Ooh step back, India Willoughby is going to penetrate the Mumsnet debate

[ALittleBitOfButter]

Just saw on twitter that IW says will do radio interview about Mumsnet. Sorry can't link as on phone.

Good points, Springnowplease.

I can draw an analogy: I have autism and will never, ever be neurotypical, no matter how hard I try. All that I can do is to watch NTs and imitate their behaviour. But I will never understand what it is like to be NT.

Same for transwomen - they can imitate us as much as they like, but they will never understand what it is like to be female.

I'll never understand what it feels like to be male either, and like most women I've had a far more thorough exposure to the male perspective (because it's everywhere, pop culture is saturated with it, you couldn't avoid if even if you tried) than most men will ever have to women's perspectives. Still not the same as actual experience.

IW is now pissed off that MN has taken down 'offensive' tweets

twitter.com/JuliaHB1/status/985957210529419264

LOL

"That comment is offensive, please remove it"

(MNHQ complies)

"See how they removed that comment? This just proves that they're as bad as we said they were."

I hope MNHQ are leaning a valuable lesson from this about what happens when you try to negotiate with people who're not acting in good faith.

Dr Nicola Williams will be on Talkradio at 9.20.

(@asknic on twitter)

I do not like the term 'biological woman' because that implies we are a subset of women and we're not.

Makes me think as opposed to what, robot women?

This whole saga is just ludicrous. I feel like I've got sucked into an argument between my preschoolers.

(If my preschoolers were lawyered up and also threatening to kerb stomp me)

Can someone post a libk to Nic’s Talkradio slot if they get a chance. Yesterday’s interview was a great listen during my lunch break.

LiNk 🙄

Nice post @ReluctantCamper
Hope it stays!

Hope people are not put off by the deletes! It's a really important debate and we have them rattled. They really don't like us talking - so we must continue to talk. Am usually late to the party so don't post much but I do RTFT. Love all you posters out there

Referring me to 2 threads of 1000 comments each, one of which I posted confused was not only unhelpful but the threats to ban if I transgressed once more (this was my first "offence") was as insulting as it was shocking.

This, this was my first "transgression" (saying men can't be women is now a transgression) and the immediate threat of a ban, combined with the "oh we're ever so sad to have to do this to you, but you know, men's feelings matter" messages were just.... jarring, hurtful, almost unbelievable if we hadn't seen it happen before.

Julia started by saying she would have signed Fair Play For Women's open letter to the Girl Guides if she had known about it beforehand.
Then she followed up by saying she read around Mumsnet and checked all of India's links after India accused Mumsnet of being transphobic and didn't find anything at all.

Really great start :)

Btw, I was on the CBB threads. I'm sure I remember an agreement not to use a particular group of pronouns or the word "man" for IW, but I don't remember being told not to use "male" when referring to IW's pre-IW life, behaviour (along the lines of the shouting at AB) or sexed body?

The separate set of threads about "famous transpeople" was around the time of the PL blogfest, iirc. And again, the agreement was around particular pronouns and "man", not around the biological reality of being a person-formerly-referred-to-as "male"?

Am I misremembering?

Nic saying that biology matters and trans women are not women and speaking facts is not transphobic.

When we were told to use the correct pronouns before a few of us started using the individuals name and no pronouns at all.
I still do that. It's clunky but avoids misgensering. For 99% of trans women I personally am happy to use female pronouns. It's the ones demonstrating very masculine behaviours (e.g. Danielle Muscato) that cause me conflict.

Nic also saying that the problems around trans girls in Guides is not because try are trans, but because they are male.

Julia pointed out that the Guides refused to send a spokesperson to Julia's show.

Someone(s) at the Guides needs to be held accountable for all this.

For 99% of trans women I personally am happy to use female pronouns.

I used to be happy to let the very few male trans get on with their lives. Not happy to have them in female space, but they were overall discreet, quickly in and out. They weren't forcing women to lie about them and they were respectful and cognisant that as males they were in women's spaces.

Since this crop of TAs I'm done. Men are men and are he. Women are women and are she.

I won't lie to be polite anymore, I am done with it.

Quentin, oo that makes me have another thought... is transperson behaving in the masculine way in which they were socialised okay?

Providing a link to my Green Party comment (being aware of how scrutinised and screenshot comments are nowadays!)

I had to give up reading the comments under it, I might burst a blood vessel. The inability to comprehend that referring to women as non-males was degrading, insulting, belittling... I give up.

The messages I got from HQ were more "please try" and less "off you fuck then" then the ones Idon'tdowindows seems to have gotten, and I appreciate the attempt to engage, but...I'm a radfem. Make me feel like I have to choose between supporting other women and supporting a policy designed to appease angry hostile men who no amount of appeasement will ever satisfy anyway (points up) and that's no choice at all.

If there's a legal reason for what's being requested then they need to tell us so, so people can then make the decisions that make sense for them based on that information. As in, is there a pending libel charge? Are they acting on legal advice? Because that people might be willing to bite their tongues for a while for.

I haven't read the whole thread yet but am currently going through a long thread on Twitter which is just glorious. Giuliana and others are posting screenshots as supposed examples of transphobia from Mumsnet and dozens of responses, many of them from JHB's ordinary followers, not radfems or Mumsnetters, are saying 'What's transphobic about that, it's just obvious common sense?' and so on and so forth. Many people pointing out that some of these examples are years and years old.

The best bit was probably a TRA saying 'Have you seen this awful thread about Danielle Muscato?' which resulted in the posting of many choice pictures of DM and screenshots of DM's most infamous moments on social media. The person insisting that their penis is not male is doing sterling work as well.

I'm pretty heartened by this. The TRAs have ventured outside their little echo chamber and there is a lot of evidence that ordinary people, not immersed in the trans debate, are baffled and repelled by what they are saying.

I feel that IW has done us all a real favour in bringing this issue to much wider attention. Thanks, India!

Julia pointed out that the Guides refused to send a spokesperson to Julia's show.

Seriously? Wow. That's not a good look for the Guides.