Rewire News Group-How to deal with 'Terfs' at Christmas.

[yourhairiswinterfire]

Anyone on twitter up for reporting this?

twitter.com/RewireNewsGroup/status/1330952166245273603 (Anyone not familiar with Twitter, you need to click the top tweet in the link to show the whole thread).

It's supposed to be totes hilares, encouraging people to attack women with food at Christmas. Apparently abusing women is 'comedic' as long as it's done with food.

You're not allowed to know what a woman is on Twitter, but an account with 71k followers is allowed to post shit like this. I don't care if it's 'only food', it's blatant disregard for women, that it's okay to treat them like shit as long as you disagree with them. They've obviously never heard of escalation.

Imagine the uproar if we suggested humiliating and degrading transpeople at Christmas in this way. We'd be literal murderers. I'm so fucking sick of the double standards.

A fun post from a site which used to call itself feminist. Urging violence against women, showing ageism, and offering just the mantra that trans women are women as the justification for why trans women are women.

I came across another article (by Imani Gandy) on that front page, about how it is crucial to write 'pregnant people' and not 'pregnant women' because of inclusiveness. She tells us that we can learn to use the correct language if we try and that we don't have to feel guilty about not having caught the woke train earlier because even she wrote about women some years ago.

I get so tired of people not doing any actual thinking on these issues, and of course being immediately attacked makes debates impossible so the activists remain uneducated.

But the problem with that whole inclusiveness argument is that it would only be correct if all people held a gender identity which is independent of their biological sex. I don't think this is true for most people though it is true for transgender people. I am a woman because I have a female body.

So when the 'inclusive' language turns that body into a gender-neutral one (menstruating people), my own identity is utterly eradicated (taking a page from the trans activists' book here).

I certainly am not allowed to choose it. Only trans and nonbinary people are allowed to have that choice. The rest of us are ordered to be cisgender and told that the sex class which used to be called 'women' is now a mere sub-category of a new identity class 'women', and the most privileged sub-category, too!

That 'inclusive' language turns the female body into a gender-neutral one is terribly problematic (!), because it makes feminism extremely difficult.

Is it 'people' who mostly rape 'people' now? Or is it penis people who mostly rape vulva people? And what would we now call traditional women's rights? The rights of vulva people or bleeders, I guess, given that those rights were actually about the treatment of female-bodied people and not about gender identities.

And what about the gender gap in wages which is actually a sex gap in wages? For instance, nonbinary people will probably earn something less than men and more than women (other things being kept the same in all such comparisons), but that is because the group has both female and male people in it, not because they identify as nonbinary.

If you want to see bigotry, look at the penis people helpfully defining feminism to women. Again. Every decade they come around with a different label on their foreheads and the same old silencing bigotry. 🙄

DS was telling me that he went to a talk by the school feminist soc and the girls were reclaiming the world ‘slut’ apparently. Also they way they talked/words used was very much in the way of male being the absolute default for everything (and they weren’t questioning it). I have a book I can lend them...

ThatIsNotMyUsername

Yes. My daughter’s friends seem to think calling each other sluts or whores is the height of empowerment. It started at aged 11 when they rolled out ‘biatches’ like the celebs.

After I told my daughter it was the height of privilege to think they were actively making life better for women by perpetuating these words. when men were still very effectively using it to control women in places where the women had absolutely no power, how was school girls and celebrities slagging off their friends with these words helping anyone and not making light of the pain others felt.

@MichelleofzeResistance

I'm not sure when political activism turned into behaving like an overtired toddler. It's like some mad race to the bottom, she does everything but advocate throwing poo.

It is utterly pathetic though isn't it?

Can you imagine it actually playing out in real life? Surely the rest of the family would think you'd gone mad, and chuck you out. Or throw food back at you.

Can you imagine it actually playing out in real life? Surely the rest of the family would think you'd gone mad

I can only imagine the dread of having to be trapped at a family occasion with someone who is so disdainful and disrespectful of everyone around them.

@Winesalot

ThatIsNotMyUsername

Yes. My daughter’s friends seem to think calling each other sluts or whores is the height of empowerment. It started at aged 11 when they rolled out ‘biatches’ like the celebs.

After I told my daughter it was the height of privilege to think they were actively making life better for women by perpetuating these words. when men were still very effectively using it to control women in places where the women had absolutely no power, how was school girls and celebrities slagging off their friends with these words helping anyone and not making light of the pain others felt.

I asked DS to consider what this actually does (call yourself a slur that was craters solely to pit women and girls down, humiliate them, ostracise them, give cause you abuse and even kill them) - or have the attitude of shrugging off insults and get off your arses and actually do something rather than say ‘I’m a slut!’ then sit back smugly to watch the shocked/astonished reactions from the people around you.

Slut has the same original meaning as bitch. In fact the word bitch came into use for dogs when slut had acquired too many negative connotations from being slung at too many women. Now of course it's gone the same way.

Are naive young women and girls going to reclaim cow and sow for themselves next?

History nerd note: "Slut" originally meant a dirty or untidy person of either sex and only gained its current meaning in the 20th century. It can be disconcerting to come across the word in older literature in its old context, the same way it's weird to read about Jane Austen heroes "making love" to their very proper heroines.

Not that relevant to the current conversation, carry on...

In a thread of bad new something positive.

Boyz magazine (publication for gay men in London) suggests people hear what LGB Alliance has to say and not backing down.

twitter.com/ALLIANCELGB/status/1331952817616072719/photo/1

Forget the above post:

twitter.com/BoyzMagazine/status/1332052779871965186

More like wee girlz...

These public atonements are so creepy. They all use the exact same language as if they're reading some pre-prepared hostage statement. It's a shame they've backed down but I've no doubt they've received a mountain of abuse and threats to their jobs.

SmallPug: A journalist has pointed out that it’s probably to generate traffic due to dwindling revenue. Let’s not give it any clicks!

100% agree. This tiresome piece was published not because readers will be interested in it or get help or good advice from it or empathise with its perspective and themes. Its purpose is to generate outrage clicks, at the expense of women and trans people alike.

It seems to have worked, for now: once again, vulnerable people are collateral damage for USAmerican hypercapitalist opportunism. These arseholes at Rewire News Group do not give one shiny shit about the rights, experiences, and lives of trans people beyond how it can profit them. And they certainly don’t care about women.

“I can’t watch granddad gum the cranberry jello, knowing he might have voted for Trump!!” may have been mildly interesting pre-Thanksgiving 2016 - that was just a couple of weeks after an election the pollsters had said that the Democrats would comfortably win. “My family broke up over Brexit!!” had its Mail-Express hayday over the summer of ‘16. It’s alllllllllll been done before, many many times, and far more competently - and, interestingly, without descending into threats of violence. (Take a bow, Rewire News Group - you are journalistic AND ethical dregs.)

As a side note, and at the risk of “EUrosplaining”: this seems to be an especially Anglosphere indulgence. When French tweens suspect that Grandpère
might’ve voted FN or when Poles get tired of “Uncle Sal” (who hasn’t set foot in Poland in 20 years - and don’t call him Slawomir!) shilling for PiS, their first thought isn’t to monetise their adolescent Tumblr ramblings or to be provocatively and counterproductively rude (and stupid) at the dinner table. It’s to recognize that other people exist, to see the big picture, and to organise local people - which can absolutely include family; they may surprise you! - to go out in the streets and block traffic. And to speak up, write letters, run for office, campaign, network, protest, vote. But you galvanise your family and community by connecting with them, by explaining why you feel the way you do - not by creating straw men that no one recognises and that you can’t defend, as this idiotic piece prescribes.

I’m not at all convinced that Caroline Riley (the adult author of this faux “edgy teen” fake diary entry) or Galina Espinoza (the “editor” of Rewire News Group, although this piece clearly hasn’t had the benefit of editing) have any experience actually knowing or caring about any other people besides themselves . They certainly don’t have a clue about US politics. If you really really wanna be leftists and feminists, ladies - I’m afraid you might just have to ... actually ... get ... up ... and .... go ... (whispers) ... o-u-t-s-i-d-e.