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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

sarah ditum on Posie parker

1000 replies

narcymum · 23/09/2022 22:33

Just saw a tweet where she calls PP a 'poundshop marine le Pen'
WTF! why are women who are supposedly in this fight together actively trying to sabotage another woman's activism?
Can we not move away from this schoolyard shit?

OP posts:
Thread gallery
23
TheClogLady · 29/09/2022 12:47

pattihews · 29/09/2022 11:14

reesewithoutaspoon, I agree with everything you wrote except this bit:

If anyone thinks politicians are in this for altruistic reasons anymore and not just self-serving then I have a bridge I,d like to sell you.

My current, first-class, hard-working, superhumanly energetic, clever, efficient and wise MP stood for this constituency back in 2017 when no one else seemed to want to take the job on. They gave up a secure career to do it. They won somewhat unexpectedly and have since then turned out to be the best MP you could hope for. Busy on the ground in the constituency, asking important questions in the HoC — and they are GC and have to battle the woke bros in the CLP as well as in the house. How they do it I don't know. They are so admired in the community that when I canvass for them I have people say 'I wouldn't normally vote Labour, but XXX is so brilliant I'm going to forget the party politics and vote for them.'

There will be others doing a similar, sterling job and these kind of blanket condemnations of their motives depress me.

I would’ve made a throw away jokey comment about cloning Patti’s MP so we can all have one but with all the weird shit happening to women due to advances in reproductive technology, thought better of it!

and yes, the last 4 years seems to have lasted at least 10.

witchyw · 29/09/2022 12:59

Bindel has done some amazing work. There's much to admire about her. She also seems to have a peculiar dislike of mothers, which I often wonder is the driver for her position re: KJK.

Ereshkigalangcleg · 29/09/2022 13:03

I can't believe it was only 4 years ago. It feels like a fucking eternity since that happened.

I know!

FOJN · 29/09/2022 13:10

This is very sad to read. To all the courageous women who spoke in Brighton I salute you. Thank you for sharing your stories and experiences with us.

twitter.com/RexDraws/status/1572435496101416960?s=20&t=_QIkYr8AHS0khEicGKvqfA

YouSirNeighMmmm · 29/09/2022 13:22

beastlyslumber · 29/09/2022 11:50

Yeah the feminists want to fuck it up because it's become their gravy train and their little hobby horse.

Although Bindel I dunno. She has done some good work about prostitution and trafficking. I just think she's not a clear thinker or a very nice person. I remember watching her in a debate on free speech and her argument was basically that she should have free speech and it was disgusting that TRAs tried to shut her down. But when people say bad things (according to her metric of good/bad) they should not be given a platform. So... maybe not as cynical as some of the others but also not so smart?

I think that there is some merit in the idea that some issues are settled (eg the LGB and ethnic minority communities should not be treated like second class citizens) and are not up for debate, whilst others are up for debate.

I might argue that the main problem we have now is that the grown ups in the room are unable to make that call, which means that we have a choice - silence some people for being "transphobic" despite their sole sin is to speak up for women's rights, or let everyone speak. Letting everyone speak seems like the better option, not least as we can ignore racists or shout them down.

pattihews · 29/09/2022 13:44

witchyw · 29/09/2022 12:59

Bindel has done some amazing work. There's much to admire about her. She also seems to have a peculiar dislike of mothers, which I often wonder is the driver for her position re: KJK.

Oh god: the lesbian-women-hate-mothers trope.

Evidence to support your pov, please.

witchyw · 29/09/2022 13:50

I know plenty of lesbians who like me (a mother) and some
Who are mothers themselves. Not a "trope" but based on JB's own words being dismissive about mothers and motherhood on a few
Occasions

witchyw · 29/09/2022 13:51

unherd.com/2022/07/why-i-didnt-want-children/

witchyw · 29/09/2022 13:52

That particular, recent essay reeks of disdain for mothers

TheClogLady · 29/09/2022 14:10

pattihews · 29/09/2022 13:44

Oh god: the lesbian-women-hate-mothers trope.

Evidence to support your pov, please.

It’s not a lesbians/straights thing, it’s a chosen-to-be-childfree/mothers thing.

Plenty of lesbians are mums.

And the great failure of feminism (all waves, all subtypes) so far is not really having any answers for the motherhood issue, except not having any children, or trying to juggle motherhood and career (and often doing less well at one or both, while paying lower waged women to pick up some of our household/childcare slack (something I, the daughter of a cleaning lady, am deeply uncomfortable with).

The women who decide to prioritise motherhood are then derided by Feminists as (and I quote) ‘domesticated zombies’.

Those of us who are mums of (shock) boys can find it particularly difficult to find a place in feminism (I personally struggle with JCJ’s writing because I can’t square the absolute rejection of ‘patriarchy’ with my absolute need, perhaps inherently biological, to love and nurture my boy child).

Posie’s take is more akin to the no-nonsense women I was raised by, Nan and her (9!) sisters, all WW2 veterans, all ‘wore the trousers’, none felt trapped or oppressed.
But then no one in my family had a pot to piss in, male or female.

No one has time to care about the glass ceiling when the roof is leaking.

DameMaud · 29/09/2022 15:00

Should maybe do a separate thread on this as it is so good.
But putting here, as after watching Kim Jones heart wrenching speech about her daughter on Lia Thomas's swim team, I got a sudden upswell of admiration for Posie Parker and what she did going over to protest there in person.

DameMaud · 29/09/2022 15:01

Sorry. She starts about 13 mins in if you just want that bit

BitossiBlues · 29/09/2022 15:12

She goes to Starbucks. That's not very socialist.
<misses point>

BirdinaHedge · 29/09/2022 15:14

And the great failure of feminism (all waves, all subtypes) so far is not really having any answers for the motherhood issue, except not having any children, or trying to juggle motherhood and career (and often doing less well at one or both, while paying lower waged women to pick up some of our household/childcare slack (something I, the daughter of a cleaning lady, am deeply uncomfortable with).

Mary Harrington is good on this.

But I find the criticism of women who "pay lower waged women to pick up some of our household/childcare slack" is always unfair. We don't castigate men that way; we rarely rub their faces in the ways that they have a career by exploiting the women around them, in such a public self-critical way.

I think the difficulties 2nd wave feminism had with motherhood are quite understandable. I was a teen in the 1970s, and started university in the late 70s (I'm at the VERY tail end of the Baby Boomer generation). I can still remember the introduction of equal pay, maternity leave, equal pensions, the removal of the requirement that women resign permanent positions on marriage etc etc - all the "equality feminism" moves to remove overt discrimination against women.

This was the necessary push to make women "equal to" men (although I do remember wearing a radfem badge which said "Women who aspire to be equal to men lack ambition"). Although there was plenty of debate about it at the time, believe me!

And to make women equal to men, reformers & activists had to show that women were just the same as men - that our role in reproduction did not make us so very different from men in public life, in the workplace, in education.

This was because sexual difference had always been used against women to "prove" we were not fit to do all the things men did.

So we squeezed women into a public, working world which has been organised around the male body, the male role in production & reproduction, and a "heteronormative" male life pattern. Women couldn't mention sexual difference, because that would just be used as a stick to beat us with "Aha!" the union bosses would say (and this is why Labour is so crap about women now, I think) "you can't do the same job as men."

The next stage in the revolution (and women's liberation is THE revolution of the modern world) is to reshape public life around women's bodies, women's life patterns, and women's role in production & reproduction.

Which is why the current vicious assault on the very fundamental definition of what it is to be a woman or a girl is so appalling.

TheClogLady · 29/09/2022 15:39

But I find the criticism of women who "pay lower waged women to pick up some of our household/childcare slack" is always unfair. We don't castigate men that way; we rarely rub their faces in the ways that they have a career by exploiting the women around them, in such a public self-critical way.

I don’t disagree with you at all.

in fact, I’d not be even slightly surprised if my discomfort is due, at least in part, to female socialisation.

However, when you ARE one of the women who would be leaving their own kids with a (usually female) child minder while they clean someone else’s house (male or female) for a pitiful net financial gain it looks rather different to how it looks from the opposite direction

I’d rather clean my own house than someone else’s and spend time with my own kids than someone else’s and I’d like not to be called a domesticated zombie while I’m doing that.

(this is exactly what I mean re: feminism hasn’t gotten to the answers yet, although I do think the second wavers were on the right path until sex-work-is-work ‘empowerment’ feminism took over and sent us down a diversion route of ‘but men are actually women if they say they are’)

Right now, the outlook seems worse for girls than it ever has in my own living memory (Gen Xer, mother of a ten year old girl, hoping to send her to a girls’ secondary school next year).

NonnyMouse1337 · 29/09/2022 15:49

I remember watching her in a debate on free speech and her argument was basically that she should have free speech and it was disgusting that TRAs tried to shut her down. But when people say bad things (according to her metric of good/bad) they should not be given a platform. So... maybe not as cynical as some of the others but also not so smart?

I watched that debate too!! I was gobsmacked at her foolishness. And seeing her behaviour since - the childish insults and smears - she doesn't come across as a nice person even if she's good at what she does.
And seeing other so-called feminists also behave appalling is really off-putting. I can see they haven't really learned anything from gender ideology - they probably have a lot of overlap with the gender zealots in term of authoritarianism, sneering at others, thinking their viewpoints are far superior etc. They are just upset that currently the sort of people they usually have a lot in common with have turned on them.

witchyw · 29/09/2022 15:58

Yes NonnyMouse

beastlyslumber · 29/09/2022 17:09

They are just upset that currently the sort of people they usually have a lot in common with have turned on them.

Yes. And part of this harassment of Posie is very much the 'pick me' behaviour that we are familiar with from the Relationships board. Bit of competitiveness nastiness to stay in with the in crowd and hope to score some points with the likes of Owen Jones.

GingerPushkin · 29/09/2022 17:29

brilliant comment, @BitossiBlues

christinarossetti39 · 29/09/2022 22:34

Ereshkigalangcleg · 29/09/2022 11:23

I don't think WPUK have ever hired Millwall Football Club - pretty sure that that was one of Venice Allen and possibly Julia Long's events quite a few years ago.

In 2018. It was Venice and Sheila Jeffreys was the main speaker. It ended up being in a room at the House of Commons. I went.

She talks about it, and TRAs targeting both Milwall and HoC here:

www.feministcurrent.com/2018/09/24/interview-irrepressible-venice-allan-fight-changes-uk-gender-recognition-act/

I know. Five years since Maria Mc was assaulted by Tara Woolf at Speaker's Corner and Helen Steel mobbed by a baying mob of TAs at the London Anarchist bookfair, following a wave of deplatforming, Linda Bellos, Geramine Greer and others.

Venice and Sheila got a lot of flak for that meeting as it was hosted by I can't remember who from the Conservative Party because, quelle surprise, no Labour MP would entertain them.

But I wouldn't say they were working with the right any more than women who can only get published in right wing publications (which is a problem, but not one that one individual woman will be able to resolve).

LangClegsInSpace · 29/09/2022 22:57

christinarossetti39 · 29/09/2022 08:35

If you're involved in women's services in Brighton, you will have heard of these people, as they have put smoke bombs through the letter boxes of family planning clinics there.

Whether KJK regards herself as a feminist or not is immaterial - her event in Brighton directly affects women working on the ground there.

I would rather not be acquainted with these people, believe me.

Interestingly, I've been involved in scores of feminist and political meetings over the years but they've never set up a tripod at the front and live streamed onto their channel. They wouldn't bother because they'd be shown the door. Never heard of them being at other SFW events, Filia conferences etc. Wonder what made the SFW event at Brighton different?

'Make women female again' is derived from a particular political slogan. Everyone knows that it's Trump, the most famous right wing populist in recent years. If that's not a problem, why try to neutralise championing Trump's politics into it's just a political slogan?

Similarly, why try to pretend that KJK's merch doesn't have stylised images of her on it? No way would someone as skilled and efficient at marketing as her not do this deliberately.

And taking a people of all politics welcome approach is quite different from taking the approach of being prepared to 'stand with the devil himself' (KJK's words, not mine) so having no moral or other boundaries about who you work with, I would say.

I watched Maria Mc's video about Brighton last night. It looked horrific, really scary aggression from the TAs. Problem is, that when they were shouting 'police protect the fascists' they were right. I can't recall any other time when aggressive TAs were actually saying anything truthful.

I watched Maria Mc's video about Brighton last night. It looked horrific, really scary aggression from the TAs. Problem is, that when they were shouting 'police protect the fascists' they were right. I can't recall any other time when aggressive TAs were actually saying anything truthful.

When the TRA shouted 'police protect the fascists', the police were protecting Maria McClachlan.

You are saying that what they shouted is true.

Please explain why you think Maria is a fascist.

MangyInseam · 29/09/2022 23:04

BirdinaHedge · 29/09/2022 15:14

And the great failure of feminism (all waves, all subtypes) so far is not really having any answers for the motherhood issue, except not having any children, or trying to juggle motherhood and career (and often doing less well at one or both, while paying lower waged women to pick up some of our household/childcare slack (something I, the daughter of a cleaning lady, am deeply uncomfortable with).

Mary Harrington is good on this.

But I find the criticism of women who "pay lower waged women to pick up some of our household/childcare slack" is always unfair. We don't castigate men that way; we rarely rub their faces in the ways that they have a career by exploiting the women around them, in such a public self-critical way.

I think the difficulties 2nd wave feminism had with motherhood are quite understandable. I was a teen in the 1970s, and started university in the late 70s (I'm at the VERY tail end of the Baby Boomer generation). I can still remember the introduction of equal pay, maternity leave, equal pensions, the removal of the requirement that women resign permanent positions on marriage etc etc - all the "equality feminism" moves to remove overt discrimination against women.

This was the necessary push to make women "equal to" men (although I do remember wearing a radfem badge which said "Women who aspire to be equal to men lack ambition"). Although there was plenty of debate about it at the time, believe me!

And to make women equal to men, reformers & activists had to show that women were just the same as men - that our role in reproduction did not make us so very different from men in public life, in the workplace, in education.

This was because sexual difference had always been used against women to "prove" we were not fit to do all the things men did.

So we squeezed women into a public, working world which has been organised around the male body, the male role in production & reproduction, and a "heteronormative" male life pattern. Women couldn't mention sexual difference, because that would just be used as a stick to beat us with "Aha!" the union bosses would say (and this is why Labour is so crap about women now, I think) "you can't do the same job as men."

The next stage in the revolution (and women's liberation is THE revolution of the modern world) is to reshape public life around women's bodies, women's life patterns, and women's role in production & reproduction.

Which is why the current vicious assault on the very fundamental definition of what it is to be a woman or a girl is so appalling.

This isn't really a stick to beat individuals with though, it's an observation about structure.

The claim is, women are freed from child-related obligations by going out to work and hiring childcare. The issue is that it's not really true. Some women are freed by that, as individuals. Some find themselves obligated to go out when they'd rather stay home. And meanwhile, it is still women, often those earning less, who are taking care of children.

So it's not been any kind of a group solution for women as a whole, if anything it represents a system efficiency that financially benefits families (women and men) who earn professional incomes.

Though not necessarily a qualitative improvement in terms of the care being offered, if that matters. Which, it turns out, it does to a lot of women.

As an approach, the "same as men but with a fanny" option creates a situation where feminists have to maintain an illusion that motherhood doesn't make much difference, and that means it has to be tightly controlled or it quickly becomes apparent that it really does.

Ereshkigalangcleg · 30/09/2022 00:32

Venice and Sheila got a lot of flak for that meeting as it was hosted by I can't remember who from the Conservative Party because, quelle surprise, no Labour MP would entertain them.

David Davies.

BoreOfWhabylon · 30/09/2022 03:28

It was David T C Davies. Not the Brexitty David Davies.

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