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 I am now ready to declare that I am officially in love with JKR.

So am I, she's brilliant 😍

@Kucingsparkles, that twitter thread is heartbreaking.

That poor woman. You wouldn't think it was too much to ask, would you? Massive kudos to her for putting it out there, though.

Here's the letter.

twitter.com/ShahrarAli/status/1604047449781305344/photo/1

I just don't know how to address those inexcusable, vile comments. A nasty bully, who gets off on the shock value, I suppose.

The twitter thread from the disabled woman is powerful and the tweet in response is coming to seem unsuprising from those who want women right's out of the picture.

This is of interest from 4w, covering multiple allegations against a male student in Brazil.

Reflecting generally on news and developments this week, I'm feeling quite gloomy and not just about female rights. It seems that in these turbulent times, people are retreating away from reality and into the comfortable fog of superstitious platitudes.

It's the closest thing to a religion I've seen emerge in my lifetime. What are we - a couple of hundred years from the Enlightenment? It seems to have infected every part of public life.

I get gloomy too. But not all the time, Kuc! And nor do you - your sprightly, energetic posts at another place have cheered many a day. :)

Terftastic Observer article today , there's a thread about it. Two polls out this week show the Scottish public are really not on board with the stuff being pushed through their parliament next week....

www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4700336-observer-article-today

That's excellent. It's good to hear what people actually think, when anyone bothers to ask.

Thanks @angelico53

It's the closest thing to a religion I've seen emerge in my lifetime.

This is how it looks to me, complete with catechisms and heresies and pious frauds. See for example:

www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4700477-no-evidence-to-suggest-abuse-of-self-id

Two polls out this week show the Scottish public are really not on board with the stuff being pushed through their parliament

The problem is, it's irrelevant what the public think if this is going ahead anyway, and (see above) the data will be deliberately not collected and not reported.

Female humans will get shat upon from a great height AGAIN.

Meanwhile in Belgium, they seem to have no instances of difficulties with self-ID. Which seems odd, let's face it. So a woman decided to investigate.

^Belgium has had self ID for almost 5 years. Not a single report of a trans woman crime? Not a single one. No stories of men attacking women in prisons? Not one.

I asked the police why. “We don’t communicate that”^

twitter.com/roisinmichaux/status/1604200438403805184?s=61&t=PkVfHCRfGcHtAnTrTLKbSw

That doesn’t surprise me too much about Belgium unfortunately. I used to live there and in some ways it is similar to Ireland - a relatively small country, once staunchly Catholic with its own sexual abuse history. The desire to show it is ‘progressive’ and a better place now leads to these sort of issues with self-id.
It is simply replacing one religion with another in my view.

Not a single report of a trans woman crime?

Presumably it would simply be recorded as committed by a woman, so there's no way to separate the data.

Then I think it would be pretty instructive to see if there'd been a marked rise in particular types of crimes being attributed to women, where previously they had been so low as to be pretty much non existent.

At some point people are going to start noticing changes in data, around the same time as men started being able to claim they were women.

It is simply replacing one religion with another in my view.

Exactly this.

To be clear, there's nothing wrong with having a religion or faith-based belief system!

Where the problem lies is that some groups don't accept that theirs is a faith-based belief system, and often sneeringly consider themselves "above" superstitious nonsense... and yet the pious frauds, structures, language, restrictions and punishments they co-opt to support their worldview are indistinguishable from the most extreme closed religious communities.

It's like some sort of mass delusion. Either sincere but faith-based, or malicious and manipulative.

Agree with this but there is also a performative aspect. I do not believe that half the people who profess to find a gender critical perspective distasteful, distressing or discriminatory actually believe in gendered souls themselves. But they buy into the idea of demonstrating allyship. There is a weird trade off where validating anyone who claims a marginalised identity, in turn validates people’s own image of themselves as good people. They don’t actually have to believe in the crap to feel good about themselves. They don’t need to believe in it to want to punish non-believers.

I think that's spot on, winters.

I stumbled on this piece which I think also goes some way towards analysing the "most oppressed minority ever" narrative, together with the justifying of some pretty appalling behaviour and language.

www.scientificamerican.com/article/unraveling-the-mindset-of-victimhood/

Very much is performative, as Winterborne says. What was that phrase Kuc used the other day, 'The Package of Good Beliefs', or something like that? Well, 'those poor trans kids' are the cherry on top of that package, it seems to me, which is why every pop star and comedian is falling over themselves to sign up for it.

That’s an interesting Scientific American article. Applies to much of the gender wars, and the demonisation of JKR is a perfect example.

I was wondering whether those on the other side of the argument would read it and think it applies to us, too. I do always try to think myself into the opposing side's shoes in any dispute, but I genuinely find it very difficult to do it to any meaningful degree on this topic.