What on earth is going to happen to women?

[Tinseltower]

I’m actually really worried. In the past couple of weeks I’ve seen Theresa May’s speech on how being transgender is not an illness, on how they will be given equal rights including access to vinerable women’s spaces. I’ve seen labour following suit, criticising Margaret Thatchers speech about homosexuality and likening it to the transgender movement, saying they won’t get it wrong. It’s not the same at all! What is going to happen to women in all this? It seems their rights will be pushed to one side and I’m actually rather worried. Can enough of us stand up to be heard?

2rebecca - doesn't it massively piss you off that your own DH can't see the threat to women? I would really struggle with that.

my dad and I often don't see eye to eye on things but even he's worried about this, I mean in terms of male violence.

Puurfect, I know, it's a shame, they are so cute. I imagine the cartoonist just chose them on the basis of how their shape dominates the cartoon square and has a proper tapering head, unlike an elephant for example.

I emailed Ruth Davidson about the issues today, not that I've ever voted Tory but Sh seems more in touch than most stories and the other parties aren't interested. I was very disappointed that she didn't come out publicly against the Gender Identity changes but siding with the TERFs is maybe nasty Tory stuff and she hasn't appreciated we aren't just a handful of scary nutters

Do you think they ever actually leave a thread? Or do they lurk a while, to see how famous effective they have become?

Whatever their reasoning the only thing they have done here is given a lot of posters the chance to clarify a lot of information. So maybe we should thank them

For every sea lion there is an own goal - to mix a few metaphors

Riverside! I thought the sea lion was chosen because of the way they will climb right up on top of you and stay there if you lay down on the beach.

No, he's generally uninterested in politics and always has been. He knows what he believes in (remain, anti Scottish independence) but has been bemused by my involvement in political parties and causes

@thebewilderness

no!! so how do you escape from being pinned under a 200lb sealion?

oh god, now I'm picturing Pervy Wankstein. I must go or I'll have nightmares.

I've only come across sea lions in NZ and gave them a wide berth as you don't want to come between them and the sea. I'd not seen it as a term of abuse before

@2rebecca "No, he's generally uninterested in politics and always has been"

that's not the issue though. My dad doesn't even vote. it's the practicalities that concern him. As well as women's safety, he's big on sports and he's also convinced that women's sport will fall apart completely.

also I think he's had a bit of shock in terms of how shit men are as a class....

I really do have to go. But great raising awareness thread, even if it just that I must hide from sea lions at the beach....

I thought the sea lion was chosen as a representation because all you can hear in their posts is the frantic clapping together of their own flippers in a mindless rapture of self congratulation of how right on and clever they are?

And naturally they can’t hear or reply to any other posters posts at all because of the noise.

😁

I had a google and the answer didn't edify me:

The term was coined in September 2014 by anti-GamerGate Internet users to mock perceived online discussion tactics employed by GamerGate support followed by the cartoon I posted before

knowyourmeme.com/memes/sea-lioning

And now I have found Gish Galloping

The one silver lining that I can see of Brexit and TM's narrow majority is that policy and law makers in the UK are too busy working on that to take through legislation in Westminster as contentious as the proposed GR bill

All this sea lion stuff (feels so childish to be using these terms). I come on these threads occasionally and more often than I think I should. Would you rather that those of us who don’t agree with you leave you to it and don’t join in?

Good grief no! There's nothing wrong with disagreement. It helps everyone explore an issue, regardless of the outcome, everyone should learn something from a discussion.

It's the weird, disingenuous, repetitive questions that cause problems.

Disagree away! But make it an exchange of opinions, rather than mimic the average 2 year old with a perpetual "why?"

If you join conversations to tell people that what they are talking about doesn't matter to you I do think you might want to reconsider joining conversations on subjects you care nothing about.

The New Zealand sea lions just laid on the beach and were fairly passive unless you got near then they could move rapidly and be scary which was why I didn't get it as an insult. I think most MN threads welcome real debate but dislike goading

Let's just fast forward 50 or so years.

Because it's useful to look at this in the context of history.

For instance, women got the vote 100 years ago, and we are only now on our second female prime minister. Labour has never had a female prime minister.

Because this is not just about transgenderism. This is about the entire country being able to choose their sex.

When what they are doing is choosing a gender.

So in the future:

There will be no women's sport.

There will be no women in power.

Any woman in a position of power, in biology, endocrinology, or chemistry will be sacked because of transphobia.

Academic books will be assessed and filtered.

Children will become confused and set great store by gender.

Girls who do not fulfil the requisite gender stereotype will transition to boys.

The remaining girls will be a hyper sexualised, compliant version.

There will be no middle ground. You have to choose.

Because pressure.

Children will resolutely believe that they are in the wrong sex, based on their preferences. They will all be sterile. Homosexuality will become taboo. And then illegal.

Transwomen will be renamed as 'female appreciation models'. The spin will be that they are empowering and uplifting women. They will be supported and encouraged by men everywhere.

Everything they say about their version of womanhood will be celebrated and perpetuated.

Men will know that all the women who have not transitioned, are compliant and sexually available.

If they are not, they will be pressured to to transition.

They also rewarded for bearing children. It becomes aspirational, the more the better.

Statistics will be meaningless, funding and research will disappear and more women will die of preventable diseases.

Biological differences will become unmentionable. As in Portland State Uni, where pointing out that men are generally taller than women made a bunch of students walk out, calling the speakers fascist.

If women are raped, it's because there are not enough compliant women to go round. As so many women have transitioned. This is women's fault.

I started writing that something of a imagined concept, but as I wrote it, I realised, based on what is actually happening, it's an only too plausible trajectory.

Hopefully, though, Barraker is correct, and before the current brainwashing becomes total, our vote will be the powerful tool our grandmothers knew it was.

Once you read about the Gish Gallop you will suddenly start noticing it on the TV and now you will know the name for the asshattery.

But nobody is mimicking a 2 year old - (not many 2 year olds can type) and nobody is saying they don’t care about this topic. Saying they are are not worried about trans is not the same as saying they don’t care about the topic.

Please read the TITLE of the thread.

Transgender and homosexual individuals are a minority, where politicians are really concerned about pleasing the majority. So they are never going to be truly sensitive to the needs of minorities.
As for women's rights I think it's pretty safe to say that we're doing alright in the way of progress! Focus on what we have rather than what is still to be achieved, we've come a long way in the last few decades.

RavenBrow Women's sports are finished, there are no women's hospital wards, psychiatric wards, DV shelters or Rape Crisis.
Thats not progress.

I thought this was an interesting thread! There’s plenty of countries where women aren’t free to go about their business without either being assaulted or requiring a male companion so I don’t think the concept that it could return to being like that here is too far fetched.

we've come a long way in the last few decades.

Which is why there is such a big pushback. Against women.

Men holding public office meant for women, rapists in women's prisons, men putting pressure on businesses, restaurants, retailers who cave at the first shot across the bows on Twitter, men beating women in sport, children being sterilised, homosexuality becoming taboo, men claiming they are feminists and campaigning for men's rights under the guise of speaking for women, biology being ignored and re-written, the sexualisation of magazines aimed at children, encouraging anal sex and ignoring women's pleasure, the targeting of anything woman only, including libraries, leisure spaces, and political representation.

Women have 50% of the vote. And this is all happening.

Right now.