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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

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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141
IcakethereforeIam · 26/10/2023 14:50

The glee on their faces, they're totally getting off on it. Or the smug expression when they have to be more circumspect. Such as when talking about how marginalised and vulnerable™️ they (or transpeople because they often aren't trans themself) are. They can't quite pull off an appropriate expression.

angelico53 · 26/10/2023 17:57

I'm slightly glad to see that the Herald refers to "he" and also lists his "girl" name.

duc748 · 26/10/2023 18:10

That would be at Miller's say-so, though, no?

SqueakyDinosaur · 26/10/2023 21:02

I wonder what Miller's grounds for appeal are. Child abduction and abuse would attract a pretty hefty sentence without any additional factors like those the judge mentioned.

nepeta · 26/10/2023 21:41

IcakethereforeIam · 26/10/2023 10:50

I read this article in Unherd (in my head it was in the voice of angry David Mitchell 😁).

https://unherd.com/2023/10/the-tyranny-of-pathological-kindness/

There are probably nuances that went over my head. But it chimed so much with things I've seen with the tras; scolders on these boards, the fascist baby woman, the patented smug look. Telling themselves they're 'being kind', RSOH, let's them indulge, guilt free, in the worse side of human nature. They can be bigoted, violent, sadistic, hypocrits, rude but they think they are still the good guys. And once you've been designated as 'bad', be that terf, colonisers, or whatever the slur du jour is, you're fair game. There's no way to appease them and it's pointless trying. Reasoning won't work because they didn't arrive at their position through reason. Compromise? They've drawn their line and you will always be on the wrong side of it. Apologies? Just red meat, you have been deemed worthless, why should they value your apology when there's virtue to signal?

I hope the RSOH, the ones that aren't too far gone, read this article and then take a good, long look in the mirror.

A good summary of many of the issues I see, both online and elsewhere:

There is an odd new take on progressiveness as needing to turn all the tables, so that not being discriminated against based on some characteristic is now privilege, rather than perhaps fair treatment which we all should be able to experience.

Instead, some people are seen as having too much, others to little, while nobody appears to have the fair amount of rights. When you add to this the multiple dimensions on which privilege or its lack can now be defined (not just the traditional -isms but thin preference etc.), finding where any one individual might stand in the hierarchy, overall, becomes complicated and situation-dependent, but that is not how the two-dimensional tribalism online works.

Rather it's a generalised ethical and moral weighing of an individual's worth, on the basis of mostly immutable characteristics attributed to groups or some sub-groups within those. This erases most agency, causes despondency, and turns 'allyship' into form of penitence with odd sado-masochistic characteristics.

I should note that my dislike of the privilege framework is not the same as not seeing the value of being aware of the way various demographic groups, when viewed as a whole, do benefit or hurt from past historical events and current biases and bigotries. I am for the latter understanding and its applications, and for introspection which helps all of us understand better how the world might feel for others.

The other aspect of this new framework by the left which bothers me is its focus on semantics, on individual repentance, on social stigmatising and mob justice etc., rather than on creating real policies and allocating real resources which would lift up oppressed groups and make a material difference in the lives of the poorest and most marginalised.

It's also true that some minority of the most vocal activists I see online come across as uncaring, callous, and often sadistic (seemingly enjoying cruelty aimed at those who cannot defend themselves against it). This is something I naively did not expect from the social justice side.

Waitwhat23 · 26/10/2023 22:03

For any Scots, the Scottish Government are currently running this consultation -

consult.gov.scot/learning-directorate/teaching-guidance-for-relationships-sexual-health/

Unsurprisingly, it is not being heavily advertised...

nepeta · 26/10/2023 22:06

And a quote from that Unherd article which, among other obvious problems, frames the comparison in an illogical manner:

Following the Hamas massacre, a lecturer at Stanford University used “identity-based targeting” to force three Jewish students to stand in a corner so they could feel “what Israel does to Palestinians”. He asked them how many Jews died in the Holocaust. One of the students said “six million” and the lecturer replied that “colonizers killed more than 6 million. Israel is a colonizer”.

If you really want to compare lives lost in this way, then you should compare Jewish lives lost to holocaust, pogroms etc. to lives taken by Jewish powers, not compare Jewish lives lost in the holocaust to all lives lost to colonialism.

The latter covers long time periods and the group 'colonisers' includes many countries over long time spans (and even more if we allow invasions (Genghis Khan, the Roman Empire etc.) to count here, given that their impact is not that different from colonialism and the two are sometimes impossible to distinguish.)

So this lecturer uses the group guilt concept for Israel, not the actual killings the state of Israel has committed, which makes this another example of that new problematic genetic or group guilt framing in progressiveness.

MavisMcMinty · 26/10/2023 23:34

Astonishing debate linked to in this thread, which - SPOILER ALERT - Helen Joyce wins hands down. It cuts off abruptly at the end, ruining it rather, but hopefully they’ll remedy that soon, it’s only been up since earlier this evening. It’s long - an hour and a quarter - but well worth a watch, if you like horror and comedy and controlled fury.

If you aren’t thinking/muttering/screaming “Shut the fuck up!” at one of the panelists, you’re a better person than me.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4928929-trans-ideology-a-real-life-debate?page=1

Trans Ideology - a real life debate | Mumsnet

So something that is far too rare - a proper debate For me positions can be summarised as: Mark Glenening - free speech paramount - and shouldnt ha...

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4928929-trans-ideology-a-real-life-debate?page=1

dunBle · 27/10/2023 03:46

I've seen various references to the video here and on twitter, but I don't think my blood pressure could stand actually watching it.

MavisMcMinty · 27/10/2023 04:00

It’s quite funny, actually, particularly if you already know the arguments.

#OperationLetThemSpeak in action.

The opponents of the motion were simply pathetic, and the other fella on Helen’s side of the debate wasn’t really required, I can barely remember any point he made, apart from saying we are all responsible for the language we use and the effect it has on others, and no words should be banned.

I grinned my way through a lot of it.

BezMills · 27/10/2023 08:02

Eddie has impressed me loads of times, no lie. He clearly is a man with a lot of drive and determination.

Britinme · 27/10/2023 08:03

I admired him when he was breaking gender stereotypes. Not so much when he's reinforcing them and talking bollocks about biology.

IcakethereforeIam · 27/10/2023 10:10

The comments are so fawning. The mods really locked them down. They're so one-sided.

duc748 · 27/10/2023 10:14

Would I like to read more about Eddie's travails?

<considers for a millisecond>

Nah, I'll pass.

Boiledbeetle · 27/10/2023 11:16

SqueakyDinosaur · 27/10/2023 05:39

Edited

Eddie (thought he was now insisting on it being Susie) shoehorned coming out as trans in 1985 three times that I noticed in that short interview. There may have been others but reading it once was bad enough.

Gonners · 27/10/2023 11:39

@BoiledbeetleEddie (thought he was now insisting on it being Susie) shoehorned coming out as trans in 1985 three times that I noticed in that short interview.

Suzy, please! Bad enough to misgender him without adding to the literal violence by mis-spelling him. It's odd, isn't it, how many of us remember his insistence that he just liked wearing "women's clothes", aka men's clothes or, you know, simply clothes?

MyLadyDisdainlsYetLiving · 27/10/2023 12:23

“These aren’t women’s clothes. They’re my clothes”

and we all applauded. Stop fucking gaslighting us Suzy.

SinnerBoy · 27/10/2023 12:26

His clothes, the action transvestite's clothes?

Eddie, no one is taking you seriously because you're taking the piss and your film's a bag of spanners, OK?

MouseMinge · 27/10/2023 14:49

The thing about progressives and that iteration of "the left" is how completely it has moved from the left.

The left is, at its roots, socialism. You can move further from that to anarchism, for example but that retains a basic tenet: collectivism. Or as Corbyn put it: for the many, not the few. Within that we can, of course, recognise that certain groups require rights that have historically been denied them, but collectivism cannot be about identity politics. That leads us backward, right over the centre and to the right. After all, in the 80s Thatcher told us there was no such thing as society. It was all about the individual.

The alphabet soup takes that and runs with it. We're told there are myriad ways to be trans and they all deserve protection. This starts to fall apart, although TRAs fail to see this, when men who commit heinous crimes then ape women in order to blame disphoria for their criminality and/or gain access to women's prison. The "anyone who says they're a woman is a woman" mantra falls apart when you agree that some of them are pretending and must go to men's prisons. Individualism and collectivism do not make good bedmates. The TRAs are not left wing, they are moralistic dictators. Their way or you are locked out of their notion of society. They call us fascists and Nazis, but it is them and the far right who ban books, it is them who take on the mantle of McCarthyism. They are illiberal.

It is up to those who are truly to the left to recognise all of this, to reclaim the left and refuse to accept its takeover by this single issue charlatans and bravely fight back against cancel culture, violence and intimidation. Easier said than done, I know, but if we find a way to do it collectively then eventually we win.

And breathe!

Britinme · 27/10/2023 14:50

Well said, Mouse.

MmePoppySeedDefage · 27/10/2023 17:07

There's probably already a long thread on this particular case, but maybe we just read this series of tweets, the number of which were needed came as a surprise to me

x.com/ripx4nutmeg/status/1717928517139091773?s=61&t=kGVJW3nqB0HwN7e30O6LKw

MavisMcMinty · 27/10/2023 17:36

Any chance of a threadreader app unroll for non-twitterers, @MmePoppySeedDefage ?

Swipe left for the next trending thread