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. 😀

Sterling effort - top marks

I’ve read the full thread with great interest, and have personally found the last few pages to be far more dynamic, forceful and persuasive without all the “Oh Spooky, you’re so brilliant for engaging with us, thank you, thank you” that went on for most of the first 3/4 of the thread.

I’d be amazed if Spooky manages somehow to cling to her GCs ARE SO CRUEL beliefs after the comprehensive education she has received on here.

seconded that last post is a thing of beauty

Same. I have seen - and called out - some disgustingly dehumanising language being used about trans women today and yesterday on another thread. No one else challenged it.

"Literally armed men on the toilet doors, making sure you've got the right genitals for entry, or of course, you know, they could just hang around in there…with their guns…keeping an eye on things… You know, in case anything creepy happened! This is the future GCs want."

I can't think of many things I want less than armed men on toilet doors.

The future I - a gender critical feminist - want, is one where men, regardless of their gender identity, respect women's boundaries.

Can you give an example?

Wow.

I’m not sure if Mica only had access to the first paragraph and didn’t go looking for the original quote or omitted it herself but if she’s presenting herself as someone who knows what she’s talking about that’s at best very lazy.

How disappointing that an adult forms rigid opinions about millions of UK citizens on the basis of silly Twitter games.

The poster said that it was insulting that trans women believe their “surgically constructed rot pockets” or “festering holes” are anything like vaginas

yes, I gathered that it was about a polysexual.

However, the transcript seemed to jump to it being Mica speaking.... So, I was confused.

They used this :

"The other main tactic to recruit LGB people, is to manipulate them into believing there is an epidemic of straight people co-opting the slur “queer” and that gender-critical activists are fighting against this. These posts would be screenshots of people saying things like, “as a polysexual, I have the right to call myself queer”. “What's a polysexual?” I’d ask in the comments. They'd all have mostly different answers, things like “straight people who aren't even gay enough to be bi” or “straight people who want to seem cool” of course, had I calmly thought to myself for a moment, I’d probably have come to a different conclusion, but I wasn't calm. I felt like my heart had been racing for months, my skin was on fire."

"How dare they? How dare you take that word from me? I was a queer, I knew what being queer was! It was discrimination, it was pain, it was living in a world where just walking alone at night meant that I was fair game. I had no idea what this “polysexual” person had been through, but I was still absolutely certain, it wasn't enough on its own, in my books, to reclaim the slur."

To then change the words to be about the world 'woman'.

"I get the feeling behind, “…how dare you? how dare you take that word from me? I am a woman! I know what being a woman was, it was discrimination, it was pain, it was living in a world where just walking alone at night meant that I was fair game. I have no idea what this “transgender woman” had been through, but I was absolutely certain it wasn't enough in my books to claim the term “woman”. Of course, had either of us cared enough to ask, we might have found a lot more in common than we had expected. We might have found quite a lot of shared pain and maybe, we would have thought about the fact that as long as we define who we are through our oppression, then we can only exist as long as we're oppressed."

This really is bollocks. A person who is transgender has their very own experiences. The discrimination that they experience IS mostly different from that a female person experience (and that includes all ages and those with or without a gender) .

Therefore, this forced teaming through discrimination is wrong. Making a male person's discrimination part of the fight of feminists really does dilute the protections needed for female people. (again, ALL female people)

It then went on with this:

"When you base your sense of identity, your sense of what it is to be a woman on the very specific confines of your own womanhood, then it might be hard for you to see other people who haven't shared that experience using the words and language that you need to talk about yourself. "

Again, this continues to conflate the two types of discrimination.

"But when we try to decide upon which and how many aspects of womanhood are enough to maketh the woman, in order to show why we shouldn't let trans women use the word “woman”, we inevitably and always fall into excluding whole groups of cis women from our definition. Just as white feminism has always done."

"My experience of being a woman - of periods, of sex, of femininity, of boobs and beauty, of healthcare, of objectification, of misogyny, violence and pain; this will be nothing like the experience of the unhoused woman living under the bridge downtown, or the woman in modern day slavery building fast construction projects for huge corporations, or the woman who was born with different reproductive organs or genitalia, or the disabled woman living in full-time care, or the rich celebrity woman in her Beverly Hills mansion, or the elderly house-bound woman who has become invisible to society, or the trans woman holding her pee until she gets home, risking infection because she's afraid to use public bathrooms."

And this is just more bollocks. And another attempt to sledge 'white feminism'. Another attempt to falsely leverage males into the definition of the word woman by attempting to portray that male as being just another type of woman, just like all the other women mentioned.....

It is bollocks because it really does go around and around as to a definition of woman.

The definition of woman and girl for law and policy needs to be confined to the female sex. Once this is agreed, all this sparple, this distractive discussion is stopped.

And this paragraph again uses emotional manipulation. I really am not going to feel empathy for that male person risking infection because they cannot find a solution to suit themselves without demanding female people give them access to our toilets.

No doubt though many people would.

fucksake, that's gross. Where was this? I hope it was deleted.

Well I wouldn’t go that far but it is true that you cannot turn one organ into a completely different organ - a penis cannot be made into a vagina any more than a kidney can be made into a liver 🤷‍♀️

Now this is what Mica said:

*"If they're performing their traditional role as Protectors of Women & Children™ then that's permissible, in fact vehemently encouraged by gender criticals!"

Run these arguments past the Ukrainian citizens and army for me will you?

That's one thing this has all illustrated is how absolutely useless a lot of the left are.

Yes, I was genuinely shocked. It was on “Lesbians being anti-trans is a lesbophobic trope”. I reported both posts and they’ve both been removed. I also challenged the poster and they replied to say they weren’t ashamed and they meant every word. The first post was ignored by a number of posters who posted afterwards.

'Anti-gender movement'

I've spoken about this framing before.

This is built on the back of the progressive movements idea about rights and people want to be 'good'.

The position is that women's rights are a good thing and that LGB rights are good.

But those pesky feminist keep asking about how can you see sexism if you can see sex and this is kinda of an awkward question for Men's Rights Activism in the form of trans activism.

In order to replace sex with gender you become blind to sexism and you become unable to protect women in the way they have been previously.

And you want to come from a place where you are saying you support women's rights. So you can have someone else parking their ideology on the patch you want to occupy.

So rather than answer the question about how do you continue to protect womens rights and prevent sexism and discrimination of women, you say that any questioning along these lines - no matter how legitimate or how well thought out or how supported by evidence it is - is instead 'anti-trans' or 'anti-gender' because it has much more negative connotation and it means you can dodge the question by saying 'im not going to indulge this anti-gender line of questioning' whilst continuing to claim you are the good guys who support women right, trans rights and gay rights. In this framing any questioning is automatically 'bad'.

That's why it's done.

Anyone asking for clarification about women's rights isnt automatically anti-trans. They may be, but for the most part they will very genuinely be concerned about impacts and preserving women's rights. It's really as uncomplicated and honest in intent as that. They are out to 'get' anyone. They want to continue to protect women.

I find any time you see the framing as 'anti-trans' or 'anti-gender' it's fundamentally flawed. The BBC have been doing it a lot in their headlines and news writing and I think it's dishonest because it doesn't accurately reflect the intent behind women standing up for women.

I have a major issue with the bias on display with it. Calling women who stand up for women's rights feminist or women's rights activists is neutral based it reflects intent not what they are presumed and framed to be doing which is removal and harm to trans rights.

The need for clarification of the equality act sits right at the heart of this point. Women have rights enshrined in law with certain exemptions ALLOWED already and these have been rode roughshot over, disregard and aren't being any where near as enforced as they should be whereas the intimidation and fake 'stonewall law' has been taken as accurate when it's simply not been.

So I take issue with anyone who uses the phrase for a debate about the lawful workings and enforcement of women's CURRENT rights and the desire to ensure they are upheld.

"Spooky"

We see exactly this chopped version used all the time here. Even to the point of reducing it to a soundbite.

Mica is not alone in repeating it. I believe a Tasmanian politician repeated a soundbite of it when he called women who were attending a Let Women Speak rally in Hobart as turds. It has proliferated through the world and is used as a 'weapon' against Kellie Jay Keen. There are plenty of other quotes like this one that get twisted and they just get replicated around social media.

What was horrific, was that also in Australia, the leader of Victorian Opposition's team simply lifted a locked wikipedia page on Kellie Jay Keen full of lies and over stretched 'alignments' to sanction a female MP and have her suspended because she attended a rally where Kellie Jay Keen was there and had facilitated. We have pages and pages on threads where we went through and quietly debunked most of it. But the wikipedia page was locked and Kellie Jay had appealed that it was full of lies and misrepresentations. Miraculously, after that Victorian opposition leader made a public statement .... wikipedia unlocked the page and allowed the falsehoods to be removed.

Now... who do you think would prevent someone from removing falsehoods about themselves on wikipedia? A page that has been used constantly to discredit a woman's rights campaigner? Surely not someone interested in ensuring accuracy and truthfulness.

I do know that it is really emotionally and labour intensive to find the truth.

It is why this board exists really. Many of us have formed enough trust with each other that we can lift their transcripts, or comments knowing that the poster who posted them is honest and has not changed it, but if we don't know the poster because they are new or they name change, then I check.

But the intensity needed to work out the truth from the falsehoods is immense.

Just saw from the transcript that the person who takes over talking is named Caelen Conrad and they start talking from

‘The other main tactic to recruit LGB people, is to manipulate them into believing there is an epidemic of straight people co-opting the slur “queer” and that gender-critical activists are fighting against this…’

and goes on till

’…We might have found quite a lot of shared pain and maybe, we would have thought about the fact that as long as we define who we are through our oppression, then we can only exist as long as we're oppressed.’

and then Mica picks back up from

’When you base your sense of identity, your sense of what it is to be a woman on the very specific confines of your own womanhood,…’

This event in Victoria was the one where literal Nazis turned up to support KJK?

Not the best example I would think....

at best very lazy. - indeed.

Nazis did not turn up to support KJK, that is another lie that has been repeatedly debunked.

I hope someone else starts another thread, btw. I can do so if need be.

I'm happy to try for 'good faith', even if it's imperfect and bearing in mind all of the comments on whether its possible or desirable.

Yep. Keep up, Mishy!

’When you base your sense of identity, your sense of what it is to be a woman on the very specific confines of your own womanhood,…’

The concept of womanhood isn't open to debate. Its not an identity. Its a biological reality. This really can't be said enough. This is not hate to say this. This is how we know what discrimination on the basis of sex is happening.

Yes. Sex matters.

Sex is real, sex matters. It isn't hate to say so.