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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

"It may be a while before older women stop feeling erased"

87 replies

Ereshkigal · 11/10/2018 10:33

Did we cover this at the time? I can't remember. Article in inane wokemag The Pool by Cologne rape apologist Gaby Hinsliff about the GRA.

www.the-pool.com/news-views/politics/2018/26/Gaby-Hinsliff-on-Penny-Mordaunt-and-trans-rights

Don't read if you have high blood pressure.

OP posts:
DisrespectfulAdultFemale · 11/10/2018 13:55

Hinsliffe, the rape apologist, can fuck off.

ErrolTheDragon · 11/10/2018 14:00

Mind you, genuinely 'older women' don't use words like 'erased'. That would imply anyone ever thought they were visible or worth looking at or listening in the first place...

Hmm
Ereshkigal · 11/10/2018 14:01

I would party all night, rock home early morning, chug a Powerade, shower and rock into work clutching a Maccas breakfast.

Me too. Very occasionally I still do Grin

OP posts:
YetAnotherSpartacus · 11/10/2018 14:09

I think I was born old. I can't bear crowds and loud music, I never did drugs and I always craved home by 2am and I'm useless unless I get 9 hours of sleep. Sure I stayed up till dawn many nights, but only if I was blissfully studying with candles lighting the way and soft classical music playing in the background. I never knew what was 'cool' and I never cared either - I was even a radical (well, socialist) feminist many decades before it has suddenly become fashionable :)

Danaquestionseverything · 11/10/2018 14:21

ereshkigal

Ha. High fives me too (except “official” work isn’t problem) at least these days. Volunteer work has it’s advantages. Being part time you can plan your partying.

Badstyley · 11/10/2018 14:32

When I was in my teens 20 years ago we took drugs, lots and lots of drugs. Now kids can’t afford drugs so they fill their heads with crazy ideas and think they’re revolutionary. I’m a bit less wild nowadays and instead of wanting to change the world I’m concentrating on not letting others fuck it up further. No point changing the world until you know what needs changing.

Redshoeblueshoe · 11/10/2018 15:14

I guess I'm old.
I don't feel erased.
I feel empowered.
If people don't like what I say I do not give a shit.
I'm not fighting for myself
I'm fighting for my grandchildren.
I know I'm doing a good job as they are already seeing the TRA agenda for what it is.

lovetherisingsun · 11/10/2018 15:20

I am reminded every day how women are only worth anything at all if they are still considered fuckable

^^This.

citiesofbismuth · 11/10/2018 15:23

Older women are all too aware of the crap that men dole out to all women so are better informed than youngsters who haven't experienced the full glories of toxic masculinity for years and years.

If they can make it into their 30s without being raped, groped, humiliated, discriminated against, used and exploited then their experiences count for something, but not before they've existed in the real world.

KOKOagainandagain · 11/10/2018 15:27

I am confused. Is the cancer charity saying that biology matters not how you identify? Trans men still have a cervix and trans women still have a prostate? So anyone who has a cervix is designed to exclude trans women?

UpstartCrow · 11/10/2018 15:27

47! How much older that Gaby do women have to be before she considers them irrelevant?

Ereshkigal · 11/10/2018 15:40

So anyone who has a cervix is designed to exclude trans women?

It's not designed to exclude them. It's just not a concern for them because they are male and therefore don't have a cervix. However they do have a prostate.

OP posts:
KOKOagainandagain · 11/10/2018 16:02

Worded to exclude is better but still recognises the importance of natal biological sex over feelings - at least where health is concerned. This is a world away from trans women claiming to have menstrual symptoms and wanting to colonise all things female. I am so used to TAs being male to female identified that this real issue had passed me by (almost erased). So I may have been blinded by rage but this prevented me immediately identifying with natal biological women (thanks to the mind fuck arguments of natal biological men). Perhaps we need a trans men are women campaign.

TheCrowFromBelow · 11/10/2018 16:04

This whole article is off from start to finish.
As a Generation Xer (and therefore an “older woman”) i must point out that I don’t feel diminished by transmen having periods.

I do feel diminished by transwomen claiming to have a menstrual cycle.

And depressed that being trans seems to be trump card to get onto women’s short lists- and into women only posts- which in turn diminishes the actual experience that biological women have.

Trans women in women’s sports dimishes the efforts of biological women.

I could go on but I sense Gaby isn’t listening. What I feel most finished by is her dismissive attitude that my concerns are just “old people not understanding how the modern world works” when it’s my mum’s generation and mine that won so much for women.

Ereshkigal · 11/10/2018 16:09

Worded to exclude is better but still recognises the importance of natal biological sex over feelings - at least where health is concerned.

I don't think it does though. It recognises that females have particular bodies but it wants to pander to the identity/biological sex is a social construct brigade in a way that erases and dehumanises women and is a barrier to women who don't know that they have a "cervix".

It is really about MTFs and the erasure of women as a distinct biological class, because you just don't see this with men's health issues. The claim that it is about FTMs is part of the reason, but it's mostly to pander to male transactivists and the young women they have coopted to do their dirty work.

OP posts:
silentcrow · 11/10/2018 16:30

I am bloody sick of the assumption that we are all semi-demented dinosaurs.

From now on I shall identify as a psychotic velociraptor. Erase that, kids.

I've heard it said that as menopause kicks in, you give less of a fuck about virtually everything, particularly men and their feels. I haven't GAF since I was in my twenties, so I rather look forward to seeing just how barren that particular field can get! Grin I've always wanted to wear purple, with a red hat that doesn't go, and drag my walking stick across the railings.

FermatsTheorem · 11/10/2018 16:41

It is important to remember the extent to which Hinscliffe chose to shit on women from a great height over Cologne.

I first found out about Cologne probably round about the 3rd or 4th of January, on Mumsnet, because there was a near complete news-blackout on the BBC and in the Guardian. Now, in one sense I have some sympathy - "they" (unspecificed other set up to be demonised) are raping "our" women is one of the oldest tropes in propaganda. So the allegations did need to be fact checked, corrorborated and double-checked. And the German police (who were doing their best to hide the evidence) and German legal system (which at the time defined rape as only having occurred if there was physical forensic evidence to show the woman had fought back) made this very difficult for the press. (And there was undoubtedly disinformation going the rounds - someone on MN linked to a video clip claiming it was the Cologne attacks - it was in fact footage of an American woman journalist being attacked in Tahrir Square during the "Arab Spring.")

So I had to turn to American news sources (the New York Times and Washington Post were reporting it) and German sources (Frankfurter Allegemeine, for example, with a lot of help from google translate). I also tried to put it in context - for instance, reading Egyptian commentaries on the problem of Taharrush Gamea within Arab-speaking societies, and its role in the oppression of women during and after the uprising in Tahrir square.

But it still took the BBC and Graun the best part of a week to admit anything had happened, and the Graun was downplaying the number of attacks by a factor of ten relative to other news sources.

Enter Hinscliffe, who wrote an op-ed piece. Now, the whole situation was crying out for a decent op-ed piece (if for no other reason than that the silence from the left-wing press was creating an information vacuum which the likes of Breitbart were gleefully filling with racist shite). Such a piece would have referenced concepts like Taharrush Gamea as a form of what anthropologists call "corrective rape", tied it up with oppression of women in Muslim communities as well as this attack on a predominantly white group, made the point maybe that although this was a new form of "corrective rape" in the west, we had plenty of forms of corrective rape of our own, from myths about "contributory negligence" in judge's summing-up in rape cases through to the fact that Hamburg had a "red light district" with "no women beyond this point" signs on lamp-posts round its boundaries. Finally, such a piece could have shone a light on the total inadequacy of the German penal code's definition of "rape" which meant that most of the rapes and assaults did not even count, legally, as crimes in Germany at the time. So what did Hinscliffe write?

Basically, it was all the fault of the victims for being well off and having fancy smart-phones. Of course those poor young men were going to feel jealous, who wouldn't?

I will never forgive her for that.

Oh, and Hinscliffe, if you stumble on this thread - you're a fucking middle aged old gimmer just like me, you deluded fool.

IfNotNowThenWhen1 · 11/10/2018 16:47

Flowers FlowersFlowers

Ereshkigal · 11/10/2018 16:49

Throws some more ThanksThanks

OP posts:
HamiltonCork · 11/10/2018 17:15

We can ignore Gabby as she firmly believes in standing should to shoulder with rapists.

Also Gaby is 47 so she can hardly describe herself as a spring chicken (perhaps she self identifies?)

irishfeminist · 11/10/2018 17:37

Fuck off Gaby. I can't believe you're my age, at least the 20somethings have an excuse of sorts.

terryleather · 11/10/2018 17:51

Obviously Gaby is identifying as a young woke libfem, that'll explain why she's farted out that Pool article.

And yes, that Cologne article was a fucking disgrace and one of the things that made me realise just how far gone The Guardian is.

KOKOagainandagain · 11/10/2018 17:54

There is no excuse for rape apology - ever.

But the adverts. Gender identity is a social construct but biology is an objective fact. You may not abstractly have the biological subjective knowledge of anatomy but this does not affect whether or not you have a cervix. It is a biological fact unaffected by belief. You don't need to know it or feel it, it just is.

Perhaps the adverts are asserting objective fact as overriding subjective feeling rather than pandering to the view that there is no objective fact and there is only subjective feeling? After all no man has ever had to deal with the reality of cervical cancer despite the strength of their subjective identification.

The adverts could be aimed at prostate cancer and the risk to men who identify as women but wouldn't this be pandering and viewing men's health as more important than women's?

Smear tests for trans women and prostate tests for trans men would be pandering. This is smiling and nodding and then carrying on regardless of silly fashionable notions.

FermatsTheorem · 11/10/2018 17:59

The problem with the "cervix-havers" adverts is they may assume a level of anatomical knowledge your audience doesn't have.

"If you're a woman aged between... and ..., remember to book your smear test" - simple, unambiguous.

"If you have a cervix..." - not so immediately obvious.

Maybe adverts in specific places do need to be more targeted to a niche audience - an ad in a trans health advice centre, for example, might say "remember, even if you're trans-masculine or non-binary, if you still have a cervix, you need to have it checked..." That's fine.

But as a blanket change in language - no.

KOKOagainandagain · 11/10/2018 18:18

Ah - get ya!

But I get called for smear tests all the time by direct post from the NHS who know I am a woman.

The service is not reliant on me seeing, understanding and then responding to an advert.

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