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]).

That ignores a lot of discrimination history, with respect. The Bristol bus dispute (unions supporting white drivers wanting to exclude black conductors advancing to driver) in the late 60’s or the Equal Pay fight where male pay went down as well as female pay going up or disability legislation where able bodied employees have to take some tasks from disabled people illustrate that there are always likely to have to be compromises. It’s called ‘society’. Because ‘society’ is worth more to us than living in isolation we give up some personal freedom to live in harmony with others. We all do it every day.

Is it the fifth rule?

5th rule of misogyny: WATM! Women and Feminism must be useful to men or they are worthless.

"we give up some personal freedom to live in harmony with others. "

What we do not do, however, is forgo our safety, privacy, dignity and wellbeing as females, which is what is currently being demanded of us.

Pus, the "freedom" of females across our world is severely curtailed by patriarchal behaviours and structures.

Quick correction to the above: I was denied a career in the 2000's. Which is why I started my own business in 2012.

Surely it is for all persons of goodwill to advance the rights of all? Just as when I worked in the transport sector and worked hard to level the playing field for women and those from ethnic minorities?

Until the end of 2017, I would have identified as an egalitarian and seen nothing wrong with your statement. And then a woman who was beaten up while waiting to attend a women's rights meeting was deemed to have deserved it for being interested in a campaign to uphold women's sex-based rights - a campaign that the many left-wing men I followed on Twitter and read in online publications found unacceptable.

I was faced with the sudden realisation that while I was supporting rights for other vulnerable groups, my own rights were under attack and in a development that was thoroughly incomprehensible to me, seeking to uphold my existing legal rights was considered hateful and transphobic.

What I went on next was the second steepest learning curve of my life (after the one I embarked upon when my eldest was born).

I then made a decision to focus on defending the sex-based rights of women and girls. While I continue to support equal rights for all, I now devote my time and effort to feminism. Which centres female people of all ages, races, classes, religions, ethnicity and sexuality (and therefore by definition centres only one sex, the female one).

That doesn't mean I'm not a person of goodwill anymore. It means I campaign for women's rights over and above any other issues. Entirely without wishing ill on anyone. Just as disability rights campaigners or gay rights campaigners or children's rights campaigners are also persons of goodwill.

Absolutely fine to have a particular focus. But important to recognise that progress is made collectively.

Women are the only people in the world who are expected to fight every other bugger's battles before our own. Even when those other battles will impact on the rights that women have had to claw from an unwilling patriarchy. Fuck that for a game of cowboys.

Absolutely fine to have a particular focus. But important to recognise that progress is made collectively.

If you're talking about just being a caring human, then maybe.

Feminism? No.

Feminism is by women, for women and about women. That's it.

“I would seek to help any oppressed person improve their lot.”

No you wouldn’t. You are seeking to reinforce the oppression of women, those of us of the female sex.

Stop talking bollocks.

Every other marginalized group contains men within it. Women are the only marginalized group that do not contain men within it, and women's oppression by men is also the longest-lasting, most universal subjugation on the planet.

I wonder why that is?

It's because men will work to further their own interests within marginalized groups. But men do not work to further the interests of women as a class. For 6000 years, globally, women were property of men. Only in the last 100 years have women come out from that property status, and only in the last 50 have we even been entitled to try to support ourselves independent of men.

So no, we don't progress together. Every step of the way for women, men work to hold us back.

As is happening right now, with the biggest threat to women's rights I've seen in my lifetime: the attempt to eliminate every sex-based set-aside, space, and protection we marched in the fucking streets for and were often beaten to obtain.

You know, instead of demanding women's rights, trans activists could fight for separate trans spaces, set-asides, and protection -- as women did. We'd support that. Women, after all, fought very hard for the right to wear trousers and faced all sorts of beatings and harassment for daring to do so. Ditto for cutting their hair. You think we don't know how hard it is to fight restrictive gender requirements? We marched in the streets for women's toilets. And what did men do when the first one was built? They burned it down that night.

We've fucking BEEN THERE, and that was without multi-millions pounds of lobby organisation money backing us.

Stop doing what men have been doing for 6000 years and demanding the fruits of women's labour and struggle be handed over to them.

BUILD YOUR OWN.

Well said, BickerinBattle. Every word.

Sometimes I just really want to tell some people to fuck off.

But I guess it wouldn’t be “in the spirit”.

No one can stop me thinking it, however.

(Not yet, anyway.)

Soz - BickerinBrattle

Well said BickerinBrattle

As is happening right now, with the biggest threat to women's rights I've seen in my lifetime: the attempt to eliminate every sex-based set-aside, space, and protection we marched in the fucking streets for and were often beaten to obtain.

And are now being beaten for *maintaining^ them. Beaten, threatened, deprived of employment, deprived of space to talk, threatened with rape, violence, bombs and masked men with dogs. Everywhere they turn. Bloody everywhere. Except where the women massively outnumber the men, like here.

So do not be surprised when women say no, but with a lot more of the F word in it.

As for your examples and your insistence that we give up some personal freedom to live in harmony with others, the groups you reference were in a position of privilege over the other groups.

The disadvantaged groups there did not seek to take freedoms or rights away from other vulnerable groups but to create equality and equity of opportunity to redress discrimination or oppression by the privileged group against the vulnerable group.

Females as a class do not oppress males who identify as trans. We neither extract resources from them, whether paid or unpaid, as in the reproductive, domestic and emotional labour females are expected to provide in our patriarchal society nor are they subject to the same systemic oppression from birth that females are.

Females as a class also do not discriminate against males who identify as trans. We are neither dominant nor privileged enough as a class to have controlled the levers of power that created institutionalised discrimination.

And trans-identifying people do - or largely did - face institutionalised discrimination and oppression via the laws of our country which denied them equal treatment, allowing your career to be curtailed for instance or bullying and harassment to happen or housing to be denied.

Those laws were the laws of a patriarchal society, made by males to suit males and enforced by males. Not females.

In any case, both the Gender Recognition Act 2004 and the Equality Act 2010 changed this. The former is one of the most liberal gender recognition laws in the world, allowing those who identify as trans to acquire a legal sex that is different from their biological sex without requiring either hormonal treatment nor surgery. It comes with a 95% success rate for applicants and the right to reapply after a six months waiting period for those who fail. And that status change is protected by incredibly stringent privacy provisions.

The latter gives you the legal right to be treated equal under all circumstances unless this conflicts with the rights of other protected groups (which we endeavour to resolve in an often complicated and sometimes contentious balancing act).

So, if you believe that persons of goodwill strive to make progress for all vulnerable groups, you are clearly failing, because you advocate for one vulnerable group to gain rights by dismantling the rights of another.

...and even when allowed to talk NOT allowed to be mean by knowing the difference between sex and gender

Brilliantly put, BickeringBrattle. The stories are legion of men in vulnerable, marginalised groups throwing women under the bus if that helped them achieve their aims. But we, we are not even allowed to advocate for our own rights without being expected to prioritise every one else's issues first.

Placemarking. I'm too ill to add anything interesting but I'm fascinated.

Perhaps it is Robin who is lacking in "goodwill" toward females?

Yes, I do believe you’re bang on the money there, Jacky.

Robin seems to be of the “you have to be kind to me but I don’t have to be kind to you” school.

Great post, CharlieParley.

Highlighting exactly what Robin is saying: that we, as the already disadvantaged group, should give up some of the scant freedoms (and rights and safety and power) that we have finally begun to accrue, to favour some members of the group that has always had the advantage.

Steal from the poor to make the rich richer.

Fuck. That. Shit.

Andy Wightman (Green party MSP) went to the event and has now been roundly attacked by fellow lefty loons for daring to go to an event about women's rights.

He's now backtracking and apologised. If you're on twitter please add your voice of reason. He's a green so obviously down the trans rabbit hole but it would be nice for him to see that actually most people believe him attending this event was a good thing.

twitter.com/andywightman/status/1137017582425391105

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.

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.

But you must do as you see fit.

In my communities, which are the legal profession, the area of industry I know well, the military and part of the charity sector I give my time to and my village and local area, I hope I am accepted for who I am, not any particular characteristic. Far better than some dark, private space.

Shouldn’t that be the aim for all?

We're half the population. Did you not notice that?

Hahaha at the thought of half the population of the world inhabiting some dark little space.

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.

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.

When men start treating us as equals instead of raping us, attacking us, killing us, groping us, taking pictures of us without consent, overstepping our boundaries and otherwise terrifying us, I will agree with you. In the meantime I'll keep our female only space thanks.

Oh but it's such a lonely space Everard! 🤣