Pushback at Wi Spa in Los Angeles

[FannyCann]

Well it's all kicking off at the spa. An amazing woman behind the desk standing up for women and telling a man where to take his penis. I fear she will lose her job over this but it's a glorious way to go.

twitter.com/stillgray/status/1408997169344909313?s=21

The Laurie Penny and Layla Moran position requires women to go against their experience and knowledge and assume all men have good intentions, either that or be able to read men's minds or gauge men's moods. One of the things I like about women-only space, and not just the kind of space where you are physically vulnerable, is that it gives women respite from having to think about men. People on the bottom of a hierarchy need respite from having to live always in relation and reaction to those on the top of the hierarchy.

Esma that is such an important point - we keep seeing this over and over, where women and children are being told to ignore their instinct, accept someone is who they say they are, it's so dangerous. And I agree regarding women's spaces, it's not all about trauma or predatory males, often it's just about a comfortable female space away from the influence of males. Like I had one module at university where the seminar was all young women, and the tutor was also a woman, and we discussed women's writing - it was so wonderful and completely different to the rest of my course.

I’m fed up of having to check policies to see whether I’m going to be safe in my bed in shared accommodation or exposed to flashers or voyeurs in facilities where I’ll be disrobing. Enough already!

I'm probably not going be express my thoughts as eloquently as I would wish so please bear with me.

My take on liberal feminism is that ultimately it comes from a place of privilege and a false sense of empowerment.

It's no surprise to me that most of the women who espouse those views are well educated and come from socio-economically comfortable backgrounds.

I think there's an interesting parallel with Stonewalls strategy to centre trans rights to "stay relevant" after the big wins of same sex partnerships and marriage became law.

For "high achieving" white women in particular the battle for feminism was surely won right? Look at me, I'm doing great. I can hold my own with the men. I make my own decisions, earn my own money.

How do I "refresh" feminism to keep it relevant to me....to ensure it reflects my achievements and success? I'll be damned if I'm going to admit that the patriarchy has power over my life. Let's snuff that candle right out to ensure my flame is brighter.

Rather lets centre people more vulnerable than me and whose more vulnerable than a woman...ah yes...this looks like a winner.

It all then becomes about "empowered" choices doesn't it and it's this no surprise that this follows through to the "choice" that sex work is a legitimate career as another facet of this movement.

It just doesn't seem to compute that life style choices about what work you do, who you spend time with, what spaces you inhabit as a women etc are not universally guaranteed and for those that are lucky enough to have such freedoms it is not because "they" are in any way special, it's the result of over a 100 years worth of "old school" actual feminist action and lobbying.

Truth is the world really isn't as progressive these women want to believe.

They haven't succeed beyond the need for centring women in their "feminism". They just arrogantly think they have.

It's why when confronted with the real life consequences of their advocacy for trans rights over that of women and girls, it has to be their (women's) fault.

Women are empowered you see. We have choices. We don't have to look. We can leave.

Admitting that actually the real narrative is that we are forced to look and forced to leave is a total anathema to their paradigm of life.

Of course I could be talking utter bollocks

DeRigueurMortis

Really, really very well put

That's probably accurate, but I am hesitant to put too much emphasis on the validity of single sex spaces being based on relative oppression. Because even if that wasn't a factor at all, I don't thin it means that spaces that are single sex aren't ok.

Perhaps this is a way in which sex is just a very different characteristic than some others, like race. We can imagine a world where race isn't really a think and therefore racial bigotry doesn't exist. There have been other cultures and times when race wasn't a category in the way it is for us. For many people until recently, this was a goal in terms of racial justice.

But sex won't even be abolished and therefore differentiation related to it will never be abolished. There will remain significant elements of difference between the male and female experience of life, and women may remain vulnerable to exploitation due to the nature of those differences. Men and women both may want to meet with others of their sex in order to relax and share experiences.

I think it's important to assert these ideas rather than just say that we should be allowed safe spaces from dangerous men.

Layla Moran should work with the police as a predictor of men who are liable to do crimes. She can spot those with good souls, so she can make us aware of the ones that don't have good souls.

Like a kind of medicine woman with supernatural powers.

Oxford, privilege and not wanting to understand women's rights has a long history.

Gertrude Bell was the youngest woman to graduate with a first-class honours degree in modern history from Oxford University. ... Yet, despite her achievements as a woman in a male dominated society, Bell openly campaigned against votes for women, becoming the Honorary Secretary of the Anti-Suffrage League (1909)

(Source: Newcastle University.)

Bell is infamous as a social snob. Extraordinary woman, but a product of class, terrified of social change and the knock-on effects for her privileged family and circle.

@Cailleach1

Layla Moran should work with the police as a predictor of men who are liable to do crimes. She can spot those with good souls, so she can make us aware of the ones that don't have good souls.

Like a kind of medicine woman with supernatural powers.

She could be the Lib Dem front bench spokesperson for Pre-Crime.

DeRigueurMortis and SmokedDuck! You two are on fire this evening!

You make your case eloquently DeRigueurMortis and I am convinced that all sounds absolutely plausible. Equally I agree with SmokedDuck we cannot ever move beyond sex differences and single sex spaces are about more than relief from oppression.

The woman in the spa said the unsayable. He has a penis. He's in the wrong place.

This is why Maya's ruling was so good. We can say, that is a man.

Transgender is all about gender identity. By their own admission. That spa was segregated by sex. We need to use the words. Sex. He is the male sex.

So many excellent points on this thread.
DeRigueurMortis
And I agree regarding women's spaces, it's not all about trauma or predatory males, often it's just about a comfortable female space away from the influence of males.
I was in a meeting group of people who were meeting for the first time this week, several females and one male. The male seemed like a decent chap, but he spoke more than any of the other women, and he was no more senior than anyone else. When he left, a lot more of the women started speaking. It struck me how much having a male in the room, even a fully clothed, perfectly pleasant male, can completely change the dynamics of a group.

SmokedDuck
But sex won't even be abolished and therefore differentiation related to it will never be abolished. There will remain significant elements of difference between the male and female experience of life, and women may remain vulnerable to exploitation due to the nature of those differences. Men and women both may want to meet with others of their sex in order to relax and share experiences.
It's striking that, unlike current dialogues around race which are against being 'colour blind' and in fact see such the concept as racist, the opposite is the case when it comes to male and female - the wokerati would like to see the concept of sex completely destroyed. Your 'lived experience' is all important when it comes to speaking as a person of x, y, z ethnicity, but when it comes to women asserting that their experiences are unique, we are told we are bigots. There is quite simply no underlying logic that can reconcile these two opposing viewpoints, and yet they are trotted out by the same individuals. Spoiler: it's due to misogynistic blindspot, women are simply not seen as being important enough to have their own identity. This is a continuation of philosophical strains - which I'm sure someone else is more well-versed in than me - which asked if women were really human and if we had souls. Do women really exist without a man to tell them what a woman is?

"Stay at home if you don’t like it? Why can’t that work for the men?"

Because men are real people and women are service animals. Wherever there's a conflict between the interests of men and women, society should first decide: what do men want? And then if there's anything left over, and men are willing to give up the leftovers, then they might toss some of it to the women. If women complain about the injustice of this, chastise them for being so rude as to mention it, and remind them to "be kind."

/bitter

My take on liberal feminism is that ultimately it comes from a place of privilege and a false sense of empowerment.
It's no surprise to me that most of the women who espouse those views are well educated and come from socio-economically comfortable backgrounds.

As a woman from what can only be described as a rough background, but who has also been to a couple of decent universities and thus mixed with a lot of women like Laurie Penny, I always found it striking how different middle class culture is to working class culture. Really, we may as well be from different countries. In my experience, virtue signalling has always been a distinctly middle class past-time, and the 'difficult' questions are always brushed off in much the same way as Penny did, because these individuals are too sheltered and sensitive to even consider harsh realities, and in any case, they have no skin in the game so why should their fantasy of self-aggrandising self-righteousness be interrupted by the truth? I truly believe that a lot of these young, middle class women have absolutely no idea how the lives of women less fortunate than themselves are so different to their own. They've never dealt with their teenage friends being pimped out as teenagers, having to walk everywhere and thus dealing with street harassment on the daily, living in areas where there are a lot of immigrant men who will grope you at the swimming baths or on the street, or sexually assault you on your way home from work, having to live in a homeless shelter and walk past all the drunk and drug addict men to get to the women's floor, having a landlord willing to take sex in exchange for money, having bricks put through your windows by the male teenage neighbour who is harassing you, having a violent father and then attracting predatory, abusive men because they can sniff out your vulnerability (these are all things that have happened to me, btw, not fantasies). They just have absolutely no idea what a lot of women go through, they are incredibly privileged, and so they tell us we need to put up and shut up, stop being mean to the most vulnerable people in society: men, who just want to get their dicks out in front of women and children in female only spaces. Women like me are just collateral in their neo-religious crusade. Fuck her, I can guarantee she hates herself almost as much as she hates women like me.

And you know what? When I was younger I tried to fit in with this liberal feminism, and it's easy to explain why: because it uses women's sexual allure and frames it as a strength. As a young woman, you have very little power, apart from your ability to attract men. The ability to get male attention can indeed feel empowering when you have so little else, but the truth is: it's not any real power at all, men don't respect you in the slightest for being sexy, and they won't grant you any kind of powers or promotions, they'll just fuck you and leave for the next one that comes along. Douglas Murray tries to make the argument that women use their sexual allure to get favours, promotions etc, but I've never seen this happen, far more so it is the case of men dangling the promise of such things to get what they want and then not following through.

@aloris

"Stay at home if you don’t like it? Why can’t that work for the men?"

Because men are real people and women are service animals. Wherever there's a conflict between the interests of men and women, society should first decide: what do men want? And then if there's anything left over, and men are willing to give up the leftovers, then they might toss some of it to the women. If women complain about the injustice of this, chastise them for being so rude as to mention it, and remind them to "be kind."

/bitter

You've just reminded me of something I think I read in a book on SOE & British agents going into France. They had to know the local conditions, e.g. that cigarettes were in short supply & so only men were allowed to smoke, women weren't.

It's not true that being middle class or a liberal feminist is any protection at all from violence, domestic violence, rape, predatory men etc. It still happens, only granted maybe sometimes less visible or the consequences can be dealt with more easily.

Not to minimise struggles of those who've experienced all that intersecting with other pressures; but women-hatred is pervasive throughout society.

Douglas Murray tries to make the argument that women use their sexual allure to get favours, promotions etc, but I've never seen this happen

It's vanishingly rare relative to the number of times that people confidently assert that it's the only reason a woman achieves anything.

And I gather the situation is appalling in a number of countries where employers are explicit that they expect sexual services as an unwritten part of a woman's job.

I am less inclined to be kind unless kindness is shown to me.

If society insists that I must be accepting, you can bet I will not comply unless I am accepted.

It might have been different for me once upon a time.

After being on the wrong end of a male bully who made me want to never wake again, this worm turned.

And oh yes - I was told to be kind to him.

I will never again keep the peace and be treated as a lesser person.

Not. Any. More.

ArabellaScott That's true and I wouldn't want to suggest otherwise, but I doubt Laurie Penny has experienced the things I have that I've listed above, nor is she seemingly aware of how poverty impacts vulnerability to VAWG. Ironically - seeing as I'm the one who would be told I'm a 'white feminist' for my view that men aren't women - what I'm asking for here is an intersectional analysis to consider how poverty leads women to being more vulnerable to predators in a number of different ways. Laurie Penny wouldn't have a clue about the some of the things I've experienced, and because impoverished women are not interesting enough to her - except tokenistic ally and at a distance, perhaps - our concerns, if she is ever made aware of them, are simply brushed aside because they don't fit in with her worldview.

what I'm asking for here is an intersectional analysis to consider how poverty leads women to being more vulnerable to predators in a number of different ways

Lucy McDonagh from Deptford People's Project has been consistently strong on this point.

“How could I share this with the women in our community project?!” she asked. Mcdonagh explained that many of the women and girls she worked with were being pimped out daily. “One young girl — only 17 — had recently had her face smashed in by a punter and had 16 metal pins put in to hold her face together.” Mcdonagh got angry.

“We are far from a prudish group of women. Many of us have experienced firsthand the very real impact of the porn/the sex industry on working class women and girls. How did they not know how utterly pathetic it was to be promoting this idea to young women? Let alone place it next to a transcript of local people discussing homelessness!”

Though purporting to support the oppressed, Mcdonagh felt these students had no concept of or empathy toward the real experiences of actual marginalized women. “In reality [they] were supporting themselves via a complex new ideology and language that only they speak,” she said.

www.feministcurrent.com/2018/03/23/leftist-women-uk-refuse-accept-labours-attempts-silence-critiques-gender-identity/

A woman says she is offended by a male waking around with his penis out in a woman’s space

And is told by a man that she is the one being offensive

You couldn’t make this up it’s so fucking ridiculous

Thanks for sharing, EmbarrassingAdmissions great article.

“That’s what ‘self-identify’ means: anyone can say they are anyone… So, rich, privileged people can claim to be marginalized.”

This is the crux of what's going on, really. It's exoticism of a socially acceptable kind, now that other kinds have gone out of fashion. There seems to be a certain complex, perhaps there's a name for it that I don't know, that exists within the middle classes, whereby people feel like they have to slum it in order to be truly alive - let's call it 'common people syndrome' after the great Pulp song. I remember reading 'On the Road' when I was younger, which typifies this syndrome - middle class privileged young men slumming it on some sort of quest for enlightenment, meanwhile appropriating the experiences of poor people, drug addicts, immigrants who they see as 'noble savages'. Of course, they all can eventually return home to their parents. I remember when I was at university, it was always the middle class kids who would want to be squatters, hang out with crack addicts, go completely broke by spending all on their loans on ridiculous things and plead poverty, which they really laid on thick. Similarly today, poor little rich girls want to be prostitutes. I can only presume having a comfortable life means that they feel like they haven't experienced enough, or that they don't deserve their privileges and so they feel a need to hit the depths in order to wake themselves up from feeling numb.
Cultural appropriation isn't acceptable any more, however, but there is still the possibility of claiming you are the opposite sex, or even just 'Queer' - a seemingly meaningless label, which is risk-free and yet allows you to opt in to oppressed status whilst retains absolutely every single one of your privileges - what a bargain!

@ArabellaScott

It's not true that being middle class or a liberal feminist is any protection at all from violence, domestic violence, rape, predatory men etc. It still happens, only granted maybe sometimes less visible or the consequences can be dealt with more easily.

Not to minimise struggles of those who've experienced all that intersecting with other pressures; but women-hatred is pervasive throughout society.

I was going to post along these lines the other day.

I think the ideas about identity Olympics/ white feminism etc have seeped into general use to some extent. And the bastardisation of intersectionality.

Most people in the UK classify themselves as middle class now I think? Or a massive proportion. And the term covers a massive range of income, jobs, lifestyles, attitudes etc.

Apart from being very broad brush.

It doesn't protect you, as Arabella said.

Child sexual abuse, being subjected to all sorts of sex related language, touching, assault and rape by boys at school. Street harrassment. Weirdos on public transport, flashers in the park. Sexual coercion by boyfriends. Assault and rape by boyfriends. All sorts of stuff.

The idea that any women really let alone all the massive number of those who are middle class have no experience of dodgy male behaviour is strange to me.

Intersectionality correctly says that female is one axis of oppression, if you have additional axes that apply then the shit gets multiplied.

It doesn't say if you only have this one you are somehow immune.

I have no idea why women like LP are saying shit like this.

Because they have gone so far they can't back down now?
Because getting approval from woke types is more important than looking out for women and girls?
Or maybe just because they're short sighted, can't bear to be disagreed with, or just don't actually like women very much.

This thread is about this spa though isn't it?

LP could not see a problem with the dick and balls in the naked women's area.

Not see a problem with little girls being there, presumably they need to learn that being naked with naked random men in normal.

Anyone with half s brain and the tiniest amount of empathy can see immediately that's all kinds of wrong.

It's not because she's middle class.

It's because she's being a pillock, and a dangerous one at that.