Freddie thread zapped

[GrumpyMiddleAgedWoman]

The usual:
'Message from MNHQ: There are a few posts here breaking talk guidelines and reading through we don't think the thread is in the spirit of the site. We felt best to remove it.'

Someone (Freddie) goes on the radio and claims that mangling the English language doesn't harm women, just a few days after we've been called 'bodies with vaginas' by the Lancet. We've been dehumanised and reduced to a single hole, but no harm done, eh?

Women are angry, but we may not discuss our anger.

Bloody fabulous.

There was a time when I enjoyed listening to ED on Today.

Over the past couple of years I’ve come to the conclusion that he’s so very bad on Half the Population’s issues that there can be no justification for him having an hour to himself on a prime time bbc slot every evening. Not that he’d care for my opinion…

stated, if I recall correctly (I was driving so may have misheard), that taking testosterone doesn’t cause fertility issues in women

If that is the case that suggests there is a serious issue around the prescribing of such treatment. I'd say it's the doctors responsibility to make sure a patient understands all the risks which it sounds as if this individual doesn't.

OK, trying to keep things general - I didn't hear the PM programme, so must catch up with that. No idea what the focus of the interview was. However, as a general rule, I find it very odd indeed that the following sequence of events is no problem at all to anyone involved with administering the GRA. It's perhaps not surprising that nobody involved in drafting the GRA anticipated issues like this, but nothing has been done to refine the Act since. What I outline below is very clearly not what Parliament expected would happen, from what I've seen of the Hansard records from 2004.

An individual applies for a Gender Recognition Certificate. This is from the guidance issued with the form.

The Standard Application track for a Gender Recognition Certificate requires applicants to demonstrate that:
•They have, or have had, gender dysphoria
•They have lived fully for the last two years in their acquired gender and continue to do so;
•They intend to live permanently in their acquired gender until death.

Individual confirms they meet all the above criteria and provides supporting evidence, including two medical reports, one from an approved mental health practitioner. (Individual is not required to have had any specific medical treatment, and certainly not required to have had sexual reassignment surgery.)

Individual gets GRC.

Individual later goes to fertility clinic to get help to use the anatomy individual was born with to become a parent in the only way possible for the individual's sex.

Individual is then recorded on birth certificate as male or female parent - i.e. the role corresponding to their birth sex. However, in every other respect the individual is treated as being the opposite to their birth sex.

I would find this odd in a male individual who has signed a declaration that they hate being a male and identify as a woman. I find it incomprehensible in a female individual who wants to be identified as a man. There is nothing on earth more female than becoming pregnant and giving birth.

@Thelnebriati

Before this thread is zapped for being a TAAT, enjoy!

Birdy was fucking awesome on that thread.

Personally, because I know threads are reported and not pre moderated, the fact that it was reported and deleted speaks volumes.

Way, way more than one single solitary thread talking about one single solitary person would have done.

Yes, yes, yes. We know these threads are watched. What these people choose to make a massive fuss about is always very informative.

We have to negotiate prohibited words, phrases, and topics here on MN.

And they still can't shut women up.

We're starting to organise now. Little tiny green shoots are springing up all over the British Isles, and more and more globally each day. We're waking up. We can all feel the momentum building. Come the revolution!

@Thelnebriati

Before this thread is zapped for being a TAAT, enjoy!

Wow. It’s amazing to me how cognitive dissonance like this continues to exist.

Dehumanising language about body parts isn’t liked by trans men either. Someone tell the Lancet, quick!

It’s at times like these, as a Marxist, that I find the phrase “class traitor” rolling through my mind. And some thoughts about how deep the internalised misogyny must be if someone has to assert their “masculinity” through their overt treatment of women (though no surprise there really - what could be more performatively masculine that showing how keen you are to oppress women…?)

It’s an interesting debate.

As women if we are being eroded. Now we can’t discuss it. So what do we do?

I’m not staying silent. I’ve been threatened by MNHQ to pipe down or I’ll be banned and I hardly ever post on this board.

Interestingly I've just read the form. On the application form, I couldn't find this bit: 'intend to live permanently in their acquired gender until death' anywhere on the form. So you have to provide evidence from other people vur you don't have to sign anything saying you will live in your acquired gender until your death.

Whatever that means.

12
Parenthood
The fact that a person’s gender has become the acquired gender under this Act does not affect the status of the person as the father or mother of a child.

www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2004/7/section/12

I hope this is ok to share, as a publicly available you tube video along with other relevant video from the same channel, which document the legal challenge and reasons for this from the claimant.

Is the phrase Women Won’t Wheest about this allowed?

Thelnebriati

That is a real interesting take in that screen shot. I got deleted for using those very words in a sentence about Freddie and pondering how they would feel about being described in such a fashion.

But there you are showing the dissonance that some of these activists cannot handle.

Yes, it’s okay to be “inclusive” by calling women body part havers, but when transmen are directly called this too, they don’t like it; and neither do trans women like being called “bodies with penises/prostates”, presumably because it refers to their actual biological bodies and not their “gender”.

So it’s more than clear that the “inclusive” language is just a way of dehumanising women under the pretence that it’s “inclusive”.

Men are men; transmen are men; trans women are women, non-binary people are non binary, and women are just bodies with fuckholes.

Did Freddy talk about how excluded Freddy is when the Lancet publishes articles on prostate problems but use the word “men” because “not all men have a prostate”?

Being pregnant doesn’t contravene living as a man, because men can have wombs too. Giving birth is a biological act with no relation to being a woman.

Oh you silly bodies!

I suppose you could argue that pregnancy is sex based rather gender based? So as long as you adhere to gender (sex stereotypes) during pregnancy / birth you are not in contravention of your GRC?

It honestly didn't occur to me when I posted this thread that it was a TAAT.

I was just fuming that after the 'bodies with vaginas' bullshit women were being silenced when trying to discuss, amongst other things, language, and what it means and what it does.

So it’s more than clear that the “inclusive” language is just a way of dehumanising women under the pretence that it’s “inclusive

And honestly anyone in real life or in the media or politics or posters on here who says that this is inclusive when it is not happening to men…is either a fucking liar or so stupid I can’t believe that they can breathe and walk at the same time

And in the interests of fairness they can pick, either stupid or a liar cos its one or the other

Freddie was on Radio 4 last night just before the weather at 6./ Thankfully I was tuned to long wave and the ships intervened before I had to throw something at the radio.

@Clymene

Interestingly I've just read the form. On the application form, I couldn't find this bit: 'intend to live permanently in their acquired gender until death' anywhere on the form. So you have to provide evidence from other people vur you don't have to sign anything saying you will live in your acquired gender until your death.

Whatever that means.

As well as the form, applicants must sign and submit a statutory declaration.

That stat dec contains the bit about living in the acquired gender until death.

"I have lived as a male/female throughout the period of years before the date of this statutory declaration and I intend to live in that gender until death."

assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/852944/t467-eng.pdf

It does seem strange that anyone would provide this, stating they're going to live as a male until death, then later deliberately become pregnant.

It does seem strange that anyone would provide this, stating they're going to live as a male until death, then later deliberately become pregnant.

Doesn't it come from the same doublethink place as female penises?

Thank you Furious! I couldn't find a link to that doc on the gov website.

I've said this before but there is quite a lot of planning that goes into fertility treatment. You don't just rock up and they treat you the next day. And for someone who has taken testosterone,one would assume they would have to stop that sometime before.

There is a lot of planning involved.

I only caught the tail end of the interview. In that short period, Freddy said two things that weren't true (entirely unknowingly, I'm sure). One is that there is no evidence that taking testosterone reduces fertility. In fact, a quick google shows that there is plenty of evidence that it does so. (This isn't entirely surprising: the female reproductive system is a delicately balanced network of inter-connections, so introducing an external agent into the body is likely to have some kind of impact.)

The other statement was that "no one" is refusing to use the word women to describe women. Even though Rosie Duffield's original offence which kicked all this off was to like a tweet by Piers Morgan objecting to the use of the phrase "persons with a cervix". Even though, just a few days earlier the Lancet had referred to women as "bodies with vaginas". I guess both of those somehow passed Freddy by.

It's a shame the phrase that has received all the media focus is 'only women have a cervix'. Its much harder to articulate what is wrong with an expression like 'women and transmen need smear tests' compared to 'some women have a penis'.
Transmen are generally non threatening and often seem very vulnerable, with precarious mental health, and if you don't think it through it seems cruel to use language they find painful.
There is a good article here on why 'inclusive' language is so regressive and why it needs to be resisted everywhere:
voidifremoved.substack.com/p/inclusionary-language
on why

MNHQ tends to have issues with discussing individual people as opposed to more general theme

Unless their names are 'Meghan"or 'Harry"