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Original poster

Deborah Frances-White and trans-women in sport

130 replies

RitaFairclough · 07/03/2019 18:25

I think DFW is marvellous and I love the Guilty Feminist. But I just read her comment on Twitter about the sport debate and I am wondering how any feminist can really support that position.

I am too scaredy cat to comment on twitter because I use it for work stuff, but I would like to present the following scenarios...

You are a 12-year-old girl and you are really fast at running. You win medals and you dream of being at the Olympics one day. You can even beat the boys - for now. When you are 13, or 14, a trans-girl arrives in your races. She is much taller than you and she runs faster. She wins the medals, and the sponsorship. You know however hard you train you will never beat her. You give up running.

Or

You are a 12-year-old boy and you’re good at running. But by the time you’re 14, your times are slipping and you’re not winning any more. Your coach suggests you say you’re a girl and try your luck in those races. You’re not keen but your parents are pushy and your coach is too, and once you’ve done it once and won a medal easily you start to see the benefits...

I just can’t see any way in which girls or women don’t lose here.

Deborah Frances-White and trans-women in sport
OP posts:
Barbarafromblackpool · 07/03/2019 21:58

Sofie left because it wasn't woke enough?

BertrandRussell · 07/03/2019 23:10

It was a very early one about trans issues that got me- they had an alarm of some sort when anyone said anything trans exclusionary. Like ladies and gentleman. It was supposed to make it easier to talk- because it would help educate speaker if they misspoke.

HerFemaleness · 07/03/2019 23:24

You're a male centering libfem. But feminists are challenging you and saying your beliefs don't add up. This confuses you. You get teased for believing in lady brains and girl souls. Then you discover intersectional feminism. Finally, you can now subordinate yourself to males and still pretend that you're really fighting the feminist cause. No. Now you hear women on TV saying people like you are a threat to women's rights and should be stopped.

itsbetterthanabox · 07/03/2019 23:36

@Barbarafromblackpool
Yeah she was getting backlash as she considers herself the queen of 'trans allies'.
Listen to her made of human podcast or look at her twitter. Or don't Cos it's saddening.

powershowerforanhour · 08/03/2019 00:17

I haven't looked up the Guilty Feminist- the name was so annoyingly oxymoronic it put me off.

SophoclesTheFox · 08/03/2019 00:47

The Sofi Hagen leaving thing blew up where they promised that all the bogs at their shows would be gender neutral. Some women suffering with anxiety said that this would make it impossible for them to attend, as they’d be unable to cope without single sex loos.

Massive Facebook pile on ensued, and Sofi’s response to those women was basically: fuck you for being a bigot, we don’t want you at our shows anyway. It was eye opening.

I love a lot of what DFW does, I think she’s very funny, but had to stop listening to the show when it became dominated by men’s voices - I mean, literally men’s voices. On a feminist podcast, week after week. Nah, mate. Nah.

FloralBuntingIsObnoxious · 08/03/2019 01:08

Obviously, she's talking shite.

The brand name gets on my tits. There are many things I lay claim to that I am a little guilty about, because they're associated with odd things. Being Catholic, voting Conservative once, preferring low budget 80's kids tv to big budget movies, and rating Sylvester McCoy's Doctor. These are all things I think require significant guilt ridden justification to explain.

Being feminist isn't. It's like calling yourself the Guilty Humanitarian or the Guilty Animal-lover. Makes no sense to attach that word to a thought process that simply wants to make women's lot better.

BitOfFun · 08/03/2019 01:50

I think DFW is a lovely, kind and well-intentioned woman. But she is massively wrong on all this Trans shit. Massively.

ValWiggin · 08/03/2019 07:53

Re the name, I don't think the idea is that being feminist is something to feel guilty about, rather that it's good to be feminist, but there are times we don't live up to our own ideals, hence feeling guilty about our feminism failures. Which is apt, given the subject of this thread.

I heard an exchange between DFW and Jess Fostekew once. DFW expressed 'guilty feminism' over the endless cycle of waxing/bronzing/whatever she undertakes in summer. Jess used the word 'crazy' or something similar. DFW told her off as it was offensive language for MH sufferers and she was contributing to a negative culture. Jess Fostekew pointed out that DFW was contributing to the negative culture of ridiculous grooming expectations for females.

So yeah, guilty feminism.

CaptainWarbeck · 08/03/2019 07:58

I loved both DFW and Sofie Hagen at the start of the Guilty Feminist podcast.

But agreed that the episode where the trans woman talked about her female dick and DFW announced that she'd decided not to mention female biology on the podcast because it was exclusionary to trans women - that lost me as a listener.

Feminism has to include female biology. And if I was a trans woman, I'd like to think I would empathise with women, not silence them. I keep trying to listen again but can't get through about 5 mins.

BertrandRussell · 08/03/2019 08:00

“I’m a feminist but.......I like pretty shoes” Everyone giggles.

Yuck.

IfNotNowThenWhy · 08/03/2019 08:02

Men just don't spend any time at all agonising over that kind of shite. They just get on with running things.
Mind you working class women don't spend any time feeling guilty about shaving their legs or getting highlights either.
Where I live it's wall to wall beauty salons and I know some women who get the works, and some who never do, but they all deal with similar stuff, due to being female.
Who honestly has the time to tie themselves in knots over bronzer? Get a job.

Fazackerley · 08/03/2019 08:07

I presume she's guilty because she's just pretending to be a feminist

Original poster
RitaFairclough · 08/03/2019 11:18

I listen to the podcast regularly and though I sometimes roll my eyes at the wokeness, there are some things that give me hope.

Reubs Walsh is often on. I cannot BEAR Reubs Walsh. Reubs takes over any discussion and speaks louder and more frequently than anyone else. Once Reubs was talking about Reubs's love of glitter and said 'maybe the patriarchy gave us glitter' and DFW really snapped at Reubs and said that was shit and of all the stuff the patriarchy could have given us, like equal pay, glitter was rubbish. I felt like that was her real self appearing.

A couple of times - definitely in the Repeal the 8th one last year and in the music one - DFW has done her wokey bit about 'not all women have vaginas' or whatever and the guests have totally and completely ignored it and gone on to talk about whatever they want. And she's not stopped them. Almost like she's said what she had to say - ticked the box - and now back to business.

Sorry, this is all a bit off-topic but it's nice to be able to discuss things that occur to me when I'm listening as I run! Also Grace Petrie is a regular on the podcast. I think she is marvellous. Really love her music. But I can't get my head round someone who dresses as she does, who presents an image in the way she does, and is still a very proud woman, not being gender critical. She's literally LIVING being gender critical and yet still calling women TERF. It makes no sense to me. If she follows trans-ideology to its logical (illogical!) conclusion, Grace Petrie should be a trans-man because she dresses like a man and she's got short-hair. But she's not. She's just a lovely, gender-non-conforming, really talented woman. It makes my head hurt.

Sorry, bit of a swerve there. I love DFW and I've learned so much from the podcast but as others have said, I do think she's wrong on this.

OP posts:
Original poster
RitaFairclough · 08/03/2019 11:24

PS: I just went back to look at the comments to the original tweet and I think it's been deleted.

OP posts:
showmethegin · 08/03/2019 12:04

@TheCuddlyOctopus which episode was that on? I must have missed it but totally with you if that's the case?

LaPufalina · 08/03/2019 12:15

Yes Rita my Twitter says it doesn't exist, too.

TheCuddlyOctopus · 08/03/2019 12:26

@showmethegin Repeal the North. It's actually this week's. Right near the start.

TowelNumber42 · 08/03/2019 13:48

Looks like she has deleted. Hopefully she read the responses then had a good think.

BertrandRussell · 08/03/2019 14:30

It was the “Minefields” episode with Reubs Walsh that made me an ex listener.

buttyblahblah · 08/03/2019 14:36

I had to stop listening to The Guilty Feminist podcast as it was beginning to be so pro trans it was ridiculous.

Her other podcast, can't remember the name, was so "woke" it was unbearable.

hackmum · 08/03/2019 16:27

I've never come across this woman before. But she's clearly an idiot, isn't she? Her "argument" is irrational and relies entirely on an appeal to emotion. It's the sort of thing that women have always been accused of in the past. If she wants to feel guilty about anything, she should feel guilty about that.

nauticant · 08/03/2019 16:41

She's quite amusing when she sticks to comedy. Although I have a feeling she's part of a current trend of comedians using their own lives as a source of amusing stories which they then spice up with fiction.

It's entertaining to listen to, but later on you think "oh, that story presented as true is filled with made up stuff".

WhereYouLeftIt · 08/03/2019 17:43

I don't actually get what she's trying to say.

If the 12 year old is a girl, she's not a cheat. Who does she mean by "people like you"? The only way I can make this statement work is if the 12 year old is actually male (or intersex?). It can't be a comment on Semenya - she's not 12. A 12 year old girl would not be cheating running against girls. Or is she trying to say that nobody would correct the people on TV assuming you're actually a boy?

I know there's a 280 character limit, but FFS whatever she was trying to say could surely have been said without it being such a hot mess.

Manderleyagain · 08/03/2019 18:04

No she just really believes twaw. She's fully signed up. It's basically saying the 12 Yr old trans girl is a girl and always has been. I assume for her 'girl' is a category for male or female people who have a 'girl' sense of self. This inner girl self has to be accepted as coherent, permanent and true. The male body is irrelevant to her status as a girl. This trans girl will feel sad if olympians say girls like her shouldn't compete against the other type of girl (the ones with the female bodies which are also irrelevant to their membership of the girl category).
It's not sensible but there you are.