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).

As people used to say, GPWM.

(Good Point Well Made)

I've woken up in a state of fury today.

Sometimes it's possible to stand back from the various things that have been occupying your attention, the many things - too many things - that you find irritating/unbelievable/infuriating: how language has been changed; how transwomen are favoured over women; how supine most people seem to be about this; how our children are being lied to; how the professional management classes flaunt their spurious virtue; how stonewall in particular has determinedly bypassed anything approaching transparency.

And somehow, during the night, my mind did step back. And I found myself so shocked to see clearly how this utter distortion has slyly taken over, without any sort of public discussion - it's almost physically breathtaking.

"Assigned male at birth" as a survey form category in a mail from my union (Unison). Rapists reported - by media with truth as a stated value - as "male". People scared to say the truth - no, don't call it some sort of "their truth" pomo rubbish, I mean the place you must come to where you either have a male or a female body. Actual material reality. Not a picture.

I've no idea how to stop this; I wish I did. At least I will never use pronouns in line with gender ideology, for anyone, anywhere. I'll not use "birthing parent" instead of mother or any of that "inclusive" language that excludes women. It's not a fat lot, but it's something. What else can we do?

It's like a nightmare from Dallas, except I've woken up and everything is wrong.

Actions we can do to move the mainstream back to reality:

Talk with people you meet.
Write to your MP - sex matters, fair play for women, wpuk all have campaigns of this type. KPSS have a detailed website.
Write to your union.
Write to local councillors.
Write to the BBC - either complain about poor reporting/praise clear reporting, send your views to any answers, question time etc.
Sign petitions.
Write to companies in the stonewall scheme.
Schools/colleges about what they teach.
The NHS about clear information about women.

Unfortunately there are many opportunities to campaign for reality about who are women and what single-sex spaces are needed.

My current action - responding to the IPSO consultation about their guidelines. Deadline is 10th March so needs doing soon.

One thing I've noticed recently is that people are using clearer language - e.g. "the rapist is a man" instead of "she is male-bodied".

Also, a few years ago I would often see "the <organisation of your choice> is gaslighting us". That has been replaced with words like "untrue" "wrong" "lying". I think this is also a welcome move towards clarity.

The IPSO consultation is really important, it's because of their guidelines that lots of newspapers don't report men as men accurately.

Genderism needs to be challenged as an irrational belief system, even if that offends the genderists.

Gender does not exist. It is not a real thing. Altering material reality to conform to a fantasy is not sane.

I can't see a thread in this yet, so I'll probably start one when I've finished my breakfast if nobody else gets there first. But so I don't lose the links, the Canadian prison service has started collecting proper data on gender diverse inmates.

Summary, with link to the full thing www.csc-scc.gc.ca/research/005008-r442_E-en.shtml

Article picking out some of the 'highlights'. (I don’t know how the DW usually stands as a news outlet, but in this case it leads with a link to the original study, and has screenshots of tables of the original data, so it seems a reasonable source.)

www.dailywire.com/news/9-in-10-trans-women-in-canadas-prisons-are-violent-nearly-half-convicted-of-sex-crimes-study

Sorry, Angelico - the above will not help your rage.

But the fact they are actually collecting and publishing the data, and now allow prison governors to refuse some transfers, is a sign the needle is edging back towards sanity.

Haven’t watched this yet, but have bookmarked it for later. Coleman Hughes has Kathleen Stock on his show. I enjoy both, so am looking forward to it:

Just watched it, thanks for the link @Winterborne74 . What an interesting intelligent conversation. I miss Twitter horribly but wouldn’t have dared to comment on that video there. Feeling quite radicalised tbh!

The Observer has reviewed Time To Think (there's plenty of excellent discussion about the book on the relevant thread, so I don't want to rehash it here).

www.theguardian.com/books/2023/feb/19/time-to-think-by-hannah-barnes-review-what-went-wrong-at-gids?

But this little quote just jumped out at me:

Another of Barnes’s interviewees is Dr Kirsty Entwistle, an experienced clinical psychologist. When she got a job at Gids’ Leeds outpost, she told her new colleagues she didn’t have a gender identity. “I’m just female,” she said. This, she was informed, was transphobic.

It kind of triggered a "memory" of the old place, where many of us had tried to explain precisely that this was our position, but this in itself was incontrovertible evidence of our Bad Peopleness.

I just watched it too. I'd have liked to have heard more on the way Stonewall and other pressure groups have colonised the govt and legal and medical establishment. But I'm sure KS has plenty more to say on that.

I also thought of that woman in Norway who is facing a prison sentence for saying a man can't be a lesbian.

this in itself was incontrovertible evidence of our Bad Peopleness.

And lack of self awareness and privilege. Because we are so comfortable in our gender identity we aren’t even aware of it. Our shoes fit. Like a white person not seeing race, people who claim not to have a gender identity are lacking in imagination and empathy for minorities.

Meanwhile Stonewall is waiting in the wings to help those who may not be sure about their own gender identity to find the form of oppression that works best for them:

twitter.com/stonewalluk/status/1627216416880619520

But I'm sure KS has plenty more to say on that.

I’m half way through, watching in bursts between chores. So far it has been interesting in parts, but nothing new. I think it’s pitched at a different audience which is neither particularly familiar with every aspect of the gender debate, nor the situation in the UK. It’s a good conversation, but it’s inevitable there will be omissions.

Yes, agree with that, Winterborne.

BinturongsSmellOfPopcorn · Today 10:50

But the fact they are actually collecting and publishing the data, and now allow prison governors to refuse some transfers, is a sign the needle is edging back towards sanity.

It's brought to mind Lord of the Flies, as the Navy ship has hove into view. All the nasty boys suddenly have to start behaving again.

Just read the review of Time to Think in the Observer. If you wish you can support the Guardian by buying a copy through their bookshop. I think I'd rather get a copy from absolutely anywhere else!

If any of them have the impertinence to try that on me I will tell them all about the privilege and comfort of being female, the constant harassment and steady incidents of minor assault since puberty, the discrimination at work, the condescention of mediocre men, the world where everything from seat belts to lawn mower starters to museum labels is designed around default male size and if after all that they don't show some awareness of my self I have plenty more where that came from. That's before starting on the female body.

I'm an adult human female and my right to be called a woman is hard earned. I will not share it with male fantasists, and I will seek to protect women who have been robbed of it by this pernicious fantasy.

And I will not play the gender game.

Well said, elderberry!

I think I saw something about that case being dropped.

It kind of triggered a "memory" of the old place, where many of us had tried to explain precisely that this was our position, but this in itself was incontrovertible evidence of our Bad Peopleness.

I very rarely refer to There but my eyes rolled a full 360 degrees this weekend watching one of the chief scolds announcing that men need to notice that men can be Bad People. Without joining any of the dots, obviously.

I forgot to says thank you all for the good advice. I suppose we do what we can. I was able to take a small stand against the exclusive language I detest ( the sort that excludes women) in some recent work, but the way everyone trod solemnly around the issue felt like fear to me. Nothing but fear.

I'm refraining from reading much there apart from food and drink threads because the idea of not being able to respond to idiocy makes me cross - but I do sometimes wonder, in the current fast moving news background, whether the mass of them still as heavily committed to the New Totalitarianism as they were six weeks ago.

Presumably next month there will be some rules, and I can make an informed decision about being more active there.

This is a long read, and mostly I suspect rather dull if you don't have a particular interest in the topic, but it is an example of Really Good medical research and has cheered me right up (despite their persistent use of gender instead of sex).

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5746020/

Not only do they look at sex difference in prevalence, but they also look at loads of other things disaggregated by sex. Possible reasons for the differences. Differences in how patients present and the importance of adapting consulting styles. How both symptoms and treatment ate affected by menstrual cycle, hormonal contraceptives and HRT - and the importance of not only taking this into account when running tests amd prescribing but also the need to explain it to patients.

It's brilliant.