Are feminists getting played?

[Maniak]

It makes me sad that feminists are spending so much time banging on about bathrooms in a world that has women still working for no pay, old women still more likely to be poor, surrogacy, underfunded maternity care, and poor support for carers. And other stuff.

Yes, the trans thing is annoying, but have you noticed how it always fires up before major elections? It's like Afghanistan in the 80s when the US provided just enough weapons to keep the war going so Russia would use all it's energy and get weak.

I feel like feminism is getting distracted with the trans stuff. At most, it should take up 10 percent of our feminist attention. But I rarely see feminism these days that isn't all about trans. Seriously. Do you think we're getting played here? Is trans really such a big deal?

Badatthinkingofnames can you link to examples of any of the accusations you make? I definitely don’t see UKIP supporters on FWR! You’re talking a whole lot of nonsense.

You’re not being abused when people challenge your comments either. I’m quite tired of that word being thrown around.

Badatthinkingofname - Well, yes, people have observed that UKIP is the only party not to capitulate to TWAW, but one has said that they will be voting for them, have they? Do correct me if I’m wrong. When I’ve seen this said, it’s generally framed within “but the rest of their policies are so anti-woman that no one in their right mind would vote for them”. I’d also be interested to know who on here has said that we should bring back Section 28?

I do find this kind of tribal, ideological purity thinking really lazy and unnuanced, i.e. that there can’t possibly be any overlap between different political groups, or that people can’t seem to acknowledge that individuals might arrive at the same conclusions through different processes or beliefs.

Partly it's the way threads about other feminist issues get buried and ignored. Partly it's the outright enthusiasm for some really revolting woman-hating people because they have the right views on trans issues (it's never "I know Rod Liddle is a girlfriend-beating misogynistic cunt but hold your nose and hear him out on this one issue" but instead "ooh, go Rod! Rod nails it again!"). Partly it's the fact that I've seen people trying to promote all sorts of unpalatable positions (UKIP are the only party protecting women, supporters of serial abuser of women Donald Trump are victimised like GC feminists, we need to bring back Section 28, etc) on here using the giant trans shoehorn, which makes me suspect that you have a couple of far right sleepers on here who aren't quite who they claim to be. Partly it's the way that the language always leaps to the extreme. I think most people's experiences would tend towards "most trans women genuinely believe they are women but that can't be allowed to override women's web-based protections", whereas MN invariably seems to leap straight to "trans women are MRAs who are only doing it to gaslight women".

Ho ho ho.

Given this is a series of outright lies, I'm just going to politely go 'nice bullshit'.

Next time try harder.

RedToothBrush I’m inclined to agree.

Oh. First post from them. Silly me.

I do remember a couple of blokes trying to promote UKIP here when the Challenor report was published and just before the MEP elections.
They didn't get very far.

Partly it's the way threads about other feminist issues get buried and ignored.

You and all the other people unhappy with the performance of other users are welcome to post on these though? So it's your own lack of response that you are unhappy with not ours?

Partly it's the outright enthusiasm for some really revolting woman-hating people because they have the right views on trans issues (it's never "I know Rod Liddle is a girlfriend-beating misogynistic cunt but hold your nose and hear him out on this one issue" but instead "ooh, go Rod! Rod nails it again!").

It often is 'I know Rod/A Nother Man is a woman hater and we don't want him on 'our side' but this is his latest article which nails it. Also, you are free to call out anyone's woman hating rhetoric so why don't you do that yourself? Unless you want other women to continue to do your work for you? I've seen this called out time and time again, and it is more that 'if even a right wing woman hater like X can see this harms women, why can't anyone on the left?'

Partly it's the fact that I've seen people trying to promote all sorts of unpalatable positions (UKIP are the only party protecting women, supporters of serial abuser of women Donald Trump are victimised like GC feminists, we need to bring back Section 28, etc) on here using the giant trans shoehorn, which makes me suspect that you have a couple of far right sleepers on here who aren't quite who they claim to be.

If you saw this you called it out right? As I have never seen anyone coming up with this apart from other people moaning that the board isn't feministing properly.

Partly it's the way that the language always leaps to the extreme. I think most people's experiences would tend towards "most trans women genuinely believe they are women but that can't be allowed to override women's web-based protections", whereas MN invariably seems to leap straight to "trans women are MRAs who are only doing it to gaslight women".

All trans women know they are men. Thats why they are 'trans'. when men try and force women to accept them as women, when we and they all know that they are men, it is gaslighting to force women into this position.

A forum is made up of its members, and their words. If you choose not to participate then that is your choice. Flailing about afterwards crying that other women don't see your point of view which you can kept to yourself is your fault, not theirs.

So I felt I had to say this even though I know I'll get a load of abuse for it. Oh dear, pre-empting disagreement is a trait of abuser, so that you have already set up some sort of 'see look what you made me do' dynamic. Perhaps you need some sort of therapy to come to terms with the fact that other women are not meeting your expectations?

I remember where the section 28 lie came from.
There was a pro-TRA poster who, in the course of a genuine discussion, referred sarcastically to a new section 28. This was seized on by one of the more hard of thinking/disingenuous TRAs who were watching MN and quoted out of context as evidence that MNers were explicitly calling for a new section 28. Which their misogynist idiot friends who would believe anything of Mumsnet eagerly took as gospel.
The irony of it being someone on their own side who had used the term was beautiful.
It is useful evidence of the bad faith of anyone who claims to have seen it on here.

It's interesting how the "MN calls for the return of section 28!!!" has become such a trope and passed into modern legend, especially amongst genderists.

The post it originally appeared in was by a supporter of the genderist agenda, not one of the regular GC vipers who post on FWR.

It was then screenshotted by our stalker fans on, I think, Twitter and posted out of context.

Et voilà "MN calls for the return of section 28!!!!"

X post with TheCountess!

*... which makes me suspect that you have a couple of far right sleepers on here who aren't quite who they claim to be.”

Like this? www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/07/discovered-our-parents-were-russian-spies-tim-alex-foley

Even if we FWR really does harbour far-right sleeper agents, or even lightly napping lib-fems, I’m not clear what you think they will achieve in an anonymous forum of unruly women.

If Gavin the tousle-headed UKIP agent is posing as JanEyre4eva, and dropping suggestive PMs into inboxes in the hopes of seducing women to vote for them, I’d suspect we’d hear about it.

Since FWR is apparently the Hellmouth, or at least a radicalisation portal, we’re all a bit busy. Gavin might need to bide his wiles, at least until the cheques from the Illuminati arrive, (if you’re reading George, I didn’t get paid for the last demonstration either).

Far right women are also, you know, women. And allowed an opinion.

A pertinent reminder from Andrea Dworkin:

Exactly Jacky.

Why do people derail this topic onto the subject of "why don't you start your own thread?" .

It's almost like this is one of those topics that at not allowed to be discussed

Nobody is saying trans isn't important or omnipresent, or that the language issue isn't important and so on.

But there are other just as important, if not more important issues in feminism. Off the top of my head, men's propensity for bombing the shit out of things, which is totally unrelated to trans.

And I don't think "well what are you doing about it?" applies. First of all we are allowed to discuss feminism and feminist theory , why is this being blocked and prevented?

I've given loads of reasons below why I think trans predominates in feminism, which is the topic under discussion .

And no, I dont think genderism is the biggest threat to women and to feminism. It is a great threat, not the biggest threat, but gets almost all feminist energy.

I have theories why this is, but because we're not allowed to discuss this topic apparently, those theories are being overlooked

I disagree with you Sakura. If we are not allowed to be clear in what a woman is then what is feminism ?

I think the notion of male parasitism (see Marilyn Frye's Separatism and Power where abortion and women-only spaces are discussed and also lots of Mary Daly's work) and necrophilia in the sense of a love of death and violence (Mary Daly again) ties a lot of aspects of patriarchy together quite neatly.

One aspect might be more of an issue than another at any given time but if we can't meet as women without our oppressors present I think it's much harder to strategise

I honestly don't know what you want to discuss anymore Sakura. You seem to be asking "why are people putting more energy into trans stuff than other stuff" and people are replying "because we think it's the most important issue". And then you're saying "well I don't think it is the most important issue, I think X is the most important issue" and people are saying "great, that does sound important, why not start a thread discussing it". Then you're saying "no I want to talk about why you all think trans is so important" and people are saying "x,y,z" and you're saying "no I think it's for these reasons, why can't we discuss this?" So if I'm following the debate correctly you don't want to discuss the issues you think are important, you don't believe people when they tell you why they think different issues are important, and you're cross that people won't discuss at length and ultimately agree that they're really motivated by the reasons you think they're motivated. Is that right? Look, you've asked why people are centring trans issues, and they've told you. If you don't agree/ believe them/ think those reasons are valid then fine, agree to disagree. If you think other issues are more important then great, lets discuss them. For what it's worth I actually agree with you that environmental concerns are the biggest threat to women (and humanity in general) because whilst we can't fight for feminism without feminist language, we can't fight for anything if we're all dead. So I'm very happy to have a thread, or lots of threads, centring that. But I honestly don't know what you're trying to get from this thread anymore.

But there are other just as important, if not more important issues in feminism. Off the top of my head, men's propensity for bombing the shit out of things

I am at a loss here how "men's propensity for bombing the shit out of things" [presumably meaning terrorist activity] relates to feminism in any way.

Please could someone explain?

Feminism has always been like this. There had always been some kind of group pushing to get rid of women and girls’ boundaries, and feminists have always had to put a huge amount of effort to protect those boundaries - running to stand still.

After trans, men will find a new way to try and destroy boundaries.

Feminists will always have to devote a large amount of time and attention to maintaining boundaries.

Jacky, lots of ways. Women involvement in a peace process, for example, increases the chances of a peace being acheived.

Jacky, the greenham/aldermanton etc campers were fighting militarism from a feminist perspective.
Women in Black do the same.

I think most things can be discussed from a feminist perspective but war in particular has a long history of being discussed in this way.

Leymah Gbowee in Liberia did amazing work recently. There's such a good film...
I think it's called Prey the Devil back to hell

Trans may not be the most important issue in feminism, but it is an important issue, and this is the core UK forum for discussing it, because so many places ban talking about it! MN doesn’t need to be at the forefront of every single feminist issue. It does need to be at the forefront of this one.