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).

[bignosebignose]

Interesting (and quite short) report from an LGBA meeting with Madrigal-Borloz, UN Independent Expert on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity.... Proper TRSOH sort of chap.

https://twitter.com/AllianceLGB/status/1656310428388007936?s=20

[BinturongsSmellOfPopcorn]

Madrigal-Borloz is the one the SNP spoke to several times about GRR, I think.

[Kucinghitam]

Yes, he's definitely one of those destined for a throne on the Glittering Rainbow Mountain in the fluffy pastel clouds.

[mach2]

Yes, I cited a friend of mine in a university where they'd had to disband a support group for women who'd been sexually abused as a trans woman insisted on attending and women no longer felt happy to share in the different environment

In the Old Place, this gets the "you shouldn't be using isolated examples" treatment. It's all Tory culture war, apparently.

[dunBle]

I keep seeing references to "The Old Place" and I have no clue where you mean. Could someone explain please (by DM if there are specific reasons why you don't want to mention it by name)?

[BinturongsSmellOfPopcorn]

A group of us decamped here en masse from another talkboard that had a longstanding misogyny problem and eventually made it offensively explicit that anyone with gender critical views was unwelcome.

It's a small private board, so I'd rather not name it even by DM.

[BinturongsSmellOfPopcorn]

(Especially as it has since changed ownership, and I'd not want to cause any problems for the new - much more reasonable - owners.)

[NotDrowningJustCrowing]

The moment a man uses the word "shrill" to describe the way a woman has just spoken, almost always without an ounce of shrill in their voice, he is put into my basement of entitled bastards who should shut the actual fuck up. Forever. I am so over "shrill".

I'm also not sure what he means by dog whistle in this context, although it's a phrase he seems quite fond of. She was very upfront with what she was asking, there was no agenda, just do women's rights count for anything. He's been right in the past about the UK government's small boats bollocks, that's blatant dog whistle politics, the question he was asked, not at all.

[duc748]

It's surely just him, effectively, putting his fingers in his ears and shouting, "La la la, transphobe, transphobe!". How dare you even bring that up, you awful bigot. No debate.

[IcakethereforeIam]

Saw this and it made chuckle, especially where the bulk of the signatures are from, and quite right too

[duc748]

Saw this on an old thread, didn't want to post on it cos I gather that's not the done thing, but,

Do you know what else is fucking terrifying?

The fact that getting a GRC essentially creates a new person. Your old identity is dead in the eyes of the state.

The person you were before your GRC the person who paid national insurance, and tax, and had medical records no longer exists. There's no link between you and that person. So you can't access any of that information, and neither can the state.

All the NI payments, the medical records, the pension details, and tax records in the name of that former identity are gone.

I know a TW with a GRC who is having huge, unsolvable, problems because 30 years of their NI payments now belong, in terms of the state, to "another person" (their deadname identity), which has massive implications for any welfare claims and their state pension, and so do over fifty years worth of their medical records.


It is akin to being registered, mistakenly, as dead. You can't undo it.

Is this really the case? It seems remarkable, and if it is the case, I'm surprised I've not heard the point made before.

[Winterborne74]

Doesn’t sound very likely. People change their names for all sorts of reasons, surely

On another note, this is fun:

https://www.thenational.scot/news/23516111.pink-peacock-staff-burn-harry-potter-book-glasgow-street/

what with that and the Oxford Union being punished for hosting Kathleen Stock the witch-hunters are having a few spasms at the moment.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/05/10/oxford-union-finances-trans-row-kathleen-stock/

Truly pathetic.

[MavisMcMinty]

Never met a book burner I liked.

[MavisMcMinty]

(Never met a book burner tbh.)

[mach2]

Yup, Oxford students are trying to destroy the Oxford Union for not doing what they're told. Another thing that never happens.

[StephanieSuperpowers]

The problem with the OU is that it's z prestige join for the kids of the rich and powerful. Getting your gang to establish itself by annoying them seems odd.

[univmum]

@StephanieSuperpowers

The problem with the OU is that it's z prestige join for the kids of the rich and powerful. Getting your gang to establish itself by annoying them seems odd.

Even 40 years ago when I was an Oxford undergraduate, the 'NUS' Students Union told freshers to boycott the 'Oxford Union Debating Society' and it was controlled by a Liberal/Labour hybrid called the 'Progressives'. Most students didn't bother to vote. Thatcher was PM at the time. This still seems to be the NUS Student Union stance to the 'Oxford Union Debating Society' with censorship thrown in.
I joined the Oxford Union Debating Society (the one standing up for free speech as it should) with 3 other people from my College - I think life-time membership was about £36 then and I only went along a few times but last summer on a visit to Oxford they let me in with my old paper membership card which was very civilised of them.
I am really pleased they have survived 200 years and that they have remained separate from the NUS Students Union.
I suspect now as then that most members of the Debating Society are Conservative rather than LibDem/Labour so nothing has really changed but it maybe helps explain why only the Tories still seem to believe in free speech in UK politics right now. 'No debate' being the mantra of the rest.

[NotDrowningJustCrowing]

I see that it's not enough for Rowling to be a terf, she also has to be a racist and anti-Semite. Of course it would be silly of these paragons of righteousness to share examples because we can all see it. Or maybe there aren't any. FFS, these people manage to be inane and dangerously vicious at the same time. Burning books, even just a symbolic burning of one book, given the history of at least some of their families is fucking abhorrent. They have no shame.

[dunBle]

Probably because they know that most people don't really know what a terf is, and of those that do, quite a few don't give a shit even if she is.

[Kucinghitam]

@NotDrowningJustCrowing

I see that it's not enough for Rowling to be a terf, she also has to be a racist and anti-Semite. Of course it would be silly of these paragons of righteousness to share examples because we can all see it. Or maybe there aren't any. FFS, these people manage to be inane and dangerously vicious at the same time. Burning books, even just a symbolic burning of one book, given the history of at least some of their families is fucking abhorrent. They have no shame.

Perhaps this could be because of the Good/Bad Person must have a Unbreakable Bundle of Good/Bad Beliefs mindset? If you deviate from one single aspect the Bundle of Good Beliefs, it follows that you have rejected the whole Bundle of Good Beliefs, which then determines that you are therefore not a Good Person, and it then further follows that you must be a Bad Person who fully adheres to the unbreakable Bundle of Bad Beliefs.

[Kucinghitam]

This thread is relevant:
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4804087-how-did-people-start-to-believe-in-this-trans-stuff?

[MmePoppySeedDefage]

That thread is really quite civil. Which is nice.

[nepeta]

@Kucinghitam

Perhaps this could be because of the Good/Bad Person must have a Unbreakable Bundle of Good/Bad Beliefs mindset? If you deviate from one single aspect the Bundle of Good Beliefs, it follows that you have rejected the whole Bundle of Good Beliefs, which then determines that you are therefore not a Good Person, and it then further follows that you must be a Bad Person who fully adheres to the unbreakable Bundle of Bad Beliefs.

This view that people are either all evil or all good seems to be linked to the way we interact in social media, i.e., around one issue which strengthens our image of others as solely concerned with that one issue in their lives. If they disagree on that one, then they must be, clearly, Bad People.

That most people are complicated mixes of characteristics which others might label good and bad or something else tends to disappear, just as the three-dimensional reality online is replaced by two-dimensional screens.

But I also think forced-teaming, in a slightly different form, is being used here: If gender critical beliefs can be connected with beliefs almost everyone deplores (fascism, Nazism), then they, too, will look deplorable (without having to be examined at all).

[Winterborne74]

If gender critical beliefs can be connected with beliefs almost everyone deplores (fascism, Nazism), then they, too, will look deplorable (without having to be examined at all).

On which note, gender critical beliefs as “genocidal fascism”:

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/826fcd46-f0ce-11ed-bdc8-c06a4e8c18d7?shareToken=c77226a5bc7471965f49ba62fdaa54e6

[BinturongsSmellOfPopcorn]

How can somebody of such delicate sensibilities work on 18th century humour?