Insanely good article by Judith Woods avout the Woman's Place meeting

[Mumsnut]

Here's the intro:

Ayoung woman with aquamarine hair is striding around with a megaphone leading a call and response, as a policewoman watches from a distance on a Bristol street.
“Trans rights are human rights!”
The motley crowd of students answer as one: “Trans rights are human rights!”
“Protect trans students!”

“Protect trans students!” they parrot.
Then she gets a little over-aerated: “Terfs can suck my boy d---.”

Nobody says a word, they just shuffle uncomfortably.
Terfs, in case you don’t know, are “trans-exclusionary radical feminists”. This loosely translates as “any woman who doesn’t want some bloke claiming to be a lady joining her in the changing rooms in Monsoon, or a boy saying he’s a girl sharing a tent and, quite possibly, a shower with their daughter at a summer camp started by former PM David Cameron.”
In effect, Terfs are those who disagree with the militant orthodoxy that anyone “identifying” as a woman must have full access to single-sex spaces – be they public loos, rape crisis refuges, female prisons or women’s sport.
Sensing she might be losing her crowd, Aquamarine then reels her angry acolytes back with a more familiar incantation: “Trans women are women!”
A woman in a Harris tweed coat passing by catches my eye, pauses and observes with perfect timing: “But they’re not, are they?”

Then there's this bit:

I might not have understood the strength of animosity she faced were I not running the gamut myself, with a bug-eyed youth following and repeatedly photographing me. When I ask him to identify himself, he tells me it’s none of my business. He is just “gathering intelligence”. But none of this is intelligent.

The article then includes a photo of the youth in question - pure genius!

Where is the article?

Thanks for pointing out the article but I think its poor manners to do so and to quote paragraphs without providing a link.

It's here: www.telegraph.co.uk/columnists/2022/05/08/welcome-insane-world-identity-politics/ and yes it's behind a paywall but it's important that the journalists and newspapers bringing light and air to these issues get to be paid for their work in my opinion.

@Mumsnut do you have a link to the article

It is behind a paywall. And if I quote the whole thing, Mumsnet will delete it, Buano. I was hoping that someone would have a bright idea ...

@BuanoKubiamVej

"yes it's behind a paywall but it's important that the journalists and newspapers bringing light and air to these issues get to be paid for their work in my opinion."

Sorry!

Thanks OP.

Brilliant article thank you :)

Great article. Most people genuinely don’t know all this yet, so it’s great to see this being reported so clearly.

Thank you for sharing this article, excellent explanations and you can feel Judith's shock and bewilderment at the behaviour and extreme attitudes of those busily bullying women.

@SpinningTooFastIWantToGetOff Thanks for the link.

That's a brilliant article. And love the close up photo of the man photographing /intimidating all the women attendees as "evidence". His Mum will be so mad if she sees it

I signed up for free to the Telegraph. It's not my paper of choice but it does allow me to access a number of articles a month? And happily this was one of them.

Great article. I'll sign up for the free service, that sounds perfectly reasonable.

I saw the journalist at the meeting and have been looking out for an article in the Telegraph.
I think the "protestors" were young, naive and although I did feel a bit intimidated entering the meeting, afterwards I just felt they were silly.
I am glad we have got such a clear and positive article.

A woman beside me murmurs: “They’re so young, they’ve had no life experience. They think we’re attacking them but we’re just defending our own hard-won ground.”

I'm not sure we ever really won the ground, to be honest, but what an article.

This is a great article thanks.
I've been feeling not only politically homeless for the last few years but also out of my newspaper home. I did read the Guardian for decades. Is The Telegraph now the paper to which I should turn?

I've read the DT for years. It's not my political home, none of the press fit that, and some of the journalists enrage me. However they have a few, like,e Judith Woods and Suzanne Moore who have written some solid articles on this subject. Indeed the DT as a whole seems to support a GC view.
On other subjects some of it is outrageously right wing but not all, and there are many intelligent articles with a viewpoint you don't get on social media.

From what I can see I'd describe him as a young man, over youth, I think.

He's covered the lower half of his face. I find this, in combination with the fact of him being an adult male, somewhat threatening. It's a thing males do when they're being sex attackers, terrorists, robbers. I appreciate not all women would find his behaviour and attire threatening but I'm someone who has already experienced male violence.

The behaviour of men like him is one of the reasons women occasionally need spaces away from males. He wouldn't ever be able to understand this because his beliefs dehumanise women like me as TERFS. And if he got close to doubting himself, he needs only utter a magic sentence and then his belief system will decree that his physical and structural advantages disappear and he can see himself as victim and TERFS as oppressors.

It is a very twisted ideology and I do not believe for one moment that most trans people support it.

I appreciate that left wingers may not like the DT and ST but honestly these are the papers that are the most gender critical and are not afraid to have left wingers like Suzanne Moore as their columnists either. Much more open minded than the Guardian (low bar I know..). Lay aside the economic /political stance, which I believe is what left wingers probably dislike most I have found the DT the most supportive of women generally - gender critical women, women in business and women's sport.

I come at this from the fact that, before I retired, my job required me to read all the nationals every day.

Like so many women, I abandoned the Guardian years ago when I realised it was actively engaged in censoring women. I take a real pleasure in their moaning pop ups - you've read 25 articles this year. Yes I have - and I would have read thousands and pay for them until you got captured by the trans lobby.
Idiots.
The Times has been at the forefront of exposing this scandal for some years now - Janice Turner and Andrew Gilligan writing some of the early pieces. I have a subscription and thoroughly enjoy their excellent campaigning journalism and exposes of corruption in government etc. as well as their relentless coverage of the issue. They've also sorted out their moderation issues so free speech generally resigns below the line (which has its problems of course).

Agreed. We're trying to protect the future for their benefit while they're resisting us and we're fighting against the abhorrent quality of maternity services and the way DV is handled by the social and judicial systems at the same time.

Excellent article, thank you for the link.

“Terfs can suck my boy d---.”

Dick? Suck her boy dick? But, but, but… never mind.