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>

Oh, absolutely. Just observing that many uninformed members of the public would probably recoil in a horrified "WTF have I just read?? This cannot be for real!" way. I mean, I go around reeling in a similar fashion.

Safeguarding is always about the worst situation, not the best situation. I genuinely don't understand why the zealots don't acknowledge this.

I’ve also had the ‘surely it can’t be that bad’ discussions, as well as ‘what’s the actual problem with transwomen in women’s changing rooms/toilets/spaces? It wouldn’t bother me’. I’ve tried to explain the issues but it’s usually met with ‘oh that won’t happen’ and ‘I doubt that’. I’ve provided links to evidence and arguments but I don’t think they’re ever opened.

I guess it’s just not on some people’s radars, including some women’s. Maybe they think it doesn’t really affect them because they don’t use MVAW services, don’t need care, don’t go to a gym, don’t plan on ever being in prison or a psychiatric hospital.

I used to attend a service for women who’d experienced sexual assault but stopped going when they changed their policy to allow transwomen into the group. Some time later they did allow a transwoman in, and someone complained. I had an acquaintance who was also in the group at that time, and she explained what had happened, using the most awful, abusive language to describe her. Turns out she was a TRA and identified as NB. Even as a survivor of MVAW themselves, she/they couldn’t see why it was an issue, and thought it was fair game to be vicious to this woman for not wanting a male in that space.

I keep hearing that GRC won’t change anything other than making the process of obtaining one easier for trans people, and that women’s services can still exclude transwomen. I’m not sure what kind of alternative reality they’re living in.

They seem genuinely not to care about safeguarding. The argument seems to be that rapists and abusers are going to rape and abuse, and it’s wrong to retain barriers to obtaining a GRC as even though some rapists or abusers may fraudulently change gender to target victims, they’d find another way if that route wasn’t available to them. The harm to trans people caused by retaining these barriers meanwhile is too big a price to pay for preventing sexual offenders exploiting the system.

It seems like most people see policy and law as a mechanism for being nice to trans people and think that when bad faith actors come along it can all be safely ignored because of natural justice. Or common sense (that elderly lady really won’t be able to object to a self-identifying burly man changing her inco pads but they think they will when it comes to it).

Men don't seem to understand or care how much we fear them.

Just this week a man was convicted of murdering his pregnant partner and bludgeoning to death her children and their friend and to top it all raping her 11 year old daughter as she lay dying.

Now most men are not a danger but a man did to a woman who let him in to her life and trusted him. Sarah Everard trusted Wayne Couzins to be a professional who was there to protect her. Men constantly do this to women who trust them and we are supposed to jist accept that there is not an issue?

Fuck that sky high.

Good piece in the Times this morning:

Scotland’s gender bill should worry Labour

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/73ab6b80-821f-11ed-933d-2ad94f4b2285?shareToken=5fe72f57c61ef00f04433bc764237ba4

(Sorry if it’s already posted elsewhere, been rushing about a bit today)

If nothing else, before the next election I will swamp my local area with leaflets about this policy and explain that local Labour MP and councillors support it. I bet most people are still blissfully unaware.

Winterborne74

The argument seems to be that rapists and abusers are going to rape and abuse, and it’s wrong to retain barriers to obtaining a GRC as even though some rapists or abusers may fraudulently change gender to target victims, they’d find another way if that route wasn’t available to them.

There's also been the frequent claim that real trans w are all lovely and would never do anything as awful as raping women and children.

Good Times piece. And yeah, I've thought (and posted) before that if the GBP realised what is going on here, they would be horrified. The media (and, especially, the so-called quality media, with a few notable exceptions) have served the public very poorly.

And I'd never, ever vote Tory, but Labour aren't getting my vote whilst they support this madness.

Nor mine. I was a Labour member but have now resigned, and made clear exactly why.

I am still a member, and haven't resigned, yet. But membership is falling, and here's one of the main reasons. I think maybe if you're a member, and you state publicly that you're voting for someone else, say, on Twitter, they throw you out anyway?

I was a Labour member too but left in 2019. I wrote and told them why and got a reply that basically said 'Okay, bye'. Fuck 'em.

Just been talking to my brother who has a lot of friends in Scotland and he said most people there are only just starting to realise what's happening and they're horrified. All the noise that women were making was ignored and people blithely looked the other way, but now it's too late.

From the Times article:

Much of the parliamentary process was quietly rigged. Quite rightly, the Holyrood committee considering the bill heard from plenty of transgender witnesses; mystifyingly, it refused to hear oral evidence from female survivors of male violence.

They haven’t even bothered to reply to me!

They only got back to me after about three months, Cyan!

I voted Green twice, before I became aware of this whole disaster and learned that the Greens are entirely onboard with it. I don't know who's on the slate in May, but I may end up spoiling my ballot.

As a non-man, the Greens are out, as are Labour.

I've always been a natural Labour voter, but they're not having it this time, despite the local MP being pretty decent. We've asked him for help twice and he / his office came through. I also didn't vote for them, after Iraq, until Blair flounced.

Justin Webb - speaking to Baroness Kennedy - used words like legal fiction and untruth.

Excellent.

I liked this from Johann Lamont:

My advice. Don’t justify the unjustifiable. Just say you made a choice. Picked a side. Decided who was expendable and who was collateral damage. But never tell a survivor of male violence that you feel their pain. Just tell them other things mattered more. And live with your pick.

twitter.com/JohannLamont/status/1606097050252165120

In the past I've banged on at the Old place about how everyone should vote, and spoiling ballot papers was rubbish. And I pretty much still take that view. But, as things stand now, I shan't be voting Labour, or Green (who, as Sinner says, are even worse), and I certainly won't vote Tory. If there's another candidate who doesn't share these looney views, fine, otherwise spoiling it may have to be.

This is the tragedy isn't it? Women haven't left labour. Labour have abandoned women and most egregiously children with their deliberate choices. Not a word about social contagion, Cass, unethical medical experimentation on children. Just appeasing men who self identify as women and placing them on a pedestal at the top of the oppression charts.
Yet they'll knock on my door like they did the other week still wanting my vote.

Jog on dudes and gals - not happening.