BBC article about cotton ceiling

[GingerAndTheBiscuits]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-57853385 including Angela Wild, Rose of Dawn and Debbie Hayton. There’s no way this would have been published even just a few months ago 🤯

Gay people have been bullied into denying their own sexuality since Stonewall told them it doesn't exist, and employers are directly discriminating against them and making them feel like shit, and silencing them just for being gay. I know this because it happened to me.

That topic was part of the discussion about the NHS at the recent LGBA conference, wasn't it?

Honestly, I'm still gobsmacked, even though I've been reading about this for years.

Stonewall have been perfectly happy to liken people who are same-sex attracted to racists.

And women who say biological sex exists, akin to antisemites.

I mean, if the deniers on this thread really want to get into the game of discrediting, for fuck's sake, look at the side you're picking! 🤣

The sheer gaslighting of complaining about the lack of rigorous research when we know that female academics, lesbian academics, are being harassed for trying to carry out research.

And here is a thread of pressure in the wild.

Do you think the people complaining today about this article ever bothered to bestir themselves to object on behalf of lesbians before?

twitter.com/wimps93/status/1322951804666187778?t=NNVHdOIOFxnfFDL4TOuznw&s=19

@MedusasBadHairDay

Just seen on twitter, a lesbian disclosing she was assaulted by a TW, and one of the replies says that the fact she's a self identified radical feminist shows there's a problem with the survey.

Ffs. Good to see their playing the, "wrong type of victim" card. Any more rape myths they want to shoehorn in?

No doubt the kind of woman Edinburgh Rape Crisis would seek to re-educate away from bigotry before they helped her.

That topic was part of the discussion about the NHS at the recent LGBA conference, wasn't it?

I couldn't attend as I couldn't afford a ticket, but I should imagine it would have been - it's a huge problem that most people felt unsafe to discuss until the BBC article.

We're basically taking our lead from the BBC on which parts of this huge misogynistic, homophobic mess we're actually permitted to talk about without being questioned by the police or losing our jobs.

Has this article disappeared from the site? I cannot find any links to it.

[quote EmbarrassingHadrosaurus]Might be worth reading before commenting again?

There is a discussion both here and on the Atwood thread about why people who are in closed communities that are engaged in thought reform do not wish to read primary sources that might challenge their views or they are deterred from reading them ("I read it so you don't have to").

People in those communities are encouraged to dispense pre-dispensed views from their thought leaders in the form of thought terminating clichés and stock answers, they are never to allow themselves to enter into a discussion that is based on a primary text that lies outside their own set of preferred beliefs. The penalty for going against the expectation of their community is a withdrawal of social support, a social network, and ostracism that can have far reaching consequences. The pile-ons to Margaret Atwood et al are to keep them in line.

People who won't read the primary sources because of the challenge to their thinking will probably, at some point, experience cognitive dissonance about their reluctance to perform such a simple and everyday action. And then they might find themselves in the situations described here:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4382551-Live-not-by-lies-Solzhenitsyn-no-tambourines-involved?[/quote]
Two random thoughts come to my mind.

First one. My ex is from a Christian background. His religious sect strongly discourages common congregation members from reading the Bible. Instead, the Bible should only be read by elder men, who can then interpret the Word to the commoners. They interpret it in an interesting way. For example, that sect teaches that all means of preventing conception are a sin, including saying no to your husband when he wants sex.

Second one. A few weeks ago someone in my leftist liberal (in the US sense) circles wanted to read Kathleen Stock's book. She asked around for a copy to borrow and made sure that everyone heard that she was only going to read it to argue better against evil terfs. Someone said "oh, I have that book, I can lend you my copy".

The next day the questions started. "WHY do you have a copy of that book? Please explain yourself. Do you believe that TWAW? Why are you giving money to Kathleen Stock?" etcetera. The second lady was instantly branded suspicious because she owned a "bad" book.

@ChristinaXYZ The original link on this thread works and earlier I searched the BBC site using 'Lesbian' as a search term and could find it, at the bottom of the article it does show connected terms, including 'Violence against Women' but I'd initially used that to search with and the article didn't appear in the results.

It’s interesting that we do have to listen to the women who have made allegations against Lily Cade but don’t have to listen to the women reporting their experiences with transwomen. Real headscratcher, that one.

Of course we need to listen to women who are put under pressure to engage in sex with someone they don't want to have sex with. Chloe in the article got raped by a trans woman and that is obviously horrendous as any rape. It doesn't mean that all or the majority of trans women are rapists.

Amy got pressured by her (cis, I assume) girlfriend, so not by a trans woman at all. Do we villify all cis bisexual women now?

As in the (imo very good) statement from the Stonewall member: noone should be coerced to have sex with anyone they don't want to have sex with.

Saying this article is not well researched is essentially saying "those victims are lying".

I don't understand why the people saying "this didn't happen" can't see how damaging that is to the trans rights cause.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but even "Not All Trans People" would be an improvement on "this doesn't happen and the women are all liars". At least that would signal some (very slow) progress.

But if Stonewall et al are going to keep going round bleating that day is night and night is day and anyone who disagrees with us is a bigot, then it's not just the LBG community they're damaging - they are also doing untold damage to the T.

noone should be coerced to have sex with anyone they don't want to have sex with.

That's your idea of a very good statement?? It's the bare bloody minimum anyone should be saying.

It doesn't mean that all or the majority of trans women are rapists.

Of course it doesn’t. In the same way an article about Wayne Couzens doesn’t mean the majority of men or police officers are rapists. But you and others seem to be suggesting there’s a threshold at which this becomes an issue to be discussed - it’s clearly not one lesbian woman being raped, so how many is it? Four? Ten? 100?

DuckDuckNo - the bad book story would be a good thread. I'd also like to see more convo's around the differences vs. US, Canada, Aus, NZ (that Helen Joyce's book shed light on) as TRAs from those countries with she/her and he/him are slamming the article without having read it

@CatherinaJTV So would it be okay to use the term 'some transwomen' rather than 'all transwomen' or 'the majority of transwomen' when discussing this?

I loathe the idea that lesbians who don't want to have sex with trans women are transphobic.

I loathe the idea that genital preferences are transphobic. That's basically just putting people who have altered their genitals or outward appearance at the top of the ladder, entitled to fuck whoever they fancy (natal women).

Because I don't hear straight men who won't have sex with gay men being called homophobes for it. Or not even so much with gay men who won't have sex with transmen.

But gay/straight/Bu women who won't have sex with trans women? They won't shut up about it.

Just men eroding women's rights by the back doors. Because if they were truly subscribed to the idea that they ARE women themselves, they'd be fighting for OUR rights, not trying to create a massive platform of entitlement for themselves where women need to submissively accept whatever genitals are thrust toward them.

As in the (imo very good) statement from the Stonewall member: noone should be coerced to have sex with anyone they don't want to have sex with.

What Kelley actually said:

"Nobody should ever be pressured into dating, or pressured into dating people they aren't attracted to. But if you find that when dating, you are writing off entire groups of people, like people of colour, fat people, disabled people or trans people, then it's worth considering how societal prejudices may have shaped your attractions.

Sexual orientation likened to sexual preferences that can be changed by society. Homophobic conversion therapy, from the chief executive of Stonewall.

The article was incredibly clear it's a problem witn some transwomen

It's actually an article about women and the pressure they are under to have sex and how fear of transphobia is being used as a stick to beat women with

It's not actually about transpeople. It goes out of its way to show that not all transpeople are like that , that it all transpeople believe these women are transphobic

It then shows that stonewall is on the side of the abusers

It's not an article trying to drum up hatred of transpeople

However the certain posters here could achieve that effect with their minimisation of the issues raised

@CatherinaJTV

the BBC response is just blabla - I don't have the time to go through the hundreds of answers here, but has the fact that the lesbian porn actress interviewed has sexually assaulted women been discussed? The many stories surfacing (including one apology from the woman herself) are horrifying.

Genuine question, CatherinaJTV:

The responses to the Cotton Ceiling article fall mainly into four camps.

One group doesn't engage with the allegations and just dismisses everyone involved from BBC itself to the survivors quoted as transphobic. Most of them haven't read the article or they would know that there's evidence of the hostility.

Those who engage with the content fall into

• denialism (these women are lying, there might be online stuff, but no one does this in real life),
• dismissal (these stories are anecdotal, this is a minor issue blown) and
• blaming and shaming (speaking about these experiences brings the LGBT community into disrepute)

So do you expect the allegations around this particular woman to be taken seriously by those same people? And if yes, why?

Now I had never heard of her before, and I don't know about the allegations, but I am well aware that women can be sexual predators. And I find the pivot from denial, dismissal and blaming/shaming very interesting to observe, especially because the sex of that alleged predator is female and the sex of all the others discussed is male.

Do you think this is another form of sexism?

@logsonlogsoff

'This is what we call an 'ad hom' attack. If you can't criticise the content, attack the person.'

It's not an attack, I know quite a few journalists and breaking or writing a story that get s this kind of attention is quite literally what their jobs are all about. They have a bit more integrity though, so don't take the easy tabloid/Daily Mail route of scaremongering, and actually try to write pieces that stand up to scrutiny.
Anyway, it's just an opinion, though mine is based on actually being part of the LGBT+ community rather than being a keyboard warrior on Twitter.

What a great post - for its stupidity and lack of logic.

"I know quite a few journalists": appeal to authority which is a logical fallacy.
"They have a bit more integrity": ad hominem attack: logical fallacy.
"Easy tabloid / Dail Mail route of scaremongering": not supported by the article or the site at all.
"Actually try to write pieces that stand up to scrutiny": ad hominem attack.
"Just an opinion, though mine is based on actually being part of the LGBT+ community": appeal to authority.
"Rather than being a keyboard warrior on Twitter": article was published on the BBC web site and this is MN, not Twitter.

logsonlogsoff

If this was about women being pressured for sex by what you'd call 'cis' men, would you take it seriously then? Is your attitude towards the witnesses and the journalist only so negative because this is about transwomen? I guess it is - suddenly your priority changes when it's transwomen, right?

Meanwhile on Twitter, still plenty of commentary like this: twitter.com/ChristopherMars/status/1453293506399817735

I mean that's some pretty virulent rhetoric; how dare someone politely suggest that I might want to reflect on the source of my sexual preferences!

Yep, sexual orientation is now a 'sexual preference' which can be changed if you reflect on the 'source'... The new face of gay rights campaigning!

[quote Realityisreal]@CatherinaJTV So would it be okay to use the term 'some transwomen' rather than 'all transwomen' or 'the majority of transwomen' when discussing this?[/quote]
until they used their biased poll to make it appear like the majority of (cis) lesbians felt pressured into sex with trans lesbians.

Chloe in the article got raped by a trans woman and that is obviously horrendous as any rape. It doesn't mean that all or the majority of trans women are rapists

I'm getting tired of explaining that we don't think that all or the majority of TW are rapists. Really. Stop putting words in our mouths.

The people trying to rubbish this article have no arguments, as we always knew. Only now it is in the open.

The majority of lesbians? How many lesbians do you think there are - 100?