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?

I'm not scared at all. I haven't seen anything going on in real life and I don't spend much time online, so whatever is going on virtually is irrelevant to my life. There have always been predatory men, there always will be.

Also, I haven't watched the Handmaid's Tale, so that probably keeps my imagination at a normal level.

@AngryAttackKittens

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.

Yep it does feel taboo as well - I often feel alone with this huge weight of insight and so pleased there are other women with it too - who can hear me and confirm - as you just did - it's so important

I am scared for myself, but I am furious for my daughters.

I am furious this is not more widely discussed, and that any attempt at discussion by women about women's rights, women's bodies, women's fucking words, is ambushed, attacked and denounced as bigotry.

I'm scared for my daughters. Scared of where a porn-addled, image obsessed society where they're not even allowed to be female or women without that being co-opted by men is going to lead them. Not so much scared for myself - the cloak of invisibility being fat, frumpy and middle-aged protects me a lot.

Also, I haven't watched the Handmaid's Tale, so that probably keeps my imagination at a normal level.

There is nothing in The Handmaid's Tale that hasn't actually happened in the real world. Atwood made a point of this.

Perhaps avoiding that might keep your imagination at a normal level. How do you feel about the changes to women's rights in Iran as the result of a belief system. Are they too imaginative too?

I'm angry.
But I'm also optimistic (rare for me)

At the moment TRAs think they have the upper hand. They think they are winning. Actually I don't think they are. Yes, self ID was raised by the Tories as a possibility. I think they have now realised it was a mistake.

I think there are far more MPs with concerns about self ID than the TRAs think. I don't think it'll ever become law. We have to keep fighting it.

I know at least 6 MPs personally who would vote against self ID and think it's a crazy idea. They all support current legislation, and do not want to reduce rights for trans people.

But they would not vote to change the law to self ID. At least 1 would resign their ministerial position over it.

I keep saying it- write to your MP. Tell them why you are worried. Tell them why you are scared.

Write to penny mordant (minister for women & equalities). Search for the threads on here with advice & tips of what to say.

I'm not scared. It's just more of the same but played out in the open. Same for many other issues as well.

LongWeek is right. Go and see your MP and explain your concerns. Use specific examples like guides policy or schools policy on mixed sex spaces or women's prisons or whatever.

And don't be fobbed off if you get a standard response back from an MP. It's easy for them to do, but not good enough.

Ask to see them in a surgery. They're not gods, they're normal people, paid by you. Don't be scared. Push them to find out their view. Ask if they have daughters and if they'd be happy with gender neutral toilets for their daughters.

(Married to an MP)

*Also, I haven't watched the Handmaid's Tale, so that probably keeps my imagination at a normal level.

There is nothing in The Handmaid's Tale that hasn't actually happened in the real world. Atwood made a point of this.

Perhaps avoiding that might keep your imagination at a normal level. How do you feel about the changes to women's rights in Iran as the result of a belief system. Are they too imaginative too?*

Life is terrible for a lot of women (not just women, children and men too) in a lot of the world, I'm not going to deny that. I'm not scared for women in this country really. I can't worry about what is happening on the other side of the world too much because there is nothing I can do about it and I have enough real life problems of my own to keep my mind busy. - for example being bullied at work - by a woman.

Why now? Social media.

Anyone with a grudge, a complaint can find a hundred/thousand/million more people like themself and together they can whip themselves into a righteous froth of indignation. About anything.

Likewise fetishists. 20 years ago, they’d sit home wanking over some well-worn mail order porn, now they can watch, live, and find other similar people like them.

It’s tribalism, facilitated by social media. All of it.

I'm not scared - yet. But I'm fucking furious that my woman's body is apparently both up for debate AND nullified because apparently it isn't important to my identity as a woman any more. I will not stand here (sit on the sofa here) and let my identity be rewritten as 'cis' (or TERF, or woman-with-breasts-rather-than-woman-with-penis).

The worst thing, which I can see is a concern to all of us, is that hardly anyone else seems to realise or care about the significance of what's happening. And because it's such a nuanced area, it is VERY hard to explain to the 'uninitiated' that I am NOT anti-gay, I'm not anti-queer, I'm not anti-transexual ffs. I'm not a bigot. It does terrify me that I was agreeing with that recent Normal Tebbit article. Now that's scary!

Brilliant post OP, you sum things up so well. We still live in such a level of male supremacy that all of this is invisible to most men becuase they don't care to understand it because it doesn't adversely affect them (I am beginning to get really pissed off seeing the amount of men who say 'live and let live' in relation to the whole issue, when in fact what this means under male supremacy is let men get on with upholding that norm).

As for fear, yup I feel fear for all women and girls, my personal reaction to all this is much more one of anger though, but it powers me on which I think is the case for so many women. What has been really shocking to me is how the violence has been ignored. Everything from violent ideation to actual violence, VAW is glorified in trans activism and very much centered and pervasive. So many women and men ignore it, I would never have believed this would happen until it happened. It shows me how people can accept pretty much anything. That is scary to realise.

No, I’m not scared. I am FUCKING FURIOUS.

I have sons and daughters. They are teenagers and they are (by default) feminists. Some years ago I saw this and it struck me:

The patriarchy says, “boys will be boys”
Feminism says “you’re better than that”.

I have high expectations. I won’t have any toxic masculinity. Their dad is a misogynistic emotional abuser. I have spent years firefighting his shit.

No, i’m not scared.

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?

Yes I share that view that unless someone grabs the middle - history tells us a war will ensue sometime in the not too distant future. Because someone will grab power who is enabled not confronted - exactly as happened with Brexit /Trump - using social media as their propaganda machine. And instead of stopping it dead in its tracks - it rolls on until full scale hostilities are inevitable. We can see that same phenomenon playing out here with MN. We've never had social media before and maybe that is where the war is taking place - for the hearts and minds of the young. Maybe we are in a war and haven't realised it as there was no formal declaration - it's like a phoney war.

But maybe this is it!! Because Hitler used the propaganda techniques refined by the USA during WW1 to get to power (Bernays referred to this work as "psychological warfare"). These same tactics are being used on us all the time now using social media as the loudspeaker of the forked tongue. Ref Century of the Self documentary: It is impossible to fundamentally grasp the social, political, economic and cultural developments of the past 100 years without some understanding of Bernays and his professional heirs in the public relations industry. PR is a 20th-century phenomenon, and Bernays—widely eulogized as the "father of public relations" at the time of his death in 1995—played a major role in defining the industry's philosophy and methods.

Bernays argued that the covert use of third parties was morally legitimate because those parties were morally autonomous actors.

"If you can influence the leaders, either with or without their conscious cooperation, you automatically influence the group which they sway", he said. In order to promote sales of bacon, for example, he conducted research and found that the American public ate very light breakfast of coffee, maybe a roll and orange juice. He went to his physician and found that a heavy breakfast was sounder from the standpoint of health than a light breakfast because the body loses energy during the night and needs it during the day. He asked the physician if he would be willing, at no cost, to write to 5,000 physicians and ask them whether their judgment was the same as his—confirming his judgment. About 4,500 answered back, all concurring that a more significant breakfast was better for the health of the American people than a light breakfast. He arranged for this finding to be published in newspapers throughout the country with headlines like '4,500 physicians urge bigger breakfast' while other articles stated that bacon and eggs should be a central part of breakfast and, as a result of these actions, the sale of bacon went up

I've got 3 daughters and a granddaughter and I'm bloody terrified. I'm also incandescent with rage over the fact that those in power are allowing this to happen.

Do they not care about their wives, their daughters, their sisters, their mothers?

What will it take for them, and especially men, to stand up and say 'enough!'

@LongWeek I think they are waiting to see how it will be handled/work in Scotland. They were gonna go first but then got the backlash and put it on the backburner, I think, knowing Scotland would be going ahead with it.

I'm in Scotland, we have been fighting against this as well as we can. We know self ID is coming in but we are trying to secure research, consultation and exemptions with regards to the GRA and the EA, in order to protect female only spaces. I'm currently working on some demands with some other women, I'm in the phase of dealing with the schools guidance atm, it is horrendous.

Once you deny objective reality, many things come up out of the abyss.

The TRA movement has succeeded because ‘if I feel it is discrimination’(substitute the ‘ism’ of your choice), then it is discrimination’. This denies any concept of an objective standard of reality, so ‘if I feel like a woman then I am one’ no longer looks quite so absurd.

It is not surprising that TRAs are making most inroads in the hotness of political correctness (the Labour Party, the media, academia etc).

A penis is male, end of.

On the other hand, what happens when natal males can bear children, do have real periods etc (I am sure it will come before my children are old). Do the chromosomes they are born with define them, even if the phenotype ceases to be expressed?

Life is terrible for a lot of women (not just women, children and men too) in a lot of the world, I'm not going to deny that. I'm not scared for women in this country really. I can't worry about what is happening on the other side of the world too much because there is nothing I can do about it and I have enough real life problems of my own to keep my mind busy. - for example being bullied at work - by a woman.

Well I'm sorry you are being bullied at work. I hope you get it sorted out, no one should have to put up with that in their work space it is very demoralising and affects mentally. So I am truly sorry you are being bullied. The fact it is a women is largely irrelevant however.

I was not suggesting you take up the cause of women in Iran etc if you don't have the time. I was merely point out how easily a country and its attitude towards women can be changed into something authoritarian and oppressive. I was not making a call to arms, I was drawing a parallel. I know it seems like it could never happen here but honestly politically speaking that is sleep walking. It is always possible for cultures and societies to change incrementally if you ignore the changes by increment (which is what women here are concerned and discussing now). You might think it wouldn't and couldn't happen here but I think that attitude is complacent. That's all.

I genuinely hope you get your work troubles sorted out and someone is helping you with them. It must be really unpleasant working there right now.

I can't believe the number of words I left out in my above post - sorry
*affects you mentally

*(which is what women here are concerned with and are discussing now)

Thanks KittyKlaws - that meant a lot to me.

Bugger I burnt my food again - so much wisdom on these threads - appreciate it and you all - munching burnt bits as a penance.

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.

I agree with this analysis. I think it has been a long game.

I read The Handmaid's Tale thirty years ago when it first came out. The world today is looking awfully like Gilead.

Good tip to write to Penny Mordaunt, LongWeek. I have already written to my MP.

I don’t feel scared. Maybe I’m too much of an optimist.

I look at progress in a two steps forward one step back kind of way. This is definitely a two steps back moment ( I’m mostly thinking Trump) and feels really uncomfortable.

Pornification really worries me. I have a girl and a boy, I think they will both be damaged unless things can somehow improve.