Prominent New Zealand lawyer calls GC women 'anti trans whores'.

[Tipmeover]

I have never started a thread on mumsnet but I am so angry I have had to as I can't see it mentioned in other threads and it is my (small) stand.

Earlier today Steph Dyhrberg, a prominent lawyer in NZ , a self proclaimed 'stroppy feminist' and the 2018 WELLINGTONIAN OF THE YEAR, in a now deleted tweet, called GC women 'anti trans whores'. She subsequently apologised for the word, saying 'it was demeaning to sex workers'.

I am so disappointed? enraged? consumed by this - a woman calls another woman a whore because she believes sex is a definable biological category. It is utterly awful.

I still feel a sense of shock I guess that we have ended up here.

twitter.com/msbedlam_caz/status/1088970084616351745

twitter.com/StephDyhrberg/status/1088974661507985410

Well she sounds lovely.

It's very unusual for women to call each other 'whores' in anger. I wonder why she did that. Why the strong investment?

Good point that dragon
Somethings close to home for her

yes, it occurred to me that 'whore' is a very bizarre go to insult (let's leave aside how it chimes with her apparent 'sex pozzie' views).

many women here abhor prostitution, but it would never cross their mind to use the word 'whore', either as an insult or simply as a noun

There’s a lot of men who don’t agree with self ID, nobody calls them whores.

And uses the word 'uppity' in another tweet. That word has awful connotations because of slavery in the US. Can't imagine why a white woman would use it even ironically:
twitter.com/StephDyhrberg/status/1088936853766529024?s=19
Obviously her wokeness is not very consistent.

I’m glad that a complaint has been made. Quite apart from the issue of transgenderism and whether you support self ID or not, for a lawyer to publically call women ‘whores’ is simply and terribly unprofessional. I may be critical (anonymously) on Twitter, but I am careful never to be abusive, not just because I don’t think it’s acceptable, but because I have a profession with similar (supposed) standards of behaviour.

I suppose that having done well in a male dominated profession, she's learned to mirror the behaviour and attitudes of those around her to fit in. But also realises that being woke plays very well in other circles she moves in.

So you end up with a self-identifying woke person sounding like an MRA. Ah. That's actually surprisingly common.

I get so angry and just despair of these women who are so careless and ignorant of women's rights and needs, throwing everything that has been gained over the last 100 years under a bus.
Handmaidens, Aunt Lydias, my preferred designation - surrendered wife of the woke (credit Julie Burchill) all.
The ones who think female athletes should try a bit harder. Who are proud to be a lesbian now their husband wears a dress. Who see souls and not penises.
I just despair of them all but don't have a coherent strategy to deal with them beyond getting a rage and dismissing them as another Surrendered wife. But trading insults doesn't solve the problem.

Perhaps it was ever thus? How must people living under Nazi occupation have felt about women who, if not actively collaborating, saw who was paying for dinner and went along with it? A few insults wouldn't quite have cut it.

Anyone remember the film with Sarah Miles?
I was quite young when taken to see it and didn't understand a lot (Mother covered my eyes for the sex scenes) but iirc she was tarred and feathered for her collaborative love affair with an English soldier.
Not suggesting we should be doing that but I really do feel some of that rage.

The film Ryan's Daughter with Sarah Miles starring.

women can be wrong too. having a uterus does not automatically make you a sensible person

but yes, in this context it feels like collaboration

Why are the aggressively woke always so bloody vicious? It's interesting how often that happens.

I don't know. It seems to come from a place where disagreement with their views feels to them like an existential threat. But, and this is important, only disagreement coming from certain groups. Disagreement from other groups is water off a duck's back in comparison.

Why are the aggressively woke always so bloody vicious?

I have often wondered this, especially when we get a particularly spittle flecked visitor here

I've come to the conclusion that it's cognitive dissonance. I know that's a phrase that gets merrily bandied around on here.

but when something very important to you (your grant funding for example, or your dearly held 'identity'), depends on you believing something that by any objective assessment is bollocks, disagreement will feel very threatening.

after all, if you listen your mind might be changed. and that could have very serious consequences for you.

What about people like the lawyer who calls women she doesn't like whores, though? I understand the hysterical reactions from people whose sense of identity is threatened, it's the woke associates who I can't quite figure out. Maybe they're just vicious people who're happy to have found a right-on excuse to be horrible to randoms.

I think some people's view of themselves as 'good' is incredibly important to them. so in the case of the wokey blokeys, and probably in the case of Steph, that is what is in jeopardy and causes the viciousness

plus I think it helps if you have a very simplistic view of the world to start with

I think in her case she's part of a power structure that she feels is being opposed, but significantly is being opposed by women, and as a woman she needs to show to all she's a team player and does this by responding aggressively.

Obviously I'm just making this up.

Maybe they're just vicious people who're happy to have found a right-on excuse to be horrible to randoms.

Yep.

Politics is civilised when you assume your opponents are wrong, but fundamentally decent people doing the best they can.

Politics is uncivilised when you assume your opponents are acting out of stupidity, malice, evil or spite.

I think in her case she's part of a power structure that she feels is being opposed

yes. I wonder if the prevailing view at Steph's 'boutique' law firm, or in her social group is pure pomo, and membership is in some way dependent on compliance?

This notification from Speakup fpr women just popped into my email inbox. Haven't listened to the interview yet.

speakupforwomen.nz/magic-talk-interview/

Just listened to the interview. Peter Williams, bless him, got a bit muddled at the beginning about whether you can change your sex or not (you can't Peter), but other than that the important points got made. Peter had obviously done his homework on how Self ID was sneakily introduced by the Green Party, and the lack of concern about its possible consequences by Government MPs. He was suitably shocked and horrified by the language used by both Louisa Wall and Steph Dyhrberg towards such a nice group like speakupforwomen. I was really encouraged to hear that many people were contacting their MPs through the speakupforwomen website. It's still going to be a huge battle when Self ID is debated in Parliament next month because the Green MPs and a couple of woman Labour MPs will not budge from their position that no risk assessment is needed, and any opposition is just hateful prejudice.

Peter Williams is a well known broadcaster in NZ of many years standing, and he certainly seemed sympathetic to women's legimate concerns on this issue.

If you work on the assumption that Green Parties are enablers of paedophiles, either intentionally or by accident, you will rarely be wrong. In Europe, all of the Green parties have a shameful history, culminating with the fawning over Daniel Cohn-Benoit who is a straightforward, proud, admitted paedophile (yeah, he denies it now, and claims it was a “provocation”, how conventient that is).

Peter Williams! Wow, good for him.

Isn’t it internalised misogyny + being aware thst you are living in a sexist environment that does this to women? Defensive self-preservation turns into aggressive competition (between women for male approval and endorsement) and the. self-appointed policing of yourself and other women... thereby doing the work of the sexist system you feel you can’t break out of..... so then it makes sense that you’re the kind of woman who says ‘oh but I’m not like those other women’ (or ‘anti-trans whores’/witches/TERFs/SWERFs/feminists/whores/protesting lesbians who should be ‘dragged off’ from Pride 2018 ‘by their saggy tits’) and then you might start advocating for women who challenge the sexist system to be punished.

That’s my armchair analysis of what’s going on here and also with the women I know of IRL who post nasty stuff about ‘TERFs’, claim it’s all down to conservatives funding or conservatives posing as feminists who are ‘anti-trans’, claim that it’s nonsense that gender critical women feel silenced because these same women are always in the media with their ‘anti-trans hate’

they also post stuff as evidence about how TERFs don’t care about the other stuff that affects women that they (woke women) themselves advocate for ..like the safety of ‘sex workers’, rights for immigrant people and including all women’s right to choose abortion. Which is patently bullshit, but particularly the last one makes me raise an eyebrow because of the logical mess they are getting into with forcing us to accept that literally ‘TWAW’ but also talking of ‘all women’s right to choose’ - as if TW are ever going to know what needing or having an abortion feels like..

I agree that cognitive dissonance is at play and that living with any form of that IME is very stressful and anxiety-producing.

Hence the visceral rage just by seeing or hearing calmly stated ideas.. the reality of physical facts... accurate descriptions of what others see.. pointing out sex stereotypes... etc. It’s why they want to police language and behaviour so much.

To spare their own feelings of doubt and confusion... but also fear of if they were to also challenge the system, what might happen to themselves.

So you may feel you’ve a lot to lose as a female lawyer in a probably quite sexist professional environment. Being woke gets you points and attention but doesn’t really challenge anyone because the men with the real power are just getting on with it and couldn’t give a shit about your woke ideas. They are Happy to let you get on with your wokeness and nod to diversity, as long as you don’t present any genuine challenge to their interests. Which highly individualistic women-undermining sexist homophobic mantras like ‘TWAW’ fit in with perfectly.

So you may feel you’ve a lot to lose as a female lawyer in a probably quite sexist professional environment.

I would be willing to bet a round of drinks that employment law in New Zealand is majority female. And the NZ Supreme Court is majority female, with a female chief justice. Of course, that doesn't stop it from being sexist, for all the reasons you articulate, and the culture will probably be institutionally sexist. But it's clearly not as simple "men have all the power and jobs".

Isn’t it internalised misogyny + being aware thst you are living in a sexist environment that does this to women?

Yes, that's my feeling too. Sometimes I'll cut these other women some more slack because of it. Sometimes.