Work and pride month

[MotorSport]

NC as I don't want this to link
I work in a heavily dominated male industry who are usually brilliant at showcasing females
Pride month hit, all fine

What is the webinar on you ask, for pride month?
A trans woman in the industry. On how to be your authentic self and transitioning in a masculine industry, and being an ally to the LBTQ community

Is it just me or would it have been more fucking inspirational to get a woman on who I dunno, is a lesbian, married to another woman to talk about how she has faced adversity?

Rather than the man who was already in the industry and was probably shit so transitioned and now everyone is "oh she's such a good female in the trade"

I think I've peaked

@suggestionsplease1 because the presentation is mostly about women in the industry, and the struggle as a woman

If it had been named "difficulties trans people face in the workplace" then yes it would have been appropriate
I mean we don't actually have any trans employees at our site so how relevant that would have been anyway

To add it's not worded
Difficulties faced transitioning in a masculine industry
It's about the experience of being a woman in the masculine industry "having experienced it first hand"

I think I have a fair understanding of the FWR room, and extremely little desire to appease it.

Yes, imagine feminists focusing on women and not men! How utterly unfair and transphobic of us!

Any struggles this person will have experienced will have been as a male person presenting in a stereotypical feminine way, not as a woman. Obviously. And I can well believe that a male dominated industry might not be kind to feminine presenting men, but that's not because they are experiencing the issues that women face. Whether those women are straight, lesbian or bisexual.

If FWR were really focussing on the wellbeing of women the attention would perhaps be on the myriad social and economic problems that they face and disadvantage they experience, rather than pursuing an obsessive and myopic hostility towards trans people.

Perhaps they could look at the countries in the world that are managing to make women's lives better...oh, perhaps the top 4 countries in the global gender gap index...oh, who also happen to have more relaxed policies of gender self ID.

www.weforum.org/reports/global-gender-gap-report-2023/

It's the whole thing really. Without giving away my job title it's the same as

I work in a shop, selling football equipment and it's lots of male staff and managers. This presentation is a pro footballer I've never heard of coming to tell me about being a woman in the industry and how hard it is and living their authentic life. It's not relevant to my job and they're a trans woman and I'm never going to be a pro footballer

If it had been - a director who is open about her sexuality as a lesbian through her career, how she started in the shop and worked her way up, how she coped years ago when it was more male heavy and how things have changed in the football industry. That's relevant to me, as a female and also in my job role/career

I answered this when you posted it a few days ago, but the point of those four countries is that their self-identification laws were created from 2016 for the oldest to February this year for the latest.

Far too early to see what this will do to women's rights, because it takes time to accrue statistics and to turn the numbers into published data, but it's also going to require analysis if, say, sexual crimes against children are now going to be recorded by gender rather than by sex. So check back in another few years.

But this is not really about the topic which has to do with how women's rights can be maintained if we change the definition of 'women' so that those rights can no longer be meaningfully defined in some contexts.

In IT, for instance, nobody doubts that trans women can be good at the job, given that they were what you call amab, and people don't suspect men of not being good at maths or coding. It's women people suspect of that.

So if we start supporting and highlighting trans women in IT, we are not addressing that possible sexism at all. We may be addressing transphobia, but not misogyny and sexism. We may even be enabling the latter by filling all the 'female' slots with trans women.

Oh right yes, why bother our pretty little heads with men in women's spaces when we there are more important things, right? I mean who cares that women and girls are being assaulted in toilets by blokes, or that men can just cheat their way into women's sports. I forgot we're supposed to centre our feminism on putting the needs of men first.

I mean we should just accept the injuries and assaults from men so we don't hurt their fragile egos, right?
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4838193-three-women-injured-by-non-binary-male-in-canadian-rugby-game

Why would it have to be a lesbian?

And why you underlined being married?
I’d rather hear from single people, know how they are dealing with life.
Why would anyone hear from married person, society supports demands that.
Makes no sense.

Out of interest, why do you think that the countries that have had such an ongoing strong track record of good policy decisions that benefit women, and outperform all other countries on the world in this respect, would suddenly now be making bad decisions for women?

That would be pretty unexpected wouldn't it?

In terms of data taking time to filter through, you would surely expect the impact of policy change to be largest during the initial period after it is introduced, and then a tapering effect to occur thereafter, wouldn't you? That should be pretty visible in countries by now, but that does not seem to be the case.

O, and plenty of people think transwomen are less likely to be as good at their jobs, in IT or otherwise.

@suggestionsplease1

Out of interest, why do you think that the countries that have had such an ongoing strong track record of good policy decisions that benefit women, and outperform all other countries on the world in this respect, would suddenly now be making bad decisions for women?

That would be pretty unexpected wouldn't it?

In some of those countries (perhaps all) there was almost no public discussion of the issues, and what there was focused entirely on seeing trans rights as similar to gay and Lesbian rights.

Most people obviously want transgender people not to be discriminated against at work or in education and also want trans people to be safe from harassment and violence on the basis of being trans. And that's how the laws were viewed by those who were aware of them being created. And affecting only a tiny percentage of people.

That the changes actually intended by the activists required a society-wide redefinition of what 'woman' meant (and, in theory, though not in practice, what 'man' meant) was completely under the radar.

The erasure of all words for people of the female sex, the loss of our language, the loss of our ability to define the group which suffers from sex-based oppression, and the total invalidation of our embodied identities as women because we live as females in a sexist society: All these changes now underway were hidden.

There were no public consultations about 'woman' now being defined only as some nebulous inner feeling of 'femininity' or as assumed comfort with sexist female stereotypes. There were no public consultations asking if it is just fine to call female people with dehumanising terms (bleeders, womb carriers etc.) for the reasons of ''inclusion'. There were no discussions about how to combat sexism and misogyny if their target group no longer was allowed to be mentioned.

Are you able to say clearly what you think 'lesbian' means, suggestions? You haven't been able to in the past, so forgive me if it rings slightly dishonest for you to be using words you can't define.

I'll take the same approach as the top 4 performing countries for women in the global gender gap index, and not obsess over achieving single definitions thanks.

@suggestionsplease1

In terms of data taking time to filter through, you would surely expect the impact of policy change to be largest during the initial period after it is introduced, and then a tapering effect to occur thereafter, wouldn't you? That should be pretty visible in countries by now, but that does not seem to be the case.

First, the Finnish change is so new (four months ago) that there would be no data yet, the NZ is a couple of years so not much data. There was a suggestion by some that the Norwegian data showed an increase in rapes committed by women the year after Norway changed the law, but I haven't had time to look into this more.

But, second, all statistical data takes time to gather and to condense which means that the most recent year available for all sorts government statistics, say, is often three or four years earlier. We are still waiting for most of that data.

Third, the effects of all such changes are not necessarily of the type you describe (an instant blip and then a tapering off), because some effects take time to appear.

Take the example of something like women's weight-lifting in sports (where men have a clear biological advantage):

The impact of allowing trans girls and women to participate will not be instantly visible and it will not even be clear for some number of years. But the longer term effect could be that girls will stop being interested in that sport altogether, knowing that they will never medal on the elite level. So some changes might take a generation to become visible.

O, and plenty of people think transwomen are less likely to be as good at their jobs, in IT or otherwise.

That is a different problem from the assumptions of male biological superiority in certain fields or from the inequalities created by pregnancy. A male IT person transitioning after many years of work in the industry is not suddenly going to be suspected of having forgotten how to code or ranked as not to be promoted due to the fears that she might suddenly fall pregnant and leave. When trans women are viewed as satisfying the female diversity goals of an IT company the underlying problems are not actually addressed.

I don't really care either way (I'm happily single) but given they've picked a trans person, I used a lesbian as an example
It's for pride so a straight woman isn't really applicable same as a straight man, it would have to be someone LGBT

Yesterday my workplace posted about a menopause group 😀 great- really supportive of older women, of whom there are many in the organisation.

The first line said "Most people who experience menopause are women." I consider this a direct harm to myself as a woman. I have been removed from being centred in the experience of menopause, something which ONLY women will ever experience.

Secondly, it's inaccurate. All people and the only people who experience menopause are women.

Thirdly, this inaccurate and unclear language has the potential to confuse my women colleagues who don't have English as a first language or have disabilities or special educational needs. Disadvantaging women who might need the help for WHO? For what reason?

Yes, there are many issues for women and feminists to focus on. But the fact that we cannot even say the word woman in public communications anymore is a good place to start!

Shall we start posting about this again? I am very happy to post about what I discovered about just how they worked out those ‘ratings’. Such as how much priority this foundation put on ranking for countries with a female leader.

And just how fucked up some
of those top 10 countries really are for domestic violence (New Zealand), incredibly poor rates of conviction for rape, and some
of the maternal mortality rates were horrendous!

Yet you keep posting this shite ranking as if it says anything about self ID at all! You have yet to explain in detail just how you perceive this ranking to be showing what you assert it shows.

Yet you post it on thread after thread after thread.

So you literally don't know what you're communicating when you say it, other than presumably a human who has a sexual orientation.

You can't claim a group has a greater level of anything if you have no way of knowing who is and isn't in that group.

You posted that on another thread about a week ago and posters pointed out the flaws in that index.

Yep. We've been doing lots of 'LGBT+content' for Pride month. Not one woman, let alone a lesbian. I keep wondering how long it will be before my colleagues can see it.