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Women's rights general conversations - Thread 6

997 replies

Kucinghitam · 31/07/2023 04:25

Continuation of Thread 5.

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 in the supermarket, grr"- that sort of thing).

Women's rights general conversations - Thread 5 | Mumsnet

Continuation of [[https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4759300-womens-rights-general-conversations-thread-4? Thread 4]]. There is so much excel...

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4807817-womens-rights-general-conversations-thread-5?

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MouseMinge · 18/09/2023 22:59

It is depressing. There are so few people I have admired that I can still admire. It was okay when people were just silent but now you have to speak in favour of TRAs or you're immediately the enemy. I'm guessing that many people who espouse gender ideology rhetoric don't really believe it but say it because they don't want to be cancelled. I don't know who really believes and who's just a coward so it's all horribly disappointing.

MouseMinge · 18/09/2023 23:15

I was listening to the latest Wider Lens podcast today and they're talking to Corinna Cohn who is transexual and sees himself/herself as a subset of the male sex not the female sex. I'm over half way through the episode but his really interesting and was saying something that I think gets to the root of the issue that so many trans people have with their identity. He said that if you are seeking outside validation for yourself, and this of course applies to any one of us, then you are never going to be comfortable with who you are. The whole trans rights movement is about forcing others to accept their chosen identity and not only that but to pretend that you can change sex when that is a biological impossibility. If a lot of the TRAs just focused on themselves, coming to terms with who they are then maybe, just maybe they would be a lot happier.

The other thing with their dysphoria, which is not their fault but the fault of the medical people "treating" them is that just as with body dysmorphia when you treat one area, the problem just relocates to another. I had a friend with BD and she was obsessed with the skin on her face. It was "fixed" but then it was something else. People who transition think it's finite. They do the blockers, the hormones, the surgery and hey presto! They're a woman/man. They're not and they know they're not. Rather than accept this and find a way to live with it they demand that we pretend that they are what they want to be and it's because of us that they can't find happiness in their new identity.

It gives a lie to the whole trans joy bullshit. There is no joy just bitter resentment that they can't accept who they are while expecting everyone else to accept that they're something they're not.

Sorry, probably a bit brain salad incoherent but I found it really thought provoking.

duc748 · 18/09/2023 23:18

Not at all, Mouse.

IcakethereforeIam · 18/09/2023 23:25

@MouseMinge the first bit you posted sounded very like the person who was born male but with a dsd that meant there was not much of a penis. The doctors transitioned the baby, swore the parents to secrecy and the secret held for 22 years then 😬. Iirc the now 36-ish person (whose name I've forgotten) after a long period off the rails has found happiness/contentment after reaching a similar conclusion. There's a thread.

Boiledbeetle · 18/09/2023 23:33

duc748 · 18/09/2023 12:29

Was just reading Unherd on (loosely) Brand,, and this piece jumped out at me:

in a 2020 BBC Disclosure survey of 2,049 UK men aged between 18-39, 71% said they had slapped, choked, gagged or spat on their partner during consensual sex. One third of that percentage said they wouldn’t ask verbal consent for such acts, either before or during sex.

https://unherd.com/2023/09/russell-brands-sexual-apocalpse/?tl_inbound=1&tl_groups[0]=18743&tl_period_type=3

Edited

That's grim. Any man who tried any of those without asking me first would have been out the front door before he got chance to get his trousers back on.

Snowypeaks · 18/09/2023 23:36

IcakethereforeIam · 18/09/2023 23:25

@MouseMinge the first bit you posted sounded very like the person who was born male but with a dsd that meant there was not much of a penis. The doctors transitioned the baby, swore the parents to secrecy and the secret held for 22 years then 😬. Iirc the now 36-ish person (whose name I've forgotten) after a long period off the rails has found happiness/contentment after reaching a similar conclusion. There's a thread.

Edited

Sophie Ottaway. Malformed penis and a part of his bowel outside his body and the doctor took it upon himself to remove the baby's testicles as well as the penis, in order to bolster the pretence. Sophie has forgiven him. I wouldn't.
But yes, Sophie is just Sophie. He accepts himself as he is now.

duc748 · 19/09/2023 01:05

I had a rather depressing message earlier from a friend who announced that the trial by media of Russell Brand was a disgrace and a plot by the Murdoch press to distract the world from what's really going on. And I thought, I'm not going to get into a big fight now, and I just said, the allegations seem overwhelming to me. And I nearly said, did you watch the Dispatches programme, but then I thought, I haven't actually watched it myself. So I did. I only just finished it, it's pretty long. But no ads, fair enough, C4. Not that they come out of it well at all, or the BBC. But the ease with which people can just buy into this lazy and superficial view of events is depressing.

weaseleyes · 19/09/2023 10:12

I think it's possible that both can co-exist. The fact that the press is dominated by RB is a distraction from other events - if only climate collapse got that many column inches. However, that doesn't mean that the charges are just invented, that they don't suggest absolutely horrendous experiences for the women and girls victimised, or that tolerance for predatory misogyny isn't systemic. The contrast in what the industry has seen as acceptable when it comes to busing women and the fact that people can be cancelled just for recognising biological sex absolutely sickens me.

duc748 · 19/09/2023 10:24

For sure, @weaseleyes The big takeaway from the docu is, of course, that RB has never made any secret of what he was and his views on women. 'In plain sight' indeed, and so obviously and awfully familiar. And that people would seek to excuse his shitty behaviour.

DeanElderberry · 19/09/2023 12:14

I find it so odd that what was if not a a non-story, at least an already non-secret story got such a fanfare. I wonder did they have a really new but also really sensitive topic that got closed down, and the RB stuff was their reserve to avoid having no programme at all.

People imagine that the UK and Ireland have freedom of speech because America has. We don't.

duc748 · 19/09/2023 12:20

But I find it equally mystifying that people are suggesting that the RB reveal was cynically timed to distract the public from other goings-on, notably the abysmal Boris Johnson, as highlighted in the LauraK docu (which, to be fair, I haven't seen). But it's hardly a secret that BJ is, and always has been, a complete POS, as even most of the Tory Party now recognise. The GBP are aware of this, and I'm sure are capable of carrying in the heads the knowledge that BJ is a POS, and RB, in his way, equally so.

duc748 · 19/09/2023 12:22

And of course, post-Savile, it's also about the responsibilities of the BBC and Channel 4. That is a matter of legitimate public interest.

BinturongsSmellOfPopcorn · 19/09/2023 15:08
Mountain Climbing GIF by South Park

Watching the ScotGov challenge to the GRR section 35. Lady Haldane (yes, that one) is the judge - and has just now, live on screen, discovered that passport sex markers can be changed without a GRC.

BinturongsSmellOfPopcorn · 19/09/2023 15:12

(Or birth cert or any other evidence. She had no idea it could just be done at will.)

duc748 · 19/09/2023 15:22

You can't get the staff!

BinturongsSmellOfPopcorn · 19/09/2023 15:38

TBF, I've been quite impressed with her approach in general - she is being thorough and asking lots of questions about things rather than just accepting 'Stonewall says'. But given her previous involvement with the subject, you'd hope she already knew the basics.

Waitwhat23 · 19/09/2023 15:50

BinturongsSmellOfPopcorn · 19/09/2023 15:08

Watching the ScotGov challenge to the GRR section 35. Lady Haldane (yes, that one) is the judge - and has just now, live on screen, discovered that passport sex markers can be changed without a GRC.

Edited

Holy shit, you're joking! Can't watch at the moment but would have loved to have seen that in real time.

BinturongsSmellOfPopcorn · 19/09/2023 15:55

There's an extended back and forth 'Are you sure?' 'Without a birth certificate?' 'Is that right?' 'Without any documents?'

The ScotGov barrister was pretty hazy on it too, and was just taking it from Stonewall and one of the other submissions as being 'apparently' the process.

Not sure if there's a way to clip and post that bit of the recording. Will investigate.

BinturongsSmellOfPopcorn · 19/09/2023 16:57

Can't find a way to clip it, but if you can open the livestream it's at about 4 hours 58.

Waitwhat23 · 19/09/2023 16:59

BinturongsSmellOfPopcorn · 19/09/2023 16:57

Can't find a way to clip it, but if you can open the livestream it's at about 4 hours 58.

Thank you, I'll have a look!

IcakethereforeIam · 19/09/2023 17:05

Article in the Critic about the Law Commission's review of surrogacy and the way the voices of dissenting women have been ignored. Baroness Hunt...just...yuck!

https://thecritic.co.uk/feminists-gear-up-for-a-new-fight/

If I understood it correctly, we could see a scenario where a surrogate changes her mind while pregnant but can do fuck all about it. Runs away at 36 weeks and, what, gets hunted down, charged with kidnapping? I'm probably being melodramatic.

BinturongsSmellOfPopcorn · 19/09/2023 17:06

As dramatic moments go, I don't want to overhype it - it's not exactly Holywood-explosion level - but she does explicitly say she's surprised.

Waitwhat23 · 19/09/2023 17:12

'You can change that at will in effect'

By jove, you've got it Lady Haldane!

Anyone who has been watching the whole thing, I salute you. All the 'as relates to paragraph ..., oh, no I mean paragraph ...' is so, so dry.

MouseMinge · 19/09/2023 17:43

Is that throughout the UK? I could if I wanted get a new passport that listed my sex as male? That is pure mental.