A moment of pause to venerate Janice Turner

[EmpressAdultHumanFemale]

twitter.com/VictoriaPeckham/status/1055425954988859392

oh god how i hate having to say male on here rather than man

the mangling of language - exactly

every single damn one of us knows what an adult human male is

Apart from anything else, it's a sneaky, invidious way to redefine the word woman, and man, as something social, rather than biological.

I find the enforced deceit and language twisting on mumsnet pretty enraging. Ditto the hypocrisy, I can say Ian Huntley is a man, but if I were to say the same about various other people, I would be deleted.
I am grateful for the FWR boards, but I do think this is shameful really.

I wasn't thinking about the rules on here tbh.

I know they strangle one's expression.

But, in the last two or three weeks, I have been struck, afresh, with how unique this site is in holding the discussion at all.

It's often when new people come on (TRAs and regular people) and are shocked at women being able to say no, biology isn't transphobic and I disagree with TWAW. They can't handle it.

Which makes you realise how unusual this site is.

Yes, true. I feel a bit twisted up about though. I do appreciate the forum, but I hate having to lie about someone’s sex to appease their feelings, while my feelings in having to lie, or to Twist my language around someone who hates and abuses women , are somehow unimportant.

I agree. Tide is turning though.

I see your point Datun. It’s like every day there’s a new person who needs an express course in the nonsense and misogyny of trans magic. It surprises me every time someone smart needs it - someone like Hugo Rifkind. I thought he’d have already thought this through but it seems not because he’s balking at calling a male a man.

hugo rifkind is properly smart. if he's baulking at calling a man a man then shame on him. he's got absolutely no excuse for subscribing to magical thinking

Re the MN rules, it's noticeable that a lot of TRA/MRA people can't manage to operate within them for long.

to be fair the only strike I got was absolutely deserved, I knew I was behaving badly - red mist had descended. I've got no major problem with needing to remain reasonably polite.

but oh how I long to call a man a man.

Yes, very smart men not seeing it is depressing. Because women being lesser than is so normalised they have to have a fairly major re-think before they get it.

Fortunately that re-think can't be undone.

Yes I think that is where it comes from.

That women should have equal rights and everything but they are just ever so slightly lesser. So those funny kind of men - you know the ones - they say they’re women so let’s dump them in that category since that’s where they say they want to be. And they certainly don’t seem like men like me. It kind of makes sense and no harm done really. But we should let women moan about it because that’s free speech and free speech is a good manly goal.

Am I ringing any bells Hugo ?

I think they fundamentally think the same about rape, that women have sex willingly with some men sometimes so why do they (we) not just put up with sex we don’t want (rape). Women are not seen as proper humans, but as ‘other’, hence men & ‘non-men’. Men who do not perform masculinity in the approved way are thus ‘women’ and can use women only spaces.

Hope that makes sense.

BigGreenOlives it makes sense; but I also think historically speaking, the idea that consent needs to be ongoing and affirmative is relatively recent, and many people still do make the jump from she had sex with him once so why did she not want it again? Or whatever the scenario is that is not stranger rape.

Plus men do not live with the knowledge that the penis people (to whom they belong) are the potential harm - because most of the time, most of them do not think of themselves that way or do not mean to cause harm - and when they do, they rationalise it away (crimes of passion; she provoked him; she was asking for it; but she did x, y or z; or you know, despite all the evidence it happened, the woman is just crazy so who pays attention to her) and the law and media helps them do that.

Out of sight, out of mind - men are not likely at all to be the victims here, so for most of them who do not see themselves as perpetrators, why worry?

Jeez, I am depressing this morning . There are good men out there.

KataraJean

Yes. Very insightful.

KataraJean I didn’t mean non-consensual sex with a partner, I meant stranger rape. Rape, such as that used in war, as only been treated seriously as a war crime despite being officially considered as a war crime for decades. The documentary film ‘The Uncondemned’ follows the activities of a group of lawyers seeking justice for women in Rwanda following the genocide.

I agree with your thoughts on ‘out of sight out of mind’ & women being disregarded as ‘hysterical’.

BigGreenOlives non-consensual sex with a partner is rape, let’s not water it down with a euphemism.
I very much agree with you about rape as a war crime - but it is not clear you were talking about that in your post, unless I was missing something. You say ‘that women have sex with some men sometimes, so why do women not put up with sex they don’t want’ - which seems to me about the boundaries of consent; whereas rape in war is surely about a general mentality of seeing women as possessions and the spoils of war. It is about taking the women who ‘belong’ to the other side; not about whether they have sex with some other men or not.

Of course, all rape is about control and men taking what they fundamentally believe is theirs without consent. But war rape is also about humiliating the men whose wives/daughters/mothers are being raped. It goes beyond the belief that women can be raped because you know, they have sex anyway, because it is also an attack on the masculinity of the losing side (they cannot protect their women).

Not sure if that is clear, I have not watched the documentary you mention.

All of which ties into the view that women are not worthy of full consideration

I did not introduce the term, you did.

I mean that men do not see rape as rape in the way that women do.

I think we are on the same page but I’m not good enough at expressing myself. Didn’t go to university or do well at school, not employed in a field in which I’ve had to write my views (but I know basic grammar).

You see, you’ve expressed what I wanted to say succinctly.

Where are the TransMen Tweeting “not all men have prostates” and yelling ‘transphobic!’ over the Guardian article about prostate cancer?

What’s sauce got the goose, and all that...

#ganderphobic
#GanderCritical

Sorry, it was early and I should have read more closely.

Thanks KataraJean. I struggle to understand why men do not support women and why women with power/a voice do not support those who do not. I love how well Janice Turner expresses things and am very grateful to her for her work.

at Hugo Rifkind when Janice Turner presses him to comment: the prevaricating (‘I’m at the park’) the twisting and the flailing and finally the snarling - all this from the son of a Cabinet Minister who presumably had the best education money can buy. Interesting how Sarah Ditum chips in then backs off. Is Hugo known to be going places, I wonder and not someone to cross? If so it makes Janice Turner all the more courageous.

Yes. Whats going on with Hugo? Would love to have a conversation with him about why he thinks it’s mean to call male people men.