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).

a certain amount of almost triumphant TRSOH finger-pointing

The TRAS will jump on anything to push their ideology, they're salivating over the opportunity the death of this poor child has given them.

But I stand by wanting to understand the myriad factors of what makes teenagers, both male and female, vulnerable to grooming, to gang culture, to carrying knives, to county lines, to Only Fans, to trans ideology, to other sorts of ideology (eg Andrew Tate).

@ShireWifeofNigelFarage and I agree with that but trawling the instagram account of a young woman murdered on Saturday, and commenting on her clothing choices etc isn't the way to do this for fucks sake I'm not the only person to point that out to you, you can take it on board or not, or just read my post and pick me up on my use of the word "twat". Fucking hell.

I saw that the thread had been deleted, since I was on it on my phone. I then couldn't log in and wondered if I'd been suspended, but I'm here on the PC.

I’ve agreed with you in that I should’ve rephrased it, whilst pointing out that it’s easy to type things that are received differently to the writer’s intent, using your ‘twat’ as an example.

I mentioned clothing only because it indicates subculture (others have made Sophie Lancaster comparisons posted elsewhere) and IMO, based on a variety of credible sources such as Genspect and the first hand account of male detransitioners, it’s subculture that is notable for vulnerability.

I agree with other posters that it’s better as a generalised conversation moving forward and won’t mention Brianna again.

I posted this on the now deleted thread, it’s the charity that supported my murdered friend’s parents, Support After Murder & Manslaughter:

samm.org.uk

Thank you and apologies for being posting intemperately @ShireWifeofNigelFarage. It's just such a very upsetting situation.

That’s ok, apology unnecessary, I thank you for your engagement 💐

You aren’t wrong to express your opinions on my post and I don’t think it’s unwarranted to interrogate me. I wasn’t specific and measured enough (comfortable on FWR I suppose) considering the awful circumstances.
Of course feminists are going to be sensitive to topics such as clothing of the victim when discussing violent crime, and it was dumb of me not to anticipate that my comments could be interpreted that way.

FWIW (speaking only generally, not about Brianna) there are other non-clothing indicators of this subculture, eg that IKEA shark and anime avatars, and I was just (perhaps lazily! I would accept that criticism!) using clothing to short hand towards a youth subculture that currently has no specific name.
It was a crass, clumsily drawn image but my intent was to make a distinction between the growing crop of vulnerable teenagers (often neurodiverse, often socially isolated) and latelife adult male transitioners (often hyper masculine, eg military careers, married with kids etc)

I genuinely do worry about all the children, teens and very young adults caught up in this strange cultural moment in time as I know lots of them personally via my teenage ROGD DstepD.

I suspect this username probably makes my posts seem more inflammatory than they are - I change a lot, usually for topical commentary rather than privacy. Perhaps I should go back to the one before (NicolaSturgeonsSOGIbottom).

Thanks again for engaging with me. I firmly believe that the way to tackle bad speech is via more speech rather than censorship - last night my speech was the bad speech 🙈

Twitter does seem to be a shitstorm of blame despite the police saying that this was almost certainly not a hate crime. Of course GCs are to blame and frankly hateful. A child has been murdered, a family is living a nightmare and rather than any respect being shown to the family or maybe a more general discussion about the ongoing huge problem of knife crime in this country ideological points are being scored.

Even if this was a hate crime those to blame would be the perpetrators. I've seen this actual comment: "Are they happy now!" How can a group of people, mostly women, be so monstered that anyone could believe that we would be fucking happy about this?! I've unfollowed one person who I used to enjoy reading because of this and would unfollow any GC who wanted to make political capital from it too although at least I know I could call them out on it, have an actual conversation, and not be attacked simply for having human feelings.

Yeah, I can't believe that anyone imagines for one moment that people who have a GC position want to harm children or take any joy from a situation such as this. I guess that's where positioning disagreement as hatred leads.

Especially when you take into consideration that this is Mumsnet and loads (but not all!) of us are mums, and only really came to understand how vital feminism still is when we had to face pregnancy/birth/infertility issues square on
As if a group of (majority) mums would feel anything except absolute horror at, and deep sympathy over, the death of another mother’s child! It’s nonsensical to believe otherwise.
Child bereavement is an almost unimaginable level of grief - we all know we’ll have to bury our parents one day, none of us expect to bury our children. The loss of a child is always, always, a tragedy.

My murdered friend’s dad died a year ago. He was an exceptional man, a psychiatrist who had spent his career working with some of the most marginalised in our society, streetsleepers, trafficked and prostituted women (and some young men in similar circumstances) and many drug and alcohol dependents. He was pragmatic and non judgemental and founded a clinic specifically to facilitate direct access between those marginalised populations and doctors that didn’t require a fixed address or a gp referral.

He left work early on the day the policemen came knocking with their hats under their arms.
Never went back.
Said he didn’t think he could help other people with their mental health problems now that he had no answers for his own never-ending grief.

@ShireWifeofNigelFarage I’m sorry for being a bit inflammatory with my response to you, I appreciate you explaining your wording and realise the sentiment behind what you were saying.

And I’m sorry to read about your friend and his child, how awful. I sometimes think about the parents of people who have been murdered over the years, the ones that make it into the news, and wonder how they are. Not sure if that’s a strange thing to say but I can only imagine the unbearable grief and I feel so sad for them left to carry something so terrible.

Thank you 💐

I’m glad we can have a robust exchange and come out the other end with a better understanding of everyone’s position.
I’m a bit sad that we’ve got to the point where a mumsnetter feels unable to speak her mind and criticise a fellow mumsnetter without the protection of a doublecloak of anonymity but I do understand why.
Not feeling able to speak freely amongst ourselves is just one of many horrors bestowed upon us by ten plus years of internet censorship and resultant cancellation cults.
I’m hopeful that we’ll be able to push through if we all just keep on talking to each other ❤️

My friend’s mum’s life also changed forever but (happily)she’s still with us at 80 so I won’t relay her personal story. I’m sure mumsnetters will intuitively understand how profound and awful it is to have your precious child and all your hopes and dreams for their future snatched away by a few minutes of senseless violence.
My friend was a young adult when he died, but he’ll always be his mother’s baby.
She wasn’t allowed to touch him, after.
The authorities kept his body as evidence for 9 whole months and it always struck her as horribly, painfully poetic, having carried him for 9 whole months.

My friend’s murder was a big news story at the time but it was very early days for the internet and has faded into history, which is bittersweet.
Other high profile cases of the period are perhaps still memorable, Damilola Taylor is one who stuck with me, partly because the two families shared a police liaison officer, so we always felt a sort of invisible thread of connection.
I still think of Damilola’s mum, Gloria often.
It took such a long time to get justice for Damilola (6 years!) and Gloria died not long after.

Thinking of Gloria today, as well as Brianna’s family, and my friend’s mum, who I should really text/call/email - my eldest child spent Christmas with her, she’s his honourary grannie. He’s now almost the same age her son was when he died.

Anyway, didn’t mean to distract from Brianna & family, just sharing personal stories in empathy and sympathy, and respecting that Brianna’s case is sub judice.

For people who don't frequent the other feminism board, please pop over to have a look at this. Chance for input on the next stage of the post-Everard enquiry - responses needed by 24 Feb. www.mumsnet.com/talk/feminism/4739965-angiolini-inquiry-policing-misogyny

I have completed the survey, I didn't know about it before now. Thanks for sharing it.

Twitter does seem to be a shitstorm

Isn't it just?

My murdered friend’s dad died a year ago. He was an exceptional man, a psychiatrist who had spent his career working with some of the most marginalised in our society, streetsleepers, trafficked and prostituted women (and some young men in similar circumstances) and many drug and alcohol dependents. He was pragmatic and non judgemental and founded a clinic specifically to facilitate direct access between those marginalised populations and doctors that didn’t require a fixed address or a gp referral.

He left work early on the day the policemen came knocking with their hats under their arms.
Never went back.
Said he didn’t think he could help other people with their mental health problems now that he had no answers for his own never-ending grief.

Heartbreaking. So sad for your friend and his family

The Guardian publishing an article about the plasticity of our personalities, but still can't join the dots

www.theguardian.com/books/2023/feb/13/the-big-idea-your-personality-is-not-set-in-stone

Thanks for the link to the survey. I'll fill it in over the next couple of days. I'm being overly social two days in a row so will get to it later. I didn't know about it so it's great to now know and to be able to participate.

Re the shitstorm. I got my daily email of things to look at on the Twitters this evening and one was from Glinner. Went to it and the hate he was getting was so upsetting that I just closed it down. Obviously, he has blood on his hands and is to blame for all of it. So much hatred out there and it's so hideously wrong to use this awful situation in this way. I am sickened by a lot of what I've seen today.

Anyway, enough. I won't talk about it anymore because I feel like continuing to do so is to become part of the horrible lack of respect for Brianna Ghey and her poor family.

This made me laugh. Thank you.

www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4742675-why-intelligent-people-belief-stupid-things?

This is so very familiar!

That's ans excellent article.

A great article I read earlier today. I'm going to read some of her other articles that are linked in this one.

The Tragedy of Becoming a Woman

That's horrific, if horribly familiar reading.

This link may work better:

unherd.com/2023/02/the-tragedy-of-becoming-a-woman/

Sturgeon resigns.

www.lbc.co.uk/news/nicola-sturgeon-quits-scotland/

holy shit balls