'Get the L Out' Statement by the lesbian protesters at Pride London

[R0wantrees]

getthelout.wordpress.com/blog/

Why “Get The L Out” ?
July 5, 2018
Angela C. Wild
Who We Are

Get the L Out is a group of lesbian and feminist individuals and organisations, opposing the increasingly anti-lesbian and misogynistic LGBT movement and the erasure of lesbians

Why We Protest

We believe that lesbian rights are under attack by the trans movement and we encourage lesbians everywhere to leave the LGBT and form their own independent movement, as well as to be vocal and take action against the proposed changes to the GRA.

Get the L Out believes trans politics (with uncritical support from the LGBT movement) does the following:

Promotes the social transition of lesbians, encouraging them to present as straight men thus favouring the pretence of heterosexuality over lesbianism – this is nothing more than a form of conversion therapy.
Promotes the medical transition of lesbians and pushes harmful drugs (untested hormone blockers, Lupron etc.) as well as unnecessary medical practices on perfectly healthy bodies – these are a form of misogynist medical abuse against lesbians.
Promotes the rights of heterosexual males who “identify” as women and lesbians (despite most of them still retaining their male genitals) over the rights of lesbians to choose their sexual partners. This new ‘queer’ LGBT politics thus coerces lesbians to accept the penis as a female organ and promotes heterosexual intercourse between male and female as a form of lesbian sex. This is simply a new facet to rape culture and compulsory heterosexuality." (continues)

I truly believe Blythe and the other brave women have lit a flame. This is the beginning of the backlash.

The comments following the 'muffin' piece are overwhelmingly sane.

ErrolTheDragon thank you for sharing the article.

(Extract)

"The “mixed-muffin gender berry challenge” is one of a number of exercises included in Agenda, a free online toolkit distributed to more than 1,400 young people across Wales.

Its author, Emma Renold, professor of childhood studies at Cardiff University, has received a £10,000 award for her work, including the Agenda guide, which aims to teach young people about healthy relationships and raise awareness of sexual violence and discrimination.

Critics have warned that the toolkit’s guide to transgender identity does more harm than good.

The exercise distributes muffins around a group. Those whose cakes have blueberries inside are asked to stand by blue balloons, representing the stereotype of masculinity in one corner of the room. Those with raspberry muffins are asked to stand by pink balloons, representing the stereotype of femininity, in another corner. Those with mixed muffins found that they had no place to stand. “After this activity, we asked how they felt being categorised according to a muffin they did not choose, what it felt like to go to a gender-coded corner that they might not identify with, and what it felt like not to have a corner at all,” the guide said.

“This got us all talking about how we come into the world already coded through gender labels; how you can’t assume someone’s gender by how they look: what it feels like to be given a gender you might not choose; and not to have your gender represented at all.”

Critics have accused the guide of falsely presenting transgender and non-binary identities as the only alternative for people who do not fit sexist stereotypes.

Kathleen Stock from the University of Sussex, who is working on the conflict of rights in the transgender debate, said the “confused and contradictory” exercise “read a bit like satire.”

She said: “The materials are troubling because they effectively encourage young people, and particularly gender non-conforming girls and young lesbians, to conclude that their distressing feelings aren’t just a sign that the world is sexist, but rather a sign that they themselves need fixing.” (continues)

Recent thread discussing Kathleen Stock's work and also the recent attempts to censor and smear her:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3289890-great-piece-by-academic-kathleen-stock-mentions-mn

Wow that's awful. How loaded.

Blythe

@NaturalAllWoman has been suspended from Twitter. She had done an excellent thread with examples of the problems lesbians are facing. Gone

BlytheByName you did an amazing thing . Stay safe

Errol thanks for the link - great comments on it!

@ NaturalAllWoman has been suspended from Twitter. She had done an excellent thread with examples of the problems lesbians are facing. Gone

January 2018
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3128427-Feminists-banned-for-hate-speech-on-twitter

May 2018
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3262686-BBC-Report-Twitter-bans-women-against-trans-ideology-say-feminists

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3261984-An-Open-Letter-to-Martha-Lane-Fox-of-Twitter

Re Miranda Yardley's permanent ban:
OP TheUterati comment:
"I am sure that many of you know my reservations, shall we put it, about including 'trans' of any shade in this debate.

Nevertheless, I feel it worthwhile posting this by Yardley, who has been permanently banned from Twitter. I post this not because I particularly value Y's voice in this debate, but because the reasons why he has been permanently banned need to be made public.

mirandayardley.com/en/i-permanently-banned-twitter-make-worry/

Double-plus-ungood."
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3258453-Permanent-Ban-from-Twitter-for-Hate-Speech

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3260432-The-Shame-of-Twitter

see also current thread,
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3300712-Twattery-on-Twitter

OP Pratchet
"And Queen Sarah Ditum's most excellent response"

Thread which many new to the wider issues have found useful:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3145470-Break-it-down-for-me

BlytheByName - and brave by nature. This straight woman is in awe of your courage and will stand with you if you ever ask.

Your protest was very successful. That's why the usual suspects are kicking off. Shows what 10 women can do to overturn the apple cart.

I stand with you Blythe

I have been reflecting on this.

As a rape and abuse survivor, the fact that women cannot speak out about a penis being a male organ is enormously distressing.

I am all the more distressed because I have spoken and indeed taught the language of gender, as a socially set of constructed roles (masculinity/femininity) as a way of unpicking the power hierarchies at play.

I have also had at times reservations about the language of gender taking away that the power of focusing just on women as a political movement (in the 1970s and 1980s). Nonetheless, masculinity studies have laid bare the hierarchies amongst men, whether understood through the lens of patriarchy or hegemonic masculinity. So, there was some value in that.

I have also taught and believed that the language of intersectionality, as voiced by Kimberley Crenshaw in the first instance, was valuable in unpicking the ways in which race and gender could form double forms of oppression, that black women, for example, stood at an intersection where race and gender crossed. I am also aware of the way that class functions as a social marker.

All these things are valuable. All these things I have read about and taught.

At no time did I see the language of gender being co-opted to replace biological sex as something 'innate' in you. At no point did I see the language of gender being used to argue that biological organs could belong to either 'gender'. I did not ever believe that one could be a 'gender', rather gender was a social constellation of attributes which society deemed either masculine or feminine.

'Gender' is a term I can no longer endorse or use. I am not a lesbian, but I do not believe that a penis is a female organ either. I do not know why or how the language which women drew on to highlight the societal inequalities they faced decades ago is now being used to enact and reinforce those inequalities. I do not think I am a moral conservative, or illiberal. But I am genuinely distressed that women cannot protest that male organs are male, and belong to men, without being vilified and threatened, and called out in the media.

those are just random thoughts. The protestors were not anti-trans, they were pro-female bodied people.

I suffer from PTSD. As a result, it is helpful for me to clarify where the feelings of distress come from, as otherwise they seem too overwhelming. So, I am sorry for my randomly dumped post.

Don't apologise. Every post here has value.

Blythe am standing with you virtually through this. You did something really important and there will be so many people out there who are relieved people like you are speaking up and saying what they are thinking. It will snowball and the movement will get louder with time.

I looked at Instagram during Pride and looked various trans hashtags. I clicked through and looked at several person accounts. 90% of them seemed to contain trans women posing in highly sexualised poses alongside masses of pouting selfies. I didn't recognise myself in terms of being a woman in any of them.

*personal accounts

So, I am sorry for my randomly dumped post.

Apologise? For a great post? Don't be silly! Pull up a chair and post som more!

katara your post is excellent. Stop apologising!!

If any of you follow Graham Lineham on Twitter ( he wrote Father Ted and the IT Crowd), he is very gender critical, and gets a LOT of abuse for it. He's tweeted an excellent article on this ( which was on one of the other threads ). Please go show your support for him as he is one of the few male voices who sees through the bullshit and is standing up for us!

I feel very moved by the bravery of what those lesbians did, and horrified at the general reaction to it and misreporting in the press. Personally I believe all of us who are straight need to be supporting them. As someone has previously said, they are the 'canaries in the cage' and if they go down, we all go down...

May 2018 Graham Linehan recommended Magdalen Berns as a ' brilliant antidote' to the 'utter bilge' people are 'swallowing in the gender debate'.
twitter.com/Glinner/status/997111005892235264

Magdalen Berns video recommended in tweet:

recent threads:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3299537-if-you-re-on-twitter-glinner-s-tweeted-a-poll

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/2934803-Male-TERFS

My managers at my workplace are proud of me! I warned them on Friday that I was protesting lesbian erasure. They get it.
The backlash has entirely demonstrated the level hatred that is there towards lesbians, and the complete lack of understanding of the impact of trans ideology on women's rights.

They are proving our point.

I am really delighted the Anonymous group are supporting us. They get it.

Keep speaking out and everyone will get it.

This comment underneath the muffins article pretty much nailed it for me:

*Basically if you don't meet the requirements of conforming to sexist stereotypes about being:

• a girl as soft, gentle, into pink, quiet,
• and a boy as boisterous, aggressive and loud,

then there's something wrong with you - you're in the wrong muffin, which means these tax funded bodies can help you to mutilate your body with surgery or clothing (breast binding) and give you synthetic hormones for a lifetime. This is going on widely in schools. Children are told they are born in the wrong body if they like do not conform to gender (social roles) stereotyped toys and interests.

This really has to stop. The analogy with harmless muffins is actually quite frightening.

Remember every young person will have these identity issues at some point in their stages of development, because gender-roles are constraining, girls can climb trees, boys can like cooking - it doesn't mean they are born in the wrong body - it means they have interests*

Hi all - I'm new here so please be gentle with me. My friend and I have been having a lot of discussions recently about trans rights and women's rights and this morning she sent me a link to this post. I've joined because I wanted to say something that I haven't seen anyone else on this thread say yet (apologies if people have said this elsewhere, but like I said, I'm new here.)

So... a bit of context: I'm a woman, a feminist, straight. Like many people, I have some gay friends, but no trans friends. I didn't know much (or honestly think much) about trans people a few months ago, but I've since being doing some reading, some listening (cheerful.libsyn.com/episode-9-transgender-rights-are-human-rights), some debating and some fact-checking. So with that in mind...

There are a few things here that make me... uncomfortable. And I say this not because I am necessarily qualified to comment, but because this is mumsnet and, in all likelihood, there are probably not too many trans people on here to speak for themselves. So, with my straight-feminist-but-otherwise-relatively-impartial hat on, a few thoughts, for balance:

Having read the statement from Get the L Out, I have to concur that - to me - their message reads way more anti-trans than pro-lesbian. Don't lynch me just yet, here's why...

Society (certainly in this country) gets lesbianism now. Women's rights and gay rights still have a long way to go, but it's been 20 years since Brookside's first pre-watershed lesbian kiss. And there are an increasing number of great TV and film characters to help joe public understand the lesbian experience. Not so for trans people.

There are trans characters, sure, but it seems that there's not much out there for a young trans person to identify with, and say yes - this was my experience. And for us to watch and understand trans people better. Partly this is because there are so few trans people and so few trans writers as a consequence. But that means there is an information hole... and this leaflet seems to be spreading "information" that just isn't true.

I won't go point by point, but a couple of things pop out specifically:

1. People who desperately want to transition are struggling to get the meds they want. Being forced to change sex is not "a thing". Please do listen to the podcast. You can be outraged at the end if you want, but at least you'll have a few more facts. There are some good interviewees on there explaining their own experiences. It's worth it, I promise.

1. I cannot believe this extract: "Promotes the rights of heterosexual males who “identify” as women and lesbians (despite most of them still retaining their male genitals) over the rights of lesbians to choose their sexual partners. ...This is simply a new facet to rape culture and compulsory heterosexuality." As a feminist I am fuming at this one. Rape is rape. Show me the law that says any lesbian is allowed to choose her sex partner, even against their will. If that were the case, then yes, allowing men to self-classify as lesbians so they can rape whoever they want is very harmful, but honestly no more harmful than saying lesbians can rape whoever they want. Moreover, this statement is insidiously trying to plant the seed that trans women are just in it to rape women. Get out and stay out.

Honestly, I am really dismayed that this statement speaks to so many people. The trans community is small, and trying to get a voice. Women's rights are human rights, but trans rights are human rights too. There are not a limited number of rights to go around - it's not a zero sum game. Trans women are some of the most vulnerable people in our society and I don't see why feminists shouldn't support our trans sisters (and brothers) - feminism is about equality for all. In many cases, they need that support even more than we do. It's really easy to understand more about trans issues if you want to - just look for sources that are written by trans people, and not just about trans people.

Ok - I've said a lot, and thank you if you've read this far. I probably won't be back on to read replies, as I just joined to say this, so feel free to rip me to shreds on here (although I hope you won't... too much to ask for?) If you want to reply or ask me anything where I can hear it and get back to you, I'm over on twitter - @freezingsheep, but I have quite high quality filters on, so please be nice or I won't see it...

That was really just another plop, in a slightly longer form, from freezingsheep wasn’t it?

Here’s why you’re all wrong. I’m not going to stay and debate though. Also I’ve heard you’re all nasty feminists, please don’t be unkind to poor little me, I’m just sticking up for the poor oppressed trans people against the hateful Mumsnet feminists. Aren’t I brave?

Freezing sheep,
You are a straight woman who has no idea what it is the be experiencing lesbian erasure.

You reference Brookside falls off chair laughing

What we are telling you is that lesbians are being forced to accept trans ideology that is fundamentally homophobic.

I would not presume to tell you what it's like to be straight. Don't school me on my sexual orientation. Its deeply offensive.

Was that nice enough?

@freezingsheep

Rape CULTURE.