Flora Gill - annoying article in The Times

[Theluggage15]

Article on cancel culture. Read the first bit then there was this paragraph:

‘ For example, for my generation — I’m 29 — the right of trans people to be protected is as indisputable as the right to sexual or racial equality. If you’re focusing only on the tiny number of women who could be at threat from men pretending to be trans, instead of the real threat faced by trans women now, then you’re not fighting for women — you’re fighting against a type of woman you don’t value.’

Want to go to sleep but feeling really angry. So depressing reading this, I feel worse for some reason when this sort of view comes from intelligent young women.

Women like Gill, Emma Watson et al can give away my rights because they have always had money so do not need them. No secure mental health units or women's prisons for these special flowers. Unlikely to be sexually assaulted or filmed in the loos at Claridges or the Ivy or the Harvey Nics changing rooms. They have no empathy because, like men, they are not and have never been at risk.

‘ For example, for my generation — I’m 29 — the right of trans people to be protected is as indisputable as the right to sexual or racial equality. If you’re focusing only on the tiny number of women who could be at threat from men pretending to be trans, instead of the real threat faced by trans women now, then you’re not fighting for women — you’re fighting against a type of woman you don’t value.’

She can want to believe that all trans women immediately morph into a women's offending profile as soon as they state they're women. That would be great - and it was was what I used to believe, myself - but it would be wrong. Male people have male offending patterns, whether transitioned or not, and women are hugely safer in spaces that exclude all males. That's not hate, not unless you think it's man-hating to have single sex spaces in the first place.

It's also straightforwardly wrong to think trans women are at greater risk of physical abuse than women are. That's unsupported by any actual facts. Very low murder rates indeed, no evidence of any increase of any form of abuse or violence. I'm certain trans people deal with lots of discrimination in employment, housing etc and that absolutely should be addressed and dealt with. Nobody should cope with that, and yes, it's bigotry. But it won't be solved by allowing access to women's spaces, and yet that seems the sole focus.

And bollocks do all women around 30 think that way. Dr Jessica Taylor's that age, for a start. Plenty of Mumsnetters are as well. Not all women, Ms Gill, think the preferences of 'women born with penises' justifies what you appear to regard as an acceptable increase in rapes and assaults for the more boringly female types of women. But congratulations. The patriarchy trained you well.

Then again, she's AA Gill and Amber Rudd's daughter, so she's never going to be in a position to need a domestic abuse shelter, or a free rape crisis therapist, or a municipal women's changing area, let alone likely to end up in a prison, where almost all women are survivors of brutal sexual abuse at the hands of men, and terrified by male bodies with very good reason. She's decreeing how vulnerable women, without her levels of privilege, should live, just as those did who thought Karen White belonged in a women's psychiatric unit, and then, when the rape of a vulnerable fellow patient occurred, a women's prison. How very enlightened. How woke.

That first link to forwomen.scot is absolutely brilliant.

Thank you wellbehavedwomen.

I don't get how you can be so unaware of other women that need protection. Does she know about FGM? does she know about certain religions & their need for single sex spaces? Is she aware of why women end up in shelters or prison? An understanding of the need for safeguarding for children? I'm not much older but wow imagine being so dismissive of the above. And then talk about the privilege of others!

She's just clueless. I have sympathy with that because her views were pretty much mine, before I started properly looking into the facts. I just assumed, as she does, that it's like racism and homophobia. In fact I started looking into it so I could prove the nasty T*RFs wrong.

Many of us came to be gender critical that way. You can't properly research all the facts, be a genuine feminist, and not. There's no test or scan for transition, to show changes. It solely relies on a claim from a person that they think they're the other sex. So all you're left with is behavioural data. I assumed, given the demands from seemingly reasonable people, that the data supported the wrong-brain hypothesis - when actually, it refutes it.

What they - and I, in the past - are arguing for is opening women's spaces up to any male who wants access. That's clearly wrong, from an evidence perspective. That should be wholly separate to the argument - which I still hold - that people should be free to express gender in any way that feels right to them.

Sex isn't gender, and women need rights based on sex. She's straightforwardly wrong, here.

I’m sticking in a link to the Phillip Collins article as I can’t see that anyone else has. I don’t know if this will work though as is just a link not a share token. What is a share token - And how do you get them? www.thetimes.co.uk/article/a-gag-is-no-cure-for-this-cancel-culture-mcnpkhk5b

She's clueless.

In the context of the wider discussion, please don't let's pretend that being privileged necessarily protects from domestic abuse though.

Here's a share token for the other article, you get it by clicking the share by email www.thetimes.co.uk/article/4e27076a-c2e7-11ea-8d55-2d09441849ca?shareToken=4bfd96fcd4c2c0f00d96597a986a0ff3

@Al1Langdownthecleghole

She's clueless.

In the context of the wider discussion, please don't let's pretend that being privileged necessarily protects from domestic abuse though.

No, it absolutely doesn't, but it does remove both obstacles to leaving, and obstacles to affording help.

A mum in a rented house who has no means of getting a new place to live or feeding the kids has no recourse but a shelter. Someone with their own money, and a wealthy background, doesn't have those problems. Similarly, someone wealthy can afford private therapeutic support, whereas someone on benefits has to take whatever Refuge, or Rape Crisis, have to give them.

You can buy single sex provision, if you can afford to.

Clearly the psychological barriers to leaving and seeking help remain. The practical, though, don't.

Thank you Everard.

I thought the Philip Collins article was excellent & was quite touched by his words about the 'online shaming' of JK Rowling.

I'm so mean. Thoroughly enjoyed seeing this girl having her arse handed to her in the comments.

Yes, the other article is so much better constructed, let alone truthful and reasonable.

EdgeOfACoin

Preferred it when we were Gen Y? Or in my family "Gen but why?"

Phillip Collins: How remarkable it is that, rather than vent their ire at actual sexists and racists, there has been so much vitriol directed at the admirable and kind JK Rowling, a woman of impeccable intellectual generosity whose personal philanthropy is testament to the sincerity of her liberalism.

Yep. Who cares that she's dedicated an enormous amount of time and money to supporting and amplifying the voices of marginalised people? Who cares that she chooses to pay her taxes in full, while Google, who pay almost none, virtue-signal on this issue, showing contempt for women as they do so? This is about a subset of male people, whose needs must, it should go without saying, trump the needs of any female people. We're only women, after all.

The framing of this entire subject shows how much hatred of women is normalised. Rowling knows it, and became involved on that basis. We all owe her a very large debt - for her courage as much as her kindness and generosity. .

Oh good god. What are the threats that transpeople face? They must be serious indeed if we are to focus on it rather than the "tiny number of women at threat". Why doesn't she list the threats? She must know them, right?

Depressing article I agree

If you’re focusing only on the tiny number of women who could be at threat from men pretending to be trans, instead of the real threat faced by trans women now, then you’re not fighting for women — you’re fighting against a type of woman you don’t value.’

Even if you agreed with the 'real threat' TW supposedly face in the UK and that TWAW, she's still lost any grip on logic here.

Flora love, you're busy fighting against other types of women you don't value and you're apparently just fine with that, so why object to anyone else doing it? Incidentally many of those women you're busily throwing under the bus in a self righteous, morally superior way will be disabled, BAME, traumatised, females already marginalised and who struggle to access services - remember that little word 'intersectionality' at all?

How lovely you don't give a shit about them. How lovely you're happy to see them suffer.

Oh and 'tiny' - proportionally the number of TW who can be made apparently happy ever after by the sacrifice of female only spaces and provisions to them on a plate will be truly tiny compared to the proportion of females excluded from spaces and harmed by loss of provisions.

I won't speculate on the numbers of likely assaults and rapes since in this country less than 1% of actual rapes ever make it into a courtroom, we know how hard everyone works under Stonewall to cover up any evidence that suggests females might be suffering under all their services going mixed sex, and you clearly don't give a fuck anyway. I find it beyond tragic when I see a female who has internalised the message so very powerfully about the inferiority and worthlessness of females that they live to demonstrate to males how vigorously they advance male benefit while suppressing females and what a very Good Girl they are.

It's bloody tragic. Go and read up about oppression love. Real oppression, not the romantic dramatized version.

Great to see the comments. Well done to Jo Marsh for her usual incisive input. Jo, if you're on here, I wish you were a columnist, and not Flora.

The last par is even worse - self righteous drivel by someone who, one suspects, was offered a writing perch at the Times on the strength of her surname and therefore never had to work very hard at honing her arguments - have a read and tell me whether this isn't classic circular logic: ie the real problem with those who disagree with me is that they disagree with me

@Peebi

The last par is even worse - self righteous drivel by someone who, one suspects, was offered a writing perch at the Times on the strength of her surname and therefore never had to work very hard at honing her arguments - have a read and tell me whether this isn't classic circular logic: ie the real problem with those who disagree with me is that they disagree with me

This with bells on.

I'm glad The Times published this.

It's just as effective in blasting through the issues via its poor construction and arrogance as a pro GC copy especially when set against the Detransition article in the magazine.

I wonder if Flora has read that?

It's bloody heartbreaking and if you can't find solidarity and want to protect women in those circumstances then shame on you.

You can buy single sex provision, if you can afford to.

This is such an important point, that isn't made often enough.

You can also buy the choice to only use unisex services when you feel completely comfortable.

Women and girls in India are fighting for the very rights that women in the West are so carelessly and thoughtlessly giving away: the right to female-only spaces. We all accept that in India many women and girls are attacked by men while looking for a place to urinate/defecate outdoors. We all accept that these attacks would not happen (or would happen far less) if those women and girls had access to their own toilets. We all accept that men can and do attack them outside of the safety of those toilets. So why do we not accept that women in the West will be at risk from men (not necessarily trans-identifying men) if we open up our female-only spaces to anybody who says they’re a woman? My husband said “It’s almost like they are saying, ‘Well that sort of thing only happens in India because Indians are uncivilised. Men in the West aren’t like that!’” And then the likes of Munroe Bergdorf have the nerve to say that gender critical women are the ones with the colonial mindset!

www.theguardian.com/global-development/2014/aug/28/toilets-india-health-rural-women-safety