Meet the Other Phone. Child-safe in minutes.

Meet the Other Phone.
Child-safe in minutes.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Nandy on R4

209 replies

poshme · 13/02/2020 07:25

Just missed it but DH messaged me- she was asked about women's place apparently. She's still on but moved on to different topic.

He says worth listening again...

OP posts:
Tombakersscarf · 13/02/2020 12:45

Maybe do some background reading on this section then? It's a bit like dropping into infant feeding and asking what this breastfeeding lark is all about then.

PaleBlueMoonlight · 13/02/2020 12:46

Perhaps they should instead be asking what is a transwoman and go from there.

AbsintheFriends · 13/02/2020 12:47

Here you go, wide-eyed new poster. You should find this thread a helpful introduction.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3145470-Break-it-down-for-me

NorthernNic · 13/02/2020 12:50

Mastertomsmum - Isn't it so confusing? What do you mean they identify as women? I thought they were women? If not then which bits are they identifying with?

BuzzShitbagBobbly · 13/02/2020 12:54

Mastertomsmum seemed tohaveno questions on what being trans was last March. How odd she's forgotten it all now.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/baby_names/3531126-What-do-you-think-of-the-name-Rowan-For-a-girl

Nandy on R4
OvaHere · 13/02/2020 12:55

Lets not derail a good political discussion for the wide eyed 'new' poster please.

Boireannachlaidir · 13/02/2020 13:01

I saw some bloke on Newsnight saying 'a man is not a woman'/'a woman is not a man'. I thought he was a dangerous dinosaur

How did you know it was a "bloke"? What's dangerous about saying that? Why does that make you think he's a "dinosaur"?

mastertomsmum · 13/02/2020 13:05

BuzzShitbagBobbly - the post you have reposted has nothing to do with what this thread seems to be about.

NorthernNic - I'm using standard terminology

I also think I must go as I appear to have landed on some other planet.

mastertomsmum · 13/02/2020 13:07

Boireannachlaidir you are well aware of what I'm saying and now I am leaving this thread to return to the real world

Boireannachlaidir · 13/02/2020 13:08

Back on track, so effectively there's not one of the Labour leadership candidates who are worth voting for if you're a woman. Labour is not only not going to get back into power anytime soon, it's also dead as an opposition party.

SauceForTheGander · 13/02/2020 13:11

Let's not get derailed with arguments about dinosaurs..... Wink

Maybe Woman's Place should tag in UCL to a tweet to Nandy - it's a pretty serious allegation she's made about WPUK - UCL hosted 900 women and had senior members of their teaching staff involved in the day. If Nandy & RLB are throwing accusations around that WPUK are hate group then she might want to get feedback from people who were actually there.

wellbehavedwomen · 13/02/2020 13:18

@mastertomsmum transwomen commit offences at the same rate as any other male person. The Ministry of Justice figures show that one in fifty male prisoners identify as women. That's statistically consistent with male offending rates...and grotesquely out of alignment with female.

95% of those in prison are male. Most males in prison are there for violent offending, and most women in prison there for financial offending. Men commit over 98% of sexual offences, with just under 18% of all male prisoners in for sexual offending. (The last time this was checked, 50% of transwomen in prison were in for sexual offending, but that was probably due to not counting the gender identity of minor offending and short sentences, so overestimating risk. Nonetheless, transwomen pose the same risk as anyone else male. No greater, I personally believe, but absolutely not less.)

Much of the safeguarding for women and girls in society is based upon excluding males from spaces where women and girls are vulnerable. It's a key measure, because women pose an extremely low risk to anyone in statistical terms. Saying any male who wants can self ID into women's spaces drives a coach and horses through the very provision first created to ensure women could participate in life at all.

Why should women abandon those rights, simply to please a group of biologically male people, who as a group (NOT as individuals) commit offences in line with their biology? And that's before you even start to consider that a system that says any male who wants to can access all women's spaces, is going to enable predators who have no interest in gender identity other than in exploiting it to access women and children. The risks are plain, and predictable, and the whole point of safeguarding is that you reduce the avoidable risks. Like, you know - males in female spaces.

It's fine that some women are happy to share communal changing, sleeping and refuge spaces with unknown males, as long as those males say that they identify as women. But other women aren't, and you don't get to give consent for anyone but yourself. Women have the right, you see, to decide who shares their spaces when they are vulnerable. And they have the right to exclude males from that space. The suggestion that women are hateful bigots for wanting to decide who gets to see them naked is one that should give anyone with any claim to being a decent person pause. Consent. Pretty key concept, no?

Some women have already been the victims of male violence and are terrified of the above suggestion. Others just aren't comfortable with male bodies in their spaces. And that's their right. Telling women that they must submit to male demands, and that those demands are based solely on a subjective belief that they do not share, is absolutely in dinosaur territory.

Gender roles are bollocks and it's great if people aren't comfortable with them and want to explore who they are. If males are happier with a traditionally female gender role, that's great and of course they should be supported in living the life that makes them happiest. Same with women who enjoy and feel comfortable with roles we stereotype as male. That's all great, and we're all on board any attempt to harm, attack or denigrate people who live that way as being hate crime. It's pure misogyny to attack those who don't gender conform.

But saying that a gender performance makes you the opposite sex is as misogynist as it gets. It is saying that gender roles are set by biology, and that is exactly what women have been fighting for the past two hundred years. There is absolutely no medical evidence of any strength to indicate that someone can be 'born in the wrong body'. At present, it's a faith belief, same as thinking someone has a soul. Gender dysphoria is real, absolutely, and very painful, and that person deserves support and help and care. But it's not at all clear that it has a physical cause, as is claimed (not that that should matter, in terms of the care, of course). And treating one person's dysphoria does not mean that nobody else has rights accordingly.

The fact a bunch of male people, however they identify, are calling women who want the right to discuss how the redefining of what a woman is affects us hateful bigots who should be expelled from Labour... well, that tells you everything. Transfolk say, quite reasonably, that any discussion of trans rights should centre them. And we say that any discussion of women's rights should centre us.

Women are defined by biological sex. Not gender. I don't believe that sex is why women are oppressed across the world. I know it is. Women aren't aborted and murdered and raped and married to old men as children and genitally mutilated and enslaved and trafficked and employed less in less good jobs and listened to less and elected into power less and running corporations less and on the TV and screen and radio less and doing more of the unpaid labour and paid less because of how we identify.

We didn't identify into this. Our sex classed us into it from the moment we were born. And if we can't name that, and discuss it, we can't combat it.

Women are being told that they have to pander to male demands, to their own detriment, or they are hateful and stupid. Funny, but that sounds like same shit, different day, from here. Women have been abused for defending their rights ever since the women's movement existed. And we're still doing it. We'll keep on doing it. And we can't be prevented from doing it.

HTH.

ArranUpsideDown · 13/02/2020 13:33

I think Bunbury would support the notion that the thread remains on topic rather than be me or de-railed onto another issue.

GCAcademic · 13/02/2020 13:48

The constant and outrageous lies that transactivists get away with never cease to amaze me. Look at the utterly defamatory stuff this academic (!) is saying about Selina Todd and other feminist academics. And there are plenty of academics who are completely taken in by it:

twitter.com/graceelavery/status/1226966948514324481

I honestly think we have now fully arrived in the post-truth era.

wellbehavedwomen · 13/02/2020 13:50

I need to go and read the Bunbury thread myself now! (Haven't done so yet) thanks for the heads up.

Back on topic: I think what they say at this point is aimed at party members, not the wider public, and that's why it's so tick-boxed identity politics. It's not intending to target the general public.

Of course, if a party has reached the stage when what they need to say to their members to be elected leader will render them unelectable to the general public, then something is badly wrong.

I remember as a kid, Tony Blair giving a speech to Conference when still opposition leader, and he said he knew Labour members who said he was a disgrace: "I know Tories who say they'll vote for you!"

That's pretty much where they are. Sanctimonious outrage when anyone so much as suggests a policy that could appeal to a wider demographic, on the basis that if it does, it's clearly morally wrong.

They don't seem to understand that they're not the only people with votes.

wellbehavedwomen · 13/02/2020 13:55

Sorry, that was to @ArranUpsideDown

@GCAcademic I've seen so many lies. Naked and blatant ones, that have to be intentional and not just ignorant mistake. It's the same approach the Tories used in their election materials - ironic, that.

tobee · 13/02/2020 13:59

But I don't want to live in a Tory world forever! ☹️

GCAcademic · 13/02/2020 14:01

On the plus side, as an academic I'm often asked to do things like external examining or external departmental review which are time consuming and poorly paid, and only undertaken out of a sense of good will. I'm keeping note of the people that are signing such no-platforming petitions and if ever asked to examine one of their PhD students or do any other work for their departments, I will happily excuse myself by informing them that I am clearly not the sort of person they could possibly tolerate in their department.

Goosefoot · 13/02/2020 14:10

That demonstrates a lack of ability to think, analyse, extrapolate, research, challenge, see the bigger picture and join dots.

Yes, I do think that it's more down to this than anything else, though I understand why people find it hard to believe.

I think in the last generation we have so utterly failed to produce people who can think systemically, we have educated people as if we are trying to avoid that. And the ones who get it anyway, they are not going into public service, they are not going into politics.

If we think about the great political leaders of the past, say, 70 years, both the ones we agree with and the ones we don't, how many of them would make it in politics today? And in which parties?

This business of Nandy and her one constituent, that is how we train people to think about issues. Learning to think rationally, in a nuanced way, strange as it seems, does not come naturally to most people. Seeing the consequences of abstract decisions does not come naturally. Being able to step back from emotion does not come naturally. Seeing patterns in history requires learning history. Asking the right questions, taking a different perspective and building up the best arguments of both sides, questioning your own motives and assumptions, do not come naturally. All of these things take practice for most people, over years.

These people are responding they they have been taught and rewarded for through their entire careers.

Michelleoftheresistance · 13/02/2020 14:11

@GCAcademic I've seen so many lies. Naked and blatant ones, that have to be intentional and not just ignorant mistake.

I honestly think this is where being 'nice' has got women. There have been requests for polite debates, polite rebuttals, pointing out of evidence, polite and considerate statements of what women need - as the relationships board often teaches women, you cannot be reasonable with people incapable of reasonability.

They won't be reciprocally nice if you're nice enough or explain enough. They won't respect you being the bigger person or holding a moral code because there are things you won't stoop to no matter what they do. They just regard it as weakness and take full advantage.

Coyoacan · 13/02/2020 14:18

What most impresses me about these woke candidates for the leadership of a political party is that their only possible defense is ignorance, but what kind of defense is that when they are so adamant?

These are people who, if their party ever came into power, could commit the country to war.

You really do need a new political party in the UK to represent left-wing opinions.

Here in Mexico, when the traditional left-wing parties betrayed the electorate, a new party was formed in 2014 and won the elections in 2018.

Ereshkigalangcleg · 13/02/2020 14:38

The second thing is that you have people like Nandy, Thornberry and the rest of the woke crowd who are too lazy to do their own investigating, so they just believe what the TRAs tell them. So if the TRAs tell them that WPUK, an organisation run by left-wing feminists with long histories of activism in the labour movement, hates trans people, then they'll go along with it.

And that, sisters, is the quality of the candidates aspiring to lead the major opposition party and one day the country. Reflect upon that and weep.

Yes, exactly AngrySad

wellbehavedwomen · 13/02/2020 14:40

@tobee it won't be. The reality is that Labour will go through paroxysms, and a revolving door of leaders, just as the Tories did after 1997. And then they'll sort themselves out.

There were articles questioning whether the Tories would ever be electable again in '97, which was funny because there were similar ones after Labour's defeat in '92. It's cyclical.

They're ridiculously far to the - I can't even say left, because there's nothing left about screaming at women who don't agree that being female is down to consumer choice. But they're far from any reality, that's for sure. Why on earth would anyone in Bolsover or Stoke on Trent or Darlington vote for them? What exactly do a bunch of navel-gazing professional victims have to offer someone on Universal Credit, who's been sanctioned because they missed a bus to the Job Centre?

There aren't enough identitarians to win elections. At some point, that penny will drop.

R0wantrees · 13/02/2020 14:51

Thu 18-Oct-18 OP (I) wrote, 'Stephen Whittle influential TRA asserts 'We know we have Labour behind this one, so will simply do our best to get them elected' & Corbyn seems to confirm this at Pink News'

(extract)
"Yesterday on a thread condemning Stephen Whittle's use of predicted suicide, he joined and commented confidently:

In the end we will pull ourselves together and continue the campaigning – as we have always done. We know we have Labour behind this one, so will simply do our best to get them elected. As I tell the community “we have always lost more battles than we have won, but we only ever need to win the big one”.

I hope that clarifies matters.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/a3397010-Guardian-article-on-MPs-concern-with-GRA?msgid=81891984#81891984

Last night at Pink News party, Jeremy Corbyn apparently confirmed Whittle's belief:
'PinkNews Awards 2018: Jeremy Corbyn vows support for transgender reforms' (continues)

[[www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3398127-Stephen-Whittle-influential-TRA-asserts-We-know-we-have-Labour-behind-this-one-so-will-simply-do-our-best-to-get-them-elected-Corbyn-seems-to-confirm-this-at-Pink-News]]

wellbehavedwomen · 13/02/2020 14:51

The second thing is that you have people like Nandy, Thornberry and the rest of the woke crowd who are too lazy to do their own investigating, so they just believe what the TRAs tell them. So if the TRAs tell them that WPUK, an organisation run by left-wing feminists with long histories of activism in the labour movement, hates trans people, then they'll go along with it.

That's the most surreal part. Almost all of us supported trans rights in the past, because we were sure that women's rights would also be protected. I mean, of course. I assumed that there had to be solid data that transwomen were no risk above female risk or it wasn't possible that they were allowed in women's spaces. I thought the sport stuff had to be justifiable. I mean, obviously the Left would support women, too. Obviously the left knew that biological sex cannot be changed. So trans people must have far fewer rights, and we should always support the vulnerable. Obviously.

I was painfully naive about the extent to which women can be fucked over, without the powerful giving one single shit. The difference is, I was willing to hear the other side, if only to counter it. And like most of us, I found it could not be countered, because women were right.

That's exactly why there is such grim, manipulative, to the death determination to block and deny debate.

You know that thing where narcissists accuse people of their own actions and intentions? Well, I have never (would never) denied a trans person their right to exist, and to exist as a trans person. It's always been, you do you, be happy. Always. And yet mainstream trans ideology now is to deny that women as a female sex class exist at all. These are biological males, telling biological females they have no right whatsoever to form a group to defend their interests. If we don't include, and prioritise, biological males, we are hateful bigots.

You could not make this shit up. And yet it's the position of several (female) Labour leadership candidates.

Please create an account

To comment on this thread you need to create a Mumsnet account.

This thread is closed and is no longer accepting replies. Click here to start a new thread.