Frankly disturbing tweet from Michael Cashman

[SunsetBeetch]

"Shaken the f out of terf"

I think a number of gay men have bought into the idea that questioning gender ideology is just like homophobia. The movement has done a stellar job of framing it that way just as they have appropriated the bits of the civil rights and feminist movements that suit them.

Gay men at the end of the day are still men and don't have first hand experience of sex based oppression or the lived reality of being a girl and a woman.

That said I've seen a number of gay men who do get it and also recognise the damage to the LGB. No demographic is a political hive mind.

Twitter is increasingly populated by conspiracy theory, right-wing, personality disordered or mentally struggling people. I have no account, I glace at Twitter from time to time and I see mainly bile there. It's not a healthy environment.

I remember him saying on ch4 to someone with too much skin that it was not like being pregnant as that 'snapped back in 6 weeks'. It took 10 years just to get my belly button back Still too much skin. Wrote him off after that.

Agreed Turning

This is a twitter thread from a young man who attend WPUK last night fully expecting something akin to a nazi rally. He was rather shocked when he found a bunch of articulate women talking about sex based feminism.

twitter.com/danielgrosvenor/status/984607278727925762

I love the replies on there.

I've noticed this @busyboysmum. Sometimes I think it's because such men see themselves, remember how they have suffered in the past as gay men and transfer this onto trans women and become particularly defensive. It's almost personal for them.

Strangely, you could say that it shows that at the root, they do see trans women as men. They rarely defend trans men as strongly and are usually silent on lesbian issues though are eloquent when it comes to gay rights. (needless to say women's issues don't get much of airing either)

I don't find it surprising that gay men (who are part of lgbt+ and therefore involved by default) are getting stuck in on both sides of the argument. What really strikes me is how straight men (who represent and benefit from rigid ideas of masculinity, which are after all what is causing the problem here) are managing to project the whole thing onto all those of us who fail the masculinity test while making like it's got nothing to do with them at all.

Amazing trick if you can pull it off

You may be right there, that they see transwomen as persecuted men like them.

The stronger the rise of the far right in both left and right-wing politics, the more fearful these people become, and for good reason.

Women may have been treated badly in Nazi Germany, their survival was based in biology, all women will not die or the human race dies altogether.

It must be such a relief for some men to have found a socially acceptable way to release all their pent up misogyny.

Yes, exactly. How can a fucking Labour peer ever think it is appropriate to post blatantly misogynistic tweets?

I also read it as implying 'shake the fuck out of'. I can't see how it makes sense otherwise. Nobody is forcing him to include the word 'feminist' in his insult of choice, and no shaking is necessary for him to stop doing so.

What the hell are things coming to when women are interrogated and suspended by the Labour Party for stating that women don't have dicks, but men can be openly misogynistic and threaten violence, and that's fine? Why aren't they being investigated?

It's a pun based on a double meaning with the ostensible meaning being to shake F(eminists) out of the TERF grouping, and the second punning meaning being to shake the fuck out of TERFs. Whichever way you look at it, the idea made plain is that disobedient women need to be handled violently so that they comply.

A man using a dead woman as a beard for his misogyny = Patriarchy 2.0.

DontCisgenderMe said "What the hell are things coming to when women are interrogated and suspended by the Labour Party for stating that women don't have dicks, but men can be openly misogynistic and threaten violence, and that's fine? Why aren't they being investigated?"

That's it, exactly. I firmly believe that Corbyn has allowed the infiltration of the party by a small group of TRAs who are using a combination of inbuilt misogyny, members' fear of being accused of transphobia and ignorance/naivete to influence policy and encourage the shutting down of any discussion of what this means for women.

Who knows what will happen.

What I see are a large number of people who believe in conspiracy theories, full of hate and a need for people to believe exactly what they do and do as they want others to do like toddlers.

I see an increase in general violence too.

Cashman has been a long standing supporter of Stonewall, hasn't he? So maybe not surprising that he has a particular view on trans issues.

But to take the name of a dead woman who was one of the principal architects of the Good Friday Agreement, in the run up to the 20th anniversary of the deal, at a time when its future is in serious jeopardy because of Brexit.... That's staggeringly crass, inappropriate and offensive on so many levels.

Anyone noticing a lot of the men who are really attacking women as "terfs" are gay men? There's him and O.J. and that blonde doctor off the TV who are well known.

Yes, I am very much noticing it.

In common with I think a lot of women, I've come to being an active (and very pissed off!) feminist as I've got older, from experience, from seeing the repeated patterns of sexism and misogyny and also as I've realised that women's rights really are bloody important.

As a younger woman I still would have said that, yeah, of course I'm a feminist because men and women should be equal but I guess:

a) to an extent I bought the lie that we had achieved equality (despite having direct experience of sexism!)
b) I didn't have the language/arguments to challenge some of things that were happening (eg as a teenager having male friends saying they were being 'ironically' sexist and coming out with some awful stuff which really affected me - but they always said that they were 'joking' or 'being ironic' and I just didn't have the words to say why it was still wrong to talk like that even if they didn't really mean it.
c) the view that there were other more important things to address (ie things that affected men).

Anyhow, that's a bit of a background but for that period of my life (well, for most of my life since my teens), I've been very involved in LGBT rights (as a lesbian, I thought that was the community/movement I belonged in). And looking back now, I can see how much I've just been serving men who have treated me and other women like crap.

As a bit of history (and this is before my time but I've heard reports of it first hand from other lesbians), gay men and lesbians were generally separate until the AIDS crisis, when lesbians united with gay men and were very active and massively supported them in terms of both the effects of the disease and the backlash against the community. This then continued on through Section 28 etc and then into the 90s when I got involved. Most of the stuff we were involved in was about men (e.g. campaigning to lower the age of consent and change other laws which affected gay men,, AIDS stuff, safer sex packs for men etc).

Lesbians really worked hard for gay men's benefit. And the men treated us like shit (Of course, NAGMALT). It's difficult to convey to people outside of the 'community' how much hatred some gay men have for lesbians. As a small flavour:

a) my first experience of a lesbian and gay support group where one of the male volunteers refused to speak to women and any questions etc had to be directed via a man
b) some gay men in clubs if they see any women say 'ewww, fish' and if they want to get passed you they will literally just push you out of the way
c) the only time I ever left a job due to harassment on the grounds of sexuality was because of a relentless campaign of abuse from a gay man

I already regretted the energy I put into supporting men who treated us like crap and I wish I'd put my time into feminism instead but I guess for a lot of women that is a conclusion you just have to reach over time, with experience. The way so many gay men behave over the transactivism issues just feels like even more of a kick in the teeth.

As I said, NAGMALT (Not All Gay Men Are Like That) and I do have a few gay male friends who aren't misogynistic nobheads. However, they still don't really get it because their world hasn't changed.

I was at an LGBT themed event with a gay male friend recently (I don't want to be too specific about it in case it outs my location). I realised that the stuff for gay men was exactly the same as it would have been 15 years ago (with not even a mention of transmen, transmasculinity etc) whereas the 'non-men' stuff was dominated by stuff about gender identity, transfemininity etc. I mentioned it to my friend afterwards and he just looked at me blankly - His stuff was still there and he was aware that there was 'other' stuff (ie that wasn't about gay men) so that was the 'non-men' stuff for the rest of us.

Women get told all the time that we have to be 'intersectional' but are the same people demanding that men be intersectional because I'm sure as hell not seeing it.

I never saw gay men standing up for lesbians, supporting us or trying to tackle the misogyny endemic in the LGBT 'community'. I wonder what it is about transwomen that suddenly makes them such fervent advocates?

ladygrey

So fascinating to hear your experience of being part of the historical L&G movement. Isn’t it depressing that even then, lesbians were doing the emotional work ofnaupportnf gay men through the Aids crisis and the huge backlash against them that resulted from all the misinformation about Aids.

I wonder what it is about transwomen that suddenly makes them such fervent advocates?

Male solidarity? I can’t see why it would be anything else.

‘Scuse the odd typo there - you get the drift

2nd rule of misogyny: Women saying no to men is a hate crime.

Male solidarity, absolutely.
4th rule of misogyny: Women's opinions are violence against men, thus male violence against women is justified.

They say it in different way but they are repeating the same authoritarian male attitudes and beliefs that their grandfathers did.

I think a lot of gay men have no interest in women at all. And they are also less likely to be parents so they don't have the concern for children that fathers may have. So a lot of the concerns just pass them by.

They seem to live a more carefree yet ultimately frivolous and selfish lifestyle. Massively generalizing of course. But my db is like this. He's never had to grow up or accept responsibility. Anything that stops the fun or kills the buzz is boring. He doesn't want to talk about it.

Only Neville Southall I can think of who is straight. And if you Google a recent picture of him........

Neville Southall is such a strange, random advocate for all this, I have really been wondering what his skin in the game is, it's weird!

Anyway, his twitter profile pic is obviously of him back in the day, and is exactly how I remember him as a footballer, with the tash and everything. I googled him and when the images came up of him nowadays I thought 'fuck me, Neville Southall looks........ different!'

To be fair what he looks like has no bearing on what he is like as a bloke, neither does it make his views any more or less valid. I was just expecting him to look like he used to, perhaps just slightly older!

I had a little Google of him and he seems unpleasant. Was a womanizer when married then his wife and 10 year old daughter just before Christmas for a 19 year old he'd been having a 6 year affair with. He left her when she got pregnant. Sued his daughter 10 years later for the return of some trophies he'd given her.

He seems to be vociferously supportive of sex work.

He's the current darling of progressive male Twitter, who treat him like he's some kind of pet. The absolute pile-on Caroline Criado Perez and Sophie Walker got for being mean to poor little Neville was just ridiculous.

Was a womanizer when married then his wife and 10 year old daughter just before Christmas for a 19 year old he'd been having a 6 year affair with. He left her when she got pregnant. Sued his daughter 10 years later for the return of some trophies he'd given her.

Oh. Eww.

Did you really mean a 6 year affair, or should that have said 6 months?

I was mixing up my Neville's there. I was thinking of Phil Neville, coach of the England Women's Football team who doesn't actually think much of women