Interesting reading - what do you make of this?

[NiceGerbil]

Hello

The Pullman thread sent me down a Twitter rabbit hole that stalled when I got to this

mobile.twitter.com/alisonphipps/status/1411387723034902531

Some extracts from their book are there- have a read (not sure how to put the text here!).

I found the extracts totally fascinating. If I knew nothing about this topic, I'd think well. IMO clear, succinct. Persuasive in the confidence of the points/ arguments.

Thing is it's... I suppose maybe true for an American USA context for the religious right who I would imagine fit what's written more or less.

Of course it's referring to all women who think sex is a thing that matters.

Would love to discuss if anyone wants?

Yes do start another thread please I'll join it.

You could just repost your last post and it can go from there.

Sorry Gerbil, it boils my blood that these regular posters will do anything to discredit the concerns of women.

To deny biology and criminology to such a degree that we are all supposed to just believe everything will be ok. As though we are stupid and haven't suffered lives filled with abuse by men of all kinds.

I just cannot stop myself from responding to this women hate.

I had thought it was universal knowledge that men are the perpetrators of 98% sexual violence.

Just stating that you feel like a woman, has not been shown to reduce the rate of sexual violence to others perpetrated by the transwoman group. Transwoman offend at the same level as men.

Lesbians have been a particular target of violent men throughout history. They see it as a personal rejection. Of course there will be a proportion of transwoman who will exploit this.

Sometimes the truth hurts.

I am sure now there are a very small number of accurate accounts of trans lesbians

There is literally no such thing as a male lesbian.

A lot of evidence here (though much has been deleted as Twitter is not a friend to women) of the coercive atmosphere for many young lesbians being pressured to consider males as a sexual partner.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3294339-cotton-ceiling-evidence-thread

that can sometimes take aggressive forms because of the extent of the hurt and anger felt at the demonisation received.

Ah, you're talking about death and rape threats sent to women for disagreeing. Nice DARVO.

The whole motivation of things like this though is to demonise GC feminists because actual arguments defending trans ideology in a rational way are non-existent.

So to firmly position GC feminists as beyond the pale and evil, so that their views must not be listened to, they are drawn as racist (because feminism is all about being white and excluding black women - which it's not and never has been) and far-right (because some far-right conservatives and religious ideologies also think sex exists). These are both sophistry - well not even sophistry, just bollocks.

The obvious question is why. Why TF would lefty feminists, often lesbians, and including a large number of black, asian and other women from around the world, who are concerned about the erasing of women's sex-based rights, be racist and right-wing? They have a long history of being among the least racist and right wing people in their societies.

But it's designed to trigger woke reactionary horror because the woke view is that anyone right-wing or racist doesn't deserve to be listened to at all, so if we can make some kind of twisted non-argument that aligns GC with these politics, we have an excuse to ignore them.

Shame on Bill Thompson for his response. He has a brain.

TBH I'm still trying to work out the link between black men and male "lesbians". Is this the same link as black women and male women that many trans activists try to make?

I'm sure there's a word for that

@TheWeeDonkey

TBH I'm still trying to work out the link between black men and male "lesbians". Is this the same link as black women and male women that many trans activists try to make?

I'm sure there's a word for that

Because there is no link whatsoever lol

Black men don't offend at any higher rate than any other man. Men offend at a consistent rate, including transwomen.

Race and sex are different protected characteristics. Comparing black men to transwomen just doesn't work to any extent when talking about women's rights. Both are men and pose equal risk to women as a sex class.

It is an argument designed to confuse. They assume GC are saying all transwomen are abusers. We aren't. We are saying that men of ANY type pose a risk to natal women of ANY type, to the same extent.

So transwomen shouldn't be treated as some special group who pose less risk to women than every other group of biological males on the planet. They commit crimes at the same rate as all men.

Plus there is no such thing as a transwoman being a lesbian.

Lesbian is a sexual orientation, not a gender preference.

Sex and gender are entirely separate and in the case of lesbians and transwomen, opposite.

Totally agree Megasausagehead. I just find this co-opting of other people's lives so irritating.

@TheWeeDonkey

Totally agree Megasausagehead. I just find this co-opting of other people's lives so irritating.

It's what people do to confused an unwinnable argument. It's pathetic and frankly insulting to black people and women. I hate it.

There's enough evidence for women to object to men in their spaces without race being brought in to it. I mean you get men and women of every race.

Haha, I'm on form today! Really?

God give me the confidence of a mediocre man

Trans women may or may not be vulnerable to attack by other men because of homophobia. But they are the same size and power as other men. So they are on an equal footing. Trans women can also opt out of oppression by changing their clothes. Women cannot grow six inches taller and gain the testosterone fueled punch power that males have just because a tiny minority identify with the idea of maleness.

I'm very pleased to see that every single point I made in my deleted post has been made by other posters since.

It seems that even 'being on form' cannot silence the facts.

@NiceGerbil

This effort to divert this into the frankly insulting analogy that anyone who doesn't want women in prison with males convicted of rape is a massive and obvious attempt to wind up and divert.

This thread is not about that anyway.

It's about words, how ideas propagate and what may be coming next/ the actual strategised end point.

Let's keep on track eh and not rise to obvious bollocks like that.

I thought you had posted earlier on in this thread that it is important to know how others are thinking, so that those thoughts can be challenged?

I read that and took you at your word, and have presented how others are thinking, and have identified some of the particular issues, and the problems people perceive with how some strands of feminism are operating.

I'm not presenting anything unusual here - there is widespread, mainstream distaste for how some strands of GC feminism is functioning - and this is a problem for GC feminism isn't it?

There is a real image problem limiting your efficacy in public perception.

Well people seem to make up any old shit to criticise GCs. So meh, some opinions are meaningless tosh.

And I don't really get how anyone can say I'm diverting from the thread...I have posted explicitly about the first link to that Allison Phipps tweet and have summarised and applied what seems to be her argument, no?

I don't see how anyone could argue that is not what I have done.

If everyone else wants to divert the thread away from the first link, that's fine, no odds to me!

One part of the argument that I'd like to address is this. It is fashionable to be 100 percent critical of historical movements such as the drive towards temperance without understanding the historical significance of these movements. Temperance was not merely about "working class drunkenness," but about the fact that alcohol was extraordinarily cheap, especially in the U.S., in the late 18th and early 19th century due to an excess of corn crops that could easily be turned into whisky and other easily fermentable crops. It was so cheap that the average American adult (and obviously this would mostly be consumed by men) was drinking 7 gallons of ethanol a year by 1830. This caused a staggeringly high rate of alcoholism. This became an important cause both to liberals and conservatives of the day because of the effect it had on the world's largest powerless political class , i.e.women. The movement became popular in the U.K., which was similarly afflicted with high rates of alcoholism. www.pastemagazine.com/drink/alcohol-history/the-1800s-when-americans-drank-whiskey-like-it-was/#the-1800s-smashing-the-booze-ceiling

The temperance movement had a variety of approaches. Some urged moderation, some urged abstinence, some were about self-control, some were about social control. It is easy to criticize some of the movement's later excesses, and to think of anyone who opposes alcohol consumption in any way as a "scold." But imagine the terrifying prospect of living lifeyes, particularly as a working class motherwith no legal rights tied to a violent alcoholic, and the justness of trying to do SOMETHING to lessen the impact of constant drinking becomes clear.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperance_movement

BTW, I believe I first heard about this issue when my husband was reading a book by Michael Pollan about the rise of industrial corn and the many social problems it caused. It really made me think.

I'm not presenting anything unusual here - there is widespread, mainstream distaste for how some strands of GC feminism is functioning - and this is a problem for GC feminism isn't it?

Except that if you speak to the average person in the street about these issues, they are firmly in the “GC” camp - most especially the majority of women over 30-35, working class people, and so on. What you call “widespread, mainstream distaste” just doesn’t exist outside Twitter, middle-class under-25s, the Londony media classes and people who are fully immersed in the “genderqueer” stuff. You just pop round and ask the average 60 year old man or women what they think about this, and it isn’t the GC angle that they find distasteful.

If you honestly believe that there is widespread, mainstream distaste for the idea that people can’t change sex and women are oppressing trans people, you really are experiencing an echo-chamber. The vast majority of people in this country think the excesses of gender ideology are daft and incomprehensible, and stuff like the Alison Phipps extracts above ridiculous nonsense. That’s what’s actually mainstream. You can pretend that GC feminists are strange outliers if you like, but it doesn’t change the fact that most adult people agree, and that gender ideology is not in fact “mainstream” at all.

NehandaMusic video on Twitter
Summary: how "female empowerment" led me to want to believe TWAW

"Sometimes I forget just a year and a half ago I was saying "transwomen are women"...it's interesting to revisit and work out why the hell I was so eager to accept men as women..."

twitter.com/NehandaMusic/status/1417570665331404803

Nehanda's video, and the comments in replies, gave me a fascinating insight into the "generation gap(s)" between women based on the brand of feminism / messages around "female empowerment" they were exposed to growing up.

There is a smattering of the usual "be nice" messaging but the big surprise to me was that the main issue was female physical strength vs physical vulnerability in relation to males.

Something very obvious got lost for that generation although the younger ones seem to be re-connecting with reality.

One of my favourite songs is still "It's Obvious" by the Au Pairs (1980):

Chorus
You’re equal
But different
You’re equal
But different
You’re equal but different
You’re equal but different
You’re equal but different
You’re equal but different
You’re equal but different
You’re equal but different
You’re equal but different
You’re equal but different
It’s obvious (it's obvious)
It’s obvious (it's obvious)
It’s obvious (it's obvious)
So obvious (so obvious)
It’s obvious (it's obvious)
So obvious (so obvious)
It’s obvious (it's obvious)
So obvious (so obvious)

ps. I thought of posting my previous comment as a new thread but Mumsnet logged me out every time I tried to do that.

@irresistibleoverwhelm

I'm not presenting anything unusual here - there is widespread, mainstream distaste for how some strands of GC feminism is functioning - and this is a problem for GC feminism isn't it?

Except that if you speak to the average person in the street about these issues, they are firmly in the “GC” camp - most especially the majority of women over 30-35, working class people, and so on. What you call “widespread, mainstream distaste” just doesn’t exist outside Twitter, middle-class under-25s, the Londony media classes and people who are fully immersed in the “genderqueer” stuff. You just pop round and ask the average 60 year old man or women what they think about this, and it isn’t the GC angle that they find distasteful.

If you honestly believe that there is widespread, mainstream distaste for the idea that people can’t change sex and women are oppressing trans people, you really are experiencing an echo-chamber. The vast majority of people in this country think the excesses of gender ideology are daft and incomprehensible, and stuff like the Alison Phipps extracts above ridiculous nonsense. That’s what’s actually mainstream. You can pretend that GC feminists are strange outliers if you like, but it doesn’t change the fact that most adult people agree, and that gender ideology is not in fact “mainstream” at all.

I think the public acknowledge the complexity of the issues and respond differently according to specific questions that are asked on the subject. As you can see from this yougov survey from July last year (I'll put in next post), a majority of the public agree with the statements 'transwomen are women' and 'transmen are men', by a slim majority of around 4-5%, so I don't see how you can claim this isn't mainstream. But, for eg. they also tend to disagree that transgender women should be allowed to participate in women's sport.

There are certainly clear trends to attitudes according to age...I wonder what that means for the future?

I don't think there is widespread distaste for measured, responsible argumentation that acknowledges the nuances, but there is distaste for perceptions of hostility and animosity towards trans people.