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. 😀

Some good suggestions there; good practical advice.

You cannot possibly critique something effectively if you don't understand it in the firts place.

@RedToothBrush "It is not hateful to stand up for your existing legal rights and for the underlying principles of liberal democracy and the material reality of human existence." I really like this as a go-to phrase for the future.

I think lots of recent posts reflect what a massive failure in education, both on a wider societal level and more literally, in schools, there's been.

While education re: racism is, rightly, seen as necessary, and gender is the current "cool kid" in the curriculum, sexism and the history of women's rights is dismissed as, what? irrelevant? out-of-date? mildly embarrassing? a dangerous acknowledgement that women are, in some respects, different to the default human on which they must model themselves to be able to advance? I think this itself is an indication of how desperately explicit education on this is needed.

The most disturbing facts and stats from "Invisible Women", as an integral part of the curriculum, could be a wake-up call. Why are such things not widely publicised as part of this more general push towards righting the wrongs of the past?

Misogyny.

It does address the issue, and in the most sensible way given that the vast majority of sex offenders are male, and in that it provides imopriosned women with at least some basic protection and the dignity of single sex spaces.

Vulnerable male offenders can be housed in a separate wing of the men's prison.

The way I see it, a woman shouldn’t be able to engage in hate speech with no consequences just because she’s a woman. And ‘trans women are not women’ is seen as hate speech.

Interesting use of 'is seen as' there. Do you think it's hate speech? Why/why not?

And we have a phrase here which has gone from being

A) uncontroversial biological fact to

B) designated as 'hate speech' by a vocal minority

In the space of a few years.

Isn't that a bizarre thing to happen? Don't you think it should be questioned?

You seem to be suggesting we should all nod along with that outrageous change without even bothering to engage our brains. Correct me if I'm wrong.

I'm amazed at the argument that if there are male prison officers then putting male offenders in the women's prison is no different.

What is the one defining difference between a prison officer and a prisoner?

There are strict rules about searches etc by sex, iirc, although I have a dim memory of this, too, being genderfied. Will fond refs later when not mid school run.

As an aside I saw footage from a USA prison last night, where [and it takes a bit of getting your head round so I'm going to use clear language] what is also happening at the moment is this:

Man who is going to jail declares he is a woman
Man goes to women's jail
Man coerces woman to have sex with him so that she can put a complaint in
Woman puts complaint in
Correctional Facility doesn't want bad publicity and pays woman
Woman and man share the payout.

So many levels of manipulation going on to play the system.

Catiette I thoroughly believe the single best book that anyone interested in women's rights can read is 'invisible women'.

It's NOT a feminist book. It's a data book. It's an evidence book. It's in the vein of Ben Goldacre's Bad Science , Margaret McCartney's Patient Paradox and Levitt & Dubner's Freakonomics which are 'truth seeking' books which look to cut through the politics and see what's going on within the data and outside the scope of the data. All of these books should be widely pushed as they are great advocates for what we should look for in arguments and what we should discount as utter bollocks.

Invisible women isn't about sex versus gender, but it inevitably shows why you can't replace sex with gender, why gender neutrality works against women and why we need to see sex in data otherwise we get sexism and discrimination.

As a 5'2" woman who is very slight it's fascinating to see how differently 6'2" DH is treated on a daily basis just because of his physicality and size. DH had never noticed it before until I started pointing it out. It's for everything - the level of service you get for pretty much everything is different. Bigger women get treated differently too - because they are at a different eye level / aren't perceived as 'fragile' / 'doormatty'. When that's your whole life you realise just how much your body actually matters. Small women really have to push back in certain situations to even get taken seriously.

With my last phone, DH finally realised the point about size in design because there are so few that fit comfortably in my hand. And that came at an extra price (even though just a couple of year ago it was a fairly common size).

This absolutely does matter. Marketing for pink or girly doesn't matter in the same way as the product still works and is functional.

https://www.hrw.org/legacy/summaries/s.us96d.html

Well, part one of this video seems to be focused on the 'middle class' and 'white' narrative of the suffrage movement. I am sure someone with more knowledge than me of this history will come and talk about this.

However, so far, this video is relying on trying to make an argument that the women who are saying 'no' to allowing males to access our rights are the same, middle class and white. This person talks about 'white feminists' .

Have you looked at the leaders of the feminist movement in the UK? And again, I mean, have you actually done anything but watch videos from influencers and read biased media and gone to check.

Look up Allison Bailey, Maya Forstater, Linda Belios, Lucy Masoud, Raquel Rosario Sanchez, Sonia Appleby, Keira Bell and I can continue to list so many. Maybe you would also like to push them into classes as well. But there are many women in this movement who have working class backgrounds. I have a working class background and there are plenty of others on this board and in this movement. In the women's groups I meet, and with the women that I attend seminars with.

This person doesn't seem to understand the people they are 'critiquing'.

I am not surprised to see your comments after reading this transcript. You have repeated their views here. They are prejudiced and seems to be not able to understand the perspective of the women they are labelling and describing. Yet,

felt confident enough to put it out there in a sponsored video no less for people to take on as being accurate.

No doubt, any one pointing out to them that they are wrong will be described as hateful and phobic.

I'm about average man height so had never really noticed the whole the world is designed for men thing until I had a baby - then I discovered that the bits of the world that are designed 'for women' weren't designed for me and certainly weren't designed for 6'5" DH. It was really hard to find a buggy he could push comfortably - it would have been easy for him to 'opt out' hands on parenting because I he didn't fit. We need design that works for everyone. We should be able to buy a vacuum based on performance not on which brand has the longest handle.

I agree. I find it frustrating from various angles.

Buying a car DH and I can both drive is surprisingly difficult. We need to be able to.

Certain tasks are much harder for me because the tools aren't right - think gardening tools. It makes a task physically harder for me to use a standard spade. Finding ones designed for smaller women was a revelation. It meant I was asking DH less to do the heaviest work! I wasn't incapable of it, I just needed suitable equipment that works for me. But it comes at a cost. You pay a premium for it.

What I find really odd is that anyone would think that calling lesbians and bi women 'homophobic' or leftwing women 'rightwing' or 'fascist' or calling lifelong feminists 'anti women' makes even the slightest bit of sense.

But then, I remember - it's not trying to worry us. It's just trying to throw up a smokescreen of doubt, libel, slander, pointing and saying 'these people are evil', with no foundation in reality whatsoever.

It's pure and calculated smearing and disinformation. It's blatant lies, throwing shit in the hope that some might stick. 'Avoid these evil people or you too must be evil'.

Trans activism sometimes appears to be entirely made of ad hom attacks.

If someone wants me to use the phrase 'trans women are women' they will have to start by giving me a definition of the word 'women' because 'its not that simple' 'its complicated' 'I think woman can kind of, perhaps be a feeling' just aren't cutting the mustard. In the meantime I will stick to woman meaning adult human female and 'trans women are not women' and that is not hate it is fact.

Trans activism sometimes appears to be entirely made of ad hom attacks.

You only turn to ad hom attacks in the absence of an actual argument that's not hitting the mark with your intended audience.

And there's that Achilles Heel right there. Again.

It's an appeal to socialisation.

Why is it there's so many female allies which isn't matched by the number of males?

It's cynical and deliberate.

I rewatched it and in the beginning I did think she was saying an awful lot about gender critical people without offering up any evidence. But then later in the video she did show screenshots of social media messages about a mother paying her daughter to shave her legs, or tweets from people claiming that women like Segourney Weaver or JK Rowling or the various female athletes who look ‘masculine’ must be trans women. I’ve seen the idea here that people can just tell a trans woman from a biological woman but it seems these gender critical women are not able to. She also talked about some very butch women facing harassment when they try to enter female spaces, and that was something I remember another poster bringing up a while back in this thread and I don’t remember if that was addressed…

"Thankfully, this is starting to change, but again, the hyper-feminine figure who loves pink, big hair, big boobs, sexy lingerie, but who owns her sexuality and whose femininity is for nobody but herself, this wouldn't be possible without trails being blazed by Black women and artists. Excluding ANY kind of women from our feminism, even white, middle-class, older cis women because we don't believe their choices are radical enough…ANY kind of exclusionary or divisive mentality will always be antithetical to collective liberation, and will leave room wide open for the Conservative and far-right."

Excuse any formatting issues with that copy and paste.

Spooky This is the summary of Part one of that video.

This talk of exclusion that this person is repeating over and over, what feminist do you think excludes any other female person?

It is clear to see that this person has very prejudiced and very confused views. Their style is rambling and I am finding the transcript almost incoherent at times. For this first part, they jammed a whole heap of societal changes and framed it in a way that attempted to show groups 'excluded' by feminism.

This seems to be someone who has read copious amounts of texts and come out without understanding an integral part of feminism.

Feminism worked to improve the lives and the opportunities for ALL women and girls. For ALL female people. Whether they were 'girly girls' (WTAF, is this person an adult?), or whether they dressed in the first comfortable piece of clothing they can find in the morning, whether they wished to stay home with their children or whether they wished to work.

The point is those feminists worked to ensure all women and girls had the choice. Because some of the grounds that were made in the late 1800s or early 1900s WERE set back by the war efforts. We know this. It is well documented. Feminists over the past decades have worked to ensure that negative sexist discrimination on the basis of being female is now recognised, and that women have been given opportunities to address the millennia of that discrimination through programmes and laws and protections.

Sure, women who wanted to stay at home might have felt they were not supported by authors and feminists specifically. However, they still had that opportunity to make that a conscious decision and it was not forced. Plus they then also had to opportunity to work or enter education AS WELL.

This influencer, whoever they are, seems to have a rather absolutist view also. There are many alarms ringing as I am reading through this transcript. There seems little comprehension of what they have read in that 'thing at the end', meaning the bibliography.

However, I also now understand why you didn't recognise the dehumanising effect of using the words 'gender criticals' and 'GCs'. Having read this transcript, I see that this person uses those terms so they can vilify and demonise women they supposedly disagree with. Supposedly, because they seem to have created the repeated strawman arguments that extreme trans activists use. It is harder to do that if you see the people you are vilifying and demonising as people with differing opinions rather than a dehumanised group seen as evil.

Incidently, do you know who I see repeating those fucked up accounts of what feminism is and what the actions have been of the past the most, male people who declare they are trans. And Men's Rights Activists. In fact, a bit of what I have read in this transcript comes from Men's Rights Activism.

Maybe Spooky you could think about that. It is clear that some of these people making statements and long winded explanations of things and yet call themselves feminists, are taking on Men's Rights Activist views of those past feminists and the intentions and actions of those feminists, to denounce feminists that they don't agree with.

Does that not concern you?

OMG - yes anyone who can should reads this book it's awesome

I can’t bricklay with the proper, effective T technique because my average female handspan and average female grip strength do not allow for the proper way to hold the brick in one hand while troweling with the other.

I’ve invented my own work around but it takes longer and while it’s fine for me building raised beds in my own yard in my own time, it wouldn’t get me a job on a site.

I think I would’ve been temperamentally well-suited to a trade but my physical dimensions are not, despite being a bit taller than the average British woman and being stronger/fitter than most women my age, I have small hands and feet (5ft 7 but a size 4 shoe).

Random Google screenshot to illustrate how I cannot hold a brick!

Those screenshots, were they from feminists? Or from people this person has declared 'gender critical'. I hope you have read enough posts to understand how that term 'gender critical' has been manipulated now.

And I will check whether those are male athletes with DSDs, such as Caster Semenya, or female athletes. Because the discussion in the media about 'women with naturally higher testosterone' is referring to MALE athletes that because of changes in the IOC regulations in the 90s allowed male athletes who go through male puberty to compete as female athletes. World Athletics have just announced in the past months that this will be changed for the future.

I will check, I am up to Part two. Part one was heavy going to modify the transcript into readable chunks because it contained a lot of words, but little insight.

The women on this board repeat constantly that you can tell the difference between a male and a female body after enough time and in real life. Because a male face has cues that are different to female faces, and if that has been successfully changed through surgery and other cosmetic procedures, a male skeleton remains unchanged. Even without male puberty the proportions of male bones stay the same. The hips are a big giveaway and males walk differently to female people.

yes, the challenging of women in the female toilet was discussed. I wrote a long post about it myself and I know others addressed it too.

There have been 'butch' women who are challenged. You will see the same ones though wheeled out as examples when they are brought up. And yet, many of those 'butch' women simply say something and other women can immediately tell from the voice.

And there are just as many stories of 'butch' women who appreciate other women seeking to make the space safe for all female people. But those are not well publicised because they don't fit the victim profile that extreme activists pushing this argument want to publicise.

by the way, I will add this formatted transcript I am doing to the Breaking it Down thread, in case any posters post a link to it in the future.

That is a simplification. The court held that it is illegal to discriminate against a person for holding GC views, including that sex is immutable. But if they express those views in a way that amounts to harassment of another person - eg if you had a colleague who was a trans woman and made a point of repeatedly saying “trans women are men” in front of them, your employer could absolutely sanction you for that. In exactly the same way, it’s a protected belief to think same sex relationships are unhealthy and sinful. But a person who expresses that view to a gay colleague could be sanctioned for harassment.

Stating your beliefs isn’t harassment tho, you’d have to repeatedly state your belief with the intent of upsetting a particular person for it to constitute harassment.

Sorry spooky I have to go and do other things, but I went and found the bit about 'you can always tell'. Again, this is a rather gross misrepresentation of what is actually said, it is the amplification of what became some kind of 'gotcha' game.

They put up a pic of Katie Ledecky. No one seeing Katie Ledecky in other images or in real life would think that Katie is a 'male athlete'. Again, this influencer is falling back on fuckwittery to prove their point.

They are trying to discredit people based on fuckwittery that amounts to a sick game.

And I also then notice that they have included things from Montgomery. Oh yes. We know about Montgomery here on this board. This is a male who is telling feminists what feminism is. Nearly every single day, this male is telling feminists what feminism is and it is there very superficial understanding of what feminism is that gets repeated in their tweets and on their youtube.

Montgomery wants to define feminism to include Montgomery. You should see some of the fuckwittery that they try to get away with. Usually science denying, often plain deliberate misrepresentation. That Montgomery is featured in this person's video is an indication of where all that bollocks has come from.

'Fawning' ...?

It has been useful, I think, to see exposed, not just the ideology we're up against, its inanities, its obvious and myriad inner contradictions and nonsensical invalidities, but also to get a proper glimpse of how someone ordinary - naive, yes, not particularly clever perhaps, but not absolutely thick as shit either - fell for/falls for all that nonsense. That's something we have to thank @SpookyFBI for.

It's a bit like having someone who voted for Brexit trying to explain her position; useful to see what we're up against, not just regarding the issue itself (that was always obvious), but perhaps more important in a democracy, getting something of an idea of how she fell for it all. (I am not looking for an argument about Brexit, btw; this is just an example.)

So, yes, I do think thanks (though indeed perhaps not fawning) are due to Spooky for giving us a glimpse of the aetiology of her personal viewpoint. It's rare to see that plainly offered. And not an easy thing to do, putting yourself out there as she has done.

And, Spooky: taking seriously your expressed intent to try to get to grips more with the whole thing, my advice is to ignore those youtube videos for a while and read some books. I've suggested The Concept of Mind and Material Girls. Not being used to serious thought expressed on the page, you'll probably find them hard going (particularly Gilbert Ryle/Julia Tanney), but if you stick with them, yes you might end up changing your own mind. Good luck!

The thing with brexit and my opposition to it was the rejection of material reality - how do you solve X problem and what's the legal issue with Y and how do you prevent practical problems like supply chain shock.

These are the legalities and practicalities that even now there the solutions promised haven't actually materialised. And that's had significant consequences to our society.

The same happens with the TRA agenda.

It doesn't matter how much you believe in the idea and the principles (nor how great the idea is) if it's unworkable in practice and the reality creates a whole world of new and bigger problems. Which cant be solved with magical thinking and enthusiasm.

It's frustrating. This gets framed as bigoted or unimaginative or backwards.

It's really not backwards to think about how you prevent sexism if you can't see sex.