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.

On the side of "gender identity"...

Imagine the scenario of a woman that gets magically mind swapped into the body of a man. Their memories somehow transfer over, and we assume the reliability of memory.

In that kind of hypothetical situation, they would have a "gender identity" that is different to their body, and I believe it would be a rational and justified belief.

It would be a rational belief, because of their original sexed body; so this still depends on a sex biological basis for defining "man" and "woman".

So I tend to think that "gender identity" could make sense for a trans person, with the important difference being that they wouldn't have a rational basis for their belief. Or anyway, if it's "rational" they will need to find a different justification.

But that's it's non rational for a trans person, doesn't mean you can't hold such a belief; it just means that maybe you should be questioning it or even viewing the belief as a delusion.

However maybe a trans person can think it's their authentic self, regardless of the difficulty in proving it's a real thing, or a rational belief in their situation.

To be charitable here, it's not like there aren't other beliefs that are difficult to prove like a belief in objective morality for example.

But as I think someone mentioned, it's one thing to hold a belief like that, that your authentic self is really a "woman", and it's another to try to impose your very questionable and controversial ideas on everyone else in society.

Even with the "magical mind swap" example, yes, in one sense, they really are a woman trapped in a man's body; but in another sense they aren't a "woman" as the mind/body combination would make them something else, and it would be entirely reasonable not to view them as a woman in some contexts.

That's a really interesting way of looking at it.

Yes, transwoman embrace and reinforce the harmful, overt sexuality that comes with being a woman. The stuff that holds us back.

Transmen try to escape it.

And in both sets of behaviours, they do nothing more or less than confirm their actual sex.

Pithy. It does feel like that's what's happening in many cases. And so different to Porcelina's analogy, which describes something different. This bundling together such disparate types and needs and groups under one "umbrella" may be done, by many, for the best possible reasons, but feels so problematic, naive and ironic - in the name of celebrating individuality, this single concept of a definitive "identity" may liberate some - but it also risks erasing / suppressing / limiting / confusing / damaging / disguising / denying etc. a whole multitude of utterly individual identities and needs...

She still doesn’t get it. It’s like Cass, Olympic sports controversy, Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre just hasn’t happened in Sandiland…

Sandi Toksvig: ‘Feisty old ladies are the backbone of society’

www.thetimes.com/article/71ac1cc5-9497-4275-a228-15315613eb46?shareToken=5a3244b6120beca0be30c8cb98bf4f2c

'She is especially angry by how many “radical feminists” attack trans people. “How could you be so white and privileged and heterosexual and never marginalised in your life yet you decide to punch down on people?”'

'I say they fear — for example — that trans women will occupy safe spaces meant for women, such as public lavatories. “I don’t get this. I’m in my 45th year in showbusiness, travelling the country touring. I’ve been to every service-station toilet in the country. Every one has a sign up saying male cleaners in attendance. I don’t recall anybody saying, ‘We need to group up against these male cleaners.’

Why would someone dress as a woman when they could just pick up a cleaning cloth? If it really bothers you there’s a toilet some place else. Go there. Shut up. Let’s join together and fight stuff that actually needs fighting. Why are they talking about this when women in Afghanistan are not allowed to sing or to look a man in the face?'

My god, she is clueless.

Urgh...it's like she's actively tried not to look into this at all. Sandi- if by some miracle you're reading this, please give a thought to the young women who are being harmed. It's really not about motorway service station toilets.

I don't think she's reading anything tbh. High on her own farts.

It's almost as if her rich, middle class, first-class Cambridge brain can't cope with the enormous amount of fact, reality, detail, personal experience, clarity, and nuance that most of us privileged, phobic, thicko types have absorbed over the years, as these issues have developed.

I mean, she has no time for baking cakes! She's so dismissive of cake bakers! What a shocker 🙄

“I’m a pensioner and I don’t want to be dismissed. I think feisty old ladies are the backbone of society.”

I think this might contain some clue to her lack of proper inquiry into this issue. She doesn't want to be dismissed by the people that matter to her which I assume are fellow media folks and so she just sprouts what she thinks everyone around her thinks.

'white and privileged and heterosexual and never marginalised in your life'

If radfems have 'never been marginalised' what's her rationale for feminism?

Leaving aside the rather glaring ignorance of all the lesbian and bisexual and black and Asian radfems.

Yes, indeed, she is railing against women for being privileged and telling us to 'shut up' from her position as a comfortable, educated, and well-known celebrity.

I can't stand her, never could. I was delighted when she left Bake Off. Absolute definition of a smug, up herself luvvie.

ST is the perfect example of a woman not getting something when her career (and no doubt her social circle) depends on her not getting something

'white and privileged and heterosexual and never marginalised in your life'
she thinks women have never been marginalised?? There aren’t enough lols in the world for that bit of stupidity

I’m a pensioner and I don’t want to be dismissed. I think feisty old ladies are the backbone of society.”

well it’s a shame then isn’t it Sandi that you stand 100% with one of the most ageist movements currently around. one of the first TRA fall back positions is “urgh you’re all old abd you’ll be dead”. I assume she remembers the councillor in Liverpool and his saggy breasted comment when women were having the temerity to challenge his trans yay/fuck off women narrative

It's article is really interesting in terms of Sandy's lifestyle and life experience.

It says:
“I’m very interested in the logical, not the biological, family,” Toksvig says. “I have the most fabulous friends, but no matter how busy they are … if I phoned and said, ‘I’m in nowhereland, please come,’ they would, as indeed I would for them. So I wanted to write about people who create their own family and love each other and how it’s multigenerational.”

And it then goes on to talk about how she has children and grandchildren. Her children were carried by her ex-partner with the help of a friend who was a sperm donor.

This to me says a lot. She has never had a lot of the biological connections and issues over sex because of the life she's lead. Even as a lesbian, it was her partner who did the biological related things.

She is ultimately exceptionally privileged because she's had no use for biology and she doesn't see any issues over biology. She just thinks its about toilets.

She's had a very positive life experience in terms of building 'a glitter family'.

The thing that isn't on her radar is safeguarding. But again look at her privilege and how she's had such a cosseted life.

She can't understand things because she hasn't had any life experience which would give her the ability to.

In a lot of ways her life has been more similar to that of a gay man who has used women as a commodity in order to have children. Several members of her family were already in broadcasting. She went to private school. She was present at mission control for the moon landing as her Dad was covering the story. She went to Cambridge and was a Cambridge Footlight and was a contemporary of Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Tony Slattery and Emma Thompson which certainly wouldn't have hindered her.

There literally isn't any way to be more privileged. She probably actually benefitted from being a woman at the right time in history too, in terms of her career - she hit it at the sweet point of when female talent was starting to be looked for and valued, rather than being a trailblazer.

And she's the one who talks about radical feminists 'punching down' because she has this 'oppressed identity' as a lesbian.

Frankly she's the example that demonstrates the power politics explicitly.

Is it surprising she doesn't get it? Not really.

'white and privileged and heterosexual and never marginalised in your life'

Erm...surely that's a description of the average trans woman?

“I’m very interested in the logical, not the biological, family,”

just as an aside this is yet another example of her privilege. In the childless community we talk a lot about creating your family of choice ie friendship because you don’t have children of your own. She has children and grand children. She has a biological family. She is astonishingly lacking in self awareness of her own privilege on so many levels

Sandy has more in common with a transwoman than the life experience of many many women...

🎯 bang on!!!

I've not yet read the article, so will do so asap. But in the meantime, the quotes you provide above are disappointing. I saw this thread had resurfaced and wondered if it signalled a change in her views, or a softening of them. The language used and ideas expressed above, though, are astonishing in the light of the growing evidence of the damage this is wreaking on vulnerable females. They feel offensive and quite distressing. Not least, the following:

Why are they talking about this when women in Afghanistan are not allowed to sing or to look a man in the face?

Who aren't allowed to sing or look a man in the face, Sandi? I'm confused. According to the worldview you so forcefully promote, you must mean that some females are, thank God, immune to these horrors (or are there no transmen in Afghanistan?), while some men - transwomen - are victimised in this way?

Now, I know that the above may be jumped on by the Sandis of the world as pettily pedantic and deliberately disingenuous, but it really is neither. Because if language is so important to the western, white middle-class trans-identifying male that "woman", "she" and "her" must be redefined to include him, and women's spaces thereby opened to him, then how - how?! - can the definition of "woman" not matter to that appallingly oppressed 51% of the Afghan population?!

The sheer irony of her misrepresentation of radical feminists as "white and privileged", and the suggestion that we're disregarding the women of Afghanistan, when* she supports a redefinition of "woman" that actively obscures the very source of their oppression is breathtaking.

*(apparent - again, I will read the article, and review this on that basis if need be)

Is that even true? About lesbians being excluded in the '60s and '70s?

There was definitely a contingent, Betty Friedan et al in particular, who termed them "The Lavender Menace."

For someone as white and privileged as Sandi to assume that all other women (you know, the ones talking about women in prisons and rape shelters) are "white and privileged" beggars belief. It is the white, sheltered, privileged and predominantly heterosexual so-called "feminists" who are prioritising men who id as trans uber alles, and especially over women who are NOT what Sandi is mischaracterising here. She just doesn't see the lower orders, does she?

Wholly ignorant woman, smearing and in a bubble of privilege. She infuriates me - privileged women like her have done SO much damage.

I have no time or patience for wealthy women with a voice on this who neither have the world knowledge or the basic intelligence to see the issues for other women and care about them as much as they care about their penised friends getting to be in rooms with non consenting women taking their clothes off and providing their bodies for the penised person's better happiness.

If you don't care about women's consent, have absolutely no concept of why some women cannot and do not consent, don't believe women should have the right of consent anyway, and see the main issue as being the right of blokes to have access to undressed women for their feelz and jollies, you are either fantastically naive and/or stupid or a very unpleasant person with some sexism and/or sexual issues you're a bit shy of being open about.