Just Fear of the Unknown, says Alan Cummings

[Igneococcus]

In the Times:
www.thetimes.co.uk/article/3bdf5ac0-a2ee-11eb-b457-728758ee7665?shareToken=fd3963bda621590b5f11b7c85ddea4ce

I always feel warmly towards men who tell women how they should act. What would we do without their guidance?

So, The Times runs an opinion piece by Alan Cummings (which is very badly researched and defended, but given that it's "Comment", I'll accept that the point is the commentater, not the argument). It's timestamped "Thursday April 22 2021, 12.01am BST".

The Times also runs another piece by Mike Wade (who I believe normally reports news and politics - I can't tell what section this is in) reporting on what Cummings has said in The Times, with no real analysis or critique except for the reaction from Marion Calder. That piece is also timestamped "Thursday April 22 2021, 12.01am BST".

So - The Times creates an "event", and then immediately reports that event as if it's news? Bit odd.

@AnyOldPrion

the most gratifying change he had witnessed was the “confirmation that when people are exposed to and begin to understand something they were previously ignorant of and felt threatened by, they stop being afraid and aggressive”.

Perhaps he would benefit from rexamining how that change was achieved and compare it to the current situation.

It is often pushed aside that a similarly timed attempt to normalise paedophilia met with less success because it was recognised that there was a rights clash. He’s very much wrong about rights.

I - and many others here - were accommodating of the polite fiction of TWAW and to welcome them into our spaces (and that was based on personal experiences of TW) until we started to understand the wider implications of what we were actually giving up. Educate yourself, as they say.

I submitted a comment where I quoted "But rights aren’t like cake; someone else getting some doesn’t mean you have any less." and added my text:

In many situations this isn't true, sometimes rights conflict. But that doesn't bother Alan Cumming because the consequences won't land on him.

It's very easy to give away other people's rights, and very tempting when you'll be applauded for it.

It was rejected instantly by the algorithm as being abusive, it didn't even become a pending comment.

Urgh

Yes we all want equality. But it would be handy to know what rights are currently missing.

I disagree, I think rights are like cake. On a very simplified level, men lose the right to dominate women when women gained more rights, right to a bank account, to a divorce, to work. After that a man couldn’t “keep” his wife and make every decision about her life. It’s just that we acknowledge that that was a pretty shitty right. So yes, when a group get more rights, they are coming from somewhere, the debate has to be whether it is worth the loss of right from that somewhere.

But rights aren’t like cake; someone else getting some doesn’t mean you have any less

Try telling that to the female inmates who have been raped and sexually assaulted whilst locked up, whose right to safety was happily tossed aside because convicted rapists 'rights' to identify their way into the female estate were considered more worthy

I've never once seen anyone that tells us silly sausages to stop fretting ever acknowledge those women, has anyone else? They keep talking about toilets or ''bathrooms'' but go quiet as soon as prison is mentioned...

I love it when a rich white man living in New York tells women in Scotland to give up their rights. Especially marginalised and disadvantaged women, BAME women and those who have experience of the criminal justice system.

I have a comment pending but I'm not very hopeful that it makes it through.

Cummings, "might I posit: how much does it cost to make the effort to refer to someone the way they want to be referred to?"

I don’t know Alan, how much does it cost for rape victims to refer to their rapist as she? The Scots police seem to think it will cost very little in fairness they obviously don’t think at all

Alan, I am happy for trans men in my spaces. Why are you so keen that trans women don’t share your spaces?

Marion Calder, director of the campaign group For Women Scotland, said Cumming “should educate himself, to understand what feminists truly think”.

She added: “What he should understand is that all groups have different rights. Who attacks women’s rights? Males. Not all males, of course, but this is why we have our single-sex spaces, as a safeguarding measure. We don’t have to be educated about this, it’s understood by women from a very young age. If Alan wants any further explanation we would be happy to oblige.”

Fantastic rebuttal from Marion there.

Also I notice that Alan says that trans rights are like the struggles of gay men to gain equality. Clearly he didn't realise that lesbians were also a key part of the fight, or perhaps he is accurately stating that he only cares about men's rights and sod the women impacted.

@nauticant

I submitted a comment where I quoted "But rights aren’t like cake; someone else getting some doesn’t mean you have any less." and added my text:

In many situations this isn't true, sometimes rights conflict. But that doesn't bother Alan Cumming because the consequences won't land on him.

It's very easy to give away other people's rights, and very tempting when you'll be applauded for it.

It was rejected instantly by the algorithm as being abusive, it didn't even become a pending comment.

There's something odd about the comments, I think. I looked about half an hour ago and there were no comments on either article. Now there are a few on each and one is 8 hours old.

I'd have guessed that your comment might have been considered questionable because it talked about the author and his possible motives, but I don't see how it's "abusive" and this is acceptable:

"Thomas Donaldson
8 hours ago
Oh well I really appreciate the views of a foreigner who will never have the benefits or otherwise of Independence, why is this in The Times ? Is he the new Sir Sean who also chose to live in a foreign Country but tell the numpties back home how to vote."

Why is anyone supposed to be remotely interested in Cummings' opinion on this?

Yeah women should wheest

Only men have valid opinions

A privileged wealthy white man telling women to shut up.

How novel!

Oh wait

Alan can bugger off, frankly.

I'm sick of men telling women what to accept and how to feminist.

@Wrongsideofhistorymyarse

Alan can bugger off, frankly.

I'm sick of men telling women what to accept and how to feminist.

This is the natural conclusion of the stupid "feminism is for everyone" and all those men wearing those awful "this is what a feminist looks like" t-shirts. Because if feminism is for everyone, why of course men can tell women we're doing feminism wrong by expecting our rights to be protected.

@R0wantrees

Sapphos, I've seen plenty of women giving women's rights away similarly without apparent care in the world.

Good point and very true my own DW is one of them.

This is the natural conclusion of the stupid "feminism is for everyone" and all those men wearing those awful "this is what a feminist looks like" t-shirts. Because if feminism is for everyone, why of course men can tell women we're doing feminism wrong by expecting our rights to be protected.

I agree. I'm always very wary of self declared "feminist" men.

So - The Times creates an "event", and then immediately reports that event as if it's news? Bit odd.
Yes, it is a bit odd. At least it gave an opportunity for the quote from Marion Calder,

So many people use the ‘rights aren’t like cake/pie’ argument. Lots of them are actually because they conflict with one another. Press freedom vs privacy for instance. If you have strong privacy laws, you encroach on press freedom. Freedom of expression vs respect for religion is another one. If you have strict blasphemy laws to respect the beliefs of religious people, it means that others cannot freely express themselves about religion. Of course many rights are like pie.

@Ereshkigalangcleg

This is the natural conclusion of the stupid "feminism is for everyone" and all those men wearing those awful "this is what a feminist looks like" t-shirts. Because if feminism is for everyone, why of course men can tell women we're doing feminism wrong by expecting our rights to be protected.

I agree. I'm always very wary of self declared "feminist" men.

The feminist men I know are the most rampant consumers of porn. It’s all fine though because a libfem told them porn and prostitution were empowering.

I am sure some agoraphobes yearn to be able to embrace open, crowded spaces

Alan, mate, you have obviously tossed this ditty off without the barest whisper of contemplation, critical thought, or research.

You've just uncapped your pen and made a series of vague, re-heated platitudes that you think sound awfully nice and vaguely stirring, safe in the knowledge that the rights you are so gallantly handing out are not yours to give, and the consequences will have zero impact on you.

Maybe best stick to campaigning on foreskin health, eh?

I can never understand why people use cake to demonstrate this point. Wasn't the Asher's Cake Company case all about balancing the conflicting rights of two groups both with protected characteristics?

Quite. And rights come into conflict all the time. The right of a Christian B&B owner to refuse admission to a gay couple, for example, comes into conflict with the gay couple's right to have equal access to services.

Similarly, the right of trans women to access women's changing rooms conflicts with women's right to have a single-sex space to change in.

But it's quite easy to think of dozens of instances where two groups with protected characteristics have clashing rights. I'm sure people can think of their own.