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.

Gosh that's a lovely response, thank you!

I hate conflict and I'm not a 'piler-onner' so I'm always a bit apprehensive when I post a criticism - even behind the anonymity of a username, I don't want to 'stir up trouble', I'm obviously a hopeless case and a therapist would have a field day with me!

Sometimes I feel I have to say something, though, and this was one of the times.

@Tinysoxxx That info graphic is brilliant, thanks very much for sharing it. I'd never seen it before and it really does capture a lot very clearly.

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?”
She is so, so privileged that she cannot understand that women are oppressed or marginalised in any way.
I'm so disappointed in all these women who I once thought were clever.

Not to mention has obviously either never bothered to inform herself enough to know that many women arguing for womens rights are not het or white or privileged thanks - or else knows but is throwing in those buzz words purely for effect to raise prejudice against them.

Neither looks particularly good. Try opening the lug holes a bit Sands.

Lots of excellent points.

I’m a childfree by choice lesbian. I’m extremely happy to have skipped some of the biology bits listed. That doesn’t mean I didn’t wake up to wet and bloody sheets at 3am this morning thanks to my period deciding to turn up a fortnight late, or that I’d be happy to see a male in the communal changing room at my gym, or that I wasn’t intimated by the muscular 6-footer in makeup and a miniskirt who loomed over me on a quiet street in Brighton and wanted me to tell him how good his postbox-red hair looked.

And it doesn’t mean that I’m not devastated at what’s happening to young lesbians, who I’m sure Sandi doesn’t give a flying fuck about.

So who is privileged, Sandi?

Julie Bindel, who grew up on a council estate, after her family moved there from a home that had no indoor toilet?

JK Rowling, the single mum author who survived an abusive marriage?

Or the private-school/ Oxbridge- educated woman from a family of globe-trotting broadcasters who has landed plum job after plum job on our screens, despite spending much of her career struggling to reach the dizzy heights of mildly amusing?

And these men aren’t saying they’re toilet cleaners. They’re saying they’re women. That’s our problem. Maybe try educating yourself, as Cambridge clearly failed to do the job.

If it really bothers you there’s a toilet some place else. Go there. Shut up

And that line is the priviledge and the prejudice. Its a lack of understanding about WHY that sign is there. The sign exists because some women WILL self exclude for religious reasons. Its a bigotted reactionary position which isn't tolerant of religion.

The other issue for me is a member of staff is accountable. They are known and traceable in a way that a random member of the public is not. That matters to me.

Apollo, surely there was at least some homophobia in the UK 60-70s feminist movement? In the US it was partly reactive to the lesbian feminist stereotype, eg Betty Friedan calling lesbians a 'lavender menace.' But there were plenty of feminists who included lesbians too, ofc.
As for Sandi, good Lord. She's completely lost it. When I was a 9yo baby feminist I really looked up to her for founding the WEP, but they've proved themselves useless.
Can't she at least say something like, 'Trans women are women, but some natal women have trauma related to male-born people, so there should be gender neutral facilities for trans people, bit they shouldn't be in women's spaces.

She was able to comodify having a baby. So there are ramifications from that.

You can throw insults as much as you like about it, but it remains something that she doesn't get. She was able to find someone to carry her baby for her...

Did her career suffer because of taking time out for a baby? I doubt it. Did she have life changing birth injuries and a need for years of intimate treatment as a result? No.

Yes she has SOME experience of the biological impact of sex, but she hasn't had one of the most significant ones which can have years and years of impact, demeaning treatment and poor care that is sadly now standard within the uk.

And even then, I suspect her partner probably went private anyway...

Its got fuck all to her sexuality and everything to do with how she's been able to skip all the shitty stuff associated with giving birth.

Can't she at least say something like, 'Trans women are women, but some natal women have trauma related to male-born people, so there should be gender neutral facilities for trans people, bit they shouldn't be in women's spaces.

Or even - as the above changes her viewpoint that inclusion should prioritise transwomen over females - just a measured, neutral-sounding, If a cis-woman believes she needs a female-only space, she could seek one elsewhere / use the disabled toilets.

Except that her viewpoint doesn't allow for this.

Such a "cis-woman" no longer has the reassurance of the past social contract that a male entering a female-only space should be challenged (in part because of public personalities such as Sandi modelling the view that anyone who believes this is deserving of an aggressive "shut up" or "go away").

And directing such a woman to the disabled would expose Sandi's lack of care and empathy for yet another disadvantaged group.

So the only conclusion is that Sandi either hasn't though this through (unlikely) or that she actively rejects the possibility of a woman being unable to use a toilet that may include male-bodied people (remarkably naive) or that she feels that such a woman's access to public spaces simply doesn't matter enough for undermining this social contract to be in any way an issue (appalling).

I really do find it the tone - the "fury", the total dismissal of another group as undeserving even of respect - more deeply disturbing than the sentiment itself... But there is no way to express this view convincingly in a moderate way; it isn't a moderate view. The faux/genuine outrage is necessary to its expression. As I said in an earlier post last year, it is, in a sense, a performative avoidance of the issues at stake, where heartfelt emotion becomes a proxy for (and disguises the apparent absence of) balanced, ethical engagement with a thorny problem.

RapidOnset, obvs you're entitled to your opinion, & people are entitled to think the C of E are right about marriage. But it's a bit disappointing being on Fwr & seeing people here support lesbians over the trans madness but then deride people as sheep those who want the C of E to include gay couples in their definition of marriage.

Also, on her commodifying having a baby-
Her partner carried the baby, not a surrogate, I presume. Is a man w a female partner commodifying having a baby?
It ofc means she hasn't been faced w those biological problems, that's def true.

usually I'd just roll my eyes at this sort of thing, assuming a lack of understanding or a lack of reading. In this case, it just infuriates me. A Cambridge educated woman with a fierce intellect spouting this crap. She really should have a conversation with another Newnham alumni, Germaine Greer.

I really do find it the tone - the "fury", the total dismissal of another group as undeserving even of respect - more deeply disturbing than the sentiment itself

Yes, @Catiette Especially when that group is mostly made up of women🤔

She's against women saying what they want (and are entitled to have), in favour of men saying what they want (and aren't entitled to have). Interesting interpretation of feminism there.

Sandi can't see the perspectives of those women who do need single sex loos, or hospital wards, or sports, or refuges etc because she hasn't needed them herself and hasn't thought about those who do. It's the second part that is inexcusable.

We can't all experience everything, but lack of direct experience does not have to mean lack of understanding or lack of consideration.

I don’t think she’s a fierce intellect. She has a posh voice and her speciality is presenting lots of facts in an interesting way. I used to know lots of facts (through practical knowledge as well as research) for my boss to spew out on TV which made him seem really clever. He was very good at retaining information and regurgitating that information to make it sound like it was an intellectual stream of thought.
She is a good presenter.
I don’t think she’s got the critical analysis skills, curiosity or emotional intelligence to work out why she sounds so daft.
And going to Oxbridge does not mean you will have all those qualities.

Honestly, "I could weep" that one of the people who founded the Women's Equality Party turned out not to be a feminist or to understand what one is.

Believing that we don't need a word for female people or any single sex spaces or sports for female people, and that if female people want a word for themselves and some single sex spaces and sports it means they're hateful bigots because they should be prioritising the wants of male people instead is very much not feminism, Sandi.

Humans can't change sex, and gender is what feminism was supposed to be fighting against.

She seems to have a lot of difficulty in understanding other people in general. She says she didn’t like working on Bake Off because you can buy cakes in shops so the whole process of baking was not enjoyable for her.

I get that some people just don’t have much interest in food and a cake is a cake to them, but surely it’s not difficult to see that a handcrafted product can’t compare to something from Sainsbury’s.

She says she didn’t like working on Bake Off because you can buy cakes in shops so the whole process of baking was not enjoyable for her

as she didn’t arrive from Mars yesterday, I think it’s fair to assume she knew what baking involved. How odd she didn’t discover this antipathy until she’d accepted the large payment from channel 4 to present a baking show 🤔

Honestly, "I could weep" that one of the people who founded the Women's Equality Party turned out not to be a feminist or to understand what one is.

The "Women's" Equality Party is a toral waste of space, and its priorities are reflected in the fact that the founders think that.

There is unfortunately a point where the good will of assuming someone is really that limited, that unaware, that wholly blind to other people, becomes overly generous. Too many times women have granted this kind interpretation to people who have later proven to know perfectly well what the issues were for women but didn't quite have the nerve to own their prejudices and dodgier views in public.

Or was intentionally from the start an exceptionally arrogant and politically motivated person who intended to commandeer 'feminism' to benefit themselves and their mates.

No other kind of 'woman' is anywhere on this person's radar, she speaks with open derision and anger towards them for being not her sort.

Do you apply this to all lesbian couples where only one gives birth? Or just Sandi Toksvig? I know several lesbian mothers who would be deeply upset at the idea that they 'commodified' their dear children by not being the parent who physically gave birth. They didn't rent a womb from some random woman overseas, they made a commitment to have a child with a woman they loved and hoped to spend their lives with.

Presumably if the lesbian couple have one each, that's OK? I know cases like that too.

You can throw insults as much as you like
Is that directed at me? Just because I objected to the suggestion that not having given birth means that a woman does not understand sex and biology ? That's an insult??

The WEP made women in politics look like chumps and tarnished modern political feminism.

“How could you be so white and privileged and heterosexual and never marginalised in your life yet you decide to punch down on people?”'

As others have said, breathtaking ignorance and hypocrisy. Who is doing the punching down on whom when the uber privileged wealthy woman tells traumatised and poor and vulnerable women in rape centres, prisons, and hospitals to actually shut up. To actually. Shut. Up. Inconceivable.