort of weird cosmic coincidence that of all the various forms of prejudice and oppression (religious, political, racial), the one which seems to be absolutely bloody universal across all societies and all of history is misogyny?

There's a reason, and that reason is biology. This is not reductionism, or biological determinism, this is recognising that biology forms the material conditions underlying our oppression.

I have plenty of nice trans people in my life.
For me peak trans was realising there WAS a pattern with this behaviour. Trans was being hijacked by sexual fetishists who coopt the struggles of the gender dysphoric. These people are setting the agenda and trampling over our gender dysphoric trans sisters.

Why are you sticking up for the misogynists? Don't you care about your nice trans comrades?

The thing is, as we keep saying, we do. You don't. Nice trans women don't say they're actual women. They don't tell us not to use the word woman or vagina. They don't tell us fgm, abortions and endometriosis are actually a privilege.

What is your actual agenda here? Why are you fucking over trans people?

"Womanhood is not so narrowly defined."

I don't understand the logic of this. Woman means "adult human female". It is a precise definition. If we're going to discard the "female" bit so that males can be women too, why not discard the whole thing? How incredibly narrow-minded to insist that women must be adults! How bigoted to insist that they must be humans! Why not let children be women too? And cats, and dogs, and rabbits?

Don't you see how ludicrous it is? Of course part of the definition of women is that they are of the class of humans that can bear children, just as part of the definition of men is that they are of the class of humans that can father children. It's not reductive - it's simply the terminology we use to distinguish between two biological classes of people.

The false premise of the article was that India Willoughby's behaviour is indicative of all trans women's behaviour. That's a nonsense argument in whatever form it is put forward (

Except it isn't.

There have been many studies into comorbid mental disorders amongst the trans community. The most prevalent of which is narcissism.

Something which India Willoughby appears to display to an extraordinary degree.

Contrary to your post, it's not unusual.

Results: The frequency of personality disorders was 81.4%. The most frequent personality disorder was narcissistic personality disorder (57.1%) and the least was borderline personality disorder. The average number of diagnoses was 3.00 per patient.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4301205/

"Having read the article, the best I can say is that that's 2 minutes of my life I won't get back.

Not one single intelligible reasonable thought. Not a one."

Oh, you mean like most of your comments, Lunar? That's some industrial strength projection you have going on there. You should consider an alternate career at your local cinema.

RE the Glasgow Uni professor, it sure is convenient to be able to claim to be a feminist one moment (and far less masculine than those naughty women who're womaning wrong by disagreeing with you) and that the idea that adults shouldn't have sex with children is a "feminist construct" and therefore should be dispensed with the next. Clearly all the resources invested in his education were a worthwhile investment that the women of Scotland should be grateful for.

As irksome as IW is though the idea of Paris Lees as a suffragette is even more offensive. Yes, love, the Pankhursts definitely fought for your right to have random men pinch your bum when you're on holiday in Benidorm.

Love this Prickly

Radical feminism holds that women are full human beings, but, because we can make babies and men cannot, the latter co-opt our reproductive labour and seek to reduce us to "baby making factories", denying our humanity.

Think about all the things patriarchal society does to us - denial of contraception, denial of abortion, forced abortion, denial of divorce, forced marriage, rape as a weapon of war, FGM, slut shaming, the Magdalene laundries... what do these things have in common? They are all about men controlling women's reproductive capacity, either directly, or indirectly via taking control of women's sexuality. Or do you really think it's some sort of weird cosmic coincidence that of all the various forms of prejudice and oppression (religious, political, racial), the one which seems to be absolutely bloody universal across all societies and all of history is misogyny?

There's a reason, and that reason is biology. This is not reductionism, or biological determinism, this is recognising that biology forms the material conditions underlying our oppression.

I love how people who reject woman = adult human female because it is "narrowly defined" (n.b. encompasses 3.7 billion humans) are OK with a definition like "has a gender identity of woman" which apparently fits a few hundred people with penises and some females who are prepared to pretend some nonsense to support them.

You know, if you want to call yourself 'inclusive' it's curious that your superior definition excludes billions of women who don't in fact 'identify as .

Who is being exclusive now?

Nothing narrow about the idea that a woman with short hair who likes working on cars must actually be a man! Totes inclusive, that.