Sandi Toksvig "doesn't get it", poor love....

[HootyMcBooby]

Sandi Toksvig slams anti-trans bigots ‘claiming to be radical feminists’ (msn.com)

"I could weep. I don’t get it. It’s beyond me"

Yeah Sandi, I don't get it either.
How is it possible that men can say they are women and have unfettered access to females in their safe spaces?
How is it possible that we are medicating children against puberty?
How it is possible that a woman can be raped on a female hospital ward by a man claiming to be a woman and then gaslighted to be told a man was not on the ward?
How is it possible that men are claiming titles, sponsorships and medals in women's sports?
How is it possible women and females are being literally erased from so many spheres of life, including health/medicine and marketing campaigns? How come the same isn't happening to males?

As a lesbian do you like "lady penis"?
Or do you actually know that men remain men whatever surgeries they may have had, and are just on the "be kind" train?

Have you even THOUGHT about the issues this ideology ushers in?

Actually you don't need to answer that.
It's obvious.

I look forward to the attempts.

I agree tempest, the problem is why they think TWAW and what the definition is. And for TRAs, the only acceptable definition is self-declaration.

That means that if a hulking great bloke who understood himself to be a straight male/man wanted to be in on a lesbian space or lesbian app, presumably Sandi would think the answer should be no. But all he has to do is say the magic words "I'm a woman" or "I'm a lesbian" and suddenly, magically, he shouldn't be excluded. Even if he's a convicted sex offender or has made his hatred of women clear. The dogma is that if you say you're a woman, you are.

Or does she literally mean it's terrible to exclude anyone from anything? That would mean no lesbian spaces at all, not even TW-inclusive ones, as everything would be for everyone. "Exclusion" is not some kind of inherently evil taboo. People get excluded all the time from groups they don't belong to and settings they're not allowed into, for a huge range of totally sensible reasons.

Neither interpretation makes sense or has any practical meaning, when you can change what you "are" by just saying the words.

Two social media posts, both in essence, saying the same thing. That men will beat women until the women obey them.

Plus ca change, women have been dealing with violent, unpleasant men for thousands of years.

Or does she literally mean it's terrible to exclude anyone from anything?

She seems perfectly happy to see women excluded from women's services and facilities so that men may use them. But I don't honestly think it's worth trying to unpick what she may or may not mean: it's quite patently a lot of bollocks.

She is simply saying that people born with penises must be indulged regardless of the cost and harm to people born without. Her performative crocodile tears about women not embracing this oppression and harm are only one of the very ugly things she is demonstrating about herself here. 'Inclusion' is not something she's into. No.

And the women she is deriding are getting treated like this for daring to say 'there are answers that would work for all of us, such as third spaces, TQ people can have non sexed spaces (and women like Toksvig are free to dance around naked in there proving their superiority all they like) and women needing female only spaces are also able to access'.

But this is apparently the evil position. The righteous position is that women are harmed, excluded, subordinated, ruled, and shut up about it. That is what she is using her position and power to support.

They could have it in their minds that it's "moral" to see them that way.

I suspect conformity and group identity also play a large part.

Anyway, I would suggest if someone has a moral motive, then you need to try to take away the moral high ground from them. So you can challenge it as an immoral position, at the same time as you probably also want to challenge it just on a factual level.

What I have found is that while it is moral, often the people who have these ideas are very muddy. They mix up the moral and factual or rational arguments. Not just about this but about a lot of things.

Fuzzy thinking is surprisingly effective at insulating people against argument.

What always gets me is that many of these people are adults, university educated, supposedly a member of the cultural or intellectual elite. How is it they are such poor thinkers?

I think some people must choose to actively disengage-brain as the safe option.

I find her choice of such emotive language pretty telling. "I could weep"? Thinking about when this is used, it's a kind of performative expression brought out in very generalised, extreme contexts ("I could weep when I think about the state of humanity! I could weep when I consider the children...") and used in a way that indulgently foregrounds the "weeper" (in their nobly empathetic but helpless-to-change-things suffering). It's a kind of verbal distancing of oneself from the nitty gritty of an issue, indicating that it's too overwhelming to even hope to be able to resolve, thereby devolving oneself of responsibility for further engagement or action.

As PP have said, that kind of language from someone with the capacity to understand the sheer complexity of the debate feels inappropriate and even irresponsible. Freedom of speech and all that - no calls for silencing from me, either - BUT I'd far rather that she engaged meaningfully, than sharing emotive soundbites connoting existential despair at the very worst of humanity! Because doing that implicitly supports the more extremist condemnations of GC thinking.

I think it's often a powerful need for people to see themselves as "good" and morally righteous, which they have reassured themselves that they are with their anti-racism, anti-homophobia etc standpoints that are essential for the modern western person who does not want to be seen as right wing or bigoted (and especially essential if you're in the arts, public sector etc). I don't think this is necessarily fake, but it does sometimes seem performative and can be performed without any critical thinking required. It's just, everyone is equal and shouldn't be persecuted etc etc. and that's easy to understand.

Then along comes trans activism hitching its wagon to gay rights (which of COURSE you support) and as part of its dogma requiring you to believe that being trans somehow magically means you are the opposite sex from your body. Now critical thinking isn't just off to one side, it has to be actively suppressed for you to go along with this. But if you don't, you're the kind of awful right wing bigot you've been trying not to be all this time.

In this way the whole thing has really done a number on a lot of people who of course have the brains to see it doesn't make sense if they tried, but they don't dare even try. Or, they do see that it makes no sense but they're scared because they see what happens to those who dare to question it.

they don't dare even try

That's it.

And there's a whole spectrum hidden in that, from totally get the issues but am consciously ignoring them to deep-rooted denial that there are any issues at all.

It's just...

I always think the latter must take SUCH mental effort in the face of the evidence! Or such cosseted privilege.

I guess it's a failure of empathy on my part that I can't understand her. But at least I'm trying. Is she?

Feeling really livid about it all at the moment.

I always think the latter must take SUCH mental effort in the face of the evidence!

Yes! Especially when it's things like suspiciously high rates of male sex offenders suddenly IDing as women when caught/sentenced. I mean COME ON! They are criminals with a strong interest in access to women - how can you deny the possibility they are pulling a fast one? The mental gymnastics must be painful.

What’s the kind, good, decent take on the trans rights debate? It’s that trans people are vulnerable and marginalised, and we should all accommodate them in the spaces where they feel most comfortable and we must all check our privilege. Transwomen are women and transmen are men. Trans children need our support as they explore their gender identity. Pronouns must be respected.

Once you’ve decided that you want to be good and kind and do the right thing, the last thing you need is for someone to start muddying the waters with “oh but what about Isla Bryson” and “what about Barbie Kardashian” and “what about detransitioners who have caused irreparable damage to their bodies” and “what about vulnerable women who need single-sex spaces” and “what about women’s sports being erased” and “what about women’s language being erased” and “what about women’s Brit awards being lost” etc.

Sandi chose blind, unquestioning kindness to one group, accepting all their demands as perfectly reasonable, despite the fact that in doing so, other much larger groups of people are disadvantaged. So it’s in her interest to stay as ignorant as she can of the issues. A bit of handwringing and emotive language will get her in the TRA good books, while she wilfully pretends not to understand the deeper issues, or has a strong inkling but doesn’t dare to delve further for fear of being peaked.

“I could weep, it’s beyond me.” It’s in her best interest not to be peaked. Once peaked, you’re at risk of cancellation if you say anything “beyond the pale”. Better to cover your ears, you love Big Brother, 2+2=5 and you just want to be a good, kind person. Just like all the good, kind people who knew that racism was wrong, and homophobia was wrong. Now trans rights is the new noble cause and you are needed to defeat those evil feminists who seem to be making a really big fuss and you don’t understand why. It’s beyond you. Did a bunch of harmless women really turn into frothing nazi bigots overnight? Or do they have legitimate concerns that ought to be listened to?

By being ‘good’ and ‘kind’ to a minority, she is being cruel and exclusive to the majority.

But the majority is girls and women - and as we all know only too well, girls and women don’t matter.

Men are the important ones, and men who identify as women are more important than actual women can ever be.

Yes but she won't see it that way (if she's genuine) because all women and girls could just not be excluded by accepting TW as W and "embracing"/shoving aside their own discomfort and fear. Or just being OK with being raped on hospital wards and in prisons.

It really is 1984 and Winston, isn't it?

Some of my frustration at the moment is because of work. A training day featuring that awful wheel of oppression that decisively positions women above transwomen and erases sex as an axis of oppression full-stop. Then a survey that asks what we identify as, with no scope not to identity as something. I don't, OK? I don't fucking "identify" as a woman, with all that that could imply for my own, for half of humanity's, rights in the current context. How dare you force me into a system that erases me? And that survey, what's more, IS about something that could be relevant to biological sex - OK, in a rather obscure way, but, still, something that females may be disadvantaged in but that for the life of me I can't see how self-identification would affect. So - data that would have been captured and could protect our interests ten years ago now being ignored in the very name of Progression. All of it, in the name of What's Right And Good. I'm sick of it. Deleting sweariness as I type. But I'm so sick of it.

I sometimes think I'd rather have fought for the vote than this. An exceptionally naive, complacent, silly thought, yes, I know I wouldn't really... but back then, at least there was a certain honesty to the other side: an explicit rebuttal - You're inferior, you're not worth the ballot slip, you should get over it! But this gaslighting - You've got your rights, you're perfectly equal, in fact you're privileged - therefore shut up and bow down to the patriarchy?!

I'm really pissed off at the moment.

I haven't read all the most recent posts but I decided to search for a BBC documentary on second-wave feminism. I can't remember exactly when this was screened but think it was around about 2009? I found it really informative at the time. Does anyone else remember this documentary? There were three, perhaps four hour-long episodes.

Anyway, I popped it into Google and didn't find it, but found this absolute gem of a page.

Second Wave Feminism - BBC Archive

And another

BBC - Second Wave Feminism

Does Sandi really not remember how recent our gains are?

and we must all check our privilege

This is a huge part of it. White, liberal feminist is driven to a large extent by some urge to self-flagellate to atone for the sins of … well everyone. This serves to rehabilitate them and make them more moral than everyone else for it.

the Wikipedia entry about self-flagellation is interesting. The bit about Christian women, in particular, suggests that liberal feminism has found new, apparently secular ways to self-flagellate.

Likewise, the Congregationalist writer Sarah Osborn (1714–1796) also practiced self-flagellation in order "to remind her of her continued sin, depravity, and vileness in the eyes of God".[44] … St. Thérèse of Lisieux, a late 19th-century French Discalced Carmelite nun considered in Catholicism to be a Doctor of the Church, is an influential example of a saint who questioned prevailing attitudes toward physical penance. Her view was that loving acceptance of the many sufferings of daily life was pleasing to God, and fostered loving relationships with other people, more than taking upon oneself extraneous sufferings through instruments of penance. As a Carmelite nun, Saint Thérèse practiced voluntary corporal mortification.

So so disappointed 😢

Exactly!!

Yes, and ironically, that self-flagellation is extremely self-centred and lazy. It's really about denying responsibility for the privilege you do have, and trying to escape from the opprobrium heaped on you for being white, middle class, western etc. If you can show you're an "ally", or (as many do IMO) claim transness yourself (often NB) so you can join the oppressed, you no longer have to be the morally unacceptable "privileged" - even though of course you still in fact are privileged and nothing has changed.

It's like the whole bloody decolonisation crap. Decolonise the curriculum/infrastructure/literature/everything so we don't have to feel bad. No - it's inherent to how many western societies have evolved and developed and it cannot be erased. We should understand and accept it and own it and resolve to do things differently, not try to wipe it clean on the surface while continuing to benefit from it anyway.

It’s also offering up the bodies of other women (who often are much less privileged) in what is a largely symbolic act of penance for the flagellater.

Quite literally their bodies in many cases - because they’re the ones who experience the consequences of the ‘oh of course TWAW and should be in women’s prison/changing rooms/sports because they’re women’.

Yes. The phrase 'pimping out' other, less privileged and powerful women, is not inaccurate or an exaggeration.

I sometimes think I'd rather have fought for the vote than this. An exceptionally naive, complacent, silly thought, yes, I know I wouldn't really... but back then, at least there was a certain honesty to the other side: an explicit rebuttal - You're inferior, you're not worth the ballot slip, you should get over it! But this gaslighting - You've got your rights, you're perfectly equal, in fact you're privileged - therefore shut up and bow down to the patriarchy?!

It might be naive but I don't think it's silly. Until recently we knew where we stood. It was often being told that we already had it all but now it's you have it all and it's about time you shared it you selfish harpies. And it is all so bloody white. Intersectional feminism has gone by the wayside in favour of people who aren't women no matter how much they want to be. We shouldn't really talk about female genital mutilation because that would exclude men who through no fault of their own weren't born with the right genitals for that particular nightmare scenario. Instead of building on our gains and reaching out and attempting to understand issues outside of our bubble, we're now supposed to just care about men who want to be women. It's nearly always the men as well. Women who want to be men are on the margins because women don't count.

Thank you so much for this absolute gem!!
(The Open Door 'Down with Feminism' has totally spun me out!)
Absolutely fascinating watching these in order.

Just as an aside, Julie Bindel is currently under attack on Twitter/ X from trans allies who've taken against her for her article about Sandi. If anyone would care to join the fray...

Gosh isn't it interesting how this seems to have stirred the hive. Some very key points obviously poked in the article there Julie. Well done.