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).

I found this , from the Anatomy of the Near Murder thread interesting and depressing, on the totalitarian nature and affiliations of a lot of the TRAs.

https://panoramicgutterview.blogspot.com/2023/03/four-fingers-pointing-back-tldr.html?m=1

The YouTube algorithm thought I might want to watch this. I've never heard of this and am minded to take it with a pinch of salt but it is interesting (and short). Reminds me of the thread with the mum whose daughter would rather change schools than admit to being a heretic detransitioner.

Important article: endometriosis is as common as diabetes but the proportion of funding that goes towards treating diabetes is around 20 times higher. As the NHS website helpfully puts it, “The cause of endometriosis is unknown.”

I was in so much pain I’d faint — yet doctors ignored me for decades.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/17e89c12-d857-11ed-89ad-19e3cfc05db4?shareToken=b28bc2be2b7d2ca40193401bb8bdc2a33_

That sounds familiar, @MmePoppySeedDefage. I was never in enough pain to faint, but remember regularly shivering with pain. Despite many visits to the GP it took until I was in my late 40s for anyone to listen. All I got told was stuff like 'Have a baby, that'll fix it', 'It's normal period pain' or 'It's your age'. It turned out to be fibroids and only my periods stopping put an end to the pain. I don't want to think about how much blood I lost over the years but it was a lot.

Fry and Laurie got there first

This made the headlines on R4 news at 6am. DH exclaimed "No shit Sherlock!" followed by "It's about bloody time!"

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/rishi-sunak-said

A good thing, of course. Why is this so hard to everyone else?

However, it will be Kuc's heat death of the universe before I ever vote Tory. But that's something we all have to decide for ourselves. Being disenfranchised sucks, though.

If you disenfranchise yourself on this, the misogynists have won. We are in the Handmaid's Tale for real. It is not the fault of women voters that all the left and centre-left parties are down the genderwoo rabbithole. Not only do they have a policy which removes our hard-won existing rights, they insult us and call us bigots. I resigned from Labour in 2017 and have no intention of going back.
Most Tories (probably not even Mordaunt?) have never insulted voters who were sceptical about gender identity ideology. The only way to keep the tide turning is to not lend your vote to those who would blatantly take your rights away.

Everyone has their own view, and I accept that. I'm not 'lending my vote' to anyone on current form.

Yes that's fine. It does depend on your constituency as well to some extent. I just want people to think through what disenfranchising yourself really means.

It's hard though. It's hard to vote for someone who'll take your rights and call you a bigot stoking a culture war while they do it. And tell your child that people can literally change sex.

I've said before numerous times, but I don't expect any party to 100% echo my views and priorities. I just look for a "best fit" - but I also have red lines which would preclude me from voting for a party that might otherwise suit me quite well. E.g. I wouldn't vote for a party that: supports Brexit, demonises asylum seekers, is anti-semitic, doesn't care about climate change and pollution, fucks up the economy to give their rich mates even more money...

One of my major red lines is that I won't vote for a party that doesn't recognise material reality, not just regarding biological sex and recognising that female humans are actual people, but actually (looking at some of my examples above) that would cover quite a few of those things.

Unfortunately, this puts me in a position whereby I don't think I will have anyone to vote for in the next GE.

Now of course there could be a discussion about whether my red lines are unreasonably demanding, but that's separate to the principle of having red lines.

Couple of interesting links and the usual apols if they've alrady been posted.

Burchill on Danny Radcliffe, rather contemptuous but makes some good general points and occasionally v funny:

https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/04/14/the-entitlement-and-ignorance-of-daniel-radcliffe/

Linked from there, some answers to my perennial question about what the heterogeneous trans population looks like. I haven't had time yet to compare these 2018 estimates of pop size to the census.

https://fairplayforwomen.com/penis/

Burchill is often a nasty piece of work, IMO, but a guilty larff at times.

Amusing article. I used to confuse Julie Burchill and Julie Bindel at one point until I googled them.
I pre-ordered Burchill's book: 'Welcome to the Woke Trials' but still haven't read it. It may now be on Kindle so it might be good travel reading if I buy it again.

Yeah, IIRC she's been nasty about various people and/or groups on quite a few occasions (somebody probably has a dossier.). It's kind of her USP, isn't it? She's one of those writers I find hard to read because of the frequent undertone of uncalled-for horribleness, even on the occasional topics on which we agree.

I can't vote Labour, Libdem, green because of the gender woo. Can't vote Tory because of them chucking the Windrushers under the bus.

She has written beautifully and movingly about her father’s death from mesothelioma, which was one of my specialities as a cancer nurse. When she means what she writes, she’s sublime, but she’s usually deliberately trolling, as though she were still that hot young punk from the 1970s, trying to get up square people’s noses.

So, in things I didn't expect to see, the mild and inoffensive Russel Kane has enjoyed Hags by glosswitch. And he didn't back down or apologise for it when asked to. I like that.

Russell Kane on Twitter: "This book is bloody brilliant. Readable - yet fathoms deep with engaging anger of what it’s like to be a 40+ female in 2023. Oozing in fiery wit too. Reading it on a sunbed gasping and giggling. @glosswitch - 🔥🔥🔥🔥 t.co/fGfd244lSi" / Twitter

Yes, I must order that book, along with Helen Joyce’s “Trans”. (Currently struggling through “Bullingdon Club Britain” by Sam Bright - it’s hard going because it’s so horrifying to read, and it keeps reminding me of all the horrible pranks visited on the people by Bullingdon bullies Cameron, Osborne and Johnson.

Hags is on my list. Trans is excellent. TRAs will never read it because it's "transphobic" except, of course, it isn't.

Julie Burchill is all manner of love-to-hate/hate-to-love, contrarian mofo. I have seen her muff.

That's a surprising throwaway comment.

The article mentioning De Beauvoir is interesting and personally amusing. I lived there in about 1990 and lived up the road from Dalston on and off until I was 27. Hackney Central and Stoke Newington. It was rough as fuck and I'm sure many parts of it are still rough as fuck but the gentrification became inevitable when the Hoxton Massive started spreading out to cheaper areas until they made them too expensive for locals. As is their wont.

I semi-agree with her although her take on it is too simplistic. A lot of the people she's talking about are people who are creating identities for themselves that are currently "hip". You can't just be a lesbian, you have to be a demiboy or something akin to that. The sort of people she's talking about are not ending up in gender clinics, on the whole, they're just bloody annoying, a bit like ladettes in the 1990s who would snog other women in front of men to show how liberated they were. They may or may not grow out of it. The bigger problem is those who end up in gender clinics and get fast-tracked to puberty blockers/hormone replacement/testosterone, etc. As we all know there are very often co-morbidities that are important but overlooked in preference for dysmorphia or perceived dysmorphia type stuff. I'm sure the majority of those children are also from more affluent families but I don't think it's just Maslow's hierarchy of needs going on there although I'm sure if they were Yemen, for example, they'd have more important things to think about.

Julie Burchill is all manner of love-to-hate/hate-to-love, contrarian mofo. I have seen her muff.

Crows, you shining star.

I need to know more.