Laurie Penny's Mirror World

[ArcheryAnnie]

Apparently gender-crit women are a cult who don't tolerate dissent.

Laurie, come over here and have a quick look through the threads. Then have a look at your own lot.

Then tell me again who is "cult-like".

I find that absolutely astonishing after the examples I gave you

I don't find it astonishing. It just further confirms my opinion that we are not being engaged with in good faith. Laurie has her mind made up. And has an eye on what her weeping trans friends and the TRA and Labour misogynists she hangs about with would think if she conceded even a tiny bit.

We can talk about why you think transwomen are women if you like.

Yes let's do.

"APAB- I think it would have been very dishonest of me to pretend to be someone else on this board."

Nonsense. You wanted everyone to know it was you. You have no idea who I am and it is entirely unimportant for me, or you, to announce ourselves.

But you are looking for attention and publicity. And pats on the back from the trans lobby. I have no doubt you will get it playing the fan girl. You are by no means the first: Jack Monroe did the same. She received no abuse. She debated with us and ultimately accepted she was female. But then ran back to twitter calling us bigots and bitches. Because Jack can't accept not being with the zeitgeist, which unfortunetely for women, is currently the trans agenga. All evidence points to you being the same.

This debate happens every single day on this board. You could have quite easily debated under another name. Will be waiting to see how long it is before you run back to twitter screaming about transphobic so called feminists.

Still. There is hope.

A lot of people on here have been worried about the direction of transactivism for a long time. So one thing you need to know - if you haven't spotted it - is that the most prominent transactivists frequently make misogynist remarks. There's India Willoughby, for example, saying that women who don't shave their legs are "dirty" and that she feels "sorry" for men because of the Counting Dead Women site, which lists the numbers of women murdered by men. There's Munroe Bergdorf, who addressed another woman as a "hairy barren lesbian". There's Lily Madigan who, as Liam Madigan, had a Twitter profile with the words "Savile's apprentice" and "rape.com". There's Shon Faye, who tweeted to a lesbian: "enjoy your erasure".

I am struggling to see why you think it's in the interests of feminism to ally ourselves with these people. Can you explain what you imagine we might have in common?

Why ARE transwomen women? It's clear that transgender women are women even tho they present as male. You need to tell us what your new definitions of man and woman are.

Debate happens every day. There was no need to announce yourself

Yes. No-one knows who I am. I don't feel the need when I am trying to educate myself.

Hi Laurie.

I think it's a good thing you're here. There are a lot of decent and extremely clever women here. I don't mean to sound patronising when I say you could learn a lot from them.

I have to be honest, I cannot fathom for the life of me how an intelligent, educated woman could take your position.

I am gender-critical and strongly against self-id. I only wish trans people peace and love and happy lives, as does everyone here I think, but just because you don't bear someone any ill-will, doesn't mean you should be forced to let them in your self-spaces. Vulnerable women - particularly rape victims - deserve to have society care about their needs. I absolutely do not trust organisations to make good decisions in this regard. Absolutely no way. Women get screwed over without thought. Many of us are voiceless in society. Look at Brendan Cox and Jimmy Saville and every child in care out there who is currently being coerced into sex by predatory men in their community. It is still ongoing.

I am gender-critical for many, many reasons but here's just one for you: I have complex medical conditions and I was once sexually assaulted by a highly respected doctor. He sedated me as it was underway so I still don't know fully what he did to me.

I have quite frequent operations. When I come round from an anaesthetic, and I'm confused and scared and not at my most assertive, I want to know I can always ask to be cared for by by female nurses and carers only. Self-id would jeopardise that. Women like you are throwing women like me under a bus. It is simply not acceptable. You do not seem to realise the harm you are doing. And no, I know not all trans people are predators. The few I have known have bern lovely. But predatory men will exploit self-id and it's pretty hard to tell in advance who they are.

Good post gendercritter

Lplurker
But isn't that the problem at the heart of this? There IS no way to prove someone is trans. Requiring people to act out stereotypes is clearly wrong but what other way is there - what test is there that would separate abusers, frauds and opportunists from genuine trans people?

Hi Penny, your response to the question regarding Maria's beating reminds me of when Trump talked about folk being bad on "both sides" after a woman was killed. In this instance a woman was beaten, there are no women beating up trans activists.

What are your thoughts on the rapid rise in young girls opting out of girlhood, so many autistic or young lesbians. I fear we are enforcing stereotypes and there is no room for feminine boys or masculine girls.

My daughter likes girls, she is now half way to declaring she is a boy as it's easier than being a masculine girl. There really is no room left for gender non conformity. The doctors are following an affirmation only approach and Stonewall does not have women or girls backs.

There are no spaces left for young lesbians and the gender roles are policed, increasingly by kids themselves. Lesbians are not cool, trans boys are celebrated.

This isn't good, this has come from the top down and is being spoon fed to our kids. We should be fighting gender stereotypes, instead we are teaching kids to use them to measure whether they are girl enough.

This is not my feminism. My feminism challenges sexism and seeks to liberate females from the oppression they face because they were born female. I centre women and girls because some bugger has to.

Women is what you are, not who you are.

"your response to the question regarding Maria's beating reminds me of when Trump talked about folk being bad on "both sides" after a woman was killed. In this instance a woman was beaten, there are no women beating up trans activists."

Exactly. When a feminist starts making excuses for two young men physically attacking a 60 year old woman without provocation, you do start to wonder at the mental gymnastics that are required.

This isn't good, this has come from the top down and is being spoon fed to our kids. We should be fighting gender stereotypes, instead we are teaching kids to use them to measure whether they are girl enough.

This makes me sick, this is AGPs creating a pipeline.

(Coming back in tentatively)

When a feminist starts making excuses

This would only be a surprise if Penny actually was a feminist. Just because someone self identifies as something doesn't mean they are that thing. Penny also identifies as a radical feminist and is clearly not one. She identifies men as women and lesbians, too.

I don't accept Penny is a feminist because I observe her actions, her statements, who she supports and listens to. None of it is woman centred. She consistently argues in opposition to feminists, she chums with and aligns herself with misogynists, and she dismisses, denies and patronises women's experiences.

If you see her for the anti feminist activist her actions reveal herself to be, it is no longer a surprise how she behaves.

What I’m hearing is that women here have been utterly shat on by this government, by cuts, by rising sexism in society and the stripping of vital welfare and institutional support. And that in this context, as you see trans women as men, it seems like men are barging in and demanding access to what little there is left for women.

No, not right. It’s not an emotional argument regarding scarce resources and who should have them and it’s not created by the cuts either.

It’s about legal concepts and a life, from birth, being shat on in various ways because of sex based oppressions with what really is a bare minimum of rights which protect women based on biology. Those rights are already woefully inadequate.

The cuts are affecting how this oppression is felt by women (magnifying it) but it has always been there. It is in fact why we are even being affected by the cuts so badly, because we are more reliant on services in the first place due to the structural sexism. We don’t want to be cycling between dependency on men and the state all our lives, unfortunately that’s the reality. It is why these changes are so important though.

The fact women have these material realities is because of sex based oppression, not because of the way we identify as individual humans.

It’s about what the trans lobby is lobbying for; an extension of the current GRA which currently replaces sex with gender identity in law in certain circumstances (a legal fiction).

It may not be the intention of those lobbying for the changes but it does have the effect in law of erasing sex based oppression and sex based legal protections from law. It replaces what we are with what others think they are. In the context of the cuts the negative effects will be magnified for women and for transsexuals.

We can acknowledge these differences and still fight patriarchy. I passionately believe that the campaign against trans inclusion damages feminism, and thereby all women. I know we’re never going to agree on all of this but I sincerely hope that some of us at least can hang on to what we have in common and give each other the benefit of the doubt.

There is no ‘campaign against trans inclusion’. Not from radical feminists anyway, maybe the American Christian right wing I don’t know...

There are some groups like woman’s place who are asking for women to be included in discussions about sex based rights and changes to services that women use. That’s all. Why do women not get to be consulted about how changing these things will affect them? How it is already affecting them?

The trans lobby is not asking for us to find common ground. It is asking that the concept of biological sex (the source of oppression of women) is erased from law and that gender identity (an issue only trans people would benefit from) replaces it. This is the fundamental issue and biological women and trans people have no common cause there because trans identity is founded based on the same concepts which are used to oppress biological women; that identity is gendered.

There will never be common ground as long as the trans lobby is lobbying for that. It is directly against the interests of biological women.

I think absolutely everyone, no matter how strongly they feel about trans ideology and what it is based on, fundamentally supports protection, support, rights, freedom from discrimination etc etc for trans people but this cannot be at the expense of sex based rights for women which is what is currently being demanded.

If you have been lucky enough in your life to have never found yourself in the position where your life has actually depended on the existence of these rights then I can see why you would come to the conclusion women speaking about these things are being mean to another vulnerable group. I can see why you’d think women are being emotional about giving things up and that it was necessary to be ‘more objective’.

That’s not what is going on.

Many women here have been in the position where frequently, from childhood, our lives have literally depended on these rights in ways you cannot fathom, even though you will have been subjected to many appalling experiences because of sexism.

Offred - Laurie's entire identity (and career) depends upon her wilfully failing to understand the actual intersectionality between class and sex based structural inequalities. Unless Laurie chooses the individualist social constructionist debasement of Crenshaw's work, she - a privately educated graduate of Oxbridge and Harvard - has no basis to claim a marginalised identity any more than her equally class privileged buddies Shon and Munroe do.

She knows this. You know this. Shon and Munroe know this. Most people reading this thread know this. Which is why Laurie has had, has, and will always have, cloth ears to everything you are saying.

@JoanSummers I owe you an apology. I thought we could maybe make LP look like the fool she is by politely engaging and showing her utter lack of coherent arguments. But you are right, she is only here to troll.

She intends to use a mixture of patronising us, attempting to guilt trip us into being nice little women, suitably dependent on the largesse of their left-wing betters for handouts (with the veiled threat that those handouts will disappear in perpetuity if we don't support left-wing group think in everything), appeal to our emotions, and scatter the usual mixture of disinformation, and as someone said upthread, almost Trump-like and entirely false rhetoric like "both sides are as bad as each other.

LP - you are a complete fucking disgrace to the journalistic profession. I'd take a muck-raker for the Sun over you any day.

suitably dependent on the largesse of their left-wing betters

She identifies as our representation, dontchaknow. We plebs aren't allowed opinions of our own. It's like the Victorians improving the poor.

@FermatsTheorem
No you don't - I completely respect that you wanted to try and dialogue with another woman and see where she was coming from and I stepped out partly because I didn't want to get in the way of that and partly because Penny really sparks so much anger in me, she has been a willing player and figurehead for so much damage.

I knew you would be disappointed but I don't hold it against you for trying.

Peace.

"It seems like there’s also a very real fear here that trans rights will be used as a lever to deny sex- and gender- based provisions and protections. "

She writes that muddled up sentence?

If you have no idea the change from sex to gender is intentionally eliminating sex based exemptions and definitions what does she actually know about? That Grayson Perry is an artist?

She's fluff.

I never engage with discussions with the aim of converting to my point of view Lang. I like the opportunity to discuss and the discussion itself.

Applauds SeahorsesAREhorses

"Hi Penny, your response to the question regarding Maria's beating reminds me of when Trump talked about folk being bad on "both sides" after a woman was killed. In this instance a woman was beaten, there are no women beating up trans activists."

for your poor daughter. It's a fucking nightmare for young girls now, I feel so sorry for them She is lucky to have a mighty mother who will do everything to let her see how wonderful she is, as she is. and for you

And that in this context, as you see trans women as men, it seems like men are barging in and demanding access to what little there is left for women

Also agree that, no, that is not it!!

It is not about men taking our inadequate share of the pie.

It is about the fact that men are responsible for 98% of violent crime, that women are physically vulnerable and oppressed purely on the basis of their sex and that men pretty much rape with impunity in our so-called modern society.

It is about keeping some spaces women only, for our safety and dignity and comfort. It is about protecting the vulnerable.

Trans women should have their own spaces if they don't wish to share with men.

Offred - sorry if I sounded wanky. I'm like Joan in that Laurie sets my teeth on edge so badly that I become intemperate.