Lesbians protest at London Pride #getthelout

[miri1985]

twitter.com/hashtag/getthelout?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Ehashtag

www.facebook.com/346828442474237/posts/403582420132172/

These women are bloody brave, if I was wearing a hat I'd tip it to them

Oneof2dads

.. it's nice to meet you, by the way. At one of the recent WPUK meetings a gay man stood up and said he'd had no awareness of this before and nor did he think it was much talked amongst his gay friends

Transplantsareplants

Amazingly elucidating answer, thank you. I totally get what you mean. But suddenly feel like this will make me a hate-mongerer in some peoples eyes! This is issue is so basic yet so complex.

What term do you think would have been acceptable, super?

I myself am not going to tone police them, but I'm interested to know how they could have expressed themselves to your satisfaction, if at all.

Because part of what they are protesting is that language that we need to describe material realities is being eroded. How do you suggest we tackle that?

TransplantsArePlants

Nice to meet you too. I agree, there is no dialogue about this in the gay male community and it's so easy to be swept along by the media.

Do you consider the use of the term " so-called 'transwomen' " acceptable in the context of that flyer being handed out at the front of that parade, or in any other context?

Well, it's a soi disant term, isn't it? Therefore, on the flyer technically accurate but also inimical.

I don't accept any term that uses the vocabulary of my sex for people not of my sex. I consider it an act of hostile appropriation. Such people do, however, eschew their own sex, so I can see that using terms to describe them using the vocabulary of their sex are unwelcome.

How do you suggest we square this circle? The onus is on you, as you are the one wanting to change definitions.

I have asked MNHQ this question many times in order to get clarity on their new guidelines. Answer came there none.

And no, I don't think they had "every right" to be there. I think the people who were intended to lead the parade by the parade organisers had every right to be there, and that their lead was wrongly taken away from them by the women in the action.

It was a protest. That's what protesting usually means, you have to go and do something you are not supposed to, be somewhere you are not supposed to be, in order to draw attention to your cause.

The lesbians at Pride could simply choose not to sleep with trans women, there's no need to get in a big transphobic flap about it.

To Daim and everyone else who loves to keeps spouting this mealy mouthed assertion.

Sexually harassing lesbians, not just into coercive sex, but in direct denial of their homosexuality is wrong on every level.

This is exactly the sort of reaction that literally millions of women were subjected to, after the MeToo campaign.

Why don't you just tell him where to go?

Why don't you just say no? It's easy.

Stop blowing it up out of all proportion. Not all men/transwomen are like that.

I've never seen anything like that. I'm not sure I believe you.

Oh my God, are you saying all men/transwomen are rapists?

I know loads of women/lesbians who have never mentioned this. They don't seem to have any trouble.

I'm a woman/lesbian, I disagree, so your experience can't be right.

Eleven million women in under 24 hours said Me Too.

Showing it was endemic and widespread. And there is barely a woman who has not been touched by it.

And yet, you substitute the word lesbian for woman, and magically it's completely different.

Absolute blindness. And such a woeful lack of empathy and perception.

Furthermore the amount of people who seem to not understand what rape culture means. It doesn't just mean there is loads of raping going on. It means raping is allowed to flourish. That the culture surrounding it is on the side of minimisation and normalisation, rather than out rage and prevention.

Telling women who are being sexually harassed that they can just say no, is the very definition of enabling rape culture.

It was a protest. That's what protesting usually means, you have to go and do something you are not supposed to, be somewhere you are not supposed to be, in order to draw attention to your cause.

Non-compliant women, eh? How very dare they.

Datun

Excellent as usual

Lets just cut through the bullshit and substitute transwoman for man and lesbian for woman, and here we are back at MeToo

Except I may not be allowed to say that

That sounds like exactly the right approach one and I'm glad for your child - with no reference to gender identity politics at all, just from everything I've read about adoption and attachment issues.

super dandy, I don't really think you're here to talk, just to goad - but I'm asking all that because I'm trying to ask how you define transwomen? Not me.

This is a bit of a simplification but for you where is someone really a transwoman:

1 I'm a woman! (Very obvious pisstake)
2 I'm a woman! (Not clearly a joke, but no demonstrable change at all in any other way)
3 I'm a woman! (Slight dress or behaviour change)
4 I'm a woman! (Dress or behaviour change)
5 I'm a woman! (Drugs, dress or behaviour changes).
6 I'm a woman! (Drugs, minor surgery, dress or behaviour changes)
7 I'm a woman! (Drugs, major surgery, dress or behaviour changes)
8 I'm a trans woman! (Surgery, dress, behaviour changes, but acknowledges a difference between identity and sex).

Where do you draw lines? Where would you personally say "so-called"? Where would you really feel comfortable handing out limited resources (if at all)?

Moonkissed

I prefer those protests where everyone is agreeing with each other, making cupcakes and knitting

the "so-called" part

It's really important that people know that lesbians are being pressured to accept TW as lesbians on their say so alone. The lesbians protesting have had decades of lesbophobic harassment from men with the same stock phrases as TW claiming they're lesbians too.

the "so-called" part

Is these women expressing their rightful objections to the lesbophobia and they can use whatever words they like to express themselves, based on their lived experience.

If you want to 'take exception' to the heartfelt & passionate words lesbians are using to defend themselves against a lesbophobic and misogynist movement that seeks to ignore their clear sexual boundaries, carry on, but most people posting here & elsewhere are 100% behind these women however they choose to express themselves.

You say their choice of wording is 'hostile'? And the verbal abuse they got from TW (as well as a bottle thrown at them) is what?

This policing of language to silence women speaking out is so utterly boring and predictable.

Daim acknowledges that lesbians are female homosexuals, but thinks men can be lesbians.

They must therefore think that these males are actually born females. Rendering the apparent fact that them and their "wife" were born female, utterly meaningless.

oneof2dads

Glad you are here and asking questions! We were recently accused of homophobia due to a thread objecting to commercial surrogacy that was subsequently reframed as ‘they don’t want gay men to have kids’ when what we were really saying was the baby needed to know that it , like every person on the planet, came from a woman. That isn’t a judgement on the men raising babies together, and you clearly demonstrate this by talking about the birth mother in your adopted child’s story.

Homophobia is revolting and unacceptable in all cases. Sadly, the T part of LGBT seems unable to accept that in some cases, the actions of T people are intrinsically homophobic.

We’re standing up for women and girls, but that doesn’t put us against all men, nor all T people, only the dangerously entitled ones!

Thank you @BlytheByName and all the protestors , thanks for speaking the truth and making a stand.

In terms of 'so-called' transwomen.

They could be attempting to make a distinction between genuine transsexuals, and fetishistic men who call themselves women, i.e. so-called transwomen.

We do it on here often enough. Try and make a distinction.

Yet people still complain that it feels as though we are talking about all transwomen.

Maybe it's better to prefix the word transwomen with 'so-called' Every time.

Just to be clear.

Just so you know we're not talking about men with gender dysphoria, who want to get on with it under the radar, don't call their penis a female organ, are not harassing lesbians for sex, and are not insisting on violating women's boundaries.

We are talking about so-called transwomen, who are nothing of the sort.

Abbreviated to SCTW.

To my mind, it couldn't be plainer.

If you're not doing any of those things that I have mentioned, then the term does not apply to you. Clearly.

• @Oneof2dads* I agree, there is no dialogue about this in the gay male community and it's so easy to be swept along by the media

My son and his partner are hoping to be two Dads. They asked a very similar question of an organiser of a local Fflag group. ( Friends and family of lesbians and gays)

The response was to stay away from Mumsnet because "they are all TERFS " and will be no help or support to gay dads at all.

(As always) Datun's articulated what I'm vaguely trying to get at but much much better

For those asking, I would not use the expression so-called transwomen, because the so-called bit carries additional meaning that in this context is really hostile and disparaging of trans people, and that's not a good starting point for convincing others that you have a reasonable point to make. It's antagonistic use of language, probably intentionally so.

Once again, I'm not goading, but trying to join a discussion. If you feel I'm goading or otherwise out of order then you can, of course, report me.

So, I can see why the leaflet would use a provocative turn of phrase. I'm interested to know whether the supporters of the action are ok with its use, so I've asked. If you don't want to answer then fine, I'm not making you type anything and I'm not planning on badgering anyone to answer.

I wonderful how it would feel to you (collective GC posters) if someone opened a conversation by referring to you as so-called 'feminists'. Do you honestly not think that might get your hackles up?

And that into the bargain it would piss off some of the fence sitters or uninformed so much with the needlessly hostile language, that they would disregard the rest of what that person had to say?

Datun
Can you help? In the context of a post on twitter about this protest somebody referred to the Stonewall riots. When I googled, I ended up finding this article.
It refers to black trans women of colour in relation to Johnson and Rivera. Does trans also refer to drag queens? Am truly drowning in the quagmire that is the alphabet soup.

Datsun I think that probably is what they were getting at, but unless you're pretty up on the background, the average reader is not going to guess at that possible hidden meaning.

Without explicative expansion the language in isolation like that comes over as hostile. This must surely have contributed to a lot of people interpreting that leaflet as anti-trans.

The needlessly hostile language comes from transactivists. It's very aggressive to tell women they don't know what a woman is. Very aggressive indeed. Transactivists, supported by lots of money from who knows where, started an invasion of womanhood and seem awfully upset when the existing inhabitants object.

@CrustyCob

Your poor son, that's so small minded! Without the help of countless mums - my my mum, my sisters, cousins, aunts - we could not parent the way we do.

Which is why this thread is so important. For the first time I understand what's at stake here for biological women. The trans movement is a huge step forward in one way, but a step back in others. The irony in all this is that (some) men are (yet again) using sexism and misogyny to become 'women'.

Sheesh, in a leaflet about the struggle & fight lesbians have to deal with you want to debate "so-called"? Did you actually take on board anything else or are you stuck at "so-called" in an ever circular loop unable to comprehend anything else said?

We gat called "so-called" feminists all the time and yet, the sky hasn't fallen in and we are still here, still talking, still standing up for women & girls. Wonder why "so-called" is such a stumbling block for others?

@Pratchet...are you flipping through name changes today? If not you have a stalker.