Should we be careful what we wish for?

[Gosports]

I’m 100% GC and want to be pleased about the latest news, from the Times article published today (confused though it is) and the BBC article earlier this week as it feels like the tide might be turning.

However, I can’t help but wonder about the motives behind these small ripples of change. I don’t trust the government at all, and I wonder if this is a case of out of the frying pan and into the fire? They have also proposed to curb judicial review and to limit our rights to protest so I can’t believe that they are at all concerned for young people confused about their gender, or lesbians abused by trans women. So why are they (or appear to be) supporting the GC movement. It can only be to gain more power in some respect, surely? And that worries me…

Tweet 1
No but that would be irrelevant.

If they offend at the same rate as other men they're still women and it's their space too. The overwhelming majority, even if they offend at the same rate as men, are safe the overwhelming majority of the time, even at those rates.

Well that's a bit of a tell isn't it stephen.

He needs to read this.
Schrödinger's Rapist -a Guide for the Men

deadwildroses.com/2011/09/21/schrodinger%e2%80%99s-rapist-a-guide-for-the-men/

extract 1

Let me start out by assuring you that I understand you are a good sort of person. You are kind to children and animals. You respect the elderly. You donate to charity. You tell jokes without laughing at your own punchlines. You respect women. You like women. In fact, you would really like to have a mutually respectful and loving sexual relationship with a woman. Unfortunately, you don’t yet know that woman—she isn’t working with you, nor have you been introduced through mutual friends or drawn to the same activities. So you must look further afield to encounter her.

So far, so good. Miss LonelyHearts, your humble instructor, approves. Human connection, love, romance: there is nothing wrong with these yearnings.

Now, you want to become acquainted with a woman you see in public. The first thing you need to understand is that women are dealing with a set of challenges and concerns that are strange to you, a man. To begin with, we would rather not be killed or otherwise violently assaulted.

“But wait! I don’t want that, either!”

Well, no. But do you think about it all the time? Is preventing violent assault or murder part of your daily routine, rather than merely something you do when you venture into war zones? Because, for women, it is. When I go on a date, I always leave the man’s full name and contact information written next to my computer monitor. This is so the cops can find my body if I go missing. My best friend will call or e-mail me the next morning, and I must answer that call or e-mail before noon-ish, or she begins to worry. If she doesn’t hear from me by three or so, she’ll call the police. My activities after dark are curtailed. Unless I am in a densely-occupied, well-lit space, I won’t go out alone. Even then, I prefer to have a friend or two, or my dogs, with me. Do you follow rules like these?

So when you, a stranger, approach me, I have to ask myself: Will this man rape me?

*Pay attention to this, Stephen. Women want to have a break from this kind of worry sometimes. Like when we're getting changed for swimming, or in a hospital ward.

extract 2

Do you think I’m overreacting? One in every six American women will be sexually assaulted in her lifetime. I bet you don’t think you know any rapists, but consider the sheer number of rapes that must occur. These rapes are not all committed by Phillip Garrido, Brian David Mitchell, or other members of the Brotherhood of Scary Hair and Homemade Religion. While you may assume that none of the men you know are rapists, I can assure you that at least one is. Consider: if every rapist commits an average of ten rapes (a horrifying number, isn’t it?) then the concentration of rapists in the population is still a little overone in sixty. That means four in my graduating class in high school. One among my coworkers. One in the subway car at rush hour. Eleven who work out at my gym. How do I know that you, the nice guy who wants nothing more than companionship and True Love, are not this rapist?

I don’t.

When you approach me in public, you are Schrödinger’s Rapist. You may or may not be a man who would commit rape. I won’t know for sure unless you start sexually assaulting me. I can’t see inside your head, and I don’t know your intentions. If you expect me to trust you—to accept you at face value as a nice sort of guy—you are not only failing to respect my reasonable caution, you are being cavalier about my personal safety.

Fortunately, you’re a good guy. We’ve already established that. Now that you’re aware that there’s a problem, you are going to go out of your way to fix it, and to make the women with whom you interact feel as safe as possible.

To begin with, you must accept thatI set my own risk tolerance.When you approach me, I will begin to evaluate the possibility you will do me harm. That possibility is never 0%. For some women, particularly women who have been victims of violent assaults, any level of risk is unacceptable. Those women do not want to be approached, no matter how nice you are or how much you’d like to date them. Okay? That’s their right. Don’t get pissy about it. Women are under no obligation to hear the sales pitch before deciding they are not in the market to buy.

If they offend at the same rate as other men they're still women and it's their space too. The overwhelming majority, even if they offend at the same rate as men, are safe the overwhelming majority of the time, even at those rates

And here we see the chilling effect of redefining what a woman is without in parallel addressing what provisions made for "women" under the old definition should now be single sex female instead.

Because whatever you decide the group named "women" should be going forward, and therefore what internal risks it's legitimate for that group to face, there is another group of people, those who used to be called women, who did not previously face those risks and now do.

Cut it how you want, take away their name, but the inescapable reality is that what Stephen is advocating makes things worse for female people in order to accommodate male people.

So even if all trans women really and legitimately truly are women (whatever "woman" even means in this context) and humanity just weirdly collectively failed to understand what a woman is for millenia, I still don't see why that is a justification to lessen the safety of female people.

To begin with, you must accept that I set my own risk tolerance. When you approach me, I will begin to evaluate the possibility you will do me harm. That possibility is never 0%. For some women, particularly women who have been victims of violent assaults, any level of risk is unacceptable.

And no-one gets to tell other women what their risk tolerance should be.

I do not care if 20 year old Elizabeth thinks 55 year Jayne should accept mixed-sex hospital wards. It's not up to her.

PurgatoryOfPotholes, I really love how you break this down in a story telling/putting meaning behind figures sort of way.

Would you be okay if I steal your approach to try and explain it to people in a business context? I won't mention "got it off someone better at explaining it than I am on the internet", never mind "where from exactly". But I think your explanation is approachable and intelligible.

@ViceLikeBlip

Isn't it just because a huge tranche of right-wing actual bigots are genuinely transphobic and against all trans rights full stop. And it seems to blow many people's minds that someone could be generally left leaning, and support the vast majority of trans rights, but still have some very specific concerns about ensuring women's rights are not simultaneously eradicated?

So it's easier just to believe that anyone who isn't a staunch, flag waving "ally" must be a right-wing bigot (apologies to those who are sick of the word bigot! I'm just parroting here really)

And as for the concept that some TRAs might themselves be far right, well that's apparently completely incomprehensible.

It’s because Blueberry has the political mind of an averagely intelligent 13 year old who still thinks the best response to a nuanced argument they don’t understand it to shout “fascist!”

That Stephen lib dem is a classic.

He won't answer a direct question for hours, every time he changes the subject, every time. Eventually he does answer one and he has to reveal that men will harm women but not enough to care about.

He repeatedly says women and girls will just have to get used to seeing men undressing in single sex facilities as it's progressive.

He's hideous.

@SoManyQuestionsHere

PurgatoryOfPotholes, I really love how you break this down in a story telling/putting meaning behind figures sort of way.

Would you be okay if I steal your approach to try and explain it to people in a business context? I won't mention "got it off someone better at explaining it than I am on the internet", never mind "where from exactly". But I think your explanation is approachable and intelligible.

Anything you see from me, I've stolen from someone else! I'm sometimes a bit rubbish with citations though.

I think this might be what you're looking for.

deadwildroses.com/2011/09/21/schrodinger%e2%80%99s-rapist-a-guide-for-the-men/

I've been waiting til I had time to give a proper reply to the OP's question. In this post, I'm using Left to mean socially left /progressive rather than economically Left.

I share the OPs' concerns. I believe in the promise of the LGBTQIA+ movement as a movement of acceptance, tolerance, gender fluidity and yes, glitter, rainbows and ( consensual ) sexual freedom. I have no problem with trans people living as the opposite sex socially (and not requiring them to pass to be accepted as such) as long as society also accepts they are not the opposite sex and supports equally the right of female people to exist in political, social and legal terms separately from male.

I don't want tempering the excessive demands of the currently dominant genderist faction to turn into a wholesale rollback of LGBTQIA+ rights or acceptance, and I'm worried that in forcing this to be black and white, for or against, all or nothing, that is what the TRAs are unwittingly going to trigger.

What should be happening when a social movement like genderism comes along is that it triggers public debate and private conversations, in this case between genderists, feminists, parents, LBG people and anyone else impacted by the new ideas, and while it may sometimes be uncomfortable, through that process understanding is formed on both sides, visions are shared, goals refined and it evolves into something that will actually work.

And that process always starts on the left because the right's nature, being small-c conservative, is to ignore nascent progressive movements right up until it can't.

So the left kick it around first, the big issues get identified, challenged and resolved and the left/progressive side comes to a rough consensus of what progress would look like. So by the time a movement has got enough momentum for the right to get engaged it's a well-rounded, well tested, well-considered prospect.

Right now we should be unpicking the "trans" monolith, "with us or against us" fallacy being pushed by Stonewall et al into lots of different questions and scenarios and between us find ways forward.

So I am furious that the mainstream left (the political parties, the left-leaning media and wider commentariat) have abdicated their responsibility to think about genderism properly and allowed activists to deliberately and cynically silence any discussion within a left wing context by insisting that TWAW & TMAM are baseline tests of progressive values.

In forcing that black or white position, the TRAs have hamstrung the left's ability to shape a workable change and forced that process of tempering and refining onto the Right's playing field. And because so many on the left have not had their concerns heard and taken into account, the genderist demands as they stand are things we cannot support. We cannot stand with them and say "yes, we are their allies and this is our movement as well" when the right come to challenge because it is not.

I am a little concerned when I hear terminology like "push back", "tide has turned" etc because I don't want to go backwards. I want to think the present authoritarian and misogynistic turn is a short aberration in a positive journey that can be course corrected, and that one day soon I can stand beside genderists and say "yes, I am their ally and this is my movement as well".

But that can only happen if the left gets its head out of the sand and starts listening to all sides, acknowledging clashes do exist for reasons that are valid and not bigotry, and bloody well dealing with it!

Do not underestimate how hard the grassroots women in the political groups like LWD and CFW have been working. Much of what they do goes on behind the scenes and cannot be shouted about on social media, but their dogged determination to get politicians to LISTEN is beginning to pay off. Unsung, and in many cases unnoticed, but they have made a difference where it matters.

I want to think the present authoritarian and misogynistic turn is a short aberration in a positive journey that can be course corrected, and that one day soon I can stand beside genderists and say "yes, I am their ally and this is my movement as well".

I completely understand your sentiment but Genderism is a regressive, anti women and anti science belief system. We do need to go backwards in terms of undoing the damage to many institutions.

We can stand with transsexuals against discrimination but we should be doing that now. Opposing Genderism is the progressive position.

I don't believe that this is all a short aberration. I believe the thin veneer of men supporting women and their rights as the socially acceptable thing to do has slipped away and all this ideology has done is allowed a platform to express the underlying opinion that women are privileged, given special allowances and need to be be punished for it. Gender ideology is itself an intensively women hating movement but is part of a wider problem imo. It's part of the 'those uppity bitches are getting what's coming to them' worldview.

@Gosports

I guess that’s it - they’re looking ahead and assuming the swing will be away from the trans activists. So it’s about votes (as usual), not concern for any particular group.

These are not separate things.

The state's job is to balance the good for all of the people who live in it. That's why we give all adult citizens the vote. So each person can signal something about where they see their interests, and parties can look at these individuals, and the groups they belong to, and try and come up with a platform that respects and balances them all.

Doing that perfectly is almost impossible, even with no complicating or confounding elements, but it does work to some extent.

Parties like Labour are losing votes because they think that by listening to the lobby efforts of specific named groups, instead of the voters, they will create some kind of justice. But they can't, not least because they are trying to rank how much attention they pay to these groups according to some Manichean hierarchy.

Individual party members are often as interested in doing the right things for people as any other normal person. They and their families have to live in society too.

I think this idea that conservatives want to put women back into gender boxes is really, really lazy thinking.

There is no evidence of that. There is possibly some indication that some conservatives, including conservative women, think gender roles are less socialized and more attached to reproductive role than some progressives do. That is really not the same as putting people into gender boxes.

There are a small minority of people who believe in very strong socially sexed roles, but they aren't particularly have much in common with mainstream western culture generally, of whatever political stripe.

I'd also point out that conservatism and the traditional left wing have quite a lot in common, in particular neither is liberal. Whether you mean liberal progressive or right-wing liberal, both of which are fundamentally libertarian and individualist.

That's the real axis this works on. Left vs right is no longer really the most useful polarity for thinking about politics.

I am a little concerned when I hear terminology like "push back", "tide has turned" etc because I don't want to go backwards. I want to think the present authoritarian and misogynistic turn is a short aberration in a positive journey that can be course corrected, and that one day soon I can stand beside genderists and say "yes, I am their ally and this is my movement as well".

I'm afraid I think this is really naive. It maybe seems possible if you look only at this issue, but the same problem is happening across a myriad of issues. That authoritarianism is being enforced right up into academia, it's across all the major social issues, it's implicated in the sciences and also tied up with a general awareness in much of the public that something has gone very wrong.

The "left" - I just can't associate them with any kind of real leftist ideas - can't play that role because they cannot allow anyone to think a bad thought. They can't even allow them to think a good thought because thinking is too dangerous. People who think don't always toe the line.

I am a little concerned when I hear terminology like "push back", "tide has turned" etc because I don't want to go backwards. I want to think the present authoritarian and misogynistic turn is a short aberration in a positive journey that can be course corrected, and that one day soon I can stand beside genderists and say "yes, I am their ally and this is my movement as well".

Gender ideology is misogynistic and homophobic at its core. This woman hating ideology has come from academia, been disseminated to the public from the top down through institutions and the media being captured, and any criticism of it has been met with harsh punishment, creating a climate of fear where people are too afraid to oppose it. It is sinister. There is nothing remotely progressive about this ideology, it will be remembered in history the same way as eugenics, in my opinion.

I don't want tempering the excessive demands of the currently dominant genderist faction to turn into a wholesale rollback of LGBTQIA+ rights or acceptance, and I'm worried that in forcing this to be black and white, for or against, all or nothing, that is what the TRAs are unwittingly going to trigger.

I am a lesbian and want nothing to do with the alphabet, there are only three sexualities (homo/bi/hetero), as there are only two sexes (male/female), so no need for the alphabet. The alphabet adopted gender ideology and sexual liberalism, e.g. don’t ‘kink shame’ etc., under the banner of queer theory, I consider both of these things (and so queer theory) to be harmful to women, and so harmful to lesbians. It has always been male focused, and is now a blatant men’s rights movement, I am happy for it to go and for lesbians, gays and bis who completely reject queer theory to create a grassroots org that represents us.

I completely agree about rejecting queer theory - this is an ideology which is obviously not grounded in the old definitions of left and rightwing movements. I would consider myself a feminist socialist and have always added the feminist bit as I was used to lefty men telling me the womens movement was all about middle class women. We need to push our foot through the chink in every door and probably accept a cornucopia of allies - we cant be precious - as Helen Joyce says: "we need to win". For the sake of straight women, lesbian women, gay men, bi-sexual people, children. And no, I dont trust the Tories either.

Only read the OP as yet, but can I just underline - women will always have to fight to maintain what we have. When we win on one front, another will open up. I'm sorry to those who hope for a coming feminist utopia. It's never going to happen. But if we are vigilant and persistent, we'll keep holding back the worst of it.

Seriously, if you haven't understood exactly how precarious your rights as a woman are by now, hold on, there'll be another illustration along in a minute. So sure, we make a gain here, there will be another battle to fight.

Cherish what you have, fight for what is right because it is right, don't be complacent, purist or perfectionist, and don't think for one moment that any group, political or otherwise, won't through you under the bus if it's expedient to do so.

ffs, that's what happens when you're rushing to post because of an appointment!! Throw, not through, obviously.