Are you scared?

[Jeanhatchet]

I. Am. Terrified.

The pace and scale of the attack on women and specifically feminists is like nothing I have seen in my lifetime.

Women are being arrested for speaking about being female. Women are insulted with derogatory terms for using words referring to their own bodies and the functions of those bodies. Suspended from their own political parties. Hounded from their jobs. Thrown out of their online spaces and denounced as bigots. Prevented from meeting to speak together. Prevented from hiring spaces to speak to each other. Being forced to say things that aren't provably true and that they really don't believe. Called terms that make them unsure of themselves. Gaslighted into accepting those terms. Made to feel guilty for wanting space where they feel safe and that has always been theirs and protected legally. Feeling uncomfortable for wanting to assert their legal rights. Feeling uncomfortable for saying no to male bodied people. Feeling uncomfortable for being lesbian and wanting only female partners. Feeling unsure if they can speak because they are terrified of upsetting a body of people who seem to have more power in every area of their lives even though those people are a tiny tiny minority.

As I just said elsewhere.... some women can take the temperature of the social/political/cultural water and feel their feet getting hot. I hope other women can feel this happening before women as a sex class is boiled alive. It is already uncomfortably hot for women speaking out. We are risking an awful lot.

I continue speaking out. I will be speaking at events wherever I'm invited about what is happening. Am I scared? Damn right I'm scared. Speaking about my body and beliefs about that body has become a revolutionary act.

Rather than ask if I'm scared that women are under such an organised, aggressive and escalating programme of attack I ask this of women who aren't scared .....why aren't you?

Jean by the way, you are incredible. You're an inspiration.

I am very scared.

I have a young teen daughter (and a teen son) and I’m terrified of the world they are growing up in and what it will become. I don’t know the way forward - I thought people would see sense before it got to this!

The NUS toilet thing I find really chilling- men bar women from their loos to basically take selfies there and play around.

I've been asking myself, why now?

My working hypothesis is that the financial crisis of 2008 has precipitated all sorts of other crises. Nobody in charge had any idea how to fix it and our centre political consensus collapsed. Without a strong centre position based on fundamentals about society that everyone can agree on, extremism of all kinds is able to flourish. Extremist transactivism has been able to exploit this vacuum.

I know it sounds like a weird leap - from financial crash to TRA extremism - but when there is no stable leadership at the top of society, cranks of all stripes exploit the instability for their own ends.

Yes I'm scared. I've just seen another Facebook friend ranting about bigots. Big love to you Jean. You're one of my heroines.

Lang your hypothesis has a scary historical precedent - financial crash in the late twenties, massive economic depression in the early thirties, all sorts of political madness flourishes.

But all of a sudden this desire for men to want to become women seems like a social movement. Is it because masculinity has got so toxic that men see the only escape is enacting femininity?

I think this warrants it's own thread. My two penneth is firstly you have to understand the predators in the male sex - Cluster Bs. These are the ones who harm others, especially women. I think these aggressive guys are running out of space in the real world e.g. probably rejected by multiple women as unsuitable material. One of the men who works with these guys, Don Hennessy, Director of the National Domestic Violence Intervention Agency (NDVIA) in Eire, talks about their sexual entitlement knowing no bounds. I think the "becoming female" may be another territory where this minority aggressive type can get their excessive sexual entitlement needs satisfied, using Trans as a cover, at the expense of women and children's existing legal rights. Because as we note, many transsexuals don't have these extreme demands involving the domination and erasure of women and children's single sex spaces.

@DancelikeEmmaGoldman

Some great questions and they need exploring. It looks like "proper academics" aren't allowed to. We are already fighting this fight so why don't we, the feminists, start exploring this? I've been saying for a while now that we need to be doing some research. I can't do it on my own, but I can certainly start it. Anyone else interested in joining me? If so, please PM.

I know it sounds like a weird leap - from financial crash to TRA extremism - but when there is no stable leadership at the top of society, cranks of all stripes exploit the instability for their own ends.

I agree plus I don't think Brexit / Trump is helping either - predators will go for wounded, vulnerable prey. The whole Brexit debacle has made the UK very, very vulnerable as everyone has their eye off the ball. Same in USA. Those are the conditions where predators move in as they know they can hunt with abandon. Sometimes I think it's a setup so the 1% can continue to strip public assets with little oversight.

And notice how what you just said is the most taboo thing of all to say, womanfor. Because once that piece of the puzzle clicks into place everything else makes sense and you realize that compromise is pointless so you may as well stand your ground and push back.

@SonicVersusGynaephobia

I think women are actually being simultaneously attacked on EVERY front at the moment.

All in the name of equality. And what reasonable person would disagree with equality, eh?

Women need to stop being reasonable.

Absolutely, I’m not in the UK so Mumsnet has been very enlightening on this topic and I wonder when the movement will come to my country (on a broader scale, I’m sure it’s already here in a small sense) and it makes me really think about the way I’ll be raising my daughter and son. It’s a scary thought what the future holds when there’s so much vitriol out there against women.

I'm terrified. I've had a breakdown over this. And that makes me feel pathetic, breaking down instead of fighting.

Angry. Calm. Full of resolve to not give up. Renewed in my commitment to women and girls.

In fact, thanks for providing the moment of clarity Shon et al!

I agree plus I don't think Brexit / Trump is helping either - predators will go for wounded, vulnerable prey.

Would we even have Brexit and Trump without the financial crash?

When the centre assumptions collapse - in our case, mixed market/capitalism is the best system, growth is necessary and will always happen, cycles are predictable, etc etc - there is no stable consensus for the moderate left and right to orbit around and so extremists flourish.

We have all sorts of institutional failure going on at the moment from the NHS to the Home Office, to DWP, to the police, to the courts.

Of course narcissistic extremists can find platforms. If you're in the middle of widespread institutional failure, who is going to stop them?

Speak out and don't beat about the bush. Get angry, permanently. You'll care a lot less about offending these turds and their misguided handmaidens.

Im.terrified for my dds more than anything. Dd1(11) in particular has already been on the receiving end of the boys will be boys crap ajd is starting to receive the "messages"loud and clear I'm trying so hard to drum into her that it's not ok and she shouldn't accept ir. But the level of acceptance amongst her amd her friends, of behaviour is set to become very upsetting over the next few years :(

She is also very sporty and I worry her chance to develope her skills and love of sport will be taken away with this crap.

I don't know how I will protect them both.

I'm not scared.

But I am motivated by all the aggression we are facing.

I have sons and like a previous poster this is for them too.

*I don't want them to believe that if they want to be sensitive or kind they have to change their beautiful male bodies and call themselves women

I don't want them to grow up so porn soaked that they don't understand that half of the human race are people, can't have a meaningful relationship with the mothers of their children if they have them*

So I am here standing for all women and girls and men and boys too. I thought our generation was OK - my relationship with my brother and my husband and male friends is good and equal. I'm not sure what happened to this new generation? It's all very odd.

I also have another thing I think contributes.

There was a shift in the media a while back with 24 hour news. It meant that content was more important than facts - any errors just got a quick errata that no one noticed at some point in the flow.
Then it kind of mutated to news not just not being fact checked but anyone writing anything in the web. So now opinions are edging out facts.
And then slowly, the opinion based stuff takes over. Trump and fake news - casting doubt in the few remaining outlets that do actually check facts.

So what you end up with is this odd climate of gullibility plus paranoia - and you see this everywhere - antivaxx, anti science, chemtrails. All these opinions are now put on a platform and seen as just as valid as real opinions with real facts behind them. You even see it in the proper media now - the BBC will have to have ‘a balancing voice’ but that can be a total fringe loon, not just ‘prof x who disagrees with prof y.’

And in a climate where science is denied, and ridiculed, where facts are secondary to opinions and feelings, you get the growth of extremism.

And I absolutely agree with posters above - having someone like trump who openly admits to assaulting women in power is a powerful message. It normalises everything. Add porn on tap into the mix and there’s this violent outpouring of misogyny.

Am I scared? Yup. But I’m also aware and angry.

Jean, you are doing a great job. I admire you greatly, as I do all the other women who are putting themselves in the firing line for this.

I have four young daughters. The oldest is 11 and is at the point where I can't shield her from everything anymore. I'm sick to my stomach terrified for all my girls

Terrified here too.

I have daughters. Older teens now, and outwardly bright capable young women with lots of empathy and social conscience. Except I see them as the children in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, being lured into a cage. 'Ice creams... lollipops... virtue cookies and total erasure...'

The atmosphere in which they exist is rainbow and sparkles and unicorns, masking an utter toxicity to women. They can't see what's happening, and they trust authority. We live in a democracy, right? What could possibly go wrong?

I’ll also add that the source of new academics and dissenters, our universities, are being neutered too.

No platforming is obscene- how will this generation learn to think critically, with no debate? They will be vulnerable to extremism, the very opposite of what they hope to achieve.
You take out the fact-bearers - the academics, the scientists, the technocrats and the intellectuals. With mockery, no platforming, accusations of x o phobia.
Then you numb everyone else with consumer goods and media. Then yes, as woman says you asset strip, reduce people to a feudal servitude and live off he fat.

The problem is that that kind of inequality triggers social collapse - there’s a level which societies don’t survive at. Black swan events like brexit and trump do not bode well for us.

You may think I’m doom mongering but I think society is head in a very dark direction and I’ve thought this for a few years now. Increasing extremism, inequality, population growth, wage depression, austerity - it’s a toxic mix.
All we need is a few small pushes and a group to ‘other’ and there will be armed conflict in Europe proper within ten years.

Bowlofbabelfish - I don't think you're wrong. It all does feel apocalyptic, doesn't it? Perhaps this is what the shift from Western to Chinese domination looks like? We're between eras?

It feels like the start of The Handmaid's Tale when women's rights were quietly being eroded

This - so yes I feel scared but I alternate between that and being absolutely, incandescently furious.

Yes I am. And I look at how women live in other parts of the world, and believe that some men would like to see that situation here for themselves.

I believe this has been going on since the 1990's, and a deliberate concerted effort has been made by the Men's Rights movement to take over womens spaces and services, and teach young women their place under the guise of 'equality'.
Men's activists have taken over Women's studies in Universities and co-opted them into 'gender studies'.
Men are re framing what 'feminism' and 'equality' mean in theory and practice.
We are facing a supremacy movement.

Not scared so much as angry at these pathetic men who are inadequate in so many ways and the pathetic politicians who are too spineless to stand up to their aggression. I'm not scared because perhaps naively I don't see these people as having the strength and intelligence as women fighting this. I believe sense and truth will prevail in the end. And I think men will take our side on this..:to paraphrase Dworkkn, I believe in men's humanity, despite the evidence to the contrary.