Well, that's us told

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

lux-magazine.com/article/the-road-to-terfdom/

This is an article about Mumsnet FWR boards. Author doesn't like us. Oh dear.

R0wan, I frickin' adore you!

That is all.

'To label women - white, middle-class, privileged, frothing, young mother, old mother, hysterical, fear mom gering, complacent, prudish, ranting, mean, middle aged, radical, pearl clutching - any old contradictory rubbish.'

There is a real thing that I talk about a lot about how society in general often sees the default male as people and everyone who is not default male in terms of types, stereotypes. This very much applies to women.

Some groups above and more generally stuff like
Old dear
Jail bait
Milf
Ball breaker
Neurotic
Etc

There's often confusion and unhappiness when women or girls step out of what they have been labelled.

It also splits us into sub groups that society and the media etc like to try and pit against each other. And not really a cohesive group with similar experiences worries etc.

Just occurred to me that the new approach is more of the same.

People with cervixes
Menstruators
Pregnant people
Etc etc

interesting.

And I wonder whether the insistence that we shouldn't mind comes from an underlying idea that women already are not really connected, but are lots of sub groups. So why the fuss.

Hmmmmm.

Yes nice, and divide and conquer. Sub groups are easier to manage. Wouldn't want women getting together and organising in big groups.

“I couldn’t sit back a watch this final episode of ‘Gentrification Deptford’ invade the only thing that working class women have left: their experience.”

I’m another who hasn’t forgotten reading that thread from 2018 about the Deptford project. This quote to me says it all about the ‘top trumps’ nature of the current push for trans access to female spaces and language and ... everything.

‘Lived experience’ is only privileged as the be-all and end-all if it’s the ‘correct’ lived experience, apparently.

Lived experience’ is only privileged as the be-all and end-all if it’s the ‘correct’ lived experience, apparently.

This is a strong and disturbing movement in a number of areas, but notably in healthcare. It's much needed but the implementation bears watching as it is oppression and trauma top trumps too much of the time.

Lived experience’ is only privileged as the be-all and end-all if it’s the ‘correct’ lived experience, apparently.

So true.

I remember having an argument on Facebook once with a young woman (probably about my age, I was about 30) who insisted that no ‘cis’ woman could ever have experienced as much trauma as a trans woman. And just thinking fuck, how can you believe that?

This is all such a shame.

But with so many advances for women it's been 2 steps forward 1 back. As men find a way to turn it to their advantage .

The good things here that have been bastardised and turned around-

Intersectionality. A really straightforward term used to articulate how multiple axes of oppression/ lack of power, voice etc can combine to multiply everything. A really good and important thing to get to grips with.

It was always meant to help people look outside their own experience. That what might help some people is still out of reach for others.

There was always a strong focus on race here and that's obviously important with disability, poverty etc making an appearance as well.

It suddenly occurs to me that it didn't get used as much as it should. EG we have a closed Christian community. Think Amish level closed. The girls and women in there have no chance. No frame of reference as to what is 'normal'. No access to any kind of media to read or see what support is available. They're white (as far as I have seen), Christian, and I don't think there is poverty.

The way intersectionality was bastardised into oppression Olympics, a competition, misses the whole point. In the oppression Olympics the women in that community are ' privileged'. In real life. Really not.
The nuance was discarded and the competition on for those who felt they were demonised because their characteristics put them at the 'top' looked for ways to destabilise the whole thing.

Similarly with lived experience. It simply meant, people who have experienced a thing should be listened to when talking about the thing. Which is exactly right. And it was needed because of the tendency of those who don't have the thing to assume they know best and speak over the people who have the thing.
Turned into if you don't have the thing you're not allowed any opinion whatsoever shut up and fuck off.

So that's what I think.

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g

Starts with the usual attempt to write mothers off as empty-headed types not to be trusted with serious issues.

I was baffled to learn these feminists were finding each other on Mumsnet, a collection of message boards I’d previously turned to for advice on how to descale my dishwasher and associated with smug, bougie mums comparing high-end strollers and complaining about the neighbor’s dog eating their begonias.

How rude. Is that all that women are supposed to talk about then?

Bog standard misogyny.

Women come in 2D cardboard cutout types.

No more to them, no less. A mum on MN is like this. Full stop. A subsection of various types of mum. Yummy mummy. Career mummy. Mumsy mummy. Young mum. Single mum. Etc etc etc

This view of girls and women as types is across society and through our whole lives

Men who meet the default (heterosexual etc) get to be people.

It's infuriating. Especially that so many women buy into it as well. And tbf play up to it a fair bit.

It suddenly occurs to me that it didn't get used as much as it should. EG we have a closed Christian community. Think Amish level closed. The girls and women in there have no chance. No frame of reference as to what is 'normal'. No access to any kind of media to read or see what support is available. They're white (as far as I have seen), Christian, and I don't think there is poverty.

This is so reminiscent of the recent MN guest post about (effectively) closed Jewish communities and forced marriage:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/guest_posts/4186416-Guest-Post-Mumsnet-was-the-first-safe-place-I-had-to-realise-my-own-agency-now-I-am-campaigning-to-end-forced-marriage

@NiceGerbil

This is all such a shame.

But with so many advances for women it's been 2 steps forward 1 back. As men find a way to turn it to their advantage .

The good things here that have been bastardised and turned around-

Intersectionality. A really straightforward term used to articulate how multiple axes of oppression/ lack of power, voice etc can combine to multiply everything. A really good and important thing to get to grips with.

It was always meant to help people look outside their own experience. That what might help some people is still out of reach for others.

There was always a strong focus on race here and that's obviously important with disability, poverty etc making an appearance as well.

It suddenly occurs to me that it didn't get used as much as it should. EG we have a closed Christian community. Think Amish level closed. The girls and women in there have no chance. No frame of reference as to what is 'normal'. No access to any kind of media to read or see what support is available. They're white (as far as I have seen), Christian, and I don't think there is poverty.

The way intersectionality was bastardised into oppression Olympics, a competition, misses the whole point. In the oppression Olympics the women in that community are ' privileged'. In real life. Really not.
The nuance was discarded and the competition on for those who felt they were demonised because their characteristics put them at the 'top' looked for ways to destabilise the whole thing.

Similarly with lived experience. It simply meant, people who have experienced a thing should be listened to when talking about the thing. Which is exactly right. And it was needed because of the tendency of those who don't have the thing to assume they know best and speak over the people who have the thing.
Turned into if you don't have the thing you're not allowed any opinion whatsoever shut up and fuck off.

So that's what I think.

So well said!

Agreed!

Bless. What a complete misinterpretation of the role American homophobia, and relative tolerance of homosexuality in the UK, and the relation of these things to the trans/GC divide.

Suzanne Moore had written a response to the article.

suzannemoore.substack.com/p/i-got-all-radicalised-without-going

My only issue with it is that she didn’t qualify that it is not only ‘mums’ on Mumsnet. Obviously, when you start reading the threads there are women with or without children and men as well.

Still her point is, the author really has no idea about British women and their political values.

She says she'd join StroppyCuntNet.

Sounds fairly interchangeable with FWR. And certainly AIBU!

I did think this too Datun.

I felt she needed an invite to come and have a look!

I'm taken aback to learn the magazine is named for Rosa Luxemburg. I hope that they somehow had the requisite permission from those who care for her legacy because that is otherwise crass.

From a discussion from the collective that runs it:

Women—and I’m going to say women, but I’m always anxious about hammering too hard on women because we have a very queer and expansive definition of our constituency—are an under-organized constituency. You see that in the fact that this country has an absolute childcare and eldercare crisis. Basically, all of that work is done by women. Everybody knows this as a crisis, and it’s not a priority anywhere.

www.thenation.com/article/politics/qa-sarah-leonard-marian-jones/

Well intentioned and able to grasp some issues but women talking on Mumsnet is what perturbs them.

(extract from interview linked above)

Sarah Leonard (co-founder of Lux): "As feminists, we think in terms of solidarity rather than sisterhood, because we don’t necessarily think there’s anything organic about all women coming together. You have to build solidarity with intent and build relationships. We refer often in our editorial note to the Combahee River Collective Statement, and one of the reasons we refer to it constantly is that they were—and remain, for that matter—very serious about building points of solidarity with different groups who they had political goals in common with but were different from.

This magazine is designed to be part of that project. We imagine a particular kind of constituency that’s made up of all of these solidarities that are feminist, abolitionist, queer, and socialist. And to us, that creates an extremely big world, a very big constituency [with] lots of alliances. " (continues)

This is the luxury/champagne socialism of Jess Bradley, Owen Jones, Ash Saaker, Novara Media etc?

For actual feminist solidarity and sisterhood: FiLia podcasts filia.org.uk/podcasts

How can they say the constituency is under organised when they can't define the constituency? A publication for women, but also for anyone else who fancies a read. The founder of which isn't comfortable saying it's a women's publication. I'm sold. If only they could work out which members of the constituency are doing all the child/elder care, then they might be able to be more specific.

I'm taken aback to learn the magazine is named for Rosa Luxemburg.

Oh, I keep thinking of soap.

Stroppycuntnet would have the benefit of genderist approval, too. We're at cervix'havers just now, it's only a matter of time before they shorten it.

I don't believe that US women who write and/or publish articles such as this have much of a grasp of European history and politics, nor do I believe they have understood Rosa Luxemborg's work.

@ArabellaScott

Stroppycuntnet would have the benefit of genderist approval, too. We're at cervix'havers just now, it's only a matter of time before they shorten it.

@Datun

She says she'd join StroppyCuntNet.

Sounds fairly interchangeable with FWR. And certainly AIBU!

I thought she was talking about fwr for a minute

I think we should rebrand

I did enjoy the article, love a bit of humour, its my downfall