Help me articulate why this article in the Guardian has so enraged me.

[franke]

www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/dec/27/everybody-is-talking-about-it-womens-rights-to-take-centre-stage-in-2020

It's not the article itself which is the problem. It's the bare faced hypocrisy of the Guardian in printing it I think. I wouldn't have expected them to mention the struggles feminist groups and individuals are facing as a result of the erasure of women as a sex class, since they are complicit in this. But every sentence I read here was heavy with what was unsaid. The threats of violence, the silencing, the overt misogyny faced by women trying to defend their rights against a pernicious ideology. It's the typical Guardian wall of silence and incredibly obtuse.

I don't post here often because others are better at setting out the issues than I am. But to see this article in that paper irked me.

They use the word woman and mean it. But it’s way too little too late for me. The Guardian can take its woke woman-erasing crap and - I dunno - die in a grease fire.

I will never click on a guardian article ever again. They can shove it up their arse.

Exactly binterested. How dare they pick and choose if and when they actually acknowledge what a woman is.

Well for me it’s the repeated use of the word gender when they mean sex

Their failure to define what a woman is

That so much of the oppression listed is related to biology

But most of all because everyone is so busy running around to appease a minority of TRA they’ve no energy left to deal with the actual problems faced by adult human females or women as we like to be called

Fuck the guardian and it’s fucking woke wankiness

The guardian can easily align their theory with practice to achieve the goals.

1. Don't assume anyone's gender, immediately leveling out any sign of inequality between the sexes. Who is to say that women earn less, are more at risk of sexual violence, need access to safe abortion etc. It is bigoted to make assumptions about the genders of those affected
2. Where people (that could be any gender but are usually county but we're pretending we don't know that) are disadvantaged, they would do well to remember that sex work is work and go out and empower themselves

Job done.

County = cunty

"Eliminating violence, family planning and reproductive healthcare"? I'm surprised that idiot Monroe Bergdorf hasn't popped up to criticise them for being reductive and exclusionary of MB.

It's such a glaring contradiction isn't it OP? To give all that space and power to the lobby groups / misogynists currently stripping away women's identity and rights and then to suddenly remember that half of the population are actively discriminated against because of said biology. Cancelled my sub to them several years ago.

To give all that space and power to the lobby groups / misogynists currently stripping away women's identity and rights and then to suddenly remember that half of the population are actively discriminated against because of said biology.

This. It's a fucking insult.

Franke, you’ve articulated this very clearly, and you are dead right. It is the hypocrisy, and it is heavy with what was unsaid. I’d like to say “At least it’s a start” but I know it isn’t - The Guardian used to be on women’s side, but it’s an obedient servant to wokeness now.

Thank you. You're right, it isn't a start. I also feel as if the article is referencing some other type of woman whose rights need to be secured. Not the uppity awkward ones. It's patronising.

The Guardian’s recent “lesbian” blind date means that I will never ever click on a Guardian link again.

I genuinely do not understand how the guardian can publish stuff like this with a straight face whilst also insisting TWAW

I don't either.

I know what you mean, OP, and I completely sympathise.

For context, the section in which this piece was published doesn't really come under the same editorial control as the rest of the paper. It's website-only, and it's in a section funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (though the content itself is editorially independent). I'm not saying Kath Viner never looks at it, but I imagine the section editor has more of a free rein to decide what she wants to run. I notice the same writer has written a lot of pieces on women's issues for the site: www.theguardian.com/profile/lizford

See also this article: www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/27/from-renewables-to-netflix-the-15-super-trends-that-defined-the-2010s , which claims that both women's rights and 'rethinking gender' have been huge in 2010s. The Guardian doesn't see any conflict there.

How does the guardian generally feel about 'gynocentricity'?

I thought they were down on it in a big way.

Hypocritical bastards.

@RoyalCorgi
Ha! I've just noticed that the article I linked comes under the same byline - what a surprise.

I particularly enjoyed the reference to Trump's part in the roll back of women's rights. Oh the irony! Having been brought up with a Christian background, this righteous allusion to Trump reminded me of "why do you see the speck in your brother's eye but fail to notice the plank in your own?". My take is that men have always been able to give and take back women's privileges and rights, and today's scenarios are no different. If you are a left-wing man, The Guardian is your friend.

Do they ever allow comments on their articles nowadays???Why is that?

As mentioned above this isn't Guardian politics, this is very much the world of "Global" top down feminism. They aren't event talking about women at grass roots level they are talking about women who move in the circles of UN etc.. I suspect the meetings they are talking about will have no impact whatsoever on 99.9% of the female population. This is basically a puff piece.

re commenting on Guardian articles. Quite some time ago they stopped comments being open on articles about women / feminism because the majority were MRAs spewing out hatred of women and femi-nazi. This was hardly surprising because in the early years of web site commentating they positively encouraged it as they thought the click rate more important than the quality of the comments.

At the time some of us who felt feminism was being used to sell the Guardian to advertised used to try and comment regularly to get a bit of balance, but almost inevitably we would each get banned for being anti men, or whatever. I think I went through about 4 or five online names. And this was before there was discussion about trans issues. This was just blatant misogyny. Male commentators could get away with really vile stuff about women, but is a women dared point out that man"can" be violent toward women or some soft soaping opinion like that, you would be suspended. So rather than own up that they created this situation and would look at solutions to allow women at least an equal voice, they just dont have comments.

Very occassionally you can comment on Guardian articles about women if the post them on their facebook page. But again it is not that woman friendly.

Effectively the Guardian online was a forerunner of twitter.

I never understand why social media gets categorised as allowing extreme opinions. The way people comment on twitter is a direct imitation of not just tabloid rants, but the supposedly superior opinionators at the broadsheets.

Just a quick after thought. Maybe OP could write a short letter to the Guardian saying the article in the Gates Foundation section is sheer hypocrasy when daily the Guardian does nothing to support women's rights but allow this sort of colonial feminism, as though women in the UK dont need feminism any more.

Have the arseholes left the comments open?

There wa another article today with a headline that went something "Thank you midwife for calming an expectant father". Except that it wasn't a father, it was a pregnant female person who lives as a male/has transitioned.

There's also an article about the Scottish census, which contains this gem:

'This month the Scottish government offered reassurance that changes intended to simplify how transgender people change the sex on their birth certificates would not diminish the rights of other women.'

Other women?

Yes other women.