Still Genuinely Willing To Discuss In Good Faith

[Catiette]

I've taken the plunge and started a new thread. In the interests of good manners, an addendum that I may be disappearing to work for a while myself, as this has all been far too interesting to allow me to achieve any of my urgent weekend work to-dos today - I hope that, in the light of that, creating this follow-up thread isn't bad form. I just thought other people may want to continue discussing these issues (mainly, now, the redefinition of woman, and statistical trends re. women globally), and I'd definitely dip back in when the urge to procrastinate overcomes me next. No worries, of course, if people think we did it all to death on the old thread - we were fairly thorough, methinks(!), so can also just let Good Faith Discussion #2 rapidly fade into Mumsnet obscurity. 😀

It's so so frustrating. And I appreciate I am being 'prickly' but we aren't getting past this point of women not being part of the conversation. Not really.

We are talking into the void and everything comes back to socialisation and having to be nice. And if you aren't at the approved level of 'nice' then you are being 'unfair'.

This isn't trying to actually be difficult for me at this point. It's trying to point out the sheer level of how we behave is deemed more important than anything we actually say.

What we say, is dismissed or ignored.

The only way that's been broken has been by being prickly and taking it to court in order to force the issue!

I agree to a point, Red. What would help is if there were more than one poster on this thread offering counterpoints to those of the rest of us.

It is an uneven dynamic, and that is why I am doing my best to be very Naice.

😊

Is it getting us anywhere?

Genuine question. (Perhaps aimed at the lurkers to an extent)

Why is it we are only making progress through the courts?

Why do we have to go to those lengths to even get recognised?

Every push back on language and tone women have been able to make on MN in the most recent year has been been preempted by winning a legal case. Likewise in debate in other arenas - particularly politics.

Otherwise a lot of what has been said in this thread would have been deleted or shut down - as it was a couple of years ago.

To look at this historical there was a split in the earliest feminist movements between suffragists and suffragettes - with tone being the most notable point. Yet none of them were 'nice' as such. The suffagettes went further and perhaps KJK is the closest comparison whereas the Court Battlers are probably more like the suffagists. And you need both to make the case.

But all were really bloody disliked and thought of as being 'bad' in someway. In the end forced necessity was a large part of the breakthrough - not being nice.

So why are we trying so hard to be nice? Why aren't we just trying to make our point based on evidence and arguments?

Excellent post, agree with every word.

I had to reread 2 posts above to check I’d understood it fully as it seemed so incompatible with what I’d written. Maybe I have - tired. But, assuming I haven’t, I’d suggest there’s some misunderstanding of my perspective and beliefs there.

“Applauding” and “heroism” are curious words to use to describe a measured tone expressing personal views.

References to “ignoring” how upsetting it is for us to be told we’ve not “done enough to understand the issues” is downright mystifying given that this same view - that it’s galling - is shared and quoted (“applauded”, you may even want to say) in the same post. It’s similarly rather hard to see how liking the analogy of Cassandra as very apt actually means that Cassandra’s voice is, once again, not being heard!

I’d also say it’s important not to assume that because something isn’t mentioned in a post it’s been disregarded or “left to slide”. It may just be that the poster feels there’s little to be gained by repeating something others have already expressed very strongly multiple times to little effect.

Reading and responding to the above reinforces to me how resilient it’s sometimes necessary to be on these boards. I remain impressed by anyone who engages on them.

I sometimes feel the engagement isn't as selfless as it appears though. Precisely because it gets a certain type of attention.

I have deliberately left this thread to pan out before stepping in at it's later stages to give room to see how it developed and I don't think there is an engagement to the level some think has happened.

That's the problem.

I despair of it all and how much the socialisation issue pops up again and again.

I do get your penultimate and last (as of writing) posts, Toothbrush, though, I really do.

I was guilty a few years ago of using the mantra “Transwomen are women” to fend off an accusation of transphobia from a young teen upset that I’d used the word male in defining transwoman to another child who hadn’t a clue what it meant. The utter absurdity of the kid‘s perspective, and the awful sense that I‘d sold out myself, the cause, women etc. has never left me.

I’ve come a long way since then and would be having none of it now! But done delicacy is needed in a context dich as that regardless, and I think on this thread. Now, if I was at that swimming pool being described on another thread, with women leaving because a man walked in? Frankly, there’d be hell to pay. I wouldn’t pull any punches, and I wouldn’t let it drop. It gives me the rage.

Some delicacy.

A context such as that.

I sound like I’ve a bad cold. Or got into literal fisticuffs with the hypothetical swimming pool manager.

So why are we trying so hard to be nice? Why aren't we just trying to make our point based on evidence and arguments?

Aye, very fair points.

Perhaps because some people seem not to hear evidence or arguments. Or have anxieties about doing a wrongthink?

But FWR has so often offered object lessons in honesty and resistance.

Why is it we are only making progress through the courts?

I disagree with you, here. I'd say actually the whole temperature of the discussion has changed considerably in the past couple of years.

For one, we can increasingly have one!

For two, things are reported in the media.

For three, it's not just the same old 6 sock puppet pearl clutching vipers anymore. The wider public and public opinion has shifted considerably - see recent polls. See also Isla Bryson, sports, etc.

Obviously there are still huge issues facing us. But the debate now, or at least the context, is very different from where it was three years ago.

I think at this point, I feel like being nice is our Achilles Heel.

Every time we do it, we give an inch and that gives the opportunity to take a mile.

It's how we got into this mess in the first place.

I don't think we have to be nice. We have to keep on topic with the arguments and using the legislation and the evidence...

But all of that has only really been possible because of the court victories legitimatising the cause and in effect saying 'yes there is a case to be answered here'.

It's only when that happened, women started to be braver and push harder with less fear.

For me, it’s anxieties about wrongthink.

In the changing room context described elsewhere, it’s utterly black and white to me, and when I’m clear there’s an injustice, I’ll say so, often when others keep their head down (and I’ve suffered for it). At the pool front desk, I think there‘s something to be gained from that.

But here, I think there’s more to be gained from a softer approach, and, yes, I am also cautious in probing these ideas, because what Spooky thinks about gender identity, and who Spooky is, and how she may be feeling as she reads our responses are all much more complex to me than the utter blank and white injustice of the swimming pool scenario.

Ok, so we’d argue one leads to the other, but I think different tactics get different results in different contexts.

If we hadn’t politely stifled our own discomfort and kindly nodded along when we first saw gendery-males in female spaces 20-30 years ago we deffo wouldn’t have gotten to the point where they are on the podiums in our sporting events.

Women have definitely been taken advantage of.

I’m always amused at how the TRAs deride terves for being old, they think we’ll die off eventually. What they don’t realise is that while not every Maiden becomes a Mother, every single one of us, given enough time, will become a Crone

As a borderline Crone, I think it’s fucking marvellous - running out of fucks to give is a most wonderful manifestation of Women’s Lib.

The Crones are out terfing in public because we have less to lose (retired, housing secure, children grown up and no longer financially dependent on us) but that doesn’t mean all terves are Crones, just that it can take time to first unpack and then reject female socialisation.

I do wonder if it is at least partly mammalian as it certainly seems to me that we get less inclined to pander to dickheads as our fertility wanes? I DGAF if men don’t like me now (46) but I think I must’ve cared at some point?

This would also explain why lesbians have led the pushback against transgender encroachment onto women’s spaces - their disinclination towards dickpandering is likely inborn!

To continue further. The Good Faith argument thread is based on the idea that there are arguments to be brought to the table from both sides and engagement is needed.

Is that the case?

The reality is you can't define 'woman' as a feeling in law. Because it's too fuzzy.

That will always bring legal challenges. Legal challenges will always come back to evidence eventually.

The point is these threads can never get past 'what is a woman' nor are arguments of any depth ever brought to the table.

So why have a good faith argument? It legitimises the nonsense and it's not the battle we need to win.

We have broken 'The Fear' to a large extent. It's still there but it's not what it was.

We need to break this desire to socialise and be nice. Because we don't need to and when we do it , it works against us.

We don't need to be nice. We just need to bring the arguments to the table and wait for the response which has some depth. Which quite honestly I don't believe actually exists beyond 'a feeling'.

Exactly right.

Being kind, nice and understanding is what led to women on a Beauty Course stripping naked in front of a now convicted double rapist, they were uncomfortable doing so before they knew that how do you think they feel now?

You can shove being nice, kind and understanding in this debate where the sun don't shine. I am not prepared to be kind in the face of what is happening, I am not prepared to overlook that those who believe in this ideology and push it like Spooky are colluding in what happened to those women on that course.

I care not one jot if posters like Spooky or Bonfire or any of the others who were practically genuflecting to Spooky don't like it, as I said before there are real world consequences here, living, breathing victims of this, notably all of one sex not fucking gender or gender identity - I care about them, I will be kind to them and I will hold to account those who push this ideology for the harms being done.

My daughter always says that at her primary, naughty kids always get star of the week for not biting anyone fora few days. I do feel there is a bit of that going on with spooky. We’re not really setting our bar high, are we? Well done for not telling us we’re fascists, or thick past it old ladies who are going to die soon.
And then spooky has the gall to say, “Have any of you bothered to do this amazing thing I’ve done here?” as though any of us are the kids who bite people. As though she actually HAS done something amazing and not what pretty much every poster on here does pretty much every day. As though women haven’t lost their livelihoods for doing just that simple thing.

I stand corrected, you’ve all clearly put a lot more thought into this than I have.

I think that this thread has reinforced to me that some people really won't hear the evidence or the arguments unless they are delivered in a particular tone. And even then, the evidence and the arguments will not be considered. I believe most of what has been presented has been and will be filtered out.

In the end, I think many of us have been posting just for the readers. Because we know that they DO go and read the evidence and do the work.

They don't have to read it in a particular tone before it is palatable.

They just go off and do the work.

So, I agree Arabella, those are very fair points.

Yeah. I’d say there are different ways of caring about the thems (Viola’s) that I don’t think (not totally sure, cos I can see how women’s “kindness” could be cumulatively undermining of the cause - need to reflect on that) need be mutually exclusive.

You can - or I could - play merry hell at that swimming pool in the bluntest terms imaginable, then head home to post on this thread.

“So why have a good faith argument? It legitimises the nonsense and it's not the battle we need to win.”

Well, it’s also legitimised our views to someone who thought we were nasty brutes. Humanised us, which we need precisely because of the good ol’ support-human perspective. And kept them around to listen some more.

Maybe it’s therefore meant that this strength of feeling is more likely attributable to furious frustration than malice.

So blunt language can then still be used, but more effectively, as it’s less likely to be dismissed as prejudice.

Small drops collecting into puddles then a pool?

An on-the-fence lurker who’s hung around when they wouldn’t usually because, for once, we’ve escaped the page 2 accusations of phobia that would have scared them off?

Who that hypothetical lurker could be? A mother previously committed to supporting physical transition? A manager in a captured org? A politician?

And for me, I think, an ability to understand the “opposing side” that gives me another tool to help me encourage them to listen.

So tell us Spooky. Why did you think otherwise?

Who is it that you have been listening to that you honestly thought that feminists were working to remove the rights of LGB people and women?

Who is it that you have been listening to that you honestly thought that women on this board had not been researching and adjusting their opinions based on the latest evidence? That we did not understand what we were talking about?

Would you mind telling us who has been so influential in your life that you had this perceptions?

Also Spooky who on earth led you to believe that feminists, GC or otherwise, would tell a daughter to stay pretty?

I'd love to be told where I was going wrong in not wanting kids to be sterilised. Or not wanting rapists in women's prisons.

But those pesky difficult questions just aren't interesting. So glossed over.

Almost like it doesn't matter.

‘oh no, you’re not a boy! Wouldn’t you rather be mummy’s pretty girl? Don’t cut your beautiful hair, it would break my heart!’

I deleted quite a few posts about that statement.

Exactly. I have rather lost patience with told that we should moderate our tone and 'be nice' in the full awareness that a women stating quite ordinary factual statements on a 'trans friendly' platform (and let's face it, what isn't?) in the same way would be met, not with fairly mild, moderated disagreement, but with verbal threats and threats of reporting to our employer.