Women's rights general conversations - Thread 5

[Kucinghitam]

Continuation of Thread 4.

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've now read it.

Sick sick men!

Let me be clear, I'm speculating. But I think damaging the leg so that it had to be amputated was probably the whole idea. I think the guy must have had BIID. They may have used that method because practicalities or it might have been integral to the fantasy.

Just generally, the less I hear about men and what they're getting up to, the more I like it.

Yes, he had to have his leg amputated (properly, by a proper surgeon) as a result of the “freezing”.

A dear friend of mine, with a lifetime of experience in the old misogynist civil service (so different from the the new misogynist civil service) used to regularly visit a group of us after her retirement for teabreak, scientific chat, and use of the photocopiers. Her opening conversational gambit was often 'Do you know what the men are at now?'

It's just as well she isn't around any more.

Giving oneself frostbite via dry ice so that a hospital is forced to perform an emergency amputation is a preferred method of the BIID crowd.

It’s usually a sex thing, it starts out with being an ‘amputee admirer’ and escalates through being a ‘wannabe’ and onto realising the fetish for oneself.

A bit like GAMP and AGP - GAMP is the scientific term for what was once known in transland as being a ‘T**y Chaser’ (now mostly shortened to just ‘Chaser’) many ‘chasers’ (who prefer the term ‘Admirer’ or ‘Trans Amorous’) go on to transition themselves. Kat Blacq, the trans YouTuber, has said at least 5 of Kat’s exes have transitioned after the break up (Kat is is exclusively attracted to men and transitioned at a young age having been a naturally feminine boy - what Blanchard would call a HSTS).

There is a BIID subreddit. It’s very strange.

Posters who have actualised their ‘true selves’ look down on the wannabes and the admirers. It’s a lot like the old TV/TS (transvestite/transsexual) divide seen in old school trans support groups. It’s unsurprising to me that the same (now disgraced!) psychiatrist who ran one of the first trans private clinics in London was involved in the small number of UK BIID amputations (which stopped as soon as the public got wind of it).

Oh my god! I’d forgotten that John Money had his grubby mitts in the back story of BIID (originally called ‘apotemnophilia’)

11 year old Guardian article that mentions dry ice:

https://amp.theguardian.com/science/neurophilosophy/2012/may/30/1

There are loads of articles from 10-20 years ago. Reading them makes me think how different things could’ve panned out with transsexualism/Gender Dysphoria - the BIID genie was forced back into it’s bottle, whereas the gender genie has become almost iatrogenic - more people want to transition because transition is an option, whereas wannabe amputeeism hasn’t been allowed to take off in the same way.

Personally, I don’t see why it’s morally/ethically ok to amputate healthy breasts/gonads/genitals and not digits or limbs, because many of the psychological drivers (and the original doctors!) are more or less the same.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/articles/200707/quirky-minds-amputee-wannabes

https://medium.com/amputees-wannabes/c3b1a75e2064

I have a 30something female friend who is an above the knee amputee (due to childhood bone cancer) and she gets swarmed by ‘amputee devotees’ online.
Makes it very hard for her to date (hetero men) as she has to weed out the weirdos but also be relatively upfront because a) the cancer treatment made her infertile and she’s of an age where that often really matters in relationships and b) some people are squeamish about limb amputation and it’s best to weed them out early too (as you need extraordinarily robust self esteem to cope with repeated rejection on the basis of a non-normative body that you did not choose).

My friend's experiences are one of the reasons I have read up on this stuff (along with the crossover with extreme body modifications)

I’m about to watch this (well, listen really, I hardly ever watch anything!) which came up while I was link searching for my above posts.

it’s a BBC3 programme from 2016, uploaded to the official BBC3 YouTube account:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03l935w

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dtCwyqD-Vp8

There is a comment under the video from 80s iconic TV presenter Mik Scarlett - he says (paraphrasing) that he got a lot of attention from fetishists/admirers but they were largely into marvelling at his triumph over adversity rather than getting off over helplessness/submission-enforced-by-circumstance (which is the plot of ‘Boxing Helena’ iirc!)

Which strikes me as potentially quite a profound observation of how gay men & straight women might manifest ‘disability admiration’ as opposed to the straight male version?

That the big chief Eunuch Maker in the gay men’s castration society was the only one who had gone as far as limb amputation may be illustrative of Mik’s experiences (disability being valorised) but I suppose we’ll have to wait for the expert witness testimony once the main trial starts at the Old Bailey to know more.

(I believe the investigation and case preparation is more akin to a Mafia trial than anything else, which is why it’s taking so long - the CPS will be trying to get the more minor players who have already pled guilty to testify against the big bosses. Presumably the defence will be ‘cut throat’ with everyone accused trying to blame someone else, which will take weeks and weeks in criminal court)

Thank you @NicolaSturgeonsSOGIbottom I find this BIID stuff rather ghoulish fascinating. It beggars belief. There's an article from years ago in the Atlantic called A New Way of Being Mad, although it doesn't actually seem to be that new.

On another subject I found this article from Unherd on purity spirals via Glinner's twitter and the Great British Sewing Bee (a woman's swimsuit with room for tucking!)

https://unherd.com/2020/01/cast-out-how-knitting-fell-into-a-purity-spiral/

I am a knitter so came across the Knitting Wars while they were happening. It was very sad how badly some people and their businesses were affected. There was a huge amount of virtue signalling by some people, which continues.

A lot of young people who are into knitting seem to do it as it can be so calming. Particularly in USA, quite a number seem a little fragile, not like us older ones who started because it was a way to get cheaper jumpers, and learned from our grannies.

There is an excellent knitting shop in Richmond in Surrey run by a wonderful woman called Milli who writes an entertaining blog, and I remember this post in 2018 at the height of the wars:

www.tribeyarns.com/blogs/news/blog-post-3-yarn-shop-customers

Matt Walsh's documentary "What is a woman" free to watch for 24 hours on Twitter, though the twitter powers have blocked sharing or liking the tweet as it's "hate speech".

https://twitter.com/realDailyWire/status/1664424891372941312

Saw this on Twitter earlier, about the problem of men in women's prisons. Going to use this next time I argue it with someone who can't see the issue:

https://twitter.com/lespauljunior3/status/1664515009714573313

Try a thought experiment. Imagine a policy that actively placed transwomen prisoners into cells with violent transphobes.

Because this is effectively what they are doing to women when they house them with male sex offenders, paedophiles, stalkers and murderers.

@IcakethereforeIam gosh yes, the knitting purity spirals were quite something to behold. Not to mention that one half (male) of the married couple who founded Ravelry (American, the biggest knitting/crafts website around, probably, like a sort of Reddit for crafters but with hundreds of businesses selling their patterns there too) suddenly declared themself trans and kicked off a kind of purge there as well. Turmoil ensued.

I lurk on the Sewing Bee thread and that swimsuit was one of the worst-sewn things there for a very long time. But the thread is pretty tightly policed and any comments that aren't suitably 'kind' get called out. Ditto, it seems, anyone who dares to question the ever-increasing influx of drag queens.

I never got round to watching Sewing Bee, I'm glad I didn't bother.

I fucking hate purity spirals! Except when the tras do it, then it's cringe and 🍿 It is something that the GC movement might also be vulnerable to, see KJK and (I think) some Bristol Women's group, probably others. I like to think we've avoided the worst of it.....so far. Eternal vigilance 👀 😁

Newsflash: The Guardian is apparently a vile sink of transphobia, according to this not at all biased or melodramatic piece:

Haha someone's not happy with not having 100 control of the narrative. Also doesn't understand the Forstater judgment.

Just watched that, and discovered a whole raft of brand new laughs. Incredulous laughter, appalled laughter, even angry laughter. The dippy woman at the very start - “I don’t know what a woman is because I’m not a woman” sets the scene.

It is the height of Bizzarro World isn't it, I feel like asking "do you hear yourself?".

You're also 1 of 30 million people who have viewed it since 1am this morning, it has backfired on whoever tried to limit it at Twitter, Streisand Effect!

@BelleHathor Matt Walsh's documentary "What is a woman" ....

Oh, thank you for flagging that up! Hugely entertaining. For me, the prize went to the inane professor of gender studies in (I think) Boston. But I might change my mind on a second viewing, because he had a hell of a lot of competition.

If the viewing hadn't been so limited in availability I might not have watched it and I might have forgotten about it. As it is, both DH and I watched it together. I probably agree with Matt Walsh on no other topic, but I thought he did a decent job of sitting back and asking questions and allowing people to speak.

71 million views now! And apparently the person responsible for limiting it has "left Twitter". As they say Sunlight is the best disinfectant....

‘Can a chicken cry?’ has become part of my family’s day to day lexicon.

Erm https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JPolwm7dmiU

I would never tire of slapping that gender studies professor. Obviously, I would never actually slap him but the thought of doing it brings me some relief from the absolute hogwash that was coming out of his stupid mouth.

As a bigoted dinosaur that was a great documentary to watch.

Heh, yes, my slapping hand itched throughout. The earnest one at the start, who said she couldn’t tell him what a woman was because she wasn’t a woman herself!