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).

In country places in Ireland many of us continue to use 'ye' as the second person plural.

In Yorkshire isn't it "tha"?

In Sheffield it's "da".

Ye is common in Newcastle, in the singular.

Ye is common in Newcastle, in the singular.

I suppose he had to hide somewhere after his antisemitic meltdown.

Thee and tha, for thee and thou.

We still have ye in NI, with a short rather than long e.

mach2 · Today 19:03

Ye is common in Newcastle, in the singular.

I suppose he had to hide somewhere after his antisemitic meltdown.

Groan etc.

Nee one like yee petal

I've come back to apologise. While 'thee', etc. are not exactly commonplace, they're not as close to extinction as I suggested. Perhaps, that's what'll happen to pronouns. They'll cling on as a regional dialect, in Bristol or Brighton maybe?

Now I’m practising “pronouns” in a Brizzle accent.

It's a slightly different situation with pronouns, though.

The words (excluding neopronouns) aren't new, and will almost certainly carry on being used for hundreds of years. It's the surrounding behaviour of announcing/asking/swapping/demanding that is new and will (I hope) prove a short-lived fad.

I don't think cis is going to last. Hopefully.

I bring you my first Twitter "attack". It was hidden because "May contain offensive content." To be fair it wasn't particularly offensive. I'll give you my Twitter bio (it's mentioned so handy for perspective) and my tweet.

My bio. This has changed recently but only in part. The last part is new, the other(s) not. My back image is a black and white photo of a young girl, fist in the air, standing by graffiti which says "A woman's place is in the revolution." Bio words: "Come the revolution I will woman the barricades! Adult human female." This is followed by three hearts in purple, white and green.

My tweet: This is so wrong. I can't stand Starmer, for other reasons, but there is no way I would do this during a vigil. The lack of respect is egregious.

The response: The fact that people like you, with your blatant bio, feel comfortable talking about Brianna or the vigils in any way is fucking disgusting.

Keep your transphobic bullshit away from this topic.

How dare you comment on anything to do with this when it's YOUR politics causing it.

My reply: It isn't. What I have to say, which is not transphobic but deeply concerned with those TRAs who are more intent on ideological point scoring than young trans people, is measured. Brianna's murder was tragic and as awful as every meaningless knife crime in this country.

To be fair to the responder their tweet was well written and there were no threats just anger. I think/hope I responded with dignity. I do feel sort of grateful that I am no longer sitting on the sidelines just watching and have finally found the courage of my convictions.

I think as more people reject using cis to describe themselves because it's frankly unnecessary, it will die out. Activists will keep on using it but when a descriptor is foisted on people it rarely works. Except TERF because we've sort of reappropriated it, cf happy terfmas, etc.

I see cis in the same light as that daft 'allopathic' than homeopathy loons use to mean 'everybody except us'.

Oh I’m definitely going to broach it. That’s what I meant by set font to green CAPS. A fine disgusted of Tunbridge Wells rant is brewing. I read Vebrithien‘s threads as they unfolded and was nudged by them to get involved.

Someone said something like “this is the time to be boring” meaning just ask lots of questions. That’s my next step, ask about various policies, safeguarding, how they are balancing rights under the EA characteristics, etc., just give them enough rope to tie themselves up in knots and then say my piece.

Our local primary school has been teaching 9 year olds not to use “wrong” pronouns for their “non-cisgender” classmates

I never thought I'd see a day when parents would have to unteach their kids what they learned at school.

I think cis and pronoun statements will disappear. Gender ideology is doomed because it is fundamentally incoherent and contradicts reality. There will always be people who are gender nonconforming and the freer we are from gender based oppression the better for everyone. I know the analogy with emperor’s new clothes is a bit of a cliche in this debate, but people can’t evade reality for ever.

Meanwhile more hellish news for Afghan women:

www.theguardian.com/global-development/2023/feb/17/taliban-ban-contraception-western-conspiracy

I never thought I'd see a day when parents would have to unteach their kids what they learned at school.

To be fair, my mother tried to unteach all the feminist rubbish I was learning. :)

She failed.

I rather surprised they hadn't already banned contraception. But I hadn't realised quite how horrific their maternal mortality figures were - and those won't reflect the latest restrictions on women's healthcare.

I was at my daughter's school yesterday and was looking about for dodgy posters, but saw none. She's said a few things, something about "It's polite to use pronouns," a few ago.

The Taliban know what a woman is, even if they didn't clock John Simpson.

'Polite to use pronouns'? Whatever happened to 'who's "she", the cat's mother'?

This is a good speech by Naomi Cunningham of Legal Feminist on language and power:

www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:share:7032783665097003008/

Lands lots of punches, but I like this which puts me in mind of some of the factionalism within gender critical feminism that has recently been on display:

“More usually, it’s the niche belief that gets a label. So people who don’t believe the world is round are “flat-Earthers” - people who think the world was created in 6 days as described in Genesis are “young Earth creationists” - the people who denied that President Obama was born in America were “birthers”, and so on.
I can’t prove it, but I’m pretty sure the belief that sex is about what’s in your head or your soul or your inner essence is the niche one. Most of the people alive on the planet today know that all mammals including humans come in two types: the sort that can gestate and give birth to young, and the other sort - the sort that can impregnate the first sort. And if you’re one sort, there is nothing doctors can do to you that will ever literally turn you into the other sort.
But on this subject, the people who hold the mainstream belief get a label, and the people who hold the niche belief don’t. Calling people who believe in the material reality of sex “gender critical feminists” is as if we called people who believe in gravity “gravity-believing socialists” - even though almost everyone believes in gravity and most of them aren’t socialists at all.”

Maybe it’s time for the sex realists to stop worrying about whether they are part of a single movement or not. There is no requirement to be. What matters is reality.

That's a great speech.