Is it only white middle class women who are GC?

[Ziegfeld]

I recently summoned courage to have “the talk” with an old friend who is gay. I wanted to know his current thoughts on sex based rights, and I thought (as we are old friends) even if we disagreed we could have a civilised conversation about it.

Unfortunately I think he called me transphobic about five minutes into the conversation when I asked, so if we say let’s have self ID, how do we tell whether someone genuinely believes themselves to be a TW or is a man simply announcing he is a woman solely for the purposes of accessing women-only spaces for bad intent. ( His answers to that were “well we need safeguarding” and “there are hardly any TWs, this isn’t a real concern” and “well ideally we should all just have gender neutral changing rooms”)

Some more things were said by both of us which I won’t go into here because I am sure we’ve all heard them before.

But then he said that it’s only white middle class women (like me) who have a problem with self ID and allowing TW access to women’s spaces. He said that working class women and women of colour have no problem at all with it.

I don’t think this is true - look at Allison Bailey for example. But I would be interested to know what other MNers think. Is this a race and class issue? Or is it that white middle class women tend to have more platforms to speak out than other women?

I’m not MC but I am GC.

But who cares? MC women are allowed opinions despite what the Woke Bros would have you believe.

I'm white and of middle-class origin, and to a certain extent I've been socialised into making my views public and expecting them to be listened to, within a racist and classist social structure which pays more attention to my thoughts and feelings than those of certain others (not including many subgroups of males, of course). So to those who don't look too closely, I'm probably more obvious than the many not-white and/or not-middle-class women who may have a similar take on this situation to me, undoubtedly outnumber me, and will have many insights, experiences and analyses that I don't have.

I mean, I'm doing it right now — commenting, with the expectation that my take on something has enough value to be worth publishing. It's part of how I've been conditioned. And part of how he's been conditioned is to notice what I say — whether that's because of where I say it, how I say it, how I identify myself when I'm saying it, or other factors — and not notice what women who aren't white or aren't middle-class are saying.

In my relatively small sample of working class/ethnic minority friends, the idea that TW are literally women and TM are literally men is so out there that the concept of it being legal is borderline conspiracy theory. I had a hard time showing them that this was actually happening - "if you have a dick, you're a man", "no penis in prisons, that's obvious", and "if this is happening, why haven't I heard about it?" were the main responses.

I've found the opposite among young people too. It's the (very few) white mc kids I teach who are believers in gender ideology. The working class and bame kids are not at all swayed by the twaw arguments.

I do think a lot of the vocal GC feminists (by no means all) are white and middle class, because often we are the ones with the time and resources to put into it. The fact that a woman is white and middle class should never be used as a argument to shut her up.

It's also likely his conditioning works to such an extent that when he does hear what a woman is saying, he assumes she's white and middle-class until it's proven otherwise, because not-middle-class and/or not-white women are generally invisible and inaudible to him. Those few who he hears and who are not white and/or not middle class can then be characterised as outliers who might as well be white and middle class, otherwise why would he have heard them.

The only people I know who believe TWAW are MC socialist workers who also told me it isn't enough to respect another person's belief I have to believe it and I just need educating

My best mate is the son of a striking miner from a small village in County Durham. He's white, gay and very GC.

Meanwhile I have not seen a single tik tok video wanging on about pronouns from anyone who isn't white.

Your mate sounds like a right tit, I am sorry.

Hahahah....not true. I can imagine what Julie Bindel would say about that.

Also tell him to spend 5 minutes on Lipstick Alley and "educate himself" as the saying goes.

Honestly OP, if you want clear evidence that your gay friend is gaslighting you have a look here:

www.google.com/search?q=Lipstick+Alley+trans+site:www.lipstickalley.com

I'm not middle class at all and I'm GC, what an absurd thing for your friend to say.

As an example, there's this thread:

www.lipstickalley.com/threads/why-are-women-not-sympathetic-to-real-trans-womens-plight.4537767/

It's curious that you didn't ask "why are men not sympathetic to trans women's plights?" Men are the ones killing trans women without exception, and I would bet that HIV is being transmitted from men too. Very very curious that sympathy is demanded from women but you have no demands for men. Why is that?

@GCAcademic

I'm not white. How dare this man decide what I am happy with? He can get to fuck.

You took the words right out of my mouth 👍

The odd thing is that the only people I ever hear throwing around the phrase “white middle class women” are white middle class men… vainly, desperately trying to make themselves sound all edgy and interesting, while doing taking the position of white male privilege, fetishising the “exotic” non-white women and some idealistic vision of the noble working class. Much like when they insult us with “middle aged women”, because what better way to demonstrate your open-mindedness than to deride women no-longer of reproductive age

I've heard similar. "No they don't. They don't mean actual men with penises can be in women's prisons. No one has actually lost their job over this, that's not possible. What do you mean death threats and rape threats, TW wouldn't do that."

The framing of trans people and in particular TW as brave, uniquely oppressed, tragically unfortunate souls who've had the shocking misfortune to be born in the wrong body and just want to be accepted as lovely girly women and not beaten up etc. has been very successful in making a lot of people think they are all harmless victims, all have full surgery and anyone with an issue is a bigot and making stuff up.

But when they realise that the category TW also includes fully intact males who threaten JKR with rape/want to wave their willies at 9yo girls/convicted rapists who ID as women at oddly high rates, and all the other info, they are generally shocked and not on board with that at all.

@ClumpingBambooIsALie

It's also likely his conditioning works to such an extent that when he does hear what a woman is saying, he assumes she's white and middle-class until it's proven otherwise, because not-middle-class and/or not-white women are generally invisible and inaudible to him. Those few who he hears and who are not white and/or not middle class can then be characterised as outliers who might as well be white and middle class, otherwise why would he have heard them.

This

He's clearly not listening to us

Its none of his business though, is it. No uterus no opinion. If you had asked a gay female friend she would have probably had a whole different take on the issue.
Anyway, its surprising how GC many teenage girls are (particularly those whose mums frequent this board 😉).

@Theeyeballsinthesky

OP I would just love your friend to trundle around say for example Boston (the lincolnshire one) Middlesbrough, Chatham (I was born there) & Wolverhampton with photos of alex Drummond, Laurel Hubbard,& Danielle muscato Abd ask them if they’re a) male or female & b) which changing rooms they should be in

He’s living in an utter bubble which he can afford to do because as always none of this affects him

Ah yes but Guardian has told him these are the “wrong kind” of working class people. Much like when I worked for a “social justice” charity and was surrounded my privately-educated tossers who were incredibly concerned about Tibet (they spent their gap yah there), but openly laughed at the actual working class people who lived in the area for what they wore, how the dresses, spoke etc.

Here's a working class woman's account of what it's like to encounter at the grass roots level the gender identity ideology as pushed by privileged university students:

web.archive.org/web/20180315031511/https:/twitter.com/LucyLoveslife1/status/973852316787933184

Ah yes but Guardian has told him these are the “wrong kind” of working class people. Much like when I worked for a “social justice” charity and was surrounded my privately-educated tossers who were incredibly concerned about Tibet (they spent their gap yah there), but openly laughed at the actual working class people who lived in the area for what they wore, how the dresses, spoke etc.

This always amazes me. How can they not see the hypocrisy? I had a friend (no longer!) who read the New Statesman and was always trying to make virtuous lefty political points based on what she read in there, but in the same breath would sneer at the chavs across the street and taught her DC to call them chavs as well! I'm not saying she had to like them or that they were automatically the salt of the earth, but you'd think she'd REALISE that slagging off "chavs" was kind of antithetical to the wokery she was always spouting?

I’m black and GC. Your friend is an ignorant dick of the highest order. The TWAW brigade never fail to use black or asian women to further their agenda. Nothing new here!

Black woman strolling in to say your (ex?) friend is a tit, OP.

I think you can only speak to the audience you are familiar with.

I am GC, but working class. Dd is nearly 13, obviously working class, as are all her friends who she goes to local comp with. They are all firmly in the TWAW camp and are swallowing gender ideology like it's ice cream.

My daughter has also told me she is a lesbian - fine by me, but I worry about this as she told me the other day that a non binary person with a penis, can be a lesbian.

OP, your friend may as well have just said that people who don't agree twaw are all 'Karen's' 🙄

( His answers to that were “well we need safeguarding” and “there are hardly any TWs, this isn’t a real concern” and “well ideally we should all just have gender neutral changing rooms”)

Your friend does not understand Safeguarding.
If it were only white middle class women whistleblowing serious Safeguarding/ Child Protection concerns (it's not) that is no basis to dismiss them.

But then he said that it’s only white middle class women (like me) who have a problem with self ID and allowing TW access to women’s spaces. He said that working class women and women of colour have no problem at all with it.

White middle class women have more of a platform in general to speak about things, this included so it's not surprising they are more visible. I am black and don't always have the energy, not because I don't think it's important, but because there are still so many other things we need to fight for to be equal to white women which are of higher importance to me, it's not an even playing field in terms of having the time to invest in it.

Exactly Noterook, except way more succinct than how I put it 😂