Just despair - HOW do some women just not get it!

[Mynewchairhasarmrests]

Just finished a brilliant novel written by a female author about friendships, girlhoo, womanhood, and growing up as a girl. She was so absolutely on the money about what it’s like to be a young woman and the pressures of looking and acting a certain way, the awful way women are so often treated by men, the way women are portrayed in the media, how we are programmed not to recognise sexual assault and told its just boys having fun, and how we aren’t believed even if we do report it. Her anger and passion really came through and it was good, though depressing, to read someone telling it exactly like it is.

You know what’s coming. I then look on her social media. She’s a TRA. Signed a letter condemning JKR for being ‘anti trans’. Condemns Germaine Greer for being so wrong on trans issues.

I just don’t understand how these women can see the misogyny everywhere they look BUT the place where it’s in its worst, purest form - gender ideology.

Its like a glitch in the coding somewhere. Why can’t they see it? I have another friend who is on the board of a rape charity. We had long conversations about how shit it can be to be a woman. The misogyny everywhere. I was sure she must be GC. But no. A TRA. Doesn’t speak to me now she knows I’m a TERF.

I just don’t get it. Is it fear of societal disapproval? A reluctance to admit the liberal progressive cause they publicly embraced is anything but and that they’ve been had?

I feel the same OP.

Who was the writer out of interest?

They just don’t want to be cancelled. They know really.

Yeah, it's a cynical marketing strategy.

I don't understand it either. If you look at the barrister Charlotte Proudman's account on Twitter, she tweets endlessly about male violence against women, about the appalling way Amber Heard has been treated by the media, about the appallingly low rates of conviction for rape. Yet she is fully TWAW. She posted yesterday about how she stands with our trans brothers and sisters.

I can see why five years ago, women might not have got it. I realise that some women see trans women as a vulnerable group who are persecuted for not conforming to masculine stereotypes. But we've had five years of stories about male abusers using trans identities as a way to predate on women and girls. It couldn't be clearer that allowing men to self-identify as women and then to gain access to women's rape crisis centres, domestic abuse shelters and prisons has immensely harmful consequences for the most vulnerable women in society. How can she not see this?

They DO know. They just don't want the rape and death threats, have all their books and contracts cancelled and people phone up and deliver pizzas all the live long day.

I think this latest tweet from Andy Ngo captures the misogyny that can never be covered over. And the homophobia and racism in this particular person. And apparently wrapped in an ‘uncancellable’ package at that.

twitter.com/mrandyngo/status/1594430891123564544?s=46&t=Nrk2T6H-NlJFtSx-XFAbuw

I've wondered this over the years and after thoughtful consideration, my analysis is they're either lying or thick.

Seriously though, there is one person I've chatted to on here who has opened my eyes a bit to the point of view. It's that it doesn't really matter that much who is and isn't classed as a woman. It's semantics.
Practically speaking, men are going to rape and kill women whatever, so allowing a slightly higher risk - and the risk is always characterised as very, very, low and usually avoidable 'if a proper risk assessment is done' or 'the woman is alert to unusual behaviour and advises the proper channels' or 'is sensible and avoids risky situations' - is acceptable if it means trans people are validated overall.

I'm not saying this is this particular poster's actual view, I've paraphrased it to fit in with many comments by many people over the years.

I think people who have seen for themselves the harm that violent or predatory men can inflict tend not to fall into the 'be kind' category.

For me, the risks are obvious, but also, I think language should be clear and logic should be used in trying to reduce VAWG/ misogyny in general, so even if no-one was ever harmed by it, I would still find it important to have a definition of 'woman' that worked. And I think a lot of the 'not getting it' comes from the conflation of 'female' and 'feminine' (and 'male' and 'masculine') which is illogical and harmful.

The author was Holly Bourne. And I do really recommend her books.

I agree that there’s absolutely no excuse for anyone not to know, in 2022, that the trans movement is characterised by some of the most horrific misogyny I have ever seen in my life, and completely underpinned by deeply sexist notions of gender and how men and women ought to behave. If you have social media, and are awake to issues around women, girls and feminism you can’t possibly not know.

All these women who have made careers out of their brand of feminism like Caitlin Moran who REFUSE to comment on this, they think we haven’t noticed their silence and now that the masks are slipping and the wheels are coming off they’ll just say in a few years that they didn’t really know or understand what was going on.

No. Fuck off and take the word feminism out if your mouths, all of you. You fucking knew, and you chose to stand by and say nothing, practicing your safe, male approved brand feminism instead - because who doesn’t agree that rape is wrong and that women should have abortion rights? - and you let them do it to Julia instead and left the actual, brave, fearless feminists, like JKR and all the other amazing women who have spoken up, to take the death threats and the abuse and the cancellations and loss of income and standing at protests while the ‘women’ you’re so keen to stand up for stood spewing hatred and violence at them.

I have nothing but contempt for women who shill for men and dare to call themselves feminists.

That tweet from Andy Ngo is sickening. How can any of these ‘be kind TWAW’ feminists watch this and not get it? That this creep isn’t just a violent outlier? That there are many, many trans identified men like this, and that these feminists are actually fighting to make it easier for them to access women’s spaces?

’I think people who have seen for themselves the harm that violent or predatory men can inflict tend not to fall into the 'be kind' category’ - this has often been my experience. Some of the most wide eyed, you can pee next to me!, allies are hopelessly gullible and naive about how dangerous men can be.

I agree, OP. For a long time, I could have explained it by people not being aware of the issues.

It's now 2022, anyone in the UK has been 'aware' of the issues for a couple of years. So yes, I've far less patience now if someone doesn't acknowledge that women are at risk due to gender being prioritised over sex.

Because what that actually means is that men's feelings are prioritised over women's needs. It's clear as day.

The Scottish Government have brought us Katie Dolatowski in a woman's prison. A violent sexual predator. In a woman's prison.

That is where we are. I'd like to see ANYONE justify that situation.

twitter.com/Urusai_naaa/status/1594597308506771456

Yes, it's the same logic, as paraphrased by this tweeter.

It's fear that stops women speaking up. Fear of being isolated is the minimum that women are afraid of.
We had some Transgender Day of Remembrance bullshit on our office intranet with gushing Shona Faye recommendations. All the comments on it were more gushing nonsense. I know for a fact there has been a civil war in our women's group over this stuff. Which means that female employees, including me, are too fearful to call this nonsense out in public. For fear of the social and possibly career consequences.

I was catching up on Twitter this morning and I saw this tweet:

‘There's one question I'd like to ask of TERFs and trabsphobes, and to keep asking until they give an honest answer:’

‘How does it affect you? How does someone else expressing their identity actually affect your life in such a way as to warrant such a strong response?’

twitter.com/bragrman/status/1593870374705725441?s=46&t=GGgq3wD2N_HN4dM-p8kGQg

what a mind fuck.

So for many reasoned and balanced but non-personal replies, these person replied “How has that affected your life?”

When women replied with personal accounts of incidences, this person replied with (paraphrased): ‘sorry that you experienced that however, is this an issue of (x) or trans people existing.’

where (x) was described as a general societal issue.

An example was this reply:
”I completely agree. Let's do everything we can to end violence against women.”

“That is not, however, and issue isolated to the trans community. Most violence against women is conducted by hetero CIS men; usually romantic partners.”

“How do trans people actually affect you?”

Just about every time.

When a woman bared her abuse and assault (she was a victim of trafficking) etc, this person turned it around to ‘so you think of TW as always men, regardless of how they pass’.

I couldn’t work out whether this person got off on reading on reading about women’s pain and harm or was simply a misogynist who refused to see the implications of whatever it was they were trying to argue, but all they were doing was hand waving away harms and victim blaming women for their visceral reaction to males after abuse.

Do not underestimate the role of the guardian and the BBC in keeping liberal women (and men) in the dark on this topic. Their narrative that trans rights is the next LGB rights has been very very successful.

When trying to illustrate the problem to friends, i have to point to such random and obscure journalistic sources.

Guardian & BBC simply cannot report 'another sex offender transferred to women's prison ' it breaks the paradigm. Intelligent liberal women are often conditioned not to click on a link to the daily mail so you end up on an advertisement riddled local news site.

As for the fetishists & abuse, there's evidence galore on the internet but trying to find some credible and balanced reporting & stats is hard.

If only organisations like the Fawcett Society would do their fucking job and commission a wide ranging report on the online & offline abuse received by prominent and non prominent GC women, with profiles of the male abusers we'd start to get somewhere.

It’s always highly educated super right on very privileged women. It’s epically disappointing. All my “normal” friends /everyday women that don’t pontificate about right on matters see the issue after about a minute but this group go full on “most oppressed group ever”.

Yes, sure. Fear can keep women quiet. Fine, I can fully understand that.

But to actively push males over women? That's something else.

When a woman bared her abuse and assault (she was a victim of trafficking) etc, this person turned it around to ‘so you think of TW as always men, regardless of how they pass’.

Yes, I do. Because that's what they are.

It's so frustrating how 'TW are in danger in prison' is used as an excuse to put them in with women.
Prison is one place where it's very easy to segregate, all sorts of high risk prisoners are kept apart - TW can be protected from the general population if they are in danger.

And what the fuck is 'cis women rape other cis women' - eh, when and where? I mean, I'm sure you could find a handful of cases, but it's incredibly rare. I can't believe it's used as some sort of gotcha.

I think they do get it.

I also think that they think that if they do as they are told. If they are " nice " enough. If they are " kind " enough and if they do everything that is asked of them that they will be afforded extra protection somehow.

What they dont realise however is that they are one punctuation mistake away from being the victim of the next pile on.

And these males you have bent over backwards to keep happy and keep on side will be no where to be seen when you are in a mixed sex hospital ward with a half naked drunk aggressive man.wandering the halls.

They will.be discarded as soon as they are no longer useful.

I also wonder this. particularly in the case of several high profile female (the old fashoned kind of female) politicians who campaign around issues of VAWG and yet are fully TWAW. It baffles me. Lying or thick as a pp said. But it has to be lies surely?

In terms of TWAW types in my real life. Well one has an extraordinarily troubled teen who has now decided they are trans, and that this is going to solve all their problems. My friend of course wants to support her child unconditionally and so is going full on TWAW and has entered into alot of local activism. Another is my aunt who frankly jumps onto any bandwagon or cause going. Personally I think it is because she has a fairly shaky sense of self and is still looking for who she is. She uses causes as a coat hanger to hang her identiy on. Trans is the cause of the moment so she is right in there, shouting loudly.

Thing is - If people believe they are trans then good luck to them and I hope they find peace and joy in their lives. I don't care what people wear, how they want to identify. My issue is with some predatory males (trans or not) cynically and gleefully using loopholes to gain access to vulnerable people- usually women and girls. I have spent a large portion of my professional life working with sex offenders. They are to a person manipulative. They will use anything available to them to gain access to vulnerable victims. I'm not at all sure why it is apparently so wrong to say that and saying that makes me a bigot in the eyes of some who really ought to know better.

I also want to say, that if that was posted here on Mumsnet, with long form answers, that person would have got many more detailed answers that would have shown what a misogynistic route that they took to hand wave away the replies.

For instance:

“That is not, however, and issue isolated to the trans community. Most violence against women is conducted by hetero CIS men; usually romantic partners.”

Had absolutely no evidence apart from this person's say so. And we know very well that children use toilets by themselves and so, this splicing off the issue ignores that it is woman AND children who are in danger in toilets and changing rooms. And we have prison statistics that show the rates of crime.

But of course, this person has blocked replies now and I would think would ignore anything posted unless it was a 'personally experienced' situation.

Thus ignoring that many victims are not about to post their experiences on social media so this person can then claim some false 'win'.

It is just like the ridiculous calls that the studies showing that testosterone blocking does not remove male advantage are false evidence because the males were not 'athletes'.... eerrrr... logically what difference do these people making this claim think will make. They honestly think a trained male reducing testosterone will have a better outcome that will magically reduce the advantages....

I agree with this, but then I think if we all stood up and said something, there would be enough of us to create a tipping point. But unfortunately the backlash would be some sort of cultural civil war or something. It's such a mess.

When it was me, my thinking was along the lines of "trans women are proof that most of what society constructs as Womanhood is just cultural stuff that can equally exist in a male brain. By accepting trans women as valid we detach those constructions from female-hood and thereby weaken their hold on us. Since Trans women suffer just as much under patriarchy as we do, they must be friends to women not a threat. They deserve to be in our spaces for safety and solidarity and so they can raise their voices in support of us."

All that worked in my head. It was when I realised that trans women (or at least the TRA version) not only have no interest in supporting women's fight to be seen outside those constructions but in fact need to priotise the constructions as the reality of womanhood in order to justify their claim to womanhood, and want to actively suppress any recognition or social discussion about how "women-only" provisions were entirely shaped by the experience of and the needs that aise from being physically female, that I realised how wrong I'd been.

HelleofaBore thanks for linking to that Andy NGO tweet. That audio was chilling and the scariest thing about it was the sense that the person had that they were completely untouchable. They can make very real threats to organise an attack, threaten to punch women (footage from the recent NYC SFW protest) yet there they are bragging if their Billboard in Times Square, their contract with a huge fashion brand, their catwalk career in NY Fashion Week.

And yet they are the 'most vulnerable' ones, the downtrodden and oppressed. All I could see on show was an aggressive, violent, homophobic (they called Ngo a faggot FGS!), sexist, racist, woman-hater, revelling in their own hormone-induced breasts - behaving in a way that would get a woman instantly arrested. I could see no one trying to calm them or say, 'hang on you can't threaten to punch a woman and fondle your tits while saying you are a 'better' woman than them - that's not good OK?' Nobody seemed to try that probably because they know they would get physically assaulted.

I think the Andy NGO Tweet deserves its own thread Hellofabore.

How does she n ow Amber Heard is a woman? Has Amber declared her gender identity? Would she be less bothered if Amber were agender?