Women's rights general conversations - Thread 3

[Kucinghitam]

Continuation of Thread 2.

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 "Has anybody noticed this recurring theme that keeps coming up??" or even "Random bloke asked me to smile while I was choosing onions, grr"- that sort of thing).

Plenty of scolding on the Starmer thread, because Labour is owed the votes of Good People, or something.

Well of course. And women can't possibly have issues that are important to them that men don't care about.

We discussed this quote upthread and there's a whole thread now. I'm rather by the posters who just don't seem to get it.

www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4738677-women-are-only-as-safe-as-their-male-partner-allows-them-to-be

I think there's been a bit of an invasion lately, to be honest.

I can't believe Labour is STILL pushing ahead with this after all that's happened. We are SO sunk if Labour wins next year and I fear they will no matter what. I fear a landslide and we're so sunk then we'll be at the bottom of the sea. We can't do anything once that happens. He'll have the votes and if it's in the manifesto the Lords can't stop it under the Salisbury Convention. He will say, people want this. People voted for this. It all feels so futile right now. We aren't listened to. How many women are going to be imprisoned with rapists - which Lisa Nandy supports!? How many women will get abused in toilets, changing rooms, hospital wards, intimate care, refuges? Our spaces are gone. Predators given the green light. Men told you can go anywhere you want and do anything you want. Indecent exposure will no longer be a crime - how could it be when there is no such thing as a man flashing his penis when he calls himself a woman!?

Why is Starmer doing this WHY!? Why is he so tin-eared!? If he can't read the room on this what else can't he read the room on? I wept with relief and joy when Blair won in 1997 even tho I had my doubts as many of us did. I'll be weeping with fear, rage, anger and terror if Starmer wins a landslide next year.

Some of those responses are very strange. Like the poster who basically says ‘it won’t happen to me because I choose not live with a man’. What difference does it make whether you live together or not?

And another poster who doesn’t understand why women don’t leave when the man shows signs of being controlling. They obviously haven’t experienced an obsessive and stalky ex. Or read the many news stories about women murdered by their ex partners.

Or my favourite, that she doesn't allow her DH to abuse her. Talk about missing the point!

Why is Starmer doing this WHY!? Why is he so tin-eared!? If he can't read the room on this what else can't he read the room on? I wept with relief and joy when Blair won in 1997 even tho I had my doubts as many of us did. I'll be weeping with fear, rage, anger and terror if Starmer wins a landslide next year.

It would help so much if the Equality Act could be updated now to make clear the characteristic ‘sex ‘ is biological, not false ‘legal sex’ from a gender recognition certificate or gender reassignment - before Starmer gets in.

To sign and share the petition to update the Equality Act
⬇️
petition.parliament.uk/petitions/623243

As I'm a NotGoodPeople, you all know what I'd say about this book. I'm only linking because once again, I see the same few posters who excuse or celebrate GoodBundleOfEverything are predictably doing the same again.

www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4738793-to-think-that-this-book-should-not-be-sold-to-young-girls?

Neither accusing nor celebrating here, but I’d’ve definitely read that book as a kid (I read everything except the books set for English O and A-levels) and it definitely wouldn’t have turned me trans, although I was a tomboy who dreaded growing breasts. Of course when I did grow breasts they were lovely, and whenever I was in a locked room with a mirror I’d whip up my top and have another look at them. I still like them 47 years on.

Why is Starmer doing this WHY!?

Because he is part of or in thrall to a movement to tear apart the fabric of society.

Has anyone asked him about the rapists-in-female-prisons debate? Sturgeon thinks there are three genders whilst Rishi thinks there are two (and the Tory Government quietly changed the criteria in Jan to avoid this problem). What was Starmer's response?

whenever I was in a locked room with a mirror I’d whip up my top and have another look at them

Ha, Mavis, I used to do that! I was never feminine and preferred doing all the boy things like climbing trees and jumping off the shed roof, with a sheet for a parachute that sadly didn't work. I've wondered many times, if I was young now, I'd have been persuaded I was a boy, but like you once my adult female body developed, I thought it was wonderful.

I also hated my nose, was obsessed with other people’s, inwardly celebrated on the rare occasions I saw someone with a worse nose than me, would have given anything to have a nose job in my teens. By the time I hit my 20s I didn’t give a fig about my nose!

There's certainly a live one on the "Beauty students urged to strip... " thread, been there last day or two. Strong case for DNFTT, I think.

Couple of strands here.

Firstly, saying that reading a book wouldn't make you become that thing, well, yes probably it wouldn't - but we are on FWR hopefully aware of the effect of social contagion upon people (particularly the turbulent minds in the changing bodies of adolescents).

Secondly, I'm personally uncomfortable with material encouraging developing teens to hate their bodies any more than they might already (see above).

Thirdly, I think you could make an argument for such material as part of a broader message about tackling difficult feelings, embracing your emerging maturity, learning to accept yourself, becoming comfortable in yourself and so on - but later on in that thread somebody shows further images from the book which show that the entire thing is full-on TRSOH tropes.

The 90% or whatever percentage of girls who might not be influenced by that book and its ilk are sort of irrelevant, it's the 10% (or 1% or .1%) who are negatively influenced who are the concern. (A bit like it's irrelevant whether I'm personally bothered by a bloke in the women's loos).

It's interesting. Is there more obtuseness than usual around right now?

I see the fragrant Susie Green has turned up as a project manager/ fundraiser for Gender GP. That doesn't seem dodgy or nepotistic in the slightest. Not even a little bit.

So she really hasn't seen how the wind is blowing?

On that book, I share the unease, to put it mildly, but girls cannot be kept from that book (and, presumably, others in the same vein), if they don't access it in book format, they will online. Good sex education in schools would go a long way to help.

I agree with Stephen King on this:

”Hey, kids! It's your old buddy Steve King telling you that if they ban a book in your school, haul your ass to the nearest bookstore or library ASAP and find out what they don't want you to read.”

So I can’t say “except for this book, oh and that one, and maybe that other one as well”. Banning it would only make me want to read it more. Records banned by Radio 1 usually got to number one.

Oh, I don't think the book should be banned - just that it's not a good message for distressed children to be encountering (encouraging hatred of their developing bodies and that the cause is because they're "really" a boy and the cure is permanent medicalisation, lying about the real physical effects of said permanent medicalisation, etc) and for those reasons, it's hardly a book I'd think should be shortlisted for awards and special kudos (which was the original subject of the thread).

Oh indeed, that’s what I mean, it shouldn’t be banned. If I saw the book I’d read it, or at least ask the owner/reader what they thought of it. I actually do want to read it now, despite being as appalled at the images I’ve seen as anyone else.

I think there's a massive gulf between banning a book and promoting it. This looks to me like one that should need to be sought by teens who are feeling a certain way (preferably with a trusted adult they can discuss the content with) rather than one that is celebrated as for the general reader.

Because it is quite niche and teenagers are, despite what they think, very vulnerable, very worried about normality and whether they measure up and often confused.