Women's rights general conversations - Thread 4

[Kucinghitam]

Continuation of Thread 3.

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).

That thread does seem to have gone @SqueakyDinosaur . Here's the actual consultation: https://www.college.police.uk/article/recording-non-crime-hate-incidents-have-your-say

Found it - looks like the title change broke the link: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/the-college-of-policing-consultation-on-non-hate-crime-incidents

Cracking thread here from Eliza Mondegreen about the hyperbole of the GI movement:

https://mobile.twitter.com/elizamondegreen/status/1534586567859257344

That's a good thread. The tactics she outlines are so familiar.

There's always room for a quirky cat! I'll read Squeaky's link later, there's a four letter word preventing me at present. Starts with w, ends with k.

Yes, work!

and if France isn’t working out well surely it’s much safer to go to a country that shares a land border? There are loads of countries on the European mainland and getting passage on a small boat costs a fortune (paid to human traffickers). Wouldn’t it be better to spend that money on a train to a border and just cross by foot?

Unlike the US, free movement in the EU means anyone can walk over any border whenever they like, no check points, no documents to show, no chance of getting shot by border control.

Risking your life by getting into a shitty little vessel makes sense when you are setting off from a war zone and heading for the nearest safe land mass, it makes no sense when you are in already in a safe country and the water you are about to cross is the busiest shipping lane in the world and really fucking cold.

We need policies and laws that dissuade this route of entry because it’s really fucking unsafe, both for the people who are on the boats and for other vessels in the channel. The people who benefit from this human misery are the traffickers!

https://www.trinityhouse.co.uk/about-us/a-to-z-of-trinity-house/dover-strait

I want the UK to welcome migrants - I want asylum seekers to be properly supported, housed and helped to participate in their communities while they await their refugee status to be granted. I want the draconian rules over spousal visas to be revisited, I want justice for the Windrush generation and their descendants. I want people to want to come here for career or study reasons and for work and student visas to be a fair, accessible and reasonable process.

I don’t want human traffickers taking advantage of people and putting their lives at risk, whether that be via suffocation in the back of haulage trucks or drowning in the sea.

There is no reason for anyone to risk their lives in the channel. They are safest on mainland Europe (and the U.K. should do more to share responsibility via taking a quota of asylum seekers who have registered in their first safe country and speeding up the process from asylum seeker to refugee).

I get really annoyed at people saying that Ukrainians are given special treatment due to being white. This is inflammatory race baiting.

Migrants, asylum seekers and refugees are three distinct categories in international human rights law.

They are being treated differently due to arriving in the country after their refugee status has already been granted (which is why they can work and claim benefits) rather than entering as asylum seekers (who have limited access to public funds while their claims are processed) or migrants (migrants are two categories, those with valid legal visas and those whose legal visas have expired/those who entered the country without visas).

Saying you don’t want migrants being illegally trafficked across the channel does not mean you hate immigrants!

The same mechanism that is used to denounce GC feminists as fascists and Nazis is used to shut down people who are making perfectly reasonable points about safe and legal immigration routes.

(one of my best friends is an expert witness for asylum seekers coming to the U.K. and EU from a particular region in South America - she supports those who are fleeing gang violence, including, interestingly, lots of male transsexuals who are genuinely persecuted and whose lives are at risk, the kind of trans people the scary murder rates actually apply to, basically. Even she’s been called a terf and a rightwinger, simply because she believes in International Human Rights Laws on refugee status and that humans can’t actually change sex!)

Forgot the link for the screen shot definitions!
They are from Habitat for Humanity (who must be secret nazis, I guess 😝)

https://www.habitatforhumanity.org.uk/blog/2016/09/refugees-asylum-seekers-migrants-crucial-difference/

People who work with refugees, asylum seekers and vulnerable migrants don’t want migrants lives being put at risk by human traffickers operating in the Channel! Mainland EU countries are ‘Safe’ and there is no Human Rights justification for setting off in these boats.

Family reunification procedures should be sped up though, because that’s a morally understandable reason why people might be ‘desperate’ enough to risk it, despite it not being legally permissible.

Blimey, that Eliza Mondegreen thread is quite something, isn't it?

Excellent points @CryptoFascistMadameCholet

We need policies and laws that dissuade this route of entry because it’s really fucking unsafe

Whereas what we have is policies and laws that make it the only route, because they've closed all the others for anyone in a refugee/asylum type situation. The French government has repeatedly offered processing centres on their side of the channel and been rejected. We refuse (with some very limited exceptions from Ukraine) to allow anyone to apply at embassies or consulates in other countries. We leave one option and then say people are wrong to use it.

As for why they don't stay in France or another European country ... well, for a start, most do. Even before the current clampdowns the UK was one of the least popular countries for refugees and asylum seekers - about no. 17 among EU countries IIRC. (Tiny proportions actually come to Europe at all.)

Of the few that do come, some have no choice. If you pay a people trafficker, you end up where they choose - which may well not be where they promised - or you end up dead.

Others come because they speak English, not French, or because they already have families or friends here who can give them a place to stay and help them navigate the system and find work.

And a few deluded souls still come because they don't feel safe in France or Belgium where they are repeatedly attacked by the police and for some reason they actually think we're a kind, welcoming country that will treat them better. Poor sods.

Systems definitely need reform.

People traffickers need to be prosecuted.

Excellent comment @CryptoFascistMadameCholet .

I personally would like to see a reduction in immigration numbers overall, given the pressure on resources in Kent and other places, and the effects on the safety of women and children when large numbers of young males are coming in from places where women are second class citizens. Something we've discussed at length in other threads.

However, I do think the UK needs to figure out what the hell it's doing and play its part in both taking in an appropriate number of asylum seekers and keeping them safe and out of the channel.

I've just been down a fascinating rabbit hole, thanks to the username @beastlyslumber .

I was trying to think where I might have seen the name/words and the closest I could get was "sunk in hoggish slumber", which I remembered from a P G Wodehouse book. I found this terrific site about Wodehouse:

https://www.madameulalie.org/index.html

.. and it turns out to originate in R L Stephenson (the "hoggish", not the "beastly"). But that site is remarkable if you like PGW. There's a link to a resource for all the biblical refs in his work too, which I especially like. I love Wodehouse's kindly clerics, trading and correcting bible quotes, deferring sadly to domineering wives and bishops and getting stoned on Mulliner's Buck-U-Uppo.

Brilliant, thanks @angelico53 I just made it up (inasmuch as anyone makes things up.) I thought it sounded Shakespearian.

That is such a boy joke!

Woman joke:

Q. What do women want that begins with a 'P' and ends with an 'S'?

A. Pockets!

😁

I got a new top delivered yesterday, and discovered it has pockets when I tried it on. Husband was slightly bemused by me delightedly prancing round the kitchen going "Look, pockets!!!".

It's the little things that matter! Every item of clothing should come with pockets. Lots of pockets!

PIES 🥧

Pockets for pies!

Better and better!

Also POEMS!

Plentiful pockets for pies and poems!

pigly words