A pleasant surprise

[APleasantSurprise]

NC for this as very outing.

I came across a number of Tweets from a user whose profile described him as a serving officer with the Met. This is the complaint I sent yesterday:

Jon Killen, a emergency response officer in the MPS and LGBT+ officer, is issuing Tweets that I consider misogynist. His Twitter account (@LDNResponseCop) clearly identifies him professionally, so he cannot argue that he's only offering personal opinions. I cannot think his social media presence is doing anything good for the Met. It seems highly unprofessional. Certainly I would have less confidence were I involved in an incident and had to deal with Jon Killen than I would in a generic officer. Please look at what he's saying - and the response from many LGBT Twitter users who find his Tweets offensive. The police must be seen to be impartial.

I got a call from an inspector this morning. He'd gone through the officer's Tweets and agreed with me. He said it wasn't a disciplinary matter as there were no personally offensive Tweets but that the Tweets definitely overstepped the bounds of what a serving police officer should be saying on social media. A conversation was in order and he would be talking to the officer soon.

Only a small step, but I was pleased the Met seems to have taken it seriously.

Eh well they really should be, let’s not stoop to their level!

Can I just point out to the regulars that the AWA visitor basically called me a 'neurotypical atheist'. I mention it so that those of you who know me can chuckle.

Let's equally not let women's rights slip through our fingers and give them away to men.

Our grandmothers and great-grandmothers fought for those rights. They weren't presented to them on a platter.

Floral

But FloralBunting, all you have to do is identify as one and the magic fairy will sprinkle neurotypical atheist dust on you and voila!

A woman can be a housewife, high court judge, astrophysicist, brain surgeon, prime minister, Captain Marvel saving the fucking universe and it really doesn’t matter does it? Not to men and to the ‘progressive’ women who have swallowed the kool aid Zoecb. Still women, still not good enough and still being told we’ll never be good enough.

Transwomen are men who think they can be better women than we are (as well as being better at everything else) and they want to show us the way because they can understand both sides? You’re doing a great job here but the disdain is palpable as you’re telling us to run along and not bother our pretty little heads about things beyond our ken. We must accept something that is good for men is good for us too (when it patently fucking isn’t) because men want it that way and they know best? Nah.

Ah but were they really women zebra? What even is a woman after all?

God knows how we've managed to reproduce as a species all this time when there's no way to tell between biological sexes 🙄

No one has a problem with talking about menstruation or pregnancy or breastfeeding - although some of those don’t affect the childfree or the infertile etc. either so they’re very much only some women’s issues (albeit a very very large percentage). Not sure many women’s issues at all can be said to affect 100% of women. Being treated fairly and in accordance to our societal and heathcare needs (which vary but still suffer from men being treated as the default state of human in terms of drug research and all manner of things as we all know) and not a target of violence are good universal things to aim for.

Reproducing as a species has been going exponentially well in terms of quantity so I wouldn’t worry that’s it’s at risk of limiting itself!

No one has a problem with talking about menstruation or pregnancy or breastfeeding

You really haven't been paying attention have you?

All those things have been attacked as problematic or transphobic by various TRAs.

Round and round and round we go

What’s your definition of a woman Zoe?

Since you’re so sure who is one

Here's some violence for you - fantasies of those nice transwomen ...

Transgender Art Exhibition

Zoecb - yes. they. do.

Mothers breastfeed.

Women menstruate

Women need access to safe and legal abortion

All of those statements would be considered transphobic, and offensive to transwomen by TRAs.

They are women's issues because only affect women - even if not every single individual woman is affected by them.

The fact is that society has put in place a number of measures to offset discrimination and disadvantages suffered by people who have the potential to become pregnant, largely visited on them because of that potential

Now a bunch of people who do not have that potential and have never experienced that disadvantage and discrimination are demanding access to those measures, diverting scarce resources to themselves

Doesn’t really seem fair to me

Actually lots of people have a problem talking about those things. I work in a menstrually related field and you would not believe the hostility and unpleasantness I get. And that is just twitter. And just the overt hostility, not including all those who find what I do distasteful or unpleasant.

And all of those things you mentioned come with attached societal and cultural ideas that are absorbed from childhood. They are pivotal to understanding women's cultural role, because these roles are shaped by men who don't have these biological processes. These processes are the mark of sexual difference that class women as inferior, weak, incompetent, overemotional - as well as nurturers, carers and placaters.

Good to see you acknowledge that "be nice" is the only driver here.

You’re making up a lot of things but ok, you do you. And not all women menstruate, only a certain fertile age group with typically functioning reproductive systems not on certain forms of contraception. Some people with UIDs or implants find they don’t at all, nor do people who take the pill continuously, nor do very underweight anorexics, etc. Etc. See? Pedantry is useful when it suits you and ‘word salad’ when it doesn’t, clearly!

And Twitter isn’t exactly full of balanced and sensible or centrist views on any topic whatsoever is it really. I have a Twitter but never use it tbh, I just see screencaps of comedy moments on other platforms.

Isn't this transphobic? It's my understanding that suggesting gender dysphoria and any medical transition are requirements for being trans is now offensive.

Yes, that line of thinking is indeed transphobic by todays transactivist standards. Which is part of the problem. It was 'easier' to deal with then it was about transsexuals, and not some huge umbrella that encompasses near anyone who wants to claim the label and declares that just saying a couple of words with no changes entitles you to female spaces.

And not all women menstruate

But only women menstruate.

ONLY women menstruate. Men do not.

ONLY women have the uterus to have UIDs. Men do not.

I agree with lots of irrational people on twitter though, lots of people on twitter keep telling me men can be women through the power of their thoughts. Madness eh?

I'm infertile. Am I now a man to you @Zoecb?

I think you're stretching yourself in circles to fit your basic premise of "be nice" - yet you don't care about "being nice" to actual women who need sex-based-human-rights.

Well transmen can menstruate so obviously no?

Yes all women need human rights!

I know you're just here to be a bit goady, zoe - but can you really not see that women and transwomen are different and have different needs?

Each is entitled to the right to live free from oppression and discrimination, but the latter's right to "self-identify" doesn't trump the former's right to be legally recognised as the biological sex category "woman: adult human female" - the sex with the reproductive system that menstruates, can become pregnant and give birth.

That biological reality is at the very root of women's oppression by men. And it is not shared by transwomen - so NO, feminism does not include transwomen. Women's rights are NOT for transwomen.

Well transmen can menstruate so obviously no?

They’re female, therefore not men. Only girls and women, females if you prefer, menstruate.