Women and girls' sex-based rights

[StephanieSuperpowers]

Well, here we are...

Dotellhimpike

-I see from Twitter that one of the attendees of the #letwomenspeak event in London was attacked and assaulted by an "activist" (can we say T-R-A in here?). This worries me as there is a bit of a pattern emerging at these events where "activists" are moving on from harrassment to assault.-

Sadly, this is not new. Julie Bindel was roughed up at a WP event, last year. There was a woman in her 60s at a protest, who was wrestled to the ground and had her phone stolen.

Not to mention the woman assaulted, in front of a spectating copper, as she tried to attach a Suffragette ribbon to the statue in Manchester. The Policeman then threatened to arrest her. For being assaulted by a group of men.

It's shocking and outrageous.

Oh, putting hyphens in strikes through...

can we say T-R-A in here?)

Yes.

Purgatory, that's really nice.

'Grow up'?

That's unfair. FWR is, as the name would suggest, a space that is largely populated by women and is for women.

Men are okay to post here, of course, but fuck off if you think that a woman asserting her right to her own space deserves to be diminished or sneered at.

We can say TRA, but I personally prefer trans activist or activist, because people fresh to the debate can get up to speed immediately. Only those in the know recognise TRA.

Also, on a note of pedantry, eschewing TRA means I have the moral high ground to point and laugh when the trans activists use GC as a noun. I mean, what the hell? It stands for Gender Critical. You should never use an initialism where the full length term wouldn't make sense, so "she's a GC" and similar don't work.

I've just come out as GC to one of the women who has stayed in the other place. Waiting to see what happens next. She's really nice and we've been internet friends for years so I hope she isn't offended.

Why are we all so scared to speak?

I (used to) follow the thread from the other place on and off, and others from time time as a legacy from GUT. Christ what happened? It all looked respectful and civil whenever I dipped in. Did it get infiltrated by cunty types?

Ditto, @TricyrtisJTT.

@BinturongsSmellOfPopcorn I find the mobile Safari site a million times better and more functional than the app, which I abandoned many years ago. Although I’ve never experienced your weird issue with line breaks.

#Bekind is silencing hogwash. Where is the kindness to the traumatised rape victim told that she can’t object to the presence of a clearly male-bodied person in her therapy session? Where is the kindness to the teenage athlete who has been training since a child and suddenly isn’t getting a place in the team because someone with the body of a teenage boy has turned up to her sports club? Where is the kindness to a female prisoner locked up with someone who has committed sex crimes against women and who the MoJ itself admits poses a risk to her?

Kindness is so rarely offered to women who speak out.

Really worth a read - Kathleen Stock on how "be kind" doesn't really mean it:

kathleenstock.com/the-pity-party-on-the-left-2/

Excerpt: "When companies or individuals ostentatiously promote the value of kindness like this, they aren’t interested in helping people navigate the complex work of how to manifest kindness in everyday interactions. What they mostly mean is: feel kindly towards others. Demonstrating kindness essentially involves definite action. In contrast, kindliness seems to involve only emitting a vague feeling of warmth towards other humans. Yet promoting something so vague and underspecified as a political value carries with it certain risks. In practice, kindly feelings can quickly transmute into the dangerously sentimental emotion of pity, or else into a passivity which daren’t risk saying or thinking anything critical at all."

Well said.

Sad to see we've got a woman attacking another woman already now that a man has entered the room.

Same as it ever was 😒

Historically I've found "threads I'm watching" more useful than "threads I'm on". Your settings probably default to adding any thread you post on to Threads I'm Watching, plus you can also add any thread to this list by clicking "watch thread" at the top or bottom (my pet peeve is people posting "placemarking" instead of just quietly watching the thread, as it clogs up threads).

You can also change your settings to view 100 posts per page rather than 40 or whatever the default is.

If a random bloke turns up & mansplains all over the place, thinking women will just sit & nod he'll get his head handed to him on a plate.

Tbf I misread this as "thinking women" ie women that think a lot "will just sit and nod" so I had to re-read to make sense of it.
Misplaced comma...

Hello, I made it here and have just finished reading this thread. I doubt I'll be able to take on board all the formatting tips etc.

Just to say what a disappointment that all was. The thread header of the last place where discussing women's rights were viewed as a shit -stain on the board, made me feel uncomfortable. Anyway. I just want to have a quick rant. I have been annoyed that for many years second wave feminists (myself included) were allies to gay men. Then suddenly (or so it seemed to me) we are the homophobes and bigots. There has been a re-writing of history I think, and women have been demonized. A simple e.g when Russell Davies in 'It's a Sin' made Olly's mother the one who was to blame, whereas the dad was just ignored. I also feel younger women have betrayed a lot of what their mother's fought for, and thrown it away; in particular safe-spaces for women. Any woman who has been sexually or violently assaulted, will feel the need for a woman's only space.
One last word on the old place, my suprise at some women and men who never read the thread but were keen to protect themselves from our so called bigotry. The venom from one or two of the men did shake me a litte. But then, as Greer said, "women will never know how much men hate them".
Good to be here, I probably won't post much but will continue to read. Thanks, Mumsnet regulars for your welcome.

I think though there is an extra context with regard to these specific men who were on the original thread on another site and didn't behave in that way. They then came with us in solidarity when it wasn't easy to do. Now, I'm definitely not unsympathetic to the general view, but in this instance, these are people whose presence I would defend.

I see the Women's Equality Party conference voted 87%-13% in favour of gender self-id

Votes for: 138.

The WEP conference had exactly, but exactly, the same shaming-and-shunning going on of the women that opposed it as we've just experienced this weekend. Any time any one of us opened our mouth to speak, someone from the Steering Committee would speak next to sneer at us.

We could have submitted a motion saying "Votes for Women" and they've have voted against it, because it was from us.

Your settings probably default to adding any thread you post on to Threads I'm Watching

Yes, it does. I just unwatch the ones I don't want to follow.

Very disappointing. It's incredible that a movement this shallow can compel such fervent adherence.

in this instance, these are people whose presence I would defend.

I agree wholeheartedly.

They then came with us in solidarity when it wasn't easy to do. Now, I'm definitely not unsympathetic to the general view, but in this instance, these are people whose presence I would defend.

It's not very good form to come into this existing feminist space and start attacking women who are a put out by a bunch of men suddenly arriving out of nowhere.

O really don't think I've attacked anyone.

Hello. I've been told this is a lifeboat from a sinking ship. May I climb aboard?

I find it bitterly ironic that the Women's Equality Party places such an emphasis on in-person voting, thus adhering to the same internal governance structure that forms a barrier to women wanting to participate in political life at any level.

I'm not a WEP member but I did consider joining it once upon a time. If I were a current member, there's little chance I'd have been able to commit to attending the conference this weekend, so I wouldn't have had a chance to vote. Y'know, family responsibilities, that thing that means women are systematically discriminated against in the workplace, and then leads to a pension gap between men and women in retirement? Kind of a huge equality issue?

Welcome, Merrylus!

Hello Merrylus!