Nancy Kelley feels like she’s living in a looking-glass world

[tabbycatstripy]

NK on Twitter saying ‘rape and sexual assault are real, not winning arguments.’ She doesn’t think people should ‘weaponise’ them as rhetorical devices. NK is experiencing a ‘trauma response’ because women are saying they feel threatened by being forced to share their spaces with males who are or claim to be transitioning.

With every sympathy for her with regards to any violence she has experienced, that is not what women who disagree with her are doing (making rhetorical arguments). Laws are supposed to cover hypothetical situations. Risk assessments are supposed to cover hypothetical situations. We are allowed to say the prospect of a certain change to the law - in our opinion - increases the risk posed to us of a certain harm. We are allowed to say we don’t agree with her underlying premise that we share any meaningful features with the people she chooses to offer all her sympathy to.

We will keep saying it until people listen.

I was wondering what the responses had been to Nancy's tweets, but I see she's locked the thread so nobody can respond.

Get over it, no debate, amirite?

The attitude of some women towards other women who have been raped or assaulted is sometimes very strange. It’s like they get some moral certainty or victory from ‘getting over it’, and sometimes, in their own pain, I think they lash out against other women.

She needs to stop weaponising her trauma.

‘rape and sexual assault are real, not winning arguments'

🤔

Going through SW's Twitter feed, looks like they have had not much to say for a while. Even their workplace thing didn't get much traction. They're mostly now spending time trying to latch on to IVF equality (me neither) or DV/SV work.

You have to wonder if the phone's stopped ringing. If it has, maybe it's because women talking about rape committed as per our legal definition is real, and for our recovery we need to exclude males. Maybe talking about that is making people think, and call them less.

It's pure gaslighting. It's telling survivors of abuse that they are just imagining their discomfort, that their feelings are not valid and not to be so silly.

Disgusting.

If a woman has a fear of something as a result of an assault that she has suffered, then any man using that fear to control her is the one weaponising her trauma.

Every rapist who hurt me was a cis, straight man. That's the norm of course. And yet social media is jammed full of people blaring hypersexualised alarms about trans women

What about the victims of Karen White? The 10-year-old girl who was sexually assaulted by Katie Dolatowski? The victims of rapist and murderer Karen Jones/ Karen Lawson?

metro.co.uk/2019/03/16/transgender-woman-18-sexually-assaulted-girl-10-morrisons-toilet-8914577/

www.standard.co.uk/hp/front/transexual-rapist-jailed-6971617.html

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/3180059-To-think-if-youve-killed-raped-women-we-dont-give-a-flying-fuck-what-you-think-on-any-given-matter

Does Nancy Kelley not believe that these incidents took place? Or does she believe that these individuals are not really trans?

I think she believes ‘white cis women’ lie about rape or exaggerate because they want to make certain arguments.

@DomesticatedZombie

The tweets:

🧵cw: sexual assault
As a survivor, there are days (yesterday, today) where I get overwhelmed by the volume of anti-trans bile that weaponises rape and sexual assault as a rhetorical device, or a radicalising tactic. Rape and sexual assault are real, often devastating harms...1/4

..not 'winning arguments'. It feels like living in a looking glass world. Every rapist who hurt me was a cis, straight man. That's the norm of course. And yet social media is jammed full of people blaring hypersexualised alarms about trans women...2/4

...and trying to trigger threat responses towards trans women for crimes overwhelmingly committed by cis men. Its been years since I've had significant trauma reactions. Now? Its like the old days - vivid nightmares, shaky days - and I know I'm not alone😔. 3/4

My heart breaks for trans people who are the target of this wave of hate every day. Finally (just because I know this thread will make some people happy!🤯) I'm not going anywhere, am MORE than up for the fight, and am #LWithTheT all the way 🙂🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈.'

Here's the problem: There are many more so-called 'cis' men than there are transwomen, so even if the two groups had the same (small) percentage of rapists, we would not observe anywhere near as many reported rapes committed by transwomen than by 'cis' men.

The real question is if transwomen are less likely to rape than 'cis' men, or perhaps better framed, if the former are less likely to commit sexual assaults than the latter. Evidence on this is extremely scarce, but what there is from one Swedish study suggests that the patterns of male violence are not affected by transitioning and certainly not by the kind of transitioning which is essentially social only.

So does one believe that transition turns a male person into an essentially female person? Even if we accept the new weird definitions of 'male' and 'female' as nothing but abstract identities, I think the answer is NO.

I see many transwomen behave in the kind of entitled and assertive manner more men than women in general behave, and the way sex is discussed on various trans sites sounds to me lots more like how men talk about it than how women talk about it.

The point is that 98% of sexual crime is perpetrated by males and that transwomen are in that sex class of male. There is no universally agreed point at which a transwomen somehow comes out of that high risk sex class of male. Males, however they identify, should not be in female spaces.

@tabbycatstripy

I think she believes ‘white cis women’ lie about rape or exaggerate because they want to make certain arguments.

I recently saw several people argue on Twitter that white women should just shut up about most things or accept being called Karens. Unless they once were white cis men. That group is allowed to talk because it is more oppressed.

This gives incentives to young white cis women to call themselves at least nonbinary. Suddenly you can speak again!

Wonder what Mary Beard would say about all this. I see it as a clear attempt to erase the idea that sexism and misogyny even exist. If you don't have any other obvious axes of oppression collapsing on you, then being female is entirely irrelevant.

Think of the trauma responses vulnerable women are having every day because they're locked up with rapists.

I'm sure ''well ''cis'' men rape more'' is hugely comforting as they're having an erect dick pressed against them whilst they're waiting for food in the prison canteen

‘ I recently saw several people argue on Twitter that white women should just shut up about most things or accept being called Karens. Unless they once were white cis men. That group is allowed to talk because it is more oppressed.’

Yes. Women as a group were getting a bit lairy, weren’t we? So first we had to be separated by age and race (Karens!) and now we have to give up our rights to people saying they are us, but absolutely not listening to or empathising with us, as they would if they were us.

@Hasselhoffsheadband

The point is that 98% of sexual crime is perpetrated by males and that transwomen are in that sex class of male. There is no universally agreed point at which a transwomen somehow comes out of that high risk sex class of male. Males, however they identify, should not be in female spaces.

This.

Genderist discussions around this subject range from "angels dancing on the head of a pin" nonsense to the jaw dropping audacity of claiming that men with identities can't be rapists as "cis" women are their oppressors which I've seen used as an argument more than once.

It's all arsewash.

It's very simple - men rape and sexually abuse women no matter what they happen to feel about themselves and their identities.

@tabbycatstripy

I think she believes ‘white cis women’ lie about rape or exaggerate because they want to make certain arguments.

Oh, surely she wouldn't say that - that's just an MRA argument.

The argument is similar to one that protected priests in the past. That they were different somehow from other men. The were holy men who were above all sins of the flesh.

Seems we still haven't learned not to create sacred castes and loopholes in the law in the name of religion.

Sorry to go back to the beginning

So we shouldn't talk about real things ?

Nancy Kelley’s hypocrisy takes my breath away sometimes. Having been through the awful trauma of sexual assault you would have thought she would be keen to stop it happening to other women. Instead she tells lesbians that they should consider their prejudices for refusing a person with male genitals, campaigns for allowing any man to self identify himself into spaces where women are naked or vulnerable including rape crisis centres and compares women pointing out the folly of this to anti semites. A strange strange woman. She is disingenuous or just so brainwashed by the cult she can’t think straight.

So is it her way of coping? Of pretending she wasn't hurt by it at all?

Nepeta says "Here's the problem: There are many more so-called 'cis' men than there are transwomen, so even if the two groups had the same (small) percentage of rapists, we would not observe anywhere near as many reported rapes committed by transwomen than by 'cis' men."

There are currently about 450 trans-identifying males in prison for rape, aren't there? Of the prison population, transwomen are more likely to have been convicted of sexual assault than the rest of the male prison population.

What I don't see is any attempt by the likes of Kelley to acknowledge that self-ID means that every bastard can claim he's trans. You'd have thought that the hugely obvious disadvantages of that outweigh any supposed benefits of self-ID.

‘ So is it her way of coping? Of pretending she wasn't hurt by it at all?’

Maybe it is. She’s acting out by pretending male violence is not such a big thing compared to other forms of ‘real’ trauma.

‘Oh, surely she wouldn't say that - that's just an MRA argument.’

She does do it, though. She ignores every account of rape or assault by a trans-identified person, and she ignores detransition. ‘Didn’t happen, and if it did it wasn’t that bad, and now you’re weaponising it.’

@tabbycatstripy

I think she believes ‘white cis women’ lie about rape or exaggerate because they want to make certain arguments.

But...isn't she one of those? Or is she a special kind of WCW?

@OvaHere

The argument is similar to one that protected priests in the past. That they were different somehow from other men. The were holy men who were above all sins of the flesh.

Seems we still haven't learned not to create sacred castes and loopholes in the law in the name of religion.

Exactly. Its not coincidence that loads of Catholic priests just happened to be paedophiles. The church was specifically appealing to them because they knew that they would be above suspicion and that the church would cover for them if there were ever found out. They knew that under the umbrella of 'Catholic Church' they were in a sacred caste that couldn't be touched. That's why so many of them joined the church.

What Nancy Kelley and Co are doing here is putting a neon flashing sign out saying 'put yourself under the trans umbrella and no one will ever be able to suspect you of anything other than being a wonderful person'. Any predatory male who wants to make himself above suspicion or hide in plain sight currently has a fantastic way of doing that by placing himself in the trans category. This also hurts genuine transwomen.

The problem I can see is she’s assuming there is a massive gulf between cis men and trans women , and that it’s incredibly nasty and unjust to blame trans women for the crimes of cis men. But things have now reached the point where the only difference between a cis man and a trans woman is the cis man simply declaring he’s a woman. I would have more sympathy with her argument if we lived in a time where being trans actually seemed to involve a commitment to medical transition, having dysphoria etc but now the only requirement is a simple self declaration. So you could very well be raped by a “cis man” who states “oh I’m actually a woman” and by that mere declaration he becomes trans. And this indeed has happened.