FB Groups and JK

[SusannaQueen]

Ok, I'm just having a rant and I know FB groups are free to set their own rules.
I've been following a fab FB group, (Home for Peculiar Artists 2), post goes up from admin saying this is a reminder, we don't allow anything Harry Potter or JKR related, if you don't know why then educate yourself. Lots of supportive replies.
I'm on the group in my real name, so I'm not going to weigh in, but it hugely fucks me off, so many people just believing lies with no dissent allowed. Just makes me think this whole thing is insurmountable.

I don't personally agree with her views but she is entitled to have the conversation and feel boycotting her is harsh I would bet a lot of the people agreeing haven't researched it at all, just jumped on the bandwagon.

This ‘assigned’ bollocks. Honestly, it’s not a lucky dip or a rocket out of the tomboys. It’s your biological sex. Observed.

*rocket out of the tomboys might be my best typo yet. Ticket out of the tombola!

Do you think it was "black superiority" to end racial segregation without paying any regard to the "concerns" around letting black people into "white spaces"?

Please.

Your appropriation of racism is vile.

Only men could oppress women for thousands of years, then decide that they not only want to insert themselves into the oppressed class of women, but also then claim that they are more oppressed than women, and that women are oppressing them.

Wanting certain spaces and provision segregated by sex is nothing like racial segregation, and it is offensive of you to claim that it is.

And you do realize that the mere existence of this kind of segregation is upholding gender, right?

When males stop murdering females at the rate of 3 a week, and stop raping and assaulting us in our thousands, then maybe we can talk about whether sex segregated spaces are 'upholding gender' or not, yes?

Ah I see we had another visitor to help us play bingo!

And I’m of course shocked that they chose to come here & wag their metaphorical finger at women rather than trot over to pistonheads to lecture men on being nicer to gender non confirming men

It’s almost as if they’re exactly aware which sex is expected to be the one that does the telling and which one is expected to do the listening….

Do these visitors all have the same list of things to say? It's like they've been on a training course.

I would definitely not approve of trans people being restricted to third spaces

They wouldn't be, they could also choose to use the appropriate space for their sex.

Look, @Wavedancer99. (Were you born in 1999?) You’re obviously quick and bright. So either you’re just arguing specious sophistry knowing it’s rubbish, or (more likely), you suspect that there are holes and incoherences in what you’re arguing because - well, because, anyone decently bright enough can see them. And you probably suspect that if you let yourself acknowledge it, you know the whole house of this fantasised pseudo-poststructuralism would fall down (I call it this to distinguish it from actual poststructuralism which is far more sophisticated than gender ideology).

But, do yourself a favour. Put your intellect to better use and abandon all this silly undergraduate style stuff. Do some serious reading and learn to think properly, and not just regurgitate all this social media idiocy. I’ve never known a really clever person be taken in by all of this. Don’t waste your time with it - learn how to do real philosophy and real theory.

Some good advice!

No, you just keep FALSELY conflating the labels "man" and "woman" with sex, when they're both gender categories socially constructed *AROUND" sex.

No, that's just your opinion, based on a worldview many virtually all people do not share. Man simply means adult human male and woman adult human female. Like a stag is an adult male deer. A mare is an adult female horse.

Oh come on! I didn't make any personal attacks, I stayed completely within the guidelines, I didn't post anything that could be taken in the slightest as being discriminatory or prejudiced even by the most disingenuous overseers so what's with the deletion?

Actually, I'm really angry about this @MumsnetHQ because it now looks as if I've posted something bad when I certainly haven't, nor would I ever do that! I haven't had an email to notify me of the unfair deletion either so I'm just supposed to sit here and take the smear on my posting character. It's not on at all.

@EndoplasmicReticulum

Do these visitors all have the same list of things to say? It's like they've been on a training course.

It's twitter.

Goodness. What a clear demonstration of the determination of men to browbeat women into accepting compulsory nudity / vulnerability in the presence of males. No single sex resources / spaces ever cos it's transphobic!

Ah, I don't do Twitter. Maybe that's where I'm going "wrong".

@EndoplasmicReticulum

Ah, I don't do Twitter. Maybe that's where I'm going "wrong".

Nope twitter is a cess pit of....of....well of feaces really

Every time we get visitors on FWR like this current iteration I'm always reminded of^ Orwell's 1984.^

Julia makes sure she's the one shouting the loudest during the 2 Minutes Hate because she's the one who has all the doubts.

It doesn't matter how loud they shout, and how many shout along with them.

The truth is the truth and we all know it, and so do they.

Don't argue with an idiot, they'll drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.

@EndoplasmicReticulum

Do these visitors all have the same list of things to say? It's like they've been on a training course.

Isn't it just? So bloody repetitive and tiresome.

@Wavedancer99
Nothing about "sexed bodies" demands strict imposition of those labels. It is purely your choice to do so, imposing those labels on others, against their will.
By labels you were referring to man and woman.

For language to be comprehensible, we have be pretty strict in how we use words. Otherwise I could say that I am floating under the carpet with my fourteen warthogs, when I mean that I'm sitting on the sofa with my two dogs.

Sometimes - in a medical setting, in a setting where female safety is an issue, in sports where fairness is an issue - we need to be really strict about what we mean by 'man' and 'woman'.

A label 'imposed against my will' can still be accurate.

I actually think it can be useful for people to see what the baseline actually is, to have no single sex spaces ever and no acknowledgment that sex exists unless it is for the benefit of the sex denying individual.
This is so far from lived reality it is helpful to see it in black and white.

So to be clear:

-any kind of single sex provision (changing rooms/sports/prisons) is bioessentialism, which is just like racism.

-the words "man" and "woman" are just socially constructed labels used by the desperately old-fashioned and uneducated.

-except when a man wants to call himself a woman and access women's spaces, when it's very important for the rest of the world to know exactly what he means by "woman" and to ensure he gets what he wants.

Yes exactly - it’s “no labels for me but yes labels for thee - except when I want it to be the other way around of course”

Which basically sums it up.

Or we could sum it up as:

“Rights” and “autonomy” and “self determination” mean me being able to do whatever I want, but you having to do whatever I say.

What a thread…
Having read through it, I’ve been struck by a few points that I’ve pondered before when I’ve seen TRAs in full flow. For a start, though gender ideology is interesting as a thought experiment, it’s incredibly impractical and won’t work outside of a utopian society that just doesn’t exist, there are too many potential negative consequences. Of course, your dyed in the wool TRA will deny those potential negatives, but as we’ve seen from ‘It never happens’ those negatives are already becoming very apparent and cannot be ignored. All the while women are preyed upon by men just because they’re female, it won’t work. All the while women are discriminated against in society for no other reason than their sex, it won’t work. You just can’t reject sex as an important category in favour of gender without not just sweeping existing sex based problems under the carpet, but actually creating lots more. As has been stated already (and pretty much ignored because it’s very awkward) there are different medical needs based on our sexed bodies. Men and women need different bladder catheters, present different heart attack symptoms, have different cancer risks. In fact as far as I can see, the push to cleanse people of their birth sex when it comes to things like medical records goes directly against the interests of trans people themselves and could lead to serious cases of misdiagnosis and incorrect treatment. Denying the reality of their sex could actually kill them. The only conclusion I can come to is that because gender woo is mostly a young person’s game, these harsh medical realities are just not on their radar…yet (because some numpty might come along and state that it’s the job of medical practitioners to take both into account when dealing with an individual, why should medics waste their precious time and create unnecessary delays to vital treatment by doing that when all they need to do is know the patient’s sex and diagnose accordingly?)
Another issue I’ve noticed is that the push to end sex segregated spaces is deeply lacking in empathy. Insisting male bodied people are let into women’s prisons verges on psychopathic, it’s that detached from simple, human feeling. For surely, if transwomen belong in women’s prisons, then trans men belong in mens prisons? Why are you so willing to inflict so much harm on trans men? Why are you perfectly happy for a women who may well have been a victim of male violence and exploitation her entire life to be made to share a cell with a male person?
How is it reasonable to expect female survivors of male sexual violence to share, and try to come to terms with, their trauma in a group with a male person, however they identify? Just why is it not acceptable to have some exclusively female only spaces in these circumstances? Why do you have no empathy for them? Because it hurts trans women? Okay, then why is trans women’s hurt so much more important than cis women’s? Why are you prioritising them in this way, because as long as there is also provision for trans women (and I would argue that trans women’s experiences of male violence are not the same as cis women’s because they’re not female, so I don’t see, apart from at best a sense of validation, at worst something rather darker, what they actually have to gain from that).
The phrase I often see used is ‘Why are you throwing trans women under the bus?’, fine, so why is it then acceptable, laudable even, to throw cis women under it instead by ignoring their particular sex specific needs and issues? Why should ANYBODY be chucked under the wheels of the number 75?
That poor busdriver…