What constitutes modern day feminism

[katienlisa552]

What does it mean to be a feminist in the 21st century? When I and indeed the members of my family who I would consider to be feminist were growing up it was about fighting for equal rights for women such as equal pay and better representation of women in high powered jobs and given that the Labour Party has yet again elected a male leader says to me that there is still along way to go. However I and my family members find ourselves becoming more and more uncomfortable with what some might call the more extreme side of feminism.

I fear that certain views of feminism are allowing a rather unhealthy and quite hateful form especially in relation to trans rights. As a member of the lgbt community and although I’m not trans myself I do have friends who are and I also volunteer for a local charity who support and offer counselling to trans teenagers. I see first hand the damage done by the attitudes promoted and supported by some sections of the feminist community dressed up under the guise of ‘free speech’. The trans right issue is a complex one. I don’t think children should be allowed to transition or be given hormone blockers to prevent puberty because I’m not convinced a child has the maturity to make those kind of life changing decisions although that doesn’t mean I don’t believe that children can’t be trans because I see it everyday through my work with the charity and it’s a fact of great shame that at least 70% of young trans have self harmed or tried to commit suicide because of the prejudice they face.

The biggest contentious issue appears to be that of self indentification. I fail to see how it erodes my rights as a women if a trans person chooses to self identify and personally I find the notion that people chose to self identify because they want to harm others somewhat far fetched. Yes I accept that there are some sick indivuals that do this but the fact is the majority of sex offenders offend as men not men who are self identifying as female or the other wan around. I remember mixed sex changing rooms when I was growing up and I don’t remember a vast increase in sexual assay because of it.

Now despite being accused of it on here several times by people who hide behind the guise of feminism to attack anyone who dares to defend trans rights as someone who condones sexual assault I do not in fact as a surviour of sexual assault I find that extremely offensive. Anyone trans or otherwise who commits any kind of sexual assault deserves to be castrated and strung up. Maybe one way around the shared changing room or toilet issue would be to have single cubicles or toilets as we do at our charity so it doesn’t matter who uses them because there’s only u on there. As a parent and someone who works with children who have been absued I can totally understand the argument for parents wanting to know who the child is sharing a changing room with. Personally I wouldn’t allow my son or my nieces who I regularly look after our without a grown up until they were of teenager age and then allow in groups of friends.

I’ve no doubt that this post will either be ignored or removed as mums net seems to remove anything that resembles some who supports the rights of trans people but just as the people who use feminism to try and erode or stand Agasint trans rights I to have the right to express my opinion.

The debate of feminism and trans issues needs to be less toxic and more about open discussion and tolerance of others opinions will allowing healthy debate because trans people are people and have the same right to be heard and to be given the same freedoms as any other member of society. Do I think that all feminists are transphobic absolutely not and neither do I believe that all of the trans community min are good people. There’s good and bad in everyone and every group of society but since when is that a justification for the discrimination of a whole part of society

[Kantastic]

Mostly they just liked to poke us because they wanted head pats from Joss Prior, which they hardly ever got, which I confess to finding rather funny.

jeezus that makes me feel really sorry for them.

You know you're pretty far down the scale when you have to resort to kissing up to ol' Joss to get your all-important validation.

[R0wantrees]

Im re-reading that thread & this seems very relevent:

Ereshkigal wrote Thu 21-Jun-18,

"For those who haven't read it, this is why it's important for certain people to silence women like Lisa [Muggeridge]:

idgeofreason.wordpress.com/2017/01/16/recipe-for-backlash/amp/?twitterr_impression=true

Written 18 months ago. Before many were aware of what was going on.

Feel the chill down your spine."

(extract)
"Take a world where it is finally possible for people to address gender dysphoria, create the medical treatment that allows the gender binary to disappear. Take many trans people, living and working(if they can get work) and trying find a way to settle the way they feel inside with the bodies God gave them. Take a society who won’t accept it, add violence, poverty, difficulty accessing healthcare and slowly but surely watch as these people fight for their right to be accepted as who they are. Add some missteps along the way, because the fight for acceptance is never straightforward and one person gaining rights often means someone else having to give way.

Add inequality, so those people just trying to live their lives, in a landscape most won’t experience, are lost behind the most vocal, the most narcissistic abusive men, who see an opportunity in the gender binary disappearing to attack the progress women have made. Add twitter. A medium where you can form an identity online, attached to nothign, and impact policy in a way never seen before. Add online tribes of narcissists forming to attack women under the guise of rights for the many trans people just trying to get by. Add high profile campaigns which sek to do nothing but silence and erase women, and drive women out of the public sphere. Add a word like TERF which allows you to openly fantasise about killing and beating women, while you call it feminism. Add online swarms who will threaten and abuse women who refuse to change their reality, perception and gender to suit these people. Add a new condition that lesbians must be forced to like cock from now on or its transphobic. Add an Oxbridge left who want violent misogyny rebranded as feminism, and add unstable misogynist narcissists dependent on mood stabilisers to defame doctors on television and fabricate allegations of sexual abuse, while offering fake statistics about child suicide. Add demands that women and girls have all protection from male violence removed, and demands that women are never mentioned. Introduce The Sun newspaper, playing on well founded fears that violent and abusive men will exploit the gender binary disappearing, by suggesting a famous child killer and rapist will have a sex change in order to get into a women’s prison. It doesn’t have to be true.

Hey presto you have a backlash. Feminism is littered with these backlashes. The abusive narcissists who exploited the gender binary disappearing get their moment in the sun and get to vent their hatred of women.

The living rooms who were oblivious to the people just trying to live their lives, access healthcare, be accepted, are told that the activists who want to vent violent misogyny, are those people. They are told that these people getting access to healthcare, protection, and acceptance is actually this misogynist culture and any recognition of violent misogyny is transphobia. They are told to accept violent misogyny which threatens children as equality for transsexuals. They are told that children who are confused about their gender will commit suicide if they are not immediately treated as transsexual, and recognise that this is disturbing abusive emotional blackmail. The people in those living rooms, recognising a dangerous culture when they see one don’t really care that this is just a nasty culture exploiting real inequality. They react. They bridle against this as any reasonable person would when faced with such dangerous and deranged demands. The cause of trans equality is set back decades. Go back to the people who just wantd to address structural inequality, to live their lives in a world where it was finally possible to address gender dysphoria. Take many trans people, living and working(if they can get work) and trying find a way to settle the way they feel inside with the bodies God gave them. Take a society who won’t accept it, add violence, poverty, difficulty accessing healthcare and slowly but surely watch as these people fight for their right to be accepted as who they are. Aware that they were so close, before elite activists, naiive students, and violent misogynists took away the progress they made so they could attack women and erase their existence.

The backlash is nearly here. It will be grim. It will be widespread and the people who will pay for it are not people like , who will go back to being a mentally unstable lawyer with all the privilege of being *, while the trans people who didn’t have an interest in violent misogyny and access to media, suffer the consequences."

& thanks Lisa
& Ereshkigal for sharing.

[FloralBunting]

BatShite, you're not wrong that openly TRA/MRA attacking is much easier to handle that some of the more insidious behaviour displayed on this board at times.

It's quite the thing to put up a reasonable front and then gradually feed in 'adjustments' - sort of like the long game version of "I'm GC, but..." style posts. There are a few to clock if you're vigilant - some, I suspect are quite deliberate set ups, while others probably don't even know they're doing it, because that's often the way the patriarchy in general is propped up. You don't even need to believe it's a thing to be 100% working to maintain it.

Which is why consciousness raising, which, despite everything, is what FWR is still very good for, is so crucial to the endeavour.

[R0wantrees]

From the linked thread above, some very useful writing for any situation where narcissisic/control patterns are present.

Lisa Muggeridge Comments:
"Guide to dealing/’debating’ with transactivists
Narcissism is prevalent here. Same rules as always with narcissists. Do not get embroiled in discussion of their identity, their identity is not relevant to you and outside making clear you do not see yourself reflected in their identity it serves no function but to prevent discussion.

All accusations are admissions. This is a very reliable compass. They will attribute their own motivations and actions to you because their identity is the only thing they can see and they can only see you as a reflection or threat to it. They are accusing themselves. Let them. Loudly.

Take every word at face value. Do not get dragged into debating it. They say women’s consent doesn’t matter? Take it at face value. They say they have the right to redefine lesbian to include them and they have pushed women to assert their sexual boundaries by misgendering? They are telling you they cannot recognise consent, boundaries, or female sexuality. This is an admission. Not a debate.
Do not treat a boundary as a negotiation. It is not/. You set the boundary and when they breach it, gaslighting, coercion, threats, you are receiving an admission of how far they will go to cross your boundaries. Take this at face value.

Do not be derailed from key points or boundaries, and use all admissions made. They will try to derail from the thing that injures them. Usually the reality of their identity and the threat you pose to it. Stick to their behaviour. The words they have used. Do not get embroiled in discussion of their identity. A narcissists identity is always the hill they will die. Accept when they tell you they cannot separate their identity from your reality.

You do not have to debate being a woman. You are one. Your biology, the inequality you lived, the knowledge you have that came from this. You do not need to debate whether you are a woman. Or their definition of woman. Outside being clear you do not see yourself reflected in them, you do not need to debate this. They do.
When you are discussing systems and laws that evolved over 70 years to protect women and girls you do not need to centre their identity in that discussion. It is irrelevant to that discussion. Those systems were fought for and created by women you dont know, they did that so you dont have to. You do not need to have arguments that are already done and are reflected in euqality legislation.

Do not have arguments you dont need to have. It is ridiculous to use failure to validate males as an insult. It is ridiculous to treat ‘you didnt think of males when you thought about inequality so you are a TERF’ as valid. You dont need to defend the right of women to self assembly without male supervision, it is yours already, they need to explain why they think it should end. If hearing about their male biology is offensive, that is not your fault. THey are male. That cannot be altered. You are not required to repeat things you know to be untrue because of the threat of violence and coercion. You are not required to be ‘inclusive’ and ‘nice’ at a cost of your own safety and rights. EVER.

Do not defend yourself from accusations which are not accusations. It is not an accusation or a crime to refuse to ignore abusive behaviour, it is not an accusation that you didnt orbit a males identity and validate him.

Misgendering and transphobia are insults designed to give men the right to abuse women and claim they are being oppressed. A nonsense. Stick to literal meanings, neither of this things is violent, neither metaphorical or literal and neither of these things warrant a violent response.

Remember what you are responsible for. You are not responsivle for managing their well being, not responsible for their threats of violence, not responsible for harm they do themselves or threaten to do themselves to control a situation. You are entitled to boundaries, to define yourself, and anyone threatened by this is telling you something.

Remember abusive behaviour is well understood. It is always a problem. It is legally and socially unacceptable to subordinate women with abusive behaviour. Nothing in the word trans changes this and any trans women suggesting it does is telling you ‘she’ is an abusive male."

[FloralBunting]

⬆️ all of this.

Thank you so much Lisa. We owe you a debt, and though I know you won't ever read this, I hope many women benefit from this wisdom.

[TheBewildernessisWeetabix]

I needed that reminder, RO. Thanks.

[I0NA]

Another for Lisa

[Ereshkigalangcleg]

The "recipe for a backlash" still chills me now. Thanks R0. And Lisa

[R0wantrees]

Eresh I remember vividly when I first read it after you'd shared it on the second attempt at a thread about Lisa Muggeridge's twitter targetting.

I had my eyes opened to many things that week & am very grateful.