Women's rights general conversations

[Kucingsparkles]

This is an experimental thread, all input much appreciated!

There is so much excellent information and so many active discussions on FWR that I wondered if it would be useful to have a thread to sort of "cross-fertilise" between them - airing little thoughts or vignettes that wouldn't themselves merit their own thread, to highlight other posts/threads of particular interest or to point to notable developments on fast-moving threads so that casual observers know where to look.

(For example, "the X thread has meandered onto a fascinating discussion of Y" or "Poster P's amazing analysis on thread Z might have relevance to the scenario in thread W" or even "Random bloke asked me to smile while I was choosing onions, grr"- that sort of thing).

Right, bring on the flames or flowers! <cowers>

I think this is a really interesting idea for a thread, I was reading some posts the other night and came across an interesting bit about cults and tribalism that got me thinking but I didn't want to derail the thread with my thinking out loud.

and from me.

Lovely. It'll also be nice to explore the common threads between other threads without messing them all up.

Great idea for a thread.

I've been listening to lots of true crime podcasts recently, quite a few which deal with stalking. There seems to be a pattern where by the threshold for credibility for female victims seems to be much higher than that of male victims or perpetrators.

Our laws, policing and judiciary seem at odds with real world experience.

For example: female victims of stalking told there is nothing the police could do as there is no proof their stalker was responsible for X incident of harassment but the police have done no investigation just assumed it will be too difficult to prove and so dismiss the complaint. The woman ends up murdered.

A woman commits a truly heinous crime and her sentence seems much longer than that of male perpetrators who commit similar crimes. In one case a woman commited a single premeditated murder and received a 30 year sentence and yet a man killed his wife and 2 children and received a 25 year sentence. The murders of the two children were premeditated as he had picked them up from school after he had murdered his wife, he drugged the children before strangling them.

Male offenders who have a long criminal history of violent (including murder) and sexual offences but are released from prison early despite warnings they are likely to offend again. We only know this because they have offended again, the offences are often an escalation of previous behaviour.

I have learned about many similar examples which is why I describe it as a pattern.

Even the primogeniture clause is the GRA assumes women will use the to act to deceive and gain financial advantage over their male siblings, this clause was felt necessary despite it applying to a tiny number of the population, and yet we keep being told that male predators would never abuse self ID despite evidence that predators will capitalise on any loophole which provides them with opportunity.

I haven't thought any further than this at the moment.

Hello shiny new thread. I am subscribing!

Even the primogeniture clause is the GRA assumes women will use the to act to deceive and gain financial advantage over their male siblings, this clause was felt necessary despite it applying to a tiny number of the population, and yet we keep being told that male predators would never abuse self ID despite evidence that predators will capitalise on any loophole which provides them with opportunity.

This makes me furious too! As I understand it, under the GRA, women cannot join private men-only clubs but transwomen can remain members. Transmen cannot inherit titles so the act does not recognise transmen as men. This is bit one-sided is it not!? In whose interest was this act lobbied for and passed!?

Yeah, it's incredible the extent to which, even after all these decades of progress that women have made, we're much more unreliable witnesses than men.

Oh and it occured to me that women usually only have a law named after them after a man has murdered them. What a damning indictment of how much it takes for women to be taken seriously.

I was just reading the biological sex in sport thread on US rowing. I see Kuc is already on the case. My first thought was that the hypocrisy was laughable, but it's no joke really, is it? The dishonesty is so transparent.

I suppose banning women from writing about these thing in prominent newspapers means that nobody will really know about it, because it's not likely that men will be overly bothered.

Really interesting thoughts FOJN - it's exactly that kind of common theme that often occurs to me.

I am here for this thread. I am new and keen to read and maybe even participate in a meandering discussion.

I bring this:
unherd.com/thepost/goodbye-eddie-izzard-and-good-riddance/

Joan Smith is a great voice on these issues.

I've been a feminist since I was 16 when in 1972 I read The Female Eunuch. I honestly thought, as idealistic teenagers are wont to do, that it will all be so much better when I got older! That women would get equal rights because it seemed such an obvious and necessary thing to happen. Much like getting the vote, In 1972 we didn't have equal pay nor yet an anti discrimination law. Women had to get a guarantor if they wanted to take out a credit agreement and women getting mortgages on their own was very rare.

But it feels to me we're going backwards. I know boomers like myself get a lot of stick but truly it was great to be young then. So much hope and optimism for the future. I find it very hard to feel anything but pessimism now and that isn't just an age thing. I don't see our young people rising up and going, oi! No! Up with this we will not put! Instead they seem to meekly accept it and do what they're told. Where is the rebellion, where!? Don't they know that if loads of people are saying you should speak a certain way, believe a certain thing, that the right response is no!? What you rebelling against? What you got?

Joan Smith is a great voice on these issues.

She's wonderful.

A great phrase from the Joan Smith link - “the problem at the heart of self-identification, which is that it requires so little of the individual — but so much of everyone else.”

Yes, I felt that summed up some of my feelings about pronouns- it’s not enough that a person wants to view himself or herself in a particular way, but that we all have to go along with it. If only the world would see me as I see myself, kind of thing.

Another common theme running through several of today's threads is how people who think they're ever so Progressive and on The Right Side of History see women not as proper people, but partially-sentient support bipeds for servicing the desires of the real people (i.e. men).

The partially-sentient bit is important, because this allows TRSOH to cast non-cooperative women as morally culpable in their Bad refusal to accept what is Righteous.

Yes, I felt Zoe Williams did something like that to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie the other day- pushing her on ‘what about if it were your brother’ kind of nonsense.

@Kucingsparkles That prostitution for prisoners thread left me speechless, utterly dumbfounded. Why isn't more being made of this? It's chilling.

Likewise the 'mirror propaganda' thread! And I've found Open Democracy a good source in the past, too.

Thanks for the link @BlackRookInRainyWeather

The Zoe question, of course, was not 'what if it were your sister?'.

@MissLawls I'm a tail-end Xer but I know what you mean. My very first 'thing I want to be when I grow up' was a suffragette, and I was honestly a little disappointed to discover that I couldn't be because women already had the vote. And for quite a while I did think there was very little left to fight for. Partly that was the innocence and ignorance of youth, but partly it really was improving - women started to outnumber men in vet medicine courses and then human medicine courses, men's golf and cricket clubs were pried open, the pay gap was shrinking, male guarantors for finance were a thing of the past (at least in the UK - I gather from the impeccable academic source of Sex & the City that it lingered on in the US), sexist dress codes were being toppled, parliamentary hours were being reviewed to work better for women ... there was still a way to go but progress seemed not merely to be happening but inevitable. And then somehow it all went wrong.

Could I ask that recommendations for other threads come with links, please? Then I can open then in background tabs instead of either forgetting what I was going to look up or losing my place in this thread.

Sorry, my laptop died, and I'm not very good at this on my mobe.

... there was still a way to go but progress seemed not merely to be happening but inevitable. And then somehow it all went wrong.

And then women lost the broad support of 'liberal', Guardianista Left, who a abandoned them in favour of a trendier cause? Which didn't require them to examine their own prejudices?

@BinturongsSmellOfPopcorn this is the thread I was referring to www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4692350-convicted-rapists-given-access-to-brothels-as-rehabilitation-therapy?page=1

Thanks @BinturongsSmellOfPopcorn I'm glad it's not just me. As one placard summed it up at a match: "Can't believe I have to fight this shit all over again."