Diva magazine exclusively for TRAs now

[SapphosRock]

I’m pretty hacked off about it truth be told, especially since I’ve supported Diva and bought pretty much every issue since I came out as a lesbian in the late 90s.

I’m a member of Diva’s online community and someone recently posted about Nicola Adams (Olympic world champion boxer, used to identify as bisexual, recently came out as a lesbian).

Nicola has made the suggestion of having a separate category in boxing for trans women to compete with one another as she doesn’t believe it is fair for them to compete in the female category. Thread on it here:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3834912-Olympic-Boxing-champ-Nicola-Adams-calls-for-transgender-athlete-categories-for-fairness#94290477

This seems completely fair enough, and there is an exception in the Equality Act for exactly this reason, to make women’s sport fair.

As Diva is (was?) mainly a place for lesbian women, quite a few in the online community spoke up in support of Nicola Adams.

A trans woman who is a prominent poster in the group wrote a long and detailed post to ‘educate’ everybody why it is completely fair for trans women to compete in female sport. Point 5 of her post states biological sex isn’t binary. Anyone who didn’t agree is a transphobe.

This was backed up by Linda Riley (Diva publisher) who compared debating the right of trans women to compete in female sport to debating ‘all lives matter’, not so subtly suggesting that questioning the fairness of trans women in sport is as bad as racism.

DIVA MAGAZINE IS OPENLY CLAIMING WOMEN ARE BIGOTED FOR QUESTIONING THE FAIRNESS OF A MALE BODIED PERSON HITTING AND PUNCHING A FEMALE BODIED PERSON IN SPORT.

I have absolutely no problem with Diva welcoming trans women into the community but centering trans activism like this is madness. I know I’ve posted here in defense of Diva before when other lesbians expressed concerns about the TRA / MRA ethos. Apologies I didn’t listen and feel free to tell me ‘I told you so’.

As a side note, the prominent TRA in Diva’s online community made Diva’s Pride Power list. Olympic world champion lesbian role model Nicola Adams did not.

www.pridepowerlist.com/the-list-2020.html

AfterEllen is only online, but they are gender critical and worth a follow.

As someone said earlier Sapphos, your line has been crossed. Most here have been there and had different lines but there's no stepping back over it once it's been crossed. And I'm sure you can also now see that none of us have an issue with Trans people. Just the ideology and what it means for women and girls across the board.

Someone has written a brilliant response to Diva 💪

I'm sure it will be deleted soon and she will be removed from the group but good on her.

Last bit of the post.

I'll wait with interest if you'd like to share the response to that post when it comes, Sappho

Linda Riley has form. It is easy to see why she wouldn't be concerned about thrown Nicola Adams under the bus.

www.theguardian.com/culture/2015/jul/29/museum-billed-as-celebration-of-london-women-opens-as-jack-the-ripper-exhibit

Thread on history of the museum.

twitter.com/LouiseRawAuthor/status/1301818889148477440

Article in private eye

imgur.com/a/fnI43o2

'throwing Nicola Adams under the bus'.

It surely can't sit right with Linda Riley to deliberately overlook a brilliant black lesbian sports woman for daring to have her own opinion?

talesfromthesouthbank.wordpress.com/2015/08/07/ripper-museum-diversity-champion-purged/

Diversity, Jack the Ripper - the main thing is "can you monetise it?"

MichelleofzeResistance quite a few replies, if you are on FB you can join the group to see.

www.facebook.com/groups/divacomm/?ref=share

@WeeBisom

That’s a shame about Diva. The online lesbian spaces like autostraddle are also entirely dominated by non binaries and trans women. The sad thing is that taking over lesbians spaces and publications literally isn’t enough for the TRAS. If you make a female only magazine they will want that too. There was a funny post on the Reddit page for “actual lesbians (which of course is full of males). This trans woman asked how many trans women were in the group and hundreds responded. He seemed put out and asked “are there no cis lesbians here?” So the end point of this is the lesbians will all go under ground and have their own spaces and the guys can be left on their own.

In which case all the transbians can date each other, or are TW actually not womenly enough for their liking? 😁

I was going to suggest that to the two trans women lamenting in the lesbian group that they couldn't find a date yet not for a minute considering dating each other. Seemed like the obvious solution to me.

@SapphosRock

I was going to suggest that to the two trans women lamenting in the lesbian group that they couldn't find a date yet not for a minute considering dating each other. Seemed like the obvious solution to me.

That's the wrong kind of same sex orientation though.

@SapphosRock

I was going to suggest that to the two trans women lamenting in the lesbian group that they couldn't find a date yet not for a minute considering dating each other. Seemed like the obvious solution to me.

How often does this happen, does anyone know? Transwomen dating transwomen?

(I have a vague unsubstantiated suspicion that it is more likely to happen with two transmen.)

so if all of you drop your subscriptions and there are only transbians left, that'll be interesting. I love this word transbians, have been trying to get my head around it for days.

Good luck you lot, I have loads of sympathy and feel you are being treated in the most horrendous way. I just don't get why the wokefems can't see it.

@WeeBisom

That’s a shame about Diva. The online lesbian spaces like autostraddle are also entirely dominated by non binaries and trans women. The sad thing is that taking over lesbians spaces and publications literally isn’t enough for the TRAS. If you make a female only magazine they will want that too. There was a funny post on the Reddit page for “actual lesbians (which of course is full of males). This trans woman asked how many trans women were in the group and hundreds responded. He seemed put out and asked “are there no cis lesbians here?” So the end point of this is the lesbians will all go under ground and have their own spaces and the guys can be left on their own.

This puts me in mind of the old days of chat rooms. So many men pretending to be women in order to trick lesbians into ‘cyber sex’. But of course the joke was there were so many men pretending to be women that clearly there would have been times two pretend women were having the sexy time with each other. Plus ca change etc, men have always resented lesbians rejecting them as sexual partners.

Thanks for the link Sappho however not on FB sadly!

I have read that TW who identify as lesbian get the 'get out' clause of being allowed to know what biological females are and to select only biological females as sexual partners as another TW would be too triggering for them.

Obviously biological females are not permitted this same equality of privilege, even if they have been raped/traumatised themselves. Riley Dennis has a video in which they kindly explain that if you are a homosexual female avoidant of sex involving penises on the grounds of finding penises traumatic due to an assault then you are permitted a short time in which to get over this, but that you need to sort your aversion out to penises asap.

It's mind boggling, it really is, that someone recorded that video in all earnestness without the faintest self awareness of how dehumanising, objectifying and utterly incoherent in its unexplained double standards that their message is - and seriously expected women to just say "Ok".

@SapphosRock

Yep OvaHere it's written by a woman. Depressing hey?

The ironic thing is until this week I would happily say I was a trans ally. The trans woman TRA in the Diva group always seemed really nice. Had a few pleasant exchanges with her.

If it was a simple difference of opinion re the sport I could even respect that and agree to disagree.

Forcing every person in the group to agree with the TRA or leave? Nope. Accusing women of transphobia for pointing out simple biological facts? Nope. Deleting any comments that support the view of Nicola Adams, a highly regarded lesbian athlete? Nope. Until TRAs can learn to be allies to women then they've got no support from me.

This is how it happens. You start with being a fervent ally and you know 'nice' trans women who kind of get the concerns and you want things to be fair and some of the stuff people say feels so ridiculous and bigoted - and then you see it. And you can't unsee it. And it doesn't mean not wanting trans people to have housing rights or to live as they want or anything like that, but it means a wariness and rage about the ideology and its implications, as well as the strategies used to enforce it, and a subsequent resistance to spending your time and energy fighting for it.

@SapphosRock I'm sorry you're going through the stress/anger/frustration of this, but also glad that you can share here. I have disagreed with a lot of what you've said here in the past re: lesbians, but I completely get the wanting to believe it 'didn't happen'. I feel like there's an awful lot of women who really don't want to be right about this, but they can't unsee it.

Thanks notyourhandmaid yes I completely agree.

I have another problem now. I'm married to the biggest trans ally you could imagine. Think Linda Riley meets Ruth Hunt. We had rather an interesting conversation this morning re my new revelations. She thinks I've lost my mind.

She won't hear or listen to my point of view at all and thinks Nicola Adams was 'insensitive'. So that's going to be interesting.

That's going to be hard.

I think most GC women have at least one piece of "let's be kind" idiocy in their past before they realised they were being conned. Mine was that, having actually been on demonstrations about the lack of women in STEM and blatant sexism in the admissions process, I still thought Germaine Greer was being unkind to that nice Rachel Padman who just wanted to be left alone to live her life (by taking one of the very few science fellowships in Cambridge only open to women, despite having succeeded in the education system and in early career and publications while male). I just didn't connect the dots.

And yes, it's going to be very, very hard within your marriage (I know you've talked about your marriage before on here).

What did I say wrong?! I actually can't remember what I wrote...🙄

Hey Sapphos.

I've always enjoyed your posts, although we've tended to very much disagree. No point having an echo chamber. & I hope this doesn't come across as hopelessly patronising, but I always got a 'good egg arguing in good faith' vibe from you.

& I'm also hugely impressed you stuck around & came back to say we horrid terfy types might have a point, rather than just quietly folding your tent & buggering off! Absolutely fair play to you.

I hope none of this causes too much tension between you & your wife - most of my dearest friends are woker than woke. There's no shame in agreeing to disagree if the alternative is a huge fall out with loved ones x

Hey thanks Corvus that's nice of you to say. It's heartening to know others share my opinion.

The sycophancy towards trans activists in the Diva group is bizarre but I have a feeling the other women in the Diva group will tire of it soon, especially if this is how the TRAs speak to their allies...

@CorvusPurpureus

Hey Sapphos.

I've always enjoyed your posts, although we've tended to very much disagree. No point having an echo chamber. & I hope this doesn't come across as hopelessly patronising, but I always got a 'good egg arguing in good faith' vibe from you.

& I'm also hugely impressed you stuck around & came back to say we horrid terfy types might have a point, rather than just quietly folding your tent & buggering off! Absolutely fair play to you.

I hope none of this causes too much tension between you & your wife - most of my dearest friends are woker than woke. There's no shame in agreeing to disagree if the alternative is a huge fall out with loved ones x

I came here to say exactly this. I’ve always enjoyed your posts Sapphos. You seem highly intelligent, reasoned and thoroughly decent. Reading your posts i always held on to hope that perhaps I WAS wrong, and we could all coexist with TWAW. So I’m actually quite gutted that they’ve got you backed into a bloody corner now.

And yep, massive kudos to you for questioning your own deeply held beliefs and coming here to talk about it.

They really seem to be the most humourless sanctimonious people! A perfect example of how whatever you say or do it will never ever be right 🙄🙄

Aw thanks Furx that's v kind of you to say so. Makes a nice change from 'we see you' or calling me a handmaiden which some posters (none on this thread) used to say to me 😴