Grouchy feminist rambling

[lorralo]

Are we actually going to get there? Are we going to be safe or are we all just going to be told to shush and carry on being at risk in female spaces? It's a scary thought that my daughter could be sharing a school bathroom/ swimming changing rooms with any biological male. If I was a trans women I would understand the threat women feel as for goodness sake rape is so common! Why can’t a lot of people see this?

Is there a middle ground that will come where we'll all stop screaming at each other and have people be trans but still have safety and biology in mind? . It’s so scary how people want to ignore risk.
I just am at a loss

The grand plan was that women would have a bit of a pout and a fuss and then get on with dick pandering and get used to having lost privacy/dignity/legal rights/access, yada yada.

Of course it hasn't worked, because it was based on a very flawed and limited social understanding of 'other people' and particularly women. The anger and resistance is getting bigger, and so is the body count of women harmed by men being given access against the interests of women, and it keeps getting into the press. The court cases keep coming in, where people who should have been discouraged by the process and intentionally escalated costs instead stood up and fought through to a verdict in their favour. The issues that a few years ago we were only allowed to say here under strict moderation are now being openly voiced in the house of lords and the house of commons.

The misogyny that allowed this in the first place, and has made this like swimming through treacle is the key issue we have, and like sorting out the institutional misogyny of government, police, etc, will be the work of decades. But no. This isn't settling down or going away and it is only moving in one direction.

OP i share your frustration.

I don’t understand why women are being thrown under the bus over this one.
If you want your own loo you are being rebranded a TERF, you are ‘unkind’, right wing, stupid…the sort of person ‘we don’t want to share with anyway etc’ …the list goes on.
As universities, restaurants, gyms and god knows how many other public spaces take down those ‘old fashioned’ ‘women only’ signs we are told to like it or lump it. No, more than that. We are reframed as heinous unkind monsters.

Complain about danger and you will be told there is none. The sporting arena? Forget it. You will be told hormonal replacements make everything fair.

Women assaulted by men in refuges and prisons?? Apparently it doesn’t happen and the penised-attacker is a woman any hows. so what’s your problem?

Women will die in the sporting arena, the refuge, the prison. But even then will that change anything. ?

WHY IS THIS HAPPENING? Could be to do with money as most things are. There’s plenty of Drugs money to be made from this agenda.

if I’m called a right wing Trump supporter for supporting women and asking questions about why this is happening, so be it.

If I’m critiqued for not being smart enough to understand that a 50 year old male with a penis and balls swinging in the wind, should share a changing room with wee girls, so be it.

if I feel compassion for the rape victim being forced to share her refuge with a man, And I’m told I’m wrong, so be it.

Well. We are facing an impending Labour government.

I expect everything will get much worse. We can also expect far more attacks, more Isla Brysons, more detransitioners, more women's sports taken over by men.

And that is probably as much what will tip it. Feminists have tried to warn people, but often this has just led to women getting abuse/arrested/losing jobs.

Eyes on the prize as they say OP.
The restitution of woman's rights, the cessation of children being socially groomed to think they've been born in the wrong body and the gradual success of #OperationLetThemSpeak is all happening now. We're challenging a powerful male dominated ideology that's had sole access to the powerful & influential until now.

But you can't tell over 50% of the world's population they no longer exist as a sex class, you can't deny the reality of women's lives and expect us to shut up. And you can't target children, encouraging them to give up their health, fertility, future relationships and well being without being condemned by society.

It's exhausting, depressing and frightening - especially when we see what's happening to children. But it's unsustainable - because it's based on a lie.

Yes I totally agree, if it makes us evil to want women to not be abused then oh well, we know they're wrong so who cares. Just shows how much care there is for our safety

To be honest. It’s got to the stage where we can say NOTHING without being called a bigot. So I think we tend to do just that for a quite life.

Or all the eye rolling and ‘oh don’t get her started’ comments start,,, and that’s usually my female relatives who are much more intelligent than me!

All this.

Women are expected to go along with any demands by other groups for their rights, because on some more fundamental level which the second wave of feminism (and only in a few countries) never managed to affect much there is this extremely strong belief, perhaps subconscious, that women, as a sex, really are supposed to exist as support humans for everyone else.

Then the rights of women are just a resource which hasn't been properly mined and can now be reallocated when needed by those deemed more deserving. (Just think how the male sex is not losing anything at all here, not its language, not its safety in single-sex spaces, not its places on the podium in sports, not its leadership positions, and you can see why many beardbros can afford to be all for inclusion.)

And this subconscious belief is every bit as strong in many feminist organisations as it is in MRA ones. The (incorrect) use of intersectionality reveals this when you notice that now so many intersections feminists analyse don't have the oppression axis based on sex in them at all.

But it's true that many of us are waking up to all this and a new feminist reawakening is taking place. I hope it's not too late or too little.

Also, money is very much behind much of this, and money is one resource which women's movement has never had much of. It's interesting to find out who, for instance, now funds Planned Parenthood, the ACLU, and so on.

Just a thought @lorralo i wonder what will be taken from us next? Anyone else have any thoughts?
please add to list (it’s a bit crude but you get my drift):
Fair sporting opportunities;
sporting bursaries;
changing room and loos etc;
female only jails;
female only refuges;
female only university accommodation;
Our ‘language’;
our periods, etc;
our voices (let women speak events shut down);
our identity as mothers;
??

Sorry to hijack your post @lorralo

No apology needed whatsoever. I would add our right to be lesbians who don't want to go out with a biological male had been taken away, as of course that is so transphobic! Sigh.

@lorralo yes good one. Forgot that one. Very important and utterly ridiculous!!!!!

And the fact JKs rape crisis centre was seen as sexist for allowing only women, there are absolutely no words for this ridiculous reaction. I was sexually assaulted in youth and am still very anxious around men, will be 10x so for women straight after the fact of course. Do they want to take away our rape crisis centres to appease biological males? The same sex that are most rapists... Just insane

I am so afraid that the battle has been lost already! I run a 6th form debate club and recently debated with somebody who wants to abolish all sex segregated spaces. None of my counter arguments were accepted, religious women, small girls, abused women - they just need to suck up “the little bit of discomfort” for the greater good…

@passthegin. Yes suck it up or find a solution. Yes we, us women have to find the solution….

Not a rant, but a poem of strength from a young feminist in USA

That's fabulous! Thank you Jo

"I heard a woman becomes herself
the first time she speaks
without permission
then, every word out her mouth
a riot..."

Political representation, plus all manner of academic awards snd scholarships - particularly those designed to get more women into tech/STEM

She's a bit marmite for some but I really like what Jane Clare Jones said.

Did men really think we'd just take this quietly, that we'd comply?

Did men really think we'd just take this quietly, that we'd comply?

Of course they did. Because we're merely appliances for them to use whenever and however they please. The idea that we could say "no" to them, never enters their mind.