Helen Islan at it again

[ArcheryAnnie]

Helen islan - "mimmymum" - the notorious (ex?) Mermaids activist, is rather unwisely having a pop at women who want to maintain public space for women and girls to do sport in safety.

I wonder, is this the same Helen Islan who rather famously took a transwoman to court and lost? Who, exactly, is "trans-hostile" here?

Helen Islan also spectacularly misses the point that nobody is blaming "trans people". Plenty of trans people want to uphold single-sex services, although they are excoriated by people like Helen if they dare to say so in public. Personally I blame anyone, trans or not trans, who thinks biology is a real thing and that women and girls don't matter. I don't think Helen Islan is trans, and in fact, I blame her, and people like her, however they identify.

Of course, you know they'd just drag race into it if you push the privacy and dignity line.

And the comparators will be completely backwards in their tantrums.

And then we'll have to explain yet again that the oppressed class has the right to oppressor-free spaces but the converse isn't true because this is one of the ways we attempt to redress the balance of power; and it'll fly totally over their heads because they don't believe in class analysis or sex-based oppression.

I'm game for the attempt though.

The answer is simple really. Campaign for trans sessions , go to mixed sex sessions . Instead the beef is always with the single sex sessions

Quite. Its the pond thing all over again tbh. A male, and a mixed exists, so why insist on males being in the female one?! Any single sex space, for any reason is discrimination against transpeople, and anyone who agrees with single sex spaces (even the many transsexuals who support womens spaces..) is a horrid transphobic bigot.

She kept her head well down when trans donors to Mermaids from the USA and Canada were having a right go at Susie Green on Twitter, about how Mermaids should be led by trans adults not by evil "cis parents"

Ha, I didn't know that had happened, thats hilarious And of course, its correct according to the ideology.

having a right go at Susie Green on Twitter, about how Mermaids should be led by trans adults not by evil "cis parents"

I don't really understand it, but it appears nonetheless to be a fact, that they will absolutely turn on allies if they're not actually trans. And will still turn on them, if they're not the right kind of trans.

Aggravation and frothing seems to be more important than any actual goal.

Is it that the so-called sexual revolution, that won some women the right to say ‘yes’, but made it a lot harder to say no and be heard, also sought to re-conceptualise having boundaries as old fashioned and unsuitable for modern women?

Yeah, that's my take. I don't think that perspective really believes dignity is a thing at all. I would put it in terms of a sense of sacredness around the body, but again, that's religious language, and won't fly in secular conversations.

And then we'll have to explain yet again that the oppressed class has the right to oppressor-free spaces but the converse isn't true because this is one of the ways we attempt to redress the balance of power; and it'll fly totally over their heads because they don't believe in class analysis or sex-based oppression.

I don't think it has anything to do with "oppressor classes". If no such thing existed, I think privacy between the sexes would still be a thing. That doesn't mean it looks the same in every culture, but it exists for reasons that are not about being safe or oppression.

I was reading an article the other day on race and the white working class, rather than women and sex, but it said something that I think is true in this case as well. When all you have to describe your problem is the language of discrimination, that is what you will use.

We've impoverished ourselves in the area of sex as well. In part because of the idea that we needed to be liberated from prudish idea that sex wasn't just an animalistic natural thing, and also in an effort to emphasise that men and women are essentially the same. The only language that people understand is safety and the hierarchy of oppression.

I'm not sure though what concepts people have in common enough to develop some new language that could be used. Dignity people barely understand, maybe respect would be better accepted. But even there, I think it's often an impoverished concept.

I don't think it has anything to do with "oppressor classes".

Perhaps not, when it comes to privacy&dignity. It's just that you know they'd liken it to hypothetical racist white women feeling their dignity is somehow threatened by the presence of black women, which is a backwards as well as racist analogy.

Plus I tend to think that, if white women routinely and systematically degrade black women to the point that the latter feel their dignity is threatened by having to undress in the same spaces as white women, then they may want a white-free single-sex space, and that's okay, and a fair provision to make while we work on dismantling the whole sexist&racist system. So far as I know black women don't generally actually want this though.

The reason I mentioned is oppression is because MB et al would be positioning themselves in the inferior position in the social hierarchy as a result of their transness, rather than recognising that their own membership of the male class actually puts them in the dominant position in the whole scenario.

Agreed on the language points, but I'm being twittered at incessantly and can't expand on them!