Edinburgh Uni under pressure for hosting discussion on women's sex based rights

[GCatEdinburgh]

Scotsman article here

So far they have been firm re. protecting freedom of speech, but the pressure is escalating and will continue, and they will keep a close eye on the balance of negative/positive correspondence.

The event details are here.

If any of you could write in support of the event the key recipients would be the head of the School of Education Prof. Rowena Arshad ([email protected]) and the Principal Prof. Peter Mathieson ([email protected]).

To be honest I'd be happy to have a bit of peace 😁

RobinMoiraWhite See this is what I mean by respect. You completely ignore the fact that women and girls have boundaries - of necessity, because our sex makes us vulnerable. We cannot fully participate in public life unless these boundaries are respected.

We suffer both systemic oppression and institutionalised discrimination because of our sex.

And because our sex lies at the root of our oppression, our rights are sex-based rights. In a patriarchal society we cannot achieve equality and equity of opportunity without single-sex set asides such as all women shortlists or hiring quotas or prizes, awards and scholarships reserved for females only.

You know this. You choose to ignore it. You advocate for an ideology that seeks to erase our single-sex set asides. You have not addressed a single one of the reasons we have given you for why we need female only spaces. Which are of course not private.

We are discussing public provisions here that exclude all members of the male sex class regardless of identification. That doesn't make these spaces private and it's utterly absurd to call them "dark".

Dark is the world we will inhabit if your ideology prevails and we lose our sex-based rights. My Muslim and Jewish friends, my friends from conservative backgrounds, all of us who are victims of male physical and sexual male violence. Our female children. Our sportswomen and girls. None of us can fully participate in public life if males who identify as trans can access our female-only set asides.

I am at the end of a long week and tired. I have spent today biting my tongue. I have swallowed all the words I wanted to say out loud.

So just let me say Charlie and Bickerin your posts have been bang on, and articulated 100% better than I could hope to muster.

I do notice that only a tiny minority of the women I know share the views expressed here. Not ‘half the population’.

I was invited to join, and then to speak about trans issues to, the women’s group in my village. And had nothing but acceptance.

Here’s to the majority.

An alternative view is that it isn’t a success to retreat into private spaces for a particular characteristic but to take a full place in society as equals.

Oh for heaven's sake. Are you really describing women's changing rooms, prisons and sports???

One approach separates us all the other unites us as equals. I know what looks more attractive and feels more of a success to me.

And yes, I'm sure you do.

How nice for you.

And do you imagine each one of those women would feel comfortable havi f you performtheir smear tests?

Because if Stonewall has their way, not one of them could object on the that they’d rather a woman insert fingers into their vagina. That would be transmisogynistic discrimination.

Get a clue: the picture is much bigger than what you see through your solipsistic lens.

Every woman I know gets it straight away.

But then us rough northern types know when ppl are banging on about shite when we see it

Dunno,why you have a women’s group asking u to give the chit chat on being trans

RobinMoiraWhite is just another man demanding women's attention.

Every woman I know gets it straight away.

Indeed. I imagine FWR increasing its traffic twelve fold in one year, and being one of the most popular boards on a site of million unique users per month, would also be a bit of a giveaway.

You do realise that surveys extending beyond your circle of friends (including one conducted by Pink News) show a small minority of the British public in favour of self-ID and the removal of sex-based rights for female people?

I live in a village too. I'm sure the WI would be genuinely very sympathetic if you turned up to tell them about how you were born in the wrong body. They'd turn on you pretty viciously though if you were to expect them to buy in self-ID, the female penis, and them or their granddaughters having to share shower facilities with a stranger with male genitalia. I imagine you left that bit out. I've seen these people in action over a transman in our village and I can assure you that it's not us on here that are the transphobic or "not being nice enough" ones.

It’s weird but I get the distinct feeling that Robin is telling us that Robin is soooo much better at womaning than we mere women are.

Like I say, weird.

But hey! We must do “as we see fit” 😂😂😂

And if only we were as good at womaning as Robin is, we’d absolutely agree that what benefits Robin should be the aim for all.

(Another weird thing, how uncannily like mansplaining Robin’s posts sound. Can’t fathom it.)

Tonight’s the kind of night I count my blessings for having had a tip top evening with some lovely women, and not having had to deal with with anyone spouting this kind of misogynist garbage at me in RL.

I know what looks more attractive and feels more of a success to me.

Great. Now tell us why we should care what you find more attractive or feel is more successful? Why is your idea of a desirable outcome more important than our expressed wishes?

Here’s the thing, we’re trying to tell you that what’s good for you isn’t good for us but you don’t appear to be listening or you just don’t care. Again, we don’t want to share certain of our spaces with men, we like those spaces without men, so we don’t need your solution to a problem we don’t have.

I was invited to join, and then to speak about trans issues to, the women’s group in my village. And had nothing but acceptance.

That's because we're socialised to be nice and have been threated with losing our jobs and violence. You seem to have a lot to learn about being a woman.

I'll think you'll find that the majority of women don't hold your views Robin. You see we're damned if we do and damned if we don't.

TRA's and crafty manoeuvring have made it nigh on impossible for women to speak out about issues that affect us without being hounded, threatened and then having it turned around on us to be called bigots, transphobes and have the police called on us, being banned from social media and yet there are hardly any consequences for those that wish to harm us.

Woman is not a feeling nor it is a costume or a set of sexist stereotypes. We are women because we were born female and grew to adulthood.

As someone said tonight that it is not all that long ago since women stopped being seen as property and being denied our rights. We've had relatively little time where we have been seen with a modicum of equality.

Now we are told once again that what we think and feel does not matter, that we have to budge over and prioritise others because of how they identify instead of dealing with our reality. That their voice is far far more important than ours. So much so that they can speak on our behalf and we should celebrate it.

I feel for you with your dysphoria, it must be a painful and distressing feeling that you are in the wrong body but please understand why women are saying no, not anymore.

Gosh. How lucky I was then to find the one rural village where the majority do share my view.

I think you're missing the point, what people say and what they actually think are not necessarily the same. If you met me at a meeting or in the street I would be polite and kind to you as a human being but I don't want you in women's spaces and do not think people can change sex.

You're not listening to what we are saying are you Robin?

We have the biggest assault on women's rights in a long time and you can't see anything beyond yourself. That tells me all I need to know.

And yes what people say and what people think are hugely different. They may have been politely agreeing with you to your face but I doubt anyone actually really did.

Women are socialised to be nice and polite.

They're being polite. They're women, that's what women do. Things would change pretty rapidly if you crossed certain invisible lines.

Time, perhaps for a repost of Barracker's post from last summer:

You're going to love this.

Number of people entering the MN site via the Feminist Chat topic:

June 2016: 15,000
June 2018: 177,000

That's a TWELVE-FOLD increase.

And that's just people entering the MN site directly into femchat. Lots of people enter Mumsnet via other routes like active talk, and then navigate to the feminism boards next.

Overall site visits in June 2018 compared to June 2016 showed an increase from 17M to 26M, which is a very healthy increase of 53%. But the impressive twelvefold increase in visitors going directly to feminism shows a significant change in behaviour.

Keep talking, brilliant women of feminist chat. People are taking notice.

robin, did you explain that rapists can go to female prisons, male bodied individuals can compete against women and 80 percent of transwoman remain intact?

Strangely, I talked about my journey. That doesn’t involve being a rapist, or spending time in prison. I’m not involved in competitive sport (parachuting is co-operative rather than competitive and is mixed without restriction) and I did describe the process culminating in a trip to Thailand a few years ago.

I understand the issues (and advise on the law about) the participation of trans athletes in competitive sport; I know that, in law, the Prison Service in fact has complete freedom about which estate (male or female) to place an inmate in for the security of themselves and the safety of others; and I do find the last statistic intriguing (where does it come from?) but you may guess it doesn’t apply to me.

So none of that is relevant to my place in my village.

So when you say that in your village the majority do share your view, you just mean your view that you as an individual are a nice decent person who is not a threat to them?
It might be that everyone on this thread, if they knew you, would also share that opinion about you. That still does not mean that we would not think women need sex based protection from discrimination and violence.

All people need protection from discrimination and violence. But to adopt a position where for little gain you disadvantage other parts of the community (excluding me from female toilets in public buildings a la backwoods USA, for example) won’t get support from the sensible majority. Practical solutions to real problems - yes, of course. Discrimination imposed to deal with illusory fears - no.

The ridiculous situation now exists where I, as a trans service person from a friendly foreign power have greater rights within the US military than their own trans service personnel. Now that is daft.

But to adopt a position where for little gain you disadvantage other parts of the community (excluding me from female toilets in public buildings a la backwoods USA, for example) won’t get support from the sensible majority.

We women are not accepting any violation of any of our boundaries against our consent.

The campaign needs to be for third and separate spaces / services / sports etc.