Woman's Place UK meeting threatened with "device"

[hungryhippie]

twitter.com/Hastings_police/status/1007627071122759681

What the actual f*ck?

@Picassospaintbrush

This^

Another issue ignored by the press

I will post this again by Grayson Perry. Now I find his art completely uninteresting but his openness is good.
Faffing about in the metropolitan art world in a dress is fine, boundaries are freer. What is happening is this is being extended into all areas of life. Everywhere.

www.independent.co.uk/news/people/grayson-perry-says-not-wearing-a-dress-doesnt-stop-you-from-being-a-transvestite-9777881.html
And more from Grayson;
transcritical.wordpress.com/2016/04/23/grayson-perry-im-all-man/
And this;
www.mercatornet.com/conjugality/view/there-is-not-just-one-trans-narrative/18161

Grayson Perry, a successful English potter, has from the age of 10 enjoyed dressing up as a woman. Perry’s “alter ego” Claire sometimes favours a Mrs. Thatcher persona, sometimes a “girlish shepherdess” look. Perry considers his penchant a fetish – “my greatest sort of potent sex dream was to be a housewife walking down the road” - and nothing to do with gender identity. “I have no special insight into being a woman. I am just a bloke in a dress.”

There is a name for Perry’s erotic fetish: autogynephilia, an ugly word in English, rendered far more beguilingly in French - amour de soi en femme. It was coined by Toronto sexologist Ray Blanchard of CAMH, and describes men who get sexual pleasure from seeing themselves as women. These men don’t want to actually be women that is, they have no wish to transition surgically as male-to-female transgenders (TG) do because they understand, exactly as Perry says, that they are not females trapped in a male body; they are biological males indulging an erotic fantasy.

Autogynephilia poses a serious problem for TG advocacy. For two reasons. First, Perry and his ilk muddy the pure waters of the unitary TG narrative: namely that males who yearn to appear as female “are” females who were “assigned” the wrong body at birth, and require rescue by the medical community in order to be made whole. Second, the introduction of eroticism (“potent sex dream”) into the near-spiritual and de-sexualized tropes cultivated in TG advocacy lends credence to the idea that at least one form of cross-gender identification is paraphilia – kinkiness in lay terms - rather than a noble, existential struggle for self-emancipation.

Objecting to being part of someone else's sexual fetish and being in a vulnerable position to not give consent is not a phobia it's a natural human reaction.

Men react violently, women react differently.

I am sure reactions of hurt people, can cause depression in those that started a situation and wanted a different outcome.

See also Eddie Izzard's interview from 2010:
(extracts)
"You're saying it's a glass rocket? You weren't there at the beginning, when people would say 'is he going to turn up wearing a dress?', sometimes it was 'we'll only have him if he's wearing a dress'." Of course, coming out as a transvestite is like anything else – people who are really good at it make it look easy. It doesn't mean it was.

Because it was hard, and is the touchstone to which Izzard returns whenever he wants to describe anything else that is a particular challenge, it is not a bad way to carbon-date his life. He realised he was a transvestite when he was four. His mother died when he was six. He decided to be an actor when he was seven....

The amount one knows about this comedian is really confusing: on the one hand, he has been this courageous figure for transvestism, being open about it even when it looked like it might torch his career, going very girly on a recent Canadian tour, even as he tries to consolidate his acting in Hollywood (where they are not at all big on alternative lifestyles, at least not for front men). In tandem with that, he's been very frank about his sexuality, since he's straight and people expected him to be gay.

"I felt everyone thought I was gay, and I could see it being a logical thing, you wear the clothes, you're gay. But I'm straight. I don't know why I'm straight, but I am. I like to be truthful and I'd like to get it down on record."

"Well, I thought it was important. Like, why should I say I'm a transvestite? I could have kept it secret and lied about it. Instead, I thought, 'no, this is true, I'm going to tell people'. And I got the space for myself, maybe someone else can get some space out of that. Just like I thought with Europe, if we can do this, then other continents can learn to work together in some shape or form and … you know, you've got to get to a place where two billion people aren't having to live on two dollars a day."

www.theguardian.com/culture/2010/nov/20/zoe-williams-eddie-izzard-saturday-interview

I think the reason the press haven't covered the bomb raid story is because the police haven't said anything beyond a brief statement - these stories tend to come from the police holding a press conference.

I was once on a bus when a young couple arrived, both in leather gear which - while not explicitly BDSM - was definitely not street wear. She wore a collar and her "Master" held the lead.

This was all about making the rest of us witnesses to their kink. I found it intolerably offensive. I'm not a voyeur and I don't want to be exposed to other people's niche sexual tastes.

It's not just the odd BDSM fan who gets a kick out of sharing their fetishes with the world.

R0wan I understand that Eddie Izzard now says he is transgender, not transvestite.

Woman’s Place cannot announce their meetings in advance because the venue will be harassed, and so transgender activists portray it as a secretive organization.

A situation engineered by TRAs. Many feminist meetings (even before WPUK) tried to be open about their meetings, but the venues were hounded until they caved and cancelled bookings. So now, all of these meetings have to have the venue secret.

To date, and I confidently predict in the future as well, no trans meeting has ever been disrupted or protested by feminists.

All a bit one-sided, innit?

R0wan I understand that Eddie Izzard now says he is transgender, not transvestite.

Correct.

Why are people backing other people pushing sexual stuff onto the rest of the population?

It's all capitalist stuff too, coming from left-wing people, pushing what it not wanted onto unconsenting people, the hypocrites.

I am not interested in porn.

I am not interested in strippers.

I am not interested in hiring a sex worker.

I am not interested in having sexual relations with friends, strangers and so forth.

You may be interested in that, I don't care what consenting adults get up to as long as no harm happens.

STOP pushing you sexual stuff on to me, it's not something I am interested in it. Keep your consensual sexual relations to the privacy of your home please.

JuzzaL I wonder if PP don't think transphobia is a "thing" because the criteria are now so absurd that just saying transwomen are biologically male qualifies as transphobia?

I tend to think trans people are subject to general homophobia rather than anything specific to them. Plus women who identify as men are also subject to misogyny. I'm not sure anyone is prejudiced against trans people because they're trans but because they're seen as gender non-conforming - which is the root of homophobia.

I suspect that there's also an uncanny valley element with biological males who don't pass as women. People, especially women, are suspicious and nervous of people who appear to be in disguise of some sort.

BoreOfWhabylon
I understand that Eddie Izzard now says he is transgender, not transvestite.

Yes, I heard a speech that he made yesterday at the Labour 'party in the park' type thing.

Incidentally, I also came across another blog (NOT Clare's) that stated that even 'CIS' women have AGP, and that many fantasise about being in a female body.

This is standard TRA nonsense. There's clearly a difference between a woman having sexual thoughts of themselves as a woman (i.e. their own body) and a male person doing so.

At Labour Live yesterday, Eddie commented, "I came out as transgender 33 years ago in 1985.... not terribly cool then"

said "I am a street fighter. I fight them on the street. If they shout horrible things, I shout horrible things back. Or report them to the police.... the police are very positive about this... hooray for hate crimes..well hooray for the fact they exist & the CPS is taking this seriously... CPS actively saying we have to move forward on this principle"
(approx quote as Eddie isn't the easiest person to transcribe! link to the speech below- I am not endorsing the Twitter account!)

twitter.com/LOLabourLive/status/1007980764321939457

Pile on' irritates me. We are many, there are lots of us, because it's a feminist board for women. I don't know why it's expected that when one or two come on to express a different view, even an anti-woman view, we should decide between ourselves that most of should withdraw to make it even and not a 'pile on'. It's just another silencing tactic.

Agree totally with this.

But he didn't, he came out as a transvestite. Does he think we don't remember? Or does he think that a transvestite is transgender?

Isn't this the Stonewall definition of transgender?

Thank you @alltheprettyseahorses. Yes. I would like to engage.

More people have clicked links to my blog than have posted here. There are lurkers, and some might just possibly be swayed by some of what I write.

Have I condemned enough? All I am aware of, at the moment, is two tweets (one correcting "decide" to "device"). I find a bomb threat appalling, but it is very different from someone "planning to bomb" AWP. If anyone has links to credible reports (not blogs) that there is a plan to leave even a fake bomb at an AWP meeting, I would be very grateful to see them, as then it would be worth my while seeking to organise trans people against that. Partly it is how bad we look- yes, optics concerns me- but I am running out of words here, worse than appalled, at the thought of bombing AWP.

Two people asked about my sexuality. One said she found what she proceeded to say "upsetting". It is a risk I run, being so open. People can use what I write to upset others. I am no more ashamed of it than of being trans (which is not to say not ashamed). Of course I am a genuine trans woman. I have been transitioned over ten years, with eight years working dealing directly with the public.

I have been out this morning. I had lunch, saw friends, talked deeply about something other than trans stuff. Even an obsessive like me has to sometimes. It's not that I am not engaging. On my blog, I quoted a trans man boasting of hitting a woman. Someone asked why I did not blank that out. I answered: it's because I want it clear that it happened, and I condemn it. So she asked me the same question again.

Clare - can you see why there is grave concern about those with AGP wanting access to women's spaces?

I have shared single sex and unisex spaces, the biological sex caste I share with, don't look at me the way the other biological sex look at me. I very much doubt my sex caste use me as an unconsenting sexual fetish prop. They are too busy rushing around trying to fit in their daily tastes and looking after children. There is never anybody of my sex caste creeping around looking at others the way I have seen people from the other sex class do.

AGP is not a useful concept.

AGP is a reality for some. I think we cant ignore it.
It is not relevant obviously for the many kids affected by this issue, and for some of the adults, but it is a reality for some of the adults and one sex in particular.

Clare.

Each time I ask you a question you do not give me a straight answer. You either ignore the question or shit it down like you just did.

I believe you know exactly what I am saying.
Can you not answer?

You are clearly not ashamed. You could have used any pseudonym to engage on here but you chose your name. You wanted people to look at your blogs. You want people to know who you are.

If there is to be a real debate we need to discuss the uncomfortable truth.

You may not see that as relevant because it doesn't affect you.

You are lucky that you can simply breeze past anything that inconveniences you. Some of us don't have that privilege.