Women's rights general conversations - Thread 6

[Kucinghitam]

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).

@angelico53 That sounds like an unpleasant confrontation and I’m not surprised that you’re shaken by it. As you say though, it is instructive to see the moment when the switch is flipped and the “reptile brain” takes over. I hope there have been no further repercussions for you (i.e. social ostracism, sort of thing).

@Kucinghitam - thanks very much. Yes, I'm a little nervous as to repercussions. Of the two friends closest to me that night, one was GC-adjacent, with safeguarding concerns mostly, and the other's daughter has just completed a PhD in something close to gender studies, so I'm expecting some sort of blowback. But they're both old friends, so "I mentioned the war once but I think I got away with it", a la Basil Fawlty.

I'm hoping they'll remember my blistering guitar playing instead (we were doing a party gig, dunno if I mentioned that)!

I do struggle to understand how people who don't necessarily have any skin in the game get so angry and invested about it. You could say the same for GC people, of course, but women in particular are drawn in by default as it's our services at stake. It's easy to understand how people with friends, family, kids who are trans would want to defend their take and actions, but others? I've never had someone not want to speak to me because of my stance on the best way to reduce income inequality or because they disagreed with me on the climate. I don't get why people's attitudes are so different in relation to this group as opposed to other disadvantaged groups (if that's how they choose to define them).

I think one theory is that they see women as weak and any man who wants to be a woman must be very weak indeed and therefore vulnerable and in need of protection. Unlike real women who are merely weak. Or something like that. Subconsciously.

A friend of mine basically sees "trans rights" as akin to gay rights and GC attitudes as akin to support for section 28.

I suppose maybe because I've been in the same side as progressives until now on most issues I've ever been on the receiving end of disagreement> I've seen plenty of impassioned defences of different causes - including from me - but not this level of aggression from people before.

Yes, I think the clever addition of the T to the LGB led to non-homophobic people extending their support/tolerance to the rest of the TQ+ without question - “Stonewall are the good guys, they must be right on this”.

And if someone doesn’t know about the whole sports/single-sex spaces thing, or the experimental medical transitioning of vulnerable, troubled children and teenagers, that’s because it’s rarely discussed on mainstream media.

Lots do. My friends too. This is not the battles of the 60s and 70s being re-fought.

I saw this article on the BBC earlier - note the "may" in the headline - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-66994133 and was startled (not startled) by this, which just made me think they're going to be "prioritising" again:

And the move would have to meet the legal threshold set by the Equality Act.
That allows trans people to be excluded from single-sex spaces if there is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim, such as privacy or safety.
Mr Barclay said he wanted to make sure the "dignity, safety and privacy" of all patients was respected, while the rights of women are protected.

Gosh, all those staff in one bay! I wanna go to THAT hospital, the one in the photo. No problems with recruitment or retention there.

Arf, @MavisMcMinty - and so clean! At our local hospital only the newly-refurbished A&E and out-of-hours GP area are really functioning as they should. It's amazing what decent working conditions do for staff morale and efficiency and how that feeds in to patient behaviour.

Unfortunately the rest of the hospital is a shithole.

The headline is kind of maddening, though, because it will lead to a rash of cries of exclusion. They could say single-sex wards to be enforced.

Christ on a bike. I can't believe that single sex wards were ever in question. I hope Mavis agrees that this is an issue of dignity in hospitals. Took ages to get single sex wards and now ...

Pillocks.

Oh yes, I totally agree. Even as a student on mixed-sex wards there were male bays and female bays, male loos and female loos. Critical care (ICU, CCU, A&E) and theatre recovery areas were obviously mixed sex, if you were awake enough to tell the sex of the person in the next bed/trolley, it was time to go back to the general wards.

That said, I was an inpatient at the Royal National Orthopaedic hospital (Stanmore) on a mixed nightingale ward (one long ward with 12 or so beds along each side). We were ALL young adults, with peripheral nerve injuries mainly, and it was hilarious to see how the women all put makeup on the moment they came round from the GA, and the men were all bravely busting a gut trying to be the first one to recover/be discharged home. In that instance it was a positive thing. I never worried I was in any danger from the men, but on a nightingale ward there’s nowhere for them to hide anyway.

Got the link to this article from the Glinner email. I've got another one about a Stonewall Workshop but I haven't read it yet so won't share yet.

This one is about Katie Neeves who "came out" as transgender when he was 49. He likes to tell people about how he wore his sister's knickers when he was a child and he knew it was wrong but it felt so right and then the shame and ...classic agp. Anyway, here's the article.

What a load of pants

That is exactly the kind of piece I'd like to send to friends. But don't. Sadly.

Great article, although I wish she hadn’t used the word “pervert”.

I radicalised my sister by giving her Hannah Barnes’ Time to Think, and my Dad’s kinda girlfriend has radicalised him by giving him Helen Joyce’s Trans. Looking forward to the next time we all see my 28-year old niece, who works in a university and was very bristly when I told her I was a TERF last time we met. Maybe she believes good left-wingers - which we all are - have to be trans allies to be proper lefties. I think that’s behind Billy fucking Bragg’s stubbornness on the issue - it’s purely a left-wing right-wing battle to him.

Little by little, convert by convert, the tide is turning.

Oh, and “Katie Neeves” in the article was reminding me very much of Ginny, the star/subject of a couple of threads back along - a new trans employee in a small company, whose constant innuendo and general lasciviousness made everyone uncomfortable, the constant threat of transphobia accusations and resulting disciplinary process trapping them all.

TRSOH strikes a stunning blow for, well, TRSOH.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4911762-to-leave-this-article-about-the-deliberate-manipulation-behind-the-anti-trans-movement-here?

I think you're partly right about Billy fucking Bragg seeing it as purely a left-wing right-wing battle. But every time he says anything about it it becomes increasingly clear to me that he is also a raging misogynist (or, as a minimum, deeply sexist). And not very bright. Both common themes on that particular RSOH.

So he sees it as simple Left-Right question. But reacts the way he does because of underlying factors.

What Bint said. If Bragg thinks he's being 'left-wing' about this, he might care to sit himself down and look at it from first principles. What's socialism all about, Billy? The many, not the few? Ring a bell? The rights of the community as whole versus a few noisy individuals?

Depressing.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4912859-anyone-else-gc-and-left-wing-in-their-politics?

Most of us, and most of MN, probably. I was just reading about the UK voting gender gap.

Women are more likely to vote Labour than at any point in the last 50 years, new analysis has revealed. Political think tank Labour Together said the Conservatives have consistently won more votes from women than men between 1945 to 2017.
But latest data shows 52% of women would vote Labour at the next General Election, compared to 46% of men. Overall, Keir Starmer’s party are 28 points ahead of the Tories when it comes to women, 24% of whom are set to vote Conservatives, according to YouGov polling.

I thought women had always voted Labour more than men, but I do wonder if that trend will continue, the way we're heading at the moment.

That middle ground thread has ended up being quite an eye-opener.

It's certainly covered a lot of ground. Just not very much of it in the middle.